Teetoncey (3 page)

Catching his breath, Jabez yelled, "She's a bad one, Cap'n." Then nodding south, he slopped back that way along the licks of foam. The storm-driven tide was setting down-coast.

Ben took another look at Keeper Midgett who was still grimly inspecting the form on the sand and decided to join Jabez, who would be more friendly. He ran after him, Boo Dog pacing by his heels. In a moment, he spotted the wind-whipped flickers of several steaming lanterns; then the dim shapes of the surfmen strung out along the beach. They were pulling debris from the water, searching for more victims.

Catching up with Jabez, Ben shouted, "Can I help?"

Tillett yelled, "Go south." Then turned down into the surf, wading out toward flotsam.

Ben dashed on past Mark Jennette, a likable man about twenty-five who lived in Chicky village. Lathered with foam up to his waist, Mark was busy tugging at a spar entangled with line and a huge torn sail.

Another hundred feet and Ben spotted something bobbing in the foam. He stopped and eyed it, afraid it might be another body. Looking back north, he saw that the darkness and spray had already hidden Jennette. Then, setting his teeth, holding the lantern high, he forced himself into the water.

Edging through the foam, a lump forming at the hollow of his throat, Ben finally touched the mound of floating doth and sighed relief. It was only a hump of mattress, straw washing out of a split. He grabbed it and towed it back to the sand slope, the hammering of his heart beginning to subside. He truly wanted to find someone in the water. Yet he didn't. Perhaps he should just sneak home again.

Another sound carried faintly over the boom of the surf and Ben realized it was Boo Dog. The barks were insistent and Ben looked in that direction, down the beach. Boo was barely visible, though only thirty or forty feet away. Ben dropped the mattress and ran toward him.

Closer, Ben saw what all the barking was about. Something was on the sand, two or three yards up from the foam line. A shape, sprawled out. Maybe a body.

He stopped again and looked north, hoping to see Jabez or Mark moving toward him. But there was only darkness and those whirling clouds of spray.

Forcing himself on again, he drew up and then gasped. A human, not debris, was on the sand, three feet away from Boo. Ben took a deep breath and moved closer, staring down. Finally, he could see the body plainly.

He bent over, hardly breathing. It was a girl. About ten or eleven years old, he estimated. Almost his own age of just-turned twelve. Her blue dress had been pushed up around her waist. One arm was tucked beneath her. Her mouth was half open. Face smudged with sand; bruised and beginning to swell. Sand was in her nostrils and eyes. She looked dead in the dim lantern glow.

Ben backed away, swallowing; then collected his wits. He'd never seen a dead girl. "Stay here, Boo," he shouted, and then took off north.

Jennette was still in the water, struggling with the heavy canvas, trying to see if anyone was beneath it, when Ben floundered up to him.

For a second, Ben couldn't speak His mouth opened but nothing but an "ah" came out.

"What is it?" Mark shouted.

Ben swallowed. "Girl!"

"Where?"

Ben pointed, and Jennette dropped the spar, splashing back toward the beach, Ben following as fast as his boots would allow him.

In a moment, the surfman was on his hands and knees by the body.

Feeling queasy, Ben watched as Mark felt her pulse, then took his forefingers to pry her eyelids open. "Still livin I think," Jennette muttered, and then turned her over on her stomach.

Ben kept watching as the surfman placed her thin cheek on the back of her hand, then began pushing the water from her lungs, pressing down on both sides just above her spine. Water gushed from her open mouth and Ben dosed his eyes. For a moment, Ben thought he might become side. He turned away.

Finally, he heard Jennette shout, "Let's git her to the Cap'n."

The surfman stripped off his oilskin coat to wrap her, and then lifted her up into his arms. Ben fell in beside him as they ran up the beach, his head spinning from all that had happened in just a few minutes. Ben found it difficult to even think.

As they neared the keeper, Mark yelled, "Ben found one still alive."

Filene squinted at them but didn't answer. He just reached to the cart to jerk out a square of tarpaulin. Throwing it to the sand, he knelt down. He did it from long experience, not even bothering to glance at Mark or Ben.

Jennette dropped to his knees to settle the bundle gently to the canvas and the keeper peeled the oilskin back.

Panting, Ben stepped forward to take another look at her, carefully avoiding the dead man nearby.

Filene murmured, "Teetoncey" He said no other word. In the manner of Banks' speaking, it meant "small." She was small and fragile. "Teetoncey" was right for her, Ben thought.

Mark raised his voice above the surf noise, nodding toward the dead man. "I think that man brung her almost in. She washed on up, Cap'n. She's been on the beach a coupla hours, I'd guess. Cold as ice, she is."

Filene put his nose against the girl's mouth, trying to catch a faint sour breath, and then reached inside the tom blue dress that was plastered against her body. He ripped it, and then jerking his sou'wester off, put his ear against the girl's heart. In the lantern glow, Ben saw that the skin on her chest was like chalk tinted with blue.

Filene's rough face was wrapped in a frown. Looking up at Ben with an almost angry look, he yelled, "You strong enough to carry 'er? Take 'er to the station. Warm 'er up. Git 'er alive. I'll send someone soon's I can."

Heart thudding faster even now, Ben yelled back, "Our house is closer, Cap'n." It was, by more than a mile. Ben felt a different surge. He could be of more help.

Filene shrugged and stood up.

Ben pulled off his woolen coat and slid the oilskin away from the girl, tossing it back to Mark Jennette, who lost no time in returning to search for more survivors.

Ben folded the girl into the warmth of his jacket as Filene lit another flare, jammed it into the pipe upright on the cart, and was off into the darkness. It was the last Ben would see of him that night.

Leaving the lantern, he lifted the "teetoncey" girl into his arms and began to trot toward home. He was not really aware of her weight until much later. At that, she didn't weigh half a sack of potatoes. The thing that was welling up inside him made her feel light as a cornstalk.

He held tightly to her and drove his feet over the mushy sand. He was wishing the Lord would open a peephole and let John O'Neal take a look.

Boo Dog crisscrossed ahead, barking loudly, mystified by the whole thing.

Ben was hoping she'd live. The habit of praying was not normal to him, but he was praying she'd live.

Whoever she was.

B
REATHING HARD
, arms aching from the long haul, Ben kicked the door open and stood on the threshold with his burden. His cheeks felt as if they were flaming from the cold and exertion. "Mama, it's a girl," he said. "Half drownded. Mebbe dead."

Rachel sucked in her breath and rose up quickly, dropping her sewing to the table. "Put her on the couch."

Ben went on in and gently lowered the survivor down while his mother bent over, pulling the damp coat away from the girl's head, then opening the rest like an envelope. She lifted a thin, limp wrist and held a finger to it while Ben watched, still breathing hard, studying the blue-white face. The girl sure looked dead.

"Some pulse," Rachel said. "Not much."

She straightened up, making plans, chewing her lower lip, the only nervous habit she had. "Now, let's hurry, Ben. You build the fire up, an' I'll need some hot water. An' pull that small bed o' yours into here..."

Like most women on the Banks, she'd usually known what to do in an emergency. She'd done her share of midwifing, helping in births. There were no doctors on the sand strips. Nearest one was Meekins, up in Manteo. In emergencies, the keepers and the womenfolk were the doctors. Mrs. Fulcher, from Big Kinnakeet village, had amputated her husband's leg after a stingray had poisoned him. She's done a nice job of it, Doc Meekins had said.

As Ben began chunking wood into the stove, his mother added, "You keep your back turned. I got to take her dress off, what's left of it, an' dean her up. Lord above, she's eaten a bushel o' sand. Mouth, ears, nose."

Ben ran into the kitchen to fill the kettle from the bucket on the sink drainboard, unable to believe his luck that he'd gone to the beach and that Filene had let him take this survivor. Usually, Filene just blew him out of the water with some choice words.

"Soon's you can, get me some cotton, Ben. I got to make a swab. An' get me one of your flannel nightshirts, too."

Ben nodded and filled the kettle. "Will she live?" he asked, replacing the kettle on the stove in the living room. It was beginning to rumble as the wood flared. They didn't use the kitchen range once it was sundown.

"She may if you hurry an' don't pester me with questions," his mother answered. "Poor thing. Half frozen. Blue as a week-old mackerd. If I wasn't a woman I'd curse that sea all the way back to Noah's Ark." Her hands were busy.

Then Rachel laughed weakly. "Why, she's built like a well-made hairpin."

Ben wanted to take a good look at her, even see her naked, and see what his mother was doing. He was simply curious, and felt some responsibility, too. After all, he'd found her. Yet, if the girl was dying he didn't particularly want to see that.

"Let me know when the water biles."

He went into the bedroom for the nightshirt and heard her call again. "An' bring me one of them big towels, one with rough nap. Outta that Sears box."

He carried them in and then saw that air was coming off the kettle. Pouring some water into a tin pan, he got that to her.

For the next few minutes while she kept making demands, Ben kept backing toward her. She was kneeling by the couch cleaning the girl with a big Florida sponge and warm water. She muttered now and then, talking to herself more than the girl. "Hateful. Tearin' this lil' thing to bits. Stuffin' her full o' sand."

That was all directed at the sea, Ben knew.

Finally, his mother pulled the nightshirt down over the small body and smoothed it. The girl was decent now. Rachel sighed, "That's as much as we can do for her at the moment. We have to resign her to the Lord now." She rose up and carried the girl to Ben's bed, tucking her in.

Ben looked at his mother. Her face was pink from labor; beads of sweat dotted her forehead. At this time, he loved her once again.

Then he walked over to the bed. Only the head was peeking out from beneath the crazy-patch comforters. The face had lost some of its blueness. Although it was a thin face, it might be rather pretty, he saw. There was still some grit in her hair which was the hue of a fresh daisy from the mainland.

Rachel was rubbing the small of her back with her hands. All the kneeling had gotten to her and discomfort had swayed around to her spine. "Pick up her things, Ben, an' take 'em out to the kitchen. I'll wash 'em in the momin'."

Ben nodded and went to the couch, picking up the tom wad of dress from the floor, along with a slip. He noticed that there were little blue bows around the collar of the slip. There were also some grimy cotton underpants. He picked those up gingerly, feeling embarrassed. Then he saw a small shoe that was already warping and turning white from salt stain. He hadn't remembered it being on her foot. He looked at it a minute and then went on into the kitchen.

Dumping her things, he glanced into the cracked, mottled mirror over the sink Somehow, his face looked different, he thought. He had his father's long face and jaw. Also his curly, dark hair. He had his bones. Starved ox bones, his mother had once said. It was a fool thing to think, yet his face seemed different. Even more like that photograph of his father on the dresser.

When he got back to the living room, he saw that his mother had drawn up a straight chair to the foot of the bed. Her hands were beneath the covers. "I'm rabbin' her feet," she explained. "If your father an' brother had gotten ashore, I'd of rubbed their feet, an' mebbe they'd still be alive. When somebody's dyin', Ben, the touch of a human hand is the best thing. Let 'em know someone cares. They seem to know. Up in their head, they're graspin' out for a helpin' hand."

Ben considered all that, watching meantime.

"Reach under an' take a hand," she said. "Don't let any cold air in but jus' rub it, very softly. You rub hard an' you'll take skin off. She's tender now."

Suddenly, Ben felt ill at ease. He didn't even know this scrawny, swelling girl in his own nightshirt and on his own bed. For all he knew she'd be buried six feet under in another day. Filene would read the services according to the surfman's manual and the Good Book.

He held back.

"Do as I tell you, son."

Reluctantly, he reached under and found a hand. Still feeling strange about it, he began to rub very gently, watching her face. It was total blank, but she did seem to be breathing, ever so slightly. That, he could see.

She had a thin, pointed nose and long dark eyelashes. Her lips were a little puffy so he couldn't tell whether they were narrow or not. In fart, her eyes were getting puffy, too, and she had a nasty bruise on her forehead. Her cheekbone, which was high, was scraped on the left side from the tumbling in the surf. Little dots of blood had dried on it.

"What kind of girl is she?" Ben asked.

Rachel laughed. "Well, I don't rightly know how to answer that question, Ben. She's jus' a lil' thing that the sea give up."

"I mean, Mama, is she American?"

"Who's to know what she is? Mebbe we can ask her when she comes aroun'?"

"An' if she don't?"

There was a silence from the end of the bed. He looked down that way. His mother was staring at him as if he'd said the wrong thing.

"You jus' keep rubbin' that hand an' will some of your strength an' warmth into her. You hear?"

B
OO
D
OG HAD COME
over and was snoring by Ben's feet, after having sniffed along the edge of the comforters, pushing his big head up, trying to decide who the stranger was; why she was there; what all the fuss was about.