Teetoncey and Ben O'Neal (15 page)

The night was long. I looked in on Mama now and then. She slept but the breathing was labored. Mis' Mehaly scarcely left the bedside, then only to get more cold water and change the rags on Mama's forehead and wrists.

Tee went to bed about midnight and I fell asleep a little later on the couch, listening to the creak of the rocker chair. I felt Mis' Scarborough covering me but didn't say anything.

The women began to come over in the morning. Mis' Gillikin, Mis' Burrus, Mis' Farrow, Mis' Fulcher, who took the Bible and put it up against Mama's side. Then Filene arrived to say he hadn't been able to locate Doc Meekins.

Most of that Monday is a blur. I sort of wandered around, in and out of the house, not knowing quite what to do while she just lay there, eyes closed and gasping for air. The women talked softly.

Tee didn't quite know what to do, either. She kept saying, "Ben, she'll get well. I know she will."

I had my doubts.

Just after dark, Tee and I were sitting in the kitchen when Filene came in. He said, "Ben, you should come."

Tee followed me into the bedroom. Mama was so white, so still. Yet her breath rattled on, though it was weak.

I asked Mis' Mehaly, "Is she...?"

Mis' Mehaly nodded.

I looked up at Cousin Filene. "What's the tide, Cap'n?"

He had to force his words. "It's on the ebb, Ben."

Death always came to Bankers on an ebbing tide.

I started to lift the covers. Mama had once said that she would have kept Papa and Guthrie alive by rubbing their feet; that a person needs a comforting hand. They reach out for help.

No sooner had I touched the quilt than Filene said, "No, Ben. She's gone loo'ard."

The breathing had stopped.

As I ran out of the room, the women began coming in to do what they had to do. I heard Teetoncey crying and calling after me but I didn't heed her.

I got Fid and rode off into the night, galloping wildly, feeling like I was going off like a flare. In all the time I'd known her, I'd never told her I loved her. But I had.

Far down the beach, almost to Big Kinnakeet, I jumped off Fid and put my head up against his sweaty neck and did explode.

Soon, I felt something around my legs. It was a panting Boo Dog. Somehow that dog knew. Somehow he knew. I knelt down.

I won't dwell longer here. It still hurts me.

The next day, we buried Mama in the Chicky graveyard, near the crosses with
A
for Appleton on them, Keeper Midgett reading the usual services from the surfmans manual.

I stayed at Heron Head Station for most of the next two weeks, sleeping upon a cot with the surfmen. Eating with them, and they didn't charge me a thin dime. Teetoncey stayed with Mis' Scarborough, everyone feeling it wasn't right for us to live in the O'Neal house together. I was at a loss in that house, anyway. But I saw Tee every day.

On the second day, we sat on the dock in the winter sun. Teetoncey asked, "What will you do now, Ben?"

"I'll go to sea, of course. Those were my plans." But I had not intended them to work out this way. "I'll go to Norfolk and ask around at the ship chandle houses for a cabin boy's job. Just the way Reuben did." He'd gone to sea just after his thirteenth birthday and mine was only a few weeks away.

"Ship chandle?"

"Suppliers. Or I'll just walk along the docks and ask every mate I see."

"And you'll leave this house?"

"Why, sure. Nobody'll ever bother it. Some of the women will dust now and then, I expect. Reuben'll be home after his voyage."

Then Teetoncey said a foolish thing. She said, "Ben, why can't you and I live here together."

"You mean, get married?"

"Why not?"

I wasn't about to do that. I had no intentions of being a father by the time I was fourteen. If ever. However, I did not want to hurt her feelings. I said, "I don't think it's legal. There's not a preacher in all North Carolina who'd marry two younguns together."

Tee sighed. But it was a nice thing for her to suggest.

"Anyway," I said, "you've got to go back to London and run your own house."

The consul had notified Filene that he wanted her to come to Norfolk on the railroad the following week. Although she was welcome to stay at the Scarboroughs, I think she was ready to go. There comes a time when you have to go from one part of life to another. It was about now, for both of us.

Tee said, "Ben, what will you do with Fid and Boo Dog?"

I'd been thinking about that. "Fid can take care of himself. These tackies have been out here for a hundredfold years. He feeds himself in the marsh. But I'm sure Jabez will check on him occasionally. Ride him now and then to make sure he doesn't go wild."

"How about Boo Dog?"

"Well," I said, "I was thinking you should take him, if you will. He has sure taken to you, and his gold coat goes with your hair."

She got all watery eyed.

I said, "How about it?"

"I'd like that very much."

So that was settled. We walked on toward the Scarborough house. Midway, she put her hand in mine. I left it there.

The next week, Tee packed what few things she had and along with Boo Dog, we departed Chicky dock in a sharpie, with Jabez at the tiller; Mark Jennette as crew. A lot of people were there to see her off, this castaway girl having caused quite a stir on the Outer Banks. Everyone was fond of her.

We jabbered back and forth at each other all the way to Skyco where we'd meet the
Neuse,
the white steamer with "Norfolk & Southern R. R." painted on its side. The
Neuse
would get her to Elizabeth City by 10
A.M.
the next morning to catch the train.

At Skyco, we all boarded the steamer. Those are nice ships with a spacious foredeck and benches to sit on; four lifeboats and a big raft. She'd be safe as Boos fleas on that ship for the inland passage. Food smells came out of her galley. Candy and apples were for sale.

When it was time to go, she went to the head of the gangway with me. I said good-bye to Boo Dog, and then stood up.

She said, "Ben, I love you."

I said, "I love you, too," without flinching a fraction.

Then she kissed me full on the lips. That wasn't at all bad. That girl had surely mommicked me.

Then Jabez, Mark, and myself waited on the dock while the vessel's lines were being slipped.

Tee called down, "Write to me, Ben."

I promised I would.

Then Boo Dog put his paws up on the rail and started barking his fool head off at me.

I said to him, "Have fun in London, you crazy hound." Wouldn't you know he'd get to see the world before I did.

The
Neuse
sounded her whistle, breaking the quiet of the sound country, raising ducks and gulls; then backed out toward the channel. Soon, smoke puffing from her high stack, she was headed north for the Pasquotank River and Elizabeth City.

So the girl with the pointed nose and daisy yellow hair departed, along with a former Carolina duck dog.

We went on back to Chicky.

A week later, it was time for me. I stitched up a good seabag from canvas Filene gave me and packed it, and then wrote a letter to Reuben, leaving it on the doily edge by the lamp on the oak table in the living room. I told him what had happened to Mama and that I was headed for sea at last. I said I'd keep a watch for the
Elnora Langhans
and if we ever passed it close aboard under full sail I'd give him a big hello.

I signed it, "Love, Ben." Not just, "Your brother." Mama would have been proud of that.

I said good-bye to Fid, and then stood at the end of our path and looked all around. There was beauty in this rugged land. I just hadn't seen it before. I'd be back.

With my kit, I went on to Chicky dock Everyone for miles around was there. Kilbie, Frank, the Gillikins, Farrows, Fulchers, Midgetts, Gaskinses, Burruses, Grays, O'Neals; all the surfmen. They made over me and wished me luck. Another son of the Outer Banks was off to sea, for better or worse.

Then Keeper Filene Midgett himself got into the sharpie, along with Jabez. That was quite an honor for the surf captain to escort me. We shoved off, caught the breeze, and laid knots on toward Skyco.

On the way, smoke winding off his pipe, Cousin Filene said, "You'll do real fine, Ben."

"You sure will," Jabez agreed.

I thought so, too. I didn't look back.

Adventure on the high sea...

 

The Odyssey
of Ben O'Neal

 

T
HE
C
ONCLUSION
OF THE
C
APE
H
ATTERAS
T
RILOGY

 

Ben and Teetoncey take to the sea—he, to find his brother, and she, to escape a forced return to England. But can they survive merciless storms, the harsh realities of ship life, and a relentless pursuer?

 

Turn the page for the first chapter of
The Odyssey of Ben O'Neal...

T
HERE IS A
trusted saying on our remote Outer Banks of North Carolina that we who live there are all frail children of the moody Mother Sea, that she watches over and controls our every destiny. Shapes us as she carves out sandbars. Puts us in raging waves or calm, sunny waters. Makes fools out of us now and then, and isn't beyond having a good laugh herself. However, in her behalf, the old people claim she takes a long and careful time before making up her mind on how to dispose of us. She'll beckon us mysteriously when she's ready and not a tide before. There is also steadfast belief from Kill Devil Hills clear to Hatteras village and Ocracoke Island that she talks to us constantly and often we don't listen.

I do believe that now, although I didn't pay it much attention in March 1899, when my various voyages began. The Mother Sea was having a good laugh for herself during that trying period.

In the chill, gray dawn of a Tuesday, in the midmonth, sun reddening but not yet mounting the horizon, I stood at the dew-coated rail on the quivering stern of the steamer
Neuse,
looking south down Croatan Sound, which lies between Roanoke Island, of Lost Colony fame, and the flat, marshy Carolina mainland. Below my feet, glassy bubbles and white froth boiled out from the railway ferry as she throbbed steadily toward the Pasquotank River and Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where a train would be waiting to carry me on to Norfolk, across the Virginia border.

A knowledgeable but plotting girl once told me my face smacked poetically of sun on Irish bogs and Land's End winters. I can't at all vouch for that, but I can tell you how I looked that Tuesday otherwise. I was clad in a sturdy brown wool jacket, good knickers, black stockings without holes in them, and a seaman's blue wool cap (courtesy of surfman Mark Jennette), and by my legs rested a tubby canvas bag containing clothes, a pair of rubber boots, writing paper, a towel, and a bar of soap. So far as I knew, I was well equipped for what lay ahead but not so well off for what lay behind.

Way down the sound I could still make out the little boat's sails but could no longer see the comforting, hunched forms of Keeper Filene Midgett and surfman Jabez Tillett. Already they were beating away in the sharpie, and in late afternoon would arrive at Chicky Dock, on the Pamlico Sound. The Outer Banks, a string of small islands with low dunes and hammocks, bent oaks and scrub holly, flank the sounds, with a watching and listening and talking Atlantic Ocean on the other side, to east. Without doubt, Filene and Jabez would be safely to home at Heron Head Lifesaving Station, which Keeper Midgett commanded, well before supper of wild pig or Mattamuskeet deer or roast ruddy duck, over which to talk about the event of the morning: my great departure.

Home,
I couldn't help but think. With people they knew. Places they knew. Standing there, I shivered, I remember, and it wasn't from any icy wind. Disgraceful tears, once more (and I was certainly glad that the men in the sharpie hadn't seen them), had stopped. I'd resolutely fought them back, but somehow my throat kept on crowding. Only ten minutes before, when the
Neuse
pulled away from the dock at Skyco, Filene and Jabez had let the sharpie drift on out into the channel, then waved a last farewell before hauling sail up.

Never would they know just how close I'd come to yelling, "Take me with you."

 

A few minutes later, with three miles of brown water already separating the sailboat from the high-stacked white steamer, I thought very hard about turning myself around in Elizabeth City, swallowing my pride as I was gulping the gummy throat lumps, admit I was scared right down to my high-top shoes. Go home and unpack my seabag and wait in the small shingle house near Heron Head for brother Reuben to return from his voyages in the Caribbean.

I also distinctly recall hoping I'd see that sharpie come smartly about and race after the
Neuse,
finally catching it in Lizzie City, big Cousin Filene shouting up, "I been thinkin, Ben. You ought to wait to next year, when you're fourteen. Come on down an' git in this boat with us..."

It didn't happen, of course.

Then I tried to imagine what they were saying to each other and later found out I wasn't the width of six hairs off.

F
ILENE
: "I do deceive that boy may be tougher'n John O'Neal. Didn't leak nary a tear. Jus' stood there manly an' said good-bye. For sure, he is tougher'n Reuben. Why, the night his mama died, if he cried I didn't see it. He jus' took off south on that pony o' his."

Well, I cried plentysome.

F
ILENE
: "But a dozen times this week I felt like tellin Ben he shouldn't go. Too quick after his mama died. Too soon to git his feet wet. He should stay with us up to the station, or up to the Odens or Farrows or Gillikins, an' they all thought about offerin'..."

I would have refused and they all knew it. I'd talked too bragging much about going out to sea; dug my own foolish pit, so to speak.

F
ILENE
: "Thirteen's a mite young to go to open sea, but Ben could always rightfully tell us that his brother had done it no older'n that. Others on the Banks afore him."