Isle of Dogs

  “This one thar let on that to you?” Fonny Boy’s father asked as he jerked his chin at the dentist.

  “Yass. Durn if he didn’t!”

  “What words did he put to you?”

  Fonny Boy shrugged, his yarn running aground, but the seed had been planted.

  “Can’t be taking no chances,” another waterman spoke up.

  “Nah.”

  “Nah. That’s right.”

  “The governor already’s cut our crabbing to the wick, and now that arster drudging is pretty near on us, what if are toldt to leave that off, too? Why, there’ll be nothing in our pockets, neither a red cent.”

  “It ain’t fittin’!”

  “Nah. For sure it ain’t!”

  “I say we let ’im make one call over the phone and talk our intentions,” Fonny Boy’s father suggested in a wild, angry voice.

  “Who’s he gonna call for?”

  “I say he talk at the state police, that’s what. They was the ones who painted on the street out thar. And maybe the dentist is spying for the police on part of the gov’ner.”

  Dr. Faux was handed the old black phone, and after calling directory assistance and going through a series of transfers, he got Superintendent Judy Hammer on the line and prayed she wouldn’t think to run a record check on him.

  “Who is this?” Hammer asked, and she could hear angry murmuring in the background.

  “I’m a dentist from the mainland,” a voice replied. “I take care of Tangier Island and am here now and in a passel of trouble because your trooper painted stripes on Janders Road and the governor is taking over the island so he can turn it into a racetrack.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Hammer asked, and she almost hung up on the so-called dentist, who clearly was a whacko, but then decided that maybe she ought to hear him out. “The stripes are a speed trap and part of the governor’s new VASCAR program.”

  “If you don’t remove the stripes immediately and sign an agreement that prohibits the state police, coast guard, and others from ever molesting the Islanders again, they’re going to keep me as a prisoner against my will!”

  “Who is this?” Hammer asked again, taking notes at her desk.

  “I’m forbidden from giving you my name,” the voice said.

  “Down with Virginia!” someone with a strange accent cried out in the background.

  “Neither body here voted for the gov’ner, as I recollect it.”

  “We ain’t done nothing but fish our floats and make an honest living, and what we come home to? Stripes on the street and him, the dentist, pulling out ever one of our teeth!”

  “I haven’t pulled out every one of your teeth!” the dentist objected with his hand over the phone, but Hammer heard him and everybody else anyway.

  “All right,” Hammer said in an authoritative voice. “Just what exactly do you want us to do? I’m confused.”

  Her question was followed by silence on the line.

  “Hello?” she asked.

  “We’re all wore out with being interfered,” she heard someone say. “Talk at her and say to pass at the gov’ner that we was having a right good time of it before his meddling, and what we want is our own independence from Virginia!”

  “Yass!”

  “That’s right! Neither more revenuers or police coming on the island! We’ll take our own independence!”

  “Neither more money going to tax! Neither a penny!”

  “And no more telling us to hold down our catch!”

  “Yass!”

  “Well, you heard them,” the dentist said to Hammer. “No more fishing restrictions, state taxes, policing, or interference. Tangier Island wants to secede from Virginia, and,” he added, lowering his voice in a conspiratorial way, “the ransom for my release is fifty thousand dollars in unmarked bills that you are to express mail to P.O. box three-sixteen in Reedville. Please meet these demands immediately. I’m a hostage in the medical clinic and have already been beaten and am bleeding and my life is in danger!”

  Before Hammer could respond to what she interpreted as madness and blatant extortion, the dentist hung up on her. She tried to find Andy to no avail and left him a voice mail explaining what had happened.

  “Your mummy essay has caused considerable damage,” she added at the end of her recorded message, “although I can’t say as fact that anyone on the island read it. But you certainly have set the stage for making people believe that Tangier Island is being persecuted by Virginia and you’d better do something to set the record straight, Andy. Call me.”

  Andy did not get the message until late that night because after he and Macovich had flown back to Richmond, Andy had quickly thrown together a secret mission that had required a disguise and a borrowed civilian helicopter. He had spent the rest of the day on Tangier Island, gathering information, and when he finally got home, it was close to midnight. He played his voice mail and returned Hammer’s call, waking her up.

  “My God,” he said. “I had no idea! If only I had known before now.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Hammer’s groggy voice came over the line.

  “I can’t tell you,” Andy said. “Not now. I know that may seem rude and unfair, but I’ve been doing research and investigating a matter that I really don’t have time to discuss at the moment. But suffice it to say that when I outlined the essays I planned to write for the website, my agenda did not include Tangier Island or dental fraud, so I’ve been busy—very busy—trying to find out everything I can about the Islanders, and I’ve got to get off the phone and start writing . . .”

  “Andy!” Hammer was wide awake and offended. “You can’t keep secrets from me! Where have you been all day? Have you heard the news? Apparently not,” she added with emotion. “A woman was viciously murdered on Belle Island and the killer carved your name on her body!”

  “My name? What the hell do you mean, my name?”

  “I mean Trooper Truth.”

  “Someone carved Trooper Truth on her body?” Andy was shocked and amazed. “What . . . ? What . . . ?”

  “I don’t know what the hell what or anything else. But I think it might be a damn good idea to scrap this Trooper Truth shit and return to normal police duties before any more damage is done.”

  “You can’t blame me for what some deranged killer did! As awful as I feel about the victim, I had nothing to do with her death and I promise to help in any way. Listen, we had an agreement and you promised,” Andy reminded her. “And don’t forget what I said a year ago when we discussed all this. If you tell the truth, the forces of evil don’t like it, and shit happens. But in the end, truth will prevail.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Hammer replied unkindly and with impatience. “Please, don’t subject me to any more of your naive philosophizing!”

  “That hurts,” Andy said, stung and disappointed, but more determined than ever. “Read Trooper Truth in the morning and maybe we’ll talk.”

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF TANGIER ISLAND

  by Trooper Truth

  Although it may wish it wasn’t at the moment, Tangier Island is part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and was happened upon in 1608 when John Smith and seven soldiers, six gentle-men, and a doctor of Physicke were exploring the Chesapeake Bay in a three-ton open barge.

  While searching for fit harbors and habitations, they found themselves in the midst of many isles, which they named the Russell Isles. When they crossed the bay to the eastern shore, they found themselves confronted by two grim, stout Naturals, or Salvages, as Smith called them, who bore long poles with bone heads.

  “Who are you and what do you have in mind?” the Salvages boldly demanded in the language of Powhatan, called such because this was what the great chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, spoke.

  Smith answered them in their own language, which impressed the Salvages considerably, and I pause here to digress a moment about the importance of communication, which certainly is a timely issue in ligh
t of what happened yesterday on the very island (Tangier) that John Smith discovered. No government, including Virginia’s, should make laws and take initiatives that affect a people who speak backward. If an Islander says, for example, “Well, this is a nice one,” or “It ain’t rainin’ none,” he may mean quite the opposite, depending on his speech tune, as native Tangierman David L. Shores explains in his definitive work Tangier Island: Place, People, and Talk.

  Now, in the old days, if an Islander meant the opposite of what he said, then he would signal as such by adding, “over the left,” which obviously meant he was talking backward. He would say, “It ain’t rainin’ much, over the left,” which was only fair if he really meant it was raining like hell. Not so anymore. Only those intimately acquainted with the Islanders’ use of inflection and facial expression might detect what was really meant when, as another example, a waterman says, “I have neither interest in going” or “That’s a poor arster.”

  “What you’re getting at, I guess,” said my closest friend, who from now on I will refer to as my wise confidante, “is if the Islanders’ reaction to the VASCAR speed traps was, ‘Well, this is nice!’ then what they probably meant was that the speed traps aren’t nice at all and they’re really pissed off about them. Based on what you’ve told me, clearly, the island woman Ginny Crockett was annoyed, even if she talked backward to the police, correct?”

  “Exactly my point,” I agreed. “The governor shouldn’t do anything to or on that island without a full comprehension of backward talking. And it’s pretty clear to me that the governor’s administration is quite skilled at backward thinking, but not backward talking. And they’ve just done a brilliant thing.”

  “And you just had a forceful inflection in your voice and an exaggerated high pitch and prolonged your syllables while jerking your chin and raising your eyebrows when you said they’ve just done a brilliant thing. Does that mean you really meant the opposite?”

  “Ah! I was testing you to see if you’re catching on,” I replied. “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

  “I’m wondering if John Smith might have had a similar difficulty when dealing with the Salvages,” my wise confidante mused. “Perhaps the Salvages talked backward as well.”

  “Well, you can be sure that how they said things was often much more important than what they said,” I replied.

  After a friendly visit with the Salvages, Smith set sail again, following inlets and the coast, when suddenly anex-treame gust of wind, rayne, thunder, and lightening happened, that with great danger we escaped the unmerciful raging of that Ocean-like water, in Smith’s words. Barely escaping with their lives, they sought shelter on one of many islands that Smith named the Russell Isles.

  Setting sail again, they were struck by a second storm that blew their mast and sail overboard and almost sank them as they frantically bailed out the barge. For two days, they waited out the tempestuous weather and searched for water to drink on an uninhabitable spot that Smith named Limbo Island. Finally, they repaired their sails with the shirts off their own backs and headed home to Jamestown.

  Most scholars seem to believe that Tangier is one of the Russell Isles. But I asked myself after studying several old maps and a modern flight chart: Is it possible that Tangier might really be Limbo, and might this explain the Islanders’ tendency not to mean what they say or say what they mean? I don’t think historians can completely rule out the possibility any more than I can offer much of a case for it. But if you look on a Washington sectional flight chart, you will see that Tangier and Limbo Islands are only a few minutes helicopter flight apart.

  To investigate this further, I decided to fly a helicopter to Jamestown and from there record the exact coordinates were Smith to sail from Jamestown to Tangier and then return to Jamestown and sail to Limbo. Note the geographic coordinates, which I shall supply here for Jamestown, Tangier, and Limbo as they were displayed on my GPS when I hovered over each island. After you study the chart, I will explain the significance:

  * * *

  * * *

  Clearly, Tangier and Limbo are not at all far from each other. So the hypothetical case I make is if you, the reader, imagine Smith and his men in the open barge with terrible rains, thunder, lightning, and zero visibility, how could Smith be so certain that when he thought he sought refuge on what he named Tangier Island that he really wasn’t on Limbo Island instead? I know with reasonable certainty that had I been flying in such conditions after a nip or two of Wild Turkey, perhaps I could have ended up on Limbo as easily as anywhere else.

  Whether Tangier is really Limbo will never be known. I doubt if John Smith were here today that even he could tell us. But I have no doubt that if Smith visited Tangier in modern times, he would feel as if he were in Limbo, even if he weren’t.

  If Tangier is really Limbo, then I personally wish the name had stuck. I believe Limbo Island could have developed a strong and specialized market in attracting tourists who are neither here nor there and would like to go somewhere in the middle of nowhere and do nothing about anything for a while. I also don’t think the governor of Virginia would have bothered ordering speed traps painted on the streets of a place named Limbo, nor would the people of Limbo have cared one way or other.

  Be careful out there!

  Seven

  Andy could measure Hammer’s impatience by the rhythm of her fingers drumming her desk. This moment, she was tapping out a loud staccato on her ink blotter as Andy briefed her on Tangier Island and how the uprising was connected to the Tangiermen’s past, because he had no reason to know at this moment that his comments about dental malpractice had riled up the Islanders just as much as the speed trap had.

  “Most of those people probably don’t even know their past and have never heard of John Smith,” Hammer countered from behind her desk, which afforded a fine view of the circular drive in front of headquarters and flags fluttering from tall poles.

  “I wouldn’t underestimate them, and I’m just trying to give you a little background,” Andy replied, sweating beneath his uniform and dreading what Hammer was going to say about his latest Trooper Truth essay. “My point is, the Islanders are programmed to think people are picaroons out to steal their island from them and everything on it—very much the way the Native Americans felt when the English sailed to Jamestown and started building their fort.”

  “Picaroons?” Hammer frowned.

  “What the Islanders call pirates.”

  “Oh God,” she groaned.

  Windy Brees suddenly wafted into Hammer’s office with an excited look on her made-up face and a UPS package clutched in her bright red-painted fingernails.

  “Holy heavens to Betsy!” Windy exclaimed. “You’ll never guess what happened!”

  Hammer never liked it when her secretary made her guess. “Just tell me,” Hammer said with an edge of impatience.

  “We’ve got more trouble than you can poke a snake at!” Windy breathlessly said. “Some dentist who works on those Tangierians is missing! He went to the island yesterday as usual, and his wife told the Reedville police that he never came back on the ferry, and when the clinic was called, some strange-talking boy said the dentist was being held hostage until the governor makes the island an independent state. Or something like that.”

  “Yes, I am already aware of what’s happened. Apparently, the Islanders are holding him hostage in the medical clinic,” Hammer said.

  “The clinic?” Andy said as a very bad feeling crept over him.

  “So the dentist told me when they let him make a phone call,” Hammer explained. “But I don’t know his name. He said he couldn’t give it to me.”

  “Sherman Fox,” Windy filled her in. “It’s a weird spelling.” She glanced at her notepad. “F-A-U-X.”

  “It’s Faux,” Andy corrected her.

  “It’s fo’? Fo’ what?” Windy puzzled.

  “Never mind,” Hammer abruptly said. “Andy, did you happen to see this dentist when you
were painting the speed trap yesterday?”

  “No,” he replied, neglecting to mention that when he had returned to the island later, wearing a disguise, he hadn’t seen the dentist, either, but had probably been within twenty feet of him because one of the places Andy had visited was the medical clinic.

  He needed to tell Hammer about his secret mission, but he thought it wise to wait until she was in a better mood.

  “A large group of watermen were marching down Janders Road,” he added, “and I’m not surprised because the Islanders have a long history of resentment and isolation. And as much as I admire Thomas Jefferson, he didn’t help matters by ordering all the Tangier boats snatched and supplies cut off during the American Revolution. Here he is saying this to his own people and treating Tangier like an enemy country, as if the island wasn’t part of the very Commonwealth he governed . . .”

  “Well, I’m afraid Mister Jefferson isn’t available to help us out!” Hammer curtly cut him off as she rose from her chair.

  “Maybe that’s best, based on how he handled the island last time,” observed Andy, who had barely escaped on the awaiting Bell 407 helicopter when the watermen chased him down Janders Road, across several footbridges and through countless wetlands, and finally onto the tiny airstrip, where Trooper Macovich was waiting in the helicopter and, thank God, had already started the engine.

  “We’ve got to go back,” Andy told a frantic Macovich as he took off, skipped the hover, and sped away.

  “You out of your damn crazy-ass mind?” Macovich’s voice sounded loudly in Andy’s headset as a rock pinged off a skid. “We ain’t going back! Those nutcakes are throwing things at us! Let’s just hope they don’t hit a rotor blade!”