Diann Ducharme (23 page)

Then I climbed atop Junie and made for the cottage to meet up with Mister Sinclair, to give him the good news.

I
COULDN’T GET USED TO
S
UNDAY WORSHIP AT THE HOTEL
. W
E DINED
there so often, it just didn’t seem right to call on God there as well.

I looked around at all the men and women, singing and reciting their very hearts out in their Sunday best, and wondered if I was the
only one whose stomach was having a difficult time distinguishing between suppertime and worship time.

But my fellow worshippers were in their own hell. Most of them appeared more than a bit pickled from the previous night’s celebrations at the hotel. It was a good thing that most of the revelers had only to drift their way from a hotel room to the dining parlor on Sunday morning, or else I doubted they would ever make it to church. Even at the cottage, we often heard the band’s music until the early hours of the morning.

The tables in the dining room had been removed, and the room was lined with chairs that faced a podium. It was a long way from the grandiosely old St. Paul’s, back home. Out here, we couldn’t even find a proper reverend. The wool-haired Reverend Weatherly was shipped all the way from Elizabeth City each and every Sunday to give us our sermons.

But the effort was lost on me today. Episcopalianism was the furthest thing from my mind. I was still on the porch of the cottage, not in this makeshift house of God. New Testament passages had become the words of
Robinson Crusoe
, and hymns resounded with Ben’s easy, musical twang.

During the sermon I thought of Run Hill, that haunted half-dead tree, and how Ben had looked when he stood at the top of the dune, looking down. As if everything below us was his kingdom, hard-earned and well-loved.

I had never seen such adoration before, in anyone. This island was
his
religion. I wanted to see through his eyes, not just pages from a book, but everything out here that there was to see.

I tried desperately to un-think Ben by helping Winnie in the kitchen that afternoon, much to her consternation.

“Miz Abby, I don’t need you in here, a-stepping on my toes when
I’m trying to get the supper made. Don’t you got something to read?”

“I just want to help you is all. What can I do?” I asked, trying to stir a big pot of stewed vegetables, scallops, and mussels on the stove.

She snatched the wooden spoon out of my hand. “If your mama saw you in here getting all mussed with Hector a-coming, she huff and puff so hard she start a hurricane to blowing! So scoot!” She shooed me out of the humid kitchen, pushing me on my back until I was in the dining room.

I decided I could at least help lay the table. She couldn’t object to that, since Hannah was still out with Charlie and Martha, supervising their clam dig on the sound. And Winnie was frazzled nowadays, spending most of her free time waiting on Mama, who lay up in her bed all day, every day. She hadn’t even gone to Sunday worship with us.

I was just taking the plates out of the china hutch when I heard a knock on the screen door of the western porch.

I saw through the screen that it was Ben, and I was so happy to see him that my face flared from my chest to my forehead. We didn’t usually see each other on Sundays, and I had seen him every day this week. He had been unusually quiet and dedicated, too, as if he were in some kind of competition with himself.

“Sorry to bother you, Abby,” he said, his voice shallow.

“Please, come on in,” I said, holding the screen door open for him.

Winnie hollered out from the kitchen, “Only if his feet is clean! I just done mopped every last sand grain from the floor, and you know I can’t stand grit under my shoes when I’m walking on a Sunday.”

Winnie strove for perfectly clean floors on Sundays, even at the beach, where it was next to impossible. In Edenton, we referred to them as her “Sunday floors.”

We both looked down at Ben’s filthy feet, which were absolutely caked in sand. With heavy eyes, he said, “I’ll walk ’round to the back. It ain’t no trouble, Abby.”

I walked with him along the porch to the ocean side. Hardly anyone was out strolling this afternoon, it was so hot. I didn’t think I’d be able to sit outside with Ben for long, but I didn’t want him to go, either.

To my surprise, Winnie elbowed her way out of the screen door with two glasses of sweet tea. “You always look to be spittin’ cotton,” she said to Ben.

He smiled at her. “Thank you kindly, Winnie.” He drank the whole thing down in one rippling gulp and handed the glass back to her before she could go back inside.

But she didn’t budge. For several long minutes, she just looked at the two of us sitting there, all alone. Finally she clicked her tongue, muttered something to herself, and banged her way back into the house.

I snickered, but Ben just gazed at the sea, gently curling into crescents against the shore. “Is something wrong?”

He stabbed his fingers through his crisp hair. “Oh, it’s been such a hot day is all. And it being Sunday today, you know. I just don’t care for Sundays anymore. And now it feels like God is punishing me with the heat.”

He stopped himself then, and glanced at me as he fidgeted in his seat. “Your pap and me were out fishing off Roanoke Island, and we didn’t catch a thing. Your pap’s so downhearted, he plopped directly on a stool in the tavern and won’t be moved.”

I smiled ruefully. “I can just picture it.”

He said, “About the only thing halfway interesting was seeing your Madeleine and a few of those other folks sailing across the sound, heading to Roanoke Island for a day trip. She blew me a kiss.”

“That’s Maddie for you. She told me she goes to the island sometimes, to get away from her parents. No telling what she does over there all day, unchaperoned.”

He nodded. “Lots of visitors to the Banks like to go there, it’s such a pretty spot of land, and all alone like. It used to have a calming effect on me, but I guess I’ve grown tired of it.”

I cocked my head at him. “Why would you grow tired of it?”

“Oh, just gotten used to it, really. Beauty gets humdrum, you see it enough.”

“That doesn’t sound like you at all,” I scolded. “What in the world is bothering you lately? You haven’t been yourself all week.”

He shook his head and said nothing.

I prodded, “It sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time on the island.”

“I know it as well as I know Nags Head. It ain’t very big.”

I smoothed my skirts with sweaty palms. I murmured, “I’d love to see the Lost Colony fort.”

“Ain’t much to see, tell you the truth. Just a few old outlines,” he said. But then his face brightened up suddenly. “I could take you there, if you can get away sometime. You’d like it, I reckon. Full of history, more things to pack away in your brain.”

I said as calmly as I could, “I’ll see if I can get away. Tomorrow morning, maybe.”

My mind immediately conjured plausible excuses. I could tell Mama that some of the Edenton folks were going, too, maybe even Hector Newman. She would be pleased enough to let me go alone, most likely. And I doubted she would ever find out the truth.

He said shyly, “You got time to teach me today? I don’t want to wreak havoc on your Sunday …”

“Winnie would be more than happy to get me out of the cottage. And I like teaching you.”

He narrowed his blue eyes at me. “You do?”

“I think we’re doing pretty well, don’t you?”

“I reckon we’ve
both
come a long way. Remember I couldn’t even spell my own name?”

“And remember when I thought Robinson Crusoe a respectable gentleman?”

As I walked into the bedroom to search for the teaching supplies, Winnie met me at the door. She scolded, “What you doing with that boy, Miz Abby? Your mama sure don’t want no hussy for a daughter. And it ain’t his day to get his learning—it’s the Lord’s day.”

She knew as well as I did that Mama was so caught up in her own misery that she hardly cared about anything anymore, except marrying me off.

I grabbed some pieces of chalk that had rolled under Martha’s bed. “He’s down in his spirits, Winnie. He’s crying out for education today, Sunday or no Sunday. Who am I to turn him down?”

“You sure it’s the
education
he crying out for? He after right more than that.”

I stopped collecting the supplies and stared at her. “You think he fancies me?”

She cackled. “Miz Abby, if you have to ask me that, you are simpler than a Banker.”

I grinned really big on the inside, then looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “You’re welcome to join us out there today.”

“No ma’am, no thank you. I’ve got a meal to cook and about a hundred other things to tend to ’fore suppertime.”

Then she grabbed for my arm, nearly causing me to spill all the supplies I had clutched to my chest.

She whispered, “Don’t be getting that poor boy’s hopes up, now. You got to think on Mr. Hector. Think on your mama ’n’ daddy.”

I bristled. “
You
think on Hector and Mama and Daddy. They hurt my head, the lot of them.”

I heard her mumble, as I walked away, “I’ll marry Mr. Hector. And you can be
my
housemaid.”

I laughed as I walked back out to the porch and sat myself next to Ben at the table, instead of sitting across from him at an angle as I usually did. I sat so close to him our thighs were almost touching. I could feel his bare skin’s heat clear through my layers of clothing.

And instead of disgusting me, his sweat smelled earthy and primal. His dirty clothes looked humble. His bare feet even reminded me of Jesus.

He didn’t seem to notice the change, though. He was as natural and as eager to learn as he always was. But my voice was high and watery as I read aloud from
Robinson Crusoe
.

I ran my fingers under the lines in the book, very slowly, so that he could read along with me. As our eyes moved together over the pages, I experienced such an unusual feeling of intimacy. I felt him, without even touching him.

He was attempting to say a few of the words with me. I had written a long list of regularly occurring words on a piece of paper for him to take home—words such as
goat, sand, ship, shoot, Friday
, and
island
. He had learned them all, and had even started adding words of his own to the list while we read.

As we worked, the sun shifted lazily to the west, shining its gold through the windows from inside the house. It was blindingly bright, so that we had to shade our eyes to see the book. After a while, though, when the sun had moved a degree farther west, I saw the outline of Winnie’s lean body standing quietly near the open window. She had stopped to listen to us after all.

With the light behind her, her white head scarf glowed like a dove in the dark house.

I never did get a chance to lay the dining room table. Charlie and Martha had returned from the clam dig with muck in their fingernails and sunburn on their fair faces. They were also grumpy from exhaustion, and Hannah had eagerly taken over where I’d left off, glad to be done with them.

Ben and I sat on the porch reading and writing until Winnie poked her head out the window, sending with it the scent of her hot seafood stew.

“Mr. Hector and your daddy riding over now. Better call it a day,” she said sternly, furrowing her brow at Ben. It was Hector’s sixth supper here.

Ben looked at me with a lopsided grin and said, “Don’t want to keep Hector waiting, now. Reckon he’s a punctual one, with a pock-etwatch and whatnot.”