Teetoncey and Ben O'Neal (7 page)

Her voice was jumpy. "What's a coon?"

"Raccoon. I used to have one. Tame."

I slammed the palm of my hand into the floor boards, raising some dust that made us both sneeze, and the fellow took off. He'd be back, I knew, but I had not heard of these Hatteras rats biting any live human so they weren't anything to worry about.

We talked on and then went to sleep.

While there are vicious storms in the winter, there are also gentle rains that fall on the Banks. The skies lower down without a cloud boil anywhere; the rains fall for a day or two, filling the cisterns and giving the sparse vegetation a welcome drink without drowning it.

I woke up just after dawn to a
pitter-pat
and a
drip-drop,
getting splashed on the cheek. The roof was leaking from a dozen places and I looked out through the cracks at early gray light. It was going to be a damp, cold, miserable day, I knew. Some cornhusks could plug the holes in the roof but trying to heat the place was something else.

Tee was still asleep and I eased out from under the blankets, pulled on my shoes and went outside, down the short ladder. After answering nature's call, shivering a little, I stuffed my jacket pockets with husks and climbed up to the edge of the roof. There was no way to find those holes in the wet shingles and I gave up on that. But there was an old lard tin under the housing for a make-do stove and some scraps of wood. Then it dawned on me that I had no matches nor a way to start a fire. I kicked the tin away and climbed back into the millhouse.

Tee had awakened and was sitting up. She said, "It's leaking in here, Ben."

"Is that so?" I said, feeling none too good.

Mama was now putting on breakfast in the dry warmth of our kitchen. Filene was eating grits and sausage gravy in the dry warmth of the station, and we were stuck out in a wet mill.

Tee went out to answer her own call and I sat down on the edge of the framework around the grinding wheel, promptly getting hit in the top of the head with a cold drop. When she got back, looking a little soggy, I said, "Pass me up some husks," and climbed into the rafters, which were loaded with mud nests for waspies, to plug the leaks. That took about twenty minutes. We weren't speaking very much. While I was up there, she asked, "Will this rain last long?"

I answered, "Ask the rain."

After I was down, she said, as a complaining woman, "I'm cold, Ben."

I said, "Well, heat a brick and stick it in your frock." I was just as cold.

She stared at me and that made me even madder. I said, "We got no tweeny maids out here. You have to take care of yourself."

She didn't say anything but huddled like an orphan in a blanket while I got out what food was left. Cold livermush sandwiches. On biting into hers, she made a face and I blew up.

"You should have brought your cook from London."

It went on that way for a while and then a rat scampered across the floor. She shrieked and I got really disgusted. "Stop yelling," I said. "Nothing but a rat."

Teetoncey let loose, little white lines of anger around her eyes. Try as I might, as good Methodists should do, I cannot easily forget what she called me: A "naughty, mean, rude, selfish, thoughtless oaf." That was not all. She also screamed, "I wouldn't stay another moment in that smelly house, in your smelly room, and your smelly bed, eating this awful food, if it weren't for the silver..."

Then she clapped her hand over her mouth as if the Hatteras cat had just jumped out.

What silver?
I thought.
Now, what was that about?

I couldn't inquire. Teetoncey was now toppled over in sobs that must have been wrenching her ribs. I stood there a moment, plagued by the thing that plagues all men—a crying woman. I am not always mean and selfish and I mustered up and went to her, touching the blanket and saying I was sorry about the rat. I sat down by her. It was miserable and damp enough in that mill without a lot of hysterical tears.

I said, "I know it's cold in here and I wish we had eggs for breakfast..." I didn't know what else to say to her. However, I suppose that was plenty, a gesture of some friendship on my part. She raised her head and sniffed and swallowed; sniffed a little more, wiped her eyes and nose, and pretty soon said, "Ben, I didn't mean to call you those names. I do sincerely apologize." So British.

I accepted.

After a short time, sitting close to her, a blanket around me now, I got back to what was still on my mind. "You said something about silver..."

Tee was silent a moment and then sighed deeply before unburdening her heavy secret. "You remember I said my father chartered the
Malta Empress
to take us to Barbados and back to New York?"

I nodded.

"We went there so my father could sell his holdings. They were inherited but he could not manage them from London. They included sugar plantation land, a molasses factory, and a rum distillery. Our estate was in Christ Church, between Ealing Grove and Graeme Hall, a very lovely place. It's in the tropics, Ben, so warm and green. I would have preferred to live there but we couldn't. Anyway, the estate shipped dark crystal sugar, white crystals, pan molasses, rum..."

Sitting in the drafty mill, listening to her, I decided I'd have to visit the Barbadoes someday.

"We stayed four months and then a Dutchman sailed over from Curaçao and bought the estate for twenty thousand pounds."

Pounds of what? "What's a pound?" I asked.

"A sovereign. Twenty shillings. Each pound is equal to about five American dollars."

I figured quickly. That was a lot of money. About a hundred thousand dollars. You could buy the whole state of North Carolina for that much. Maybe South Carolina, too.

"The Dutchman paid us in East India silver bar,
bullion,
and my father placed it in two chests ... and about a week later we boarded the
Empress
near the careenage in Bridgetown..."

"What's a careenage?"

"Part of the port where they tilt ships to work on them."

Tee knew more about the sea than I thought. "Go on," I said.

"Then we sailed. A few days later, my father, in a jolly mood and laughing, said, 'Wendy, in case a carriage runs us down in New York, keep an eye on those chests. There's a fortune in them, as you know.'"

I had to ask, "Were they aboard when you hit Heron Shoal?" She nodded. We'd had a Boston vessel, the
Richard Kent,
founder with twenty thousand in gold on it. Now, a hundred thousand in silver. "You sure, Teetoncey?"

She nodded again.

If the cracks in the mill floor had been wide enough, I would have plummeted to sand. A hundred thousand dollars was sitting on a bar not more than three miles from our house.

I
WAS NO LONGER
cold or damp or miserable, seeing the possibility of a fortune before I reached the age of thirteen. But there were some problems and they were large ones. I said, "Tee, of all the places in the world to drop a hundred thousand in silver, this might have been the worst."

"Why?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Long before us Outer Bankers were lifesavers, we were wreckers. Salvage people. It still runs deep in the blood. After a ship wrecks, I've seen people root around like wild hogs for ten dollars in gold coins. These Banks are poor. If it was known that much silver was on Heron, they'd shovel a hole to China to get it."

"What shall I do?" Teetoncey asked.

I didn't rightfully know at the moment but just then I heard a loon cry. I knew Kilbie was out there somewhere because it had always been our signal in times when we needed to communicate that way. I walked over, creaked the door open, and gave him a laughing gull screech. In a moment, he came up on his papa's mule. He was sensibly dressed in a sou'wester and rubber coat but that brown mule was pretty wet. I beckoned Kilbie in.

He climbed up and said "Howdy" to Teetoncey and then said to me, "I think your troubles are over, Ben. The consul left this mornin', telling the keeper that Wendy Appleton could stay here the rest of her life so far as he was concerned. He was mighty upset, Ben. Mad at everybody. He had to get back to Norfolk after wasting three days and getting an awful cold."

"He left in this rain?"

Kilbie nodded. "Filene borrowed the Farrow buggy, fitted him out with oilskins, an' got him on his way overland. They'll row him across Oregon Inlet. I think it's lucky he got off the Banks alive. He called Filene an ignorant peasant last night..."

Consul Calderham
was
lucky. So far as I knew, Filene would jerk an oak tree out for less than that. I felt a great weight off all of us. I said, "That's good news, Kilbie."

Kilbie added, "Filene is still roastin' about you but he'll calm down in a day or two, Jabez said."

I looked over at Teetoncey. She was smiling and happy again. "Can we go home now?" she asked. Home, was it? Maybe it wasn't so smelly after all?

"I guess," I said. Throughout this conversation, the silver had been in the back of my mind. It would be impossible for Tee and myself to salvage it alone. We'd need help.

"Can I tell Kilbie?" I asked Tee. She knew what I was talking about.

"If you think it's wise," she answered.

"Sit down, Kilbie," I said, and he arranged himself on the framework of the grinding wheel. I then told him about the East India bullion on Heron Shoal and how it got there. He reacted as I expected, with a whistle and a "Jumpin Jehoshaphat."

I asked, "What do you know about salvage rights?"

"Not much," Kilbie replied. "But if we git it up out o' there, it should be ours."

I had not had time to discuss shares with Teetoncey but assumed she would do the right thing if we helped her save the chests. In my mind, already, it would not have to be equal. If she'd give us, say, twenty-five thousand dollars for our efforts, then she'd be welcome to the rest, particularly since she was without living kin in England. I also had in mind bringing Frank Scarborough along. She would still have seventy-five thousand dollars, which is more than enough to last a lifetime for a girl of twelve. The rest of us would share a "fee," coming out at an eight thousand odd lot each.

I pointed out to Kilbie that we'd have to plan it carefully. "Wait for the lowest tide of the month, until we can see that sandbar clean of water, then hope it's a calm day."

Teetoncey said, "Those chests are very heavy, Ben."

I waved that aside. "Once we get to them, we'll hitch a line to Fid and let him pull them out."

Kilbie said, "It's worth a try."

Then I looked at both of them sternly. "Besides Frank, we can't tell a soul. There'd be a ruckus out here beyond belief."

Kilbie agreed.

We all three got on the dripping brown mule and rode toward my house in the rain.

Boo Dog was barking his head off from inside when we pulled up, and then swarmed all over Teetoncey when I opened the door. He favored me a slight greeting.

Mama was also very pleased to see us, especially Teetoncey, and ran to fix us some dinner. She made Tee get out of her wet clothes immediately and started to heat water for a kitchen bath in the tin tub. She apparently thought I had not undergone the same miserable rigors in the cold and damp of that millhousing. I had to fend for myself.

Later, she got me aside and said, "I do deceive we shouldn't have done what we did. It was almost kidnappin, an' its been on my mind for three days now. After being proud to live as the Bible tells me, I have to confess to Filene it was all my ideer."

Truthfully speaking, it was
her
idea and maybe that would get me off the hook with Keeper Midgett.

However, I had more to do than worry about hot tub baths and Cousin Filene. As soon as I dried off and changed clothes, I went to the almanac to check low tides for January and February 1899. We'd need one when the Atlantic, at full moon, sucked every available inch of water off Heron Head Shoal.

At supper that night, after we bowed for grace and before we started eating, Teetoncey said, "You've both been so good to me that I have something to say. I've been so worried about it. I feel so guilty." I thought—Tee, if you tell her about the silver I'll punch you right in the mouth.

Not looking at us, and showing her guilt, I suppose, Tee said, "I told a lie that first night, but I didn't really mean to. I said I had no relatives in England. I do."

We both stared at her.

"I have an uncle," she confessed. "Mother's brother, who lives with his family in Chelsea. His name is Salisbury. He's a hateful man and I dislike him very much, and I don't like his children. I do not want to live with him..." Then she looked direct at Mama. "I think that's why I said I had no family."

I felt the fool. Here, I'd told everybody she was a complete orphan, gaining a lot of sympathy. Now, she wasn't.

Mama was shocked, too, but when the shock wore off, she said, "We understand, Tee."

My head spun for the second time that day. There was a lot more to Teetoncey than met the eye. In bed, after four or five tortured sighs, Mama said, "I guess we'll have to tell Filene."

I said, "Mama, let's don't rush into it." I'd had some time to think. Tee's uncle would scurry-aboard the
Lucania
if he knew a hundred thousand in bullion was sitting on our shore. Fare thee well for shares.

In the morning, though I knew it was against her principles, Mama finally agreed that what Tee's uncle Salisbury didn't temporarily know would not hurt him. There was also the likelihood that he had no knowledge that the Appletons were aboard the
Malta Empress,
although Lloyds of London had probably posted the wreck by now. And what Filene Midgett didn't know certainly would not hurt him, either.

N
EXT DAY
, the sun came brightly back over the Banks and just before low tide, I met Kilbie and Frank Scarborough on the beach at Heron Head Shoal. We stood and looked out toward the sandbar, which was about eight hundred yards offshore. With the tide ebbing, it was still covered.

"Where do you think she hit?" Kilbie asked.