Diann Ducharme (3 page)

Only we knew that beneath the awkward exterior coursed something much darker than poor social skills.

“What do you think you were doing, Abigail?” she seethed. “You’ll be the talk of society out here for the entire summer!”

I tried to form coherent syllables for her. She expected composure and reason, especially during an argument. “I was excited to see the ocean, Mama. I wanted to compare the real thing to the image that I had in my head …”

She calmly stood her parasol by the door and walked over to me. “No, Abigail, you ran before you utilized the bright mind that God gave you. I ask you, daughter, why do we pay good money for your clothing, if you’re going to treat it with such disrespect?”

She jerked my arms up to inspect the sweat stains that had bloomed on the linen during my unaccustomed exercise, then bent over to see the snags and sand along the hem. Charlie and Martha peered at me quietly from the bedroom doorway.

Her blue eyes flashed. “This dress is ruined,” she hissed. “Winnifred, take Abigail to her room at once and remove this sordid piece
of clothing. I want you to wash it and mend it and take it to a young woman of Abigail’s age here on the island. A girl who will appreciate a dress of such quality, and treat it with respect.”

Even though it stung, her anger was well-founded, and I hung my head in regret. Two months before our departure for Nags Head, Mama had ordered a dozen dresses for me, despite the current lack of money for such luxuries. Their ripples of silk and linen looked like mountains in springtime, with the lace like dustings of late-season snow.

Winnie hurried over, looking wild with some of her rebellious curls peeking from her scarf. She cut an I-told-you-so look at me, one of her favorite expressions. Mama then glided in her layer-cake skirts over to the narrow steps leading to the upstairs bedroom, looking as regal as she did ascending the spiral staircase back home.

Her voice had grown thin and tired, though. “Foolish girls will never become the wives of doctors. You’d better pray that Hector doesn’t hear of your vulgar display of athleticism.”

I should have known that it all went back to Hector Newman’s courtship, a constant topic of conversation with Mama. She would never tire of it until I was finally married off.

“No more running,” she said.

Winnie quickly undressed me in my bedroom and, with a few sad shakes of her head, took the dress with her when she left. Suddenly exhausted, I plopped down on the little bed, still in my corset and petticoats. The rest felt so good that I stretched out, hoping the old bed was at least somewhat comfortable. And then I couldn’t help myself. I closed my eyes, even though Hannah poked fun at my belled-out hoops as she unpacked my cases.

The room had grown warm in the afternoon sun. I didn’t mind the heat, though, since I was trying to shake out the early-spring chill that still encircled my bones. The Union-sent wind wanted to remind us, even these three years later, who it was that kicked our Southern faces into the dirt of our sin. Those cold blasts blew through the tall rooms and found us unrepentant rebels, bluing our lips and numbing our fingers and noses.

During the war, Mama, Martha, and I had kept close to the fireplace in cold weather, knitting socks and scarves for the soldiers. I knit so much one winter that I’m sure I left blood on some of the poor men’s woolens. With Uncle Jack constantly in mind, I was one of the most active young supporters of the cause in Edenton. I recounted for him, in my countless letters, my many self-appointed responsibilities. He subsequently nicknamed me “Little Red Reb,” which made me unaccountably proud.

Yet here, at this isolated cottage by the sea, the memories of those cold-needle days without Uncle Jack seemed hazy and hard to reach. Perhaps this Outer Banks house would help us
all
to forget, to wash our memories as clean as the seashells, so that we could start anew.

At first Mama had questioned the sanity of building such a house as this. She said that if God had wished for humans to build their houses next to the sea, He wouldn’t have lined the beaches with sand that shifts its very nature with the changing tides.

And I saw her point. I couldn’t see how a wooden house, no matter how well it was constructed, as Daddy argued it would be, would survive for long on the Atlantic Ocean’s sinking sand. But Daddy was insistent, as hopeful as I’d seen him in years. Just talking about the cottage caused his cheeks to flush and his voice to soar.

Even so, the cottage had been a stretch for us. Most of our former slaves left us years ago, before the war had even ended, and Daddy had since had lots of trouble finding folks to work the land. And he
preferred not to part with what was left of his money, especially if it was going to pay “lazy ingrates looking for handouts.”

With no other options left for him, Daddy actually paid some of the straggling field hands to come to the island with a boat full of pine cut from our own land to construct the house according to plans that he himself drafted. Even with the nor’easters and such that hit the islands last fall and winter, the hands finished the cottage in six months flat. I wouldn’t call that lazy at all.

O
UR FIRST FULL DAY IN
N
AGS
H
EAD UNFOLDED AS THICK AND WARM AS
honey from the hive. There wasn’t a thing to do except eat, sleep, and daydream, and I imagined the days following like a stack of goose-down pillows, white and fluffy.

No Shakespearean sonnets to learn, no Latin lessons to strain over. No more filling my head with things that had already happened, things already written. Nags Head was a whole new language.

Anyone with warm blood in their veins would have felt the freedom, too. Charlie and Martha acted like very small jailbreaks, and Hannah was beside herself trying to keep them from sloshing into the wash too deeply. The hem of her dress was in a constant state of wetness.

In typical fashion, Daddy had risen with the sun and left the cottage on his stallion for a day of fishing. Even though he had been all the way down at the stable, giving Justus instructions for saddling his stallion, Horatio, his booming voice had woken me from a light sleep. He had missed Winnie’s breakfast of ham and biscuits, though, so I felt I was doing better than he was.

Mama was the only one who hadn’t taken well to the fresh air. She spent the day looking sickly and reading in a rocking chair on the porch, and I spent the day avoiding her, wearing my oldest skirt and shirtwaist. We were getting along like pie.

After a long afternoon walk down the shore and an hour of reading Mama’s copy of
Moby-Dick
, I lumbered into the cottage with my hair coming loose from its pins and my forehead slick with perspiration. I couldn’t wait to clean myself up with a fresh tub of water and a cake of my favorite lavender soap. But on my way inside, I heard Daddy’s voice on the other side of the cottage.

He was carrying on with such jocularity that I thought his companion was a good friend of his from home who had surprised us at the cottage, to see for himself our much-debated adventure. I cringed and tried to hurry to my bedroom to wash up before anyone caught sight of me looking so wretched. But as it turned out, I shouldn’t have been worried about
my
appearance; the man who accompanied Daddy inside wouldn’t have been fit for entry into Sinclair House.

His deeply tanned face was disguised with streaky smudges of dirt and scruffy beard growth, and his hands and lower arms were encrusted with a layer of dark greenish grime. His hair appeared to be a
shade of blond, but it was so unkempt that I couldn’t even tell what it would look like in a natural state.

His brownish long-sleeved work shirt and trousers, which appeared to have never been washed or mended, hung shapelessly off his body. And he didn’t even see fit to wear shoes; his bare feet were two pieces of soiled leather. My tongue curled when I caught his odor of bloody fish, mixed with the scent of stale tobacco and sweat.

Daddy, wearing his shiny riding boots, smart jacket, and top hat, didn’t seem fazed in the least by the man’s remarkable filth. He glanced at me as he stooped his imposing frame through the doorway and seemed not to notice either my improper appearance or my haste to escape the room.

“Abigail, I’d like you to meet my guide, Benjamin Whimble. He’s showing me the best places to catch fish on the Outer Banks,” Daddy bellowed. “I tell you, I’ve never seen such a natural!”

I guessed that this man would’ve been embarrassed to be seen in such a state, but he didn’t seem to give it a second thought. He shifted on his filthy feet and smiled sloppily.

“Hey there, Miss Sinclair, good to meet you,” he drawled. He fidgeted with a worn cap, which he at least saw fit to remove before he came into the house.

I clutched
Moby-Dick
to my chest and tried not to stare at his filthy feet. “How do you do, Mr. Whimble.”

He snorted in glee. “Oh, you call me Ben. Ain’t no one ever called me Mr. Whimble afore, so I ain’t too used to hearing it. Fact, folks ’round here don’t even call my daddy Mr. Whimble, they just call him Tremblin’ Whimble, ’cause he makes men shake when he’s mad. And too, he’s getting on in age, so he kind of trembles when he talks now.”

Daddy’s guffaw caught me by surprise, so that I clean forgot my manners. “Well then. I’ve got to be getting ready for supper now.”

I scooted toward the doorway, but I hadn’t moved more than two paces when I heard him blurt, “Miss Sinclair, is that book you’re holding yours? I mean, what I meant to say is, are you reading that there book?”

I gripped the book even tighter, cherishing the heavy feel of it in my hands. “Of course I am. Why else would I be carrying it?”

“Oh, right. So softheaded I am,” he muttered, smacking his forehead with a dirty palm. “It’s just that I ain’t never met a gal that can read a book that big.”

Daddy snorted. “Abigail here reads more than a young lady should, in my opinion. But her mama sets a bad example for her. Days go by and I don’t see hide nor hair of her. She’s out in the orchard reading books, living off the apples and a canteen of water.”

Mr. Whimble grinned broadly at me, but I stood stiffly, uncomfortable with this man knowing anything that intimate about me. I made for my bedroom, leaving Daddy and Mr. Whimble talking about tomorrow’s fishing expedition.

Back in my room, raking a comb through my tumbleweed hair, I was sorely distracted. I had never seen Daddy take to someone like that before. He was usually a tough old turkey to please. I supposed it was possible that Mr. Whimble had a certain way about him. And I hadn’t failed to notice how his blue eyes had twinkled right through the grime.

Daddy helped all of us into the buggy and we set off for the hotel for supper. But it was slow going. The two big wheels of our buggy turned so deeply in the sand that at times old Mungo seemed to stand still, or at least wished he could. I guessed I could have walked to the
hotel and eaten my meal before he had struggled through the unfamiliar sand with his load.