Teetoncey (6 page)

Finally, at about four o'clock, Rachel said to the girl, "You jus' can't keep doin' this. I want you to help us get some broth down you ... I want you to speak to us ... come back from wherever you are..."

That seemed to wake her up more. Ben saw the chapped lips move but nothing came out.

Rachel bent over her; then drew back, looking down. "You're safe on shore, child. You're in North Carolina. In a house. The gale's over."

The girl simply stared as if it made no sense to her.

"I'm Rachel O'Neal an' this is my son, Ben..."

Ben nodded and let her see his smile.

She didn't react.

"Now, you try an' stay awake a few minutes. I've had some broth heatin' for you for two hours."

The girl's eyes began to move around the room and Ben followed them.

She looked at the deer head on the opposite wall; at the double-barrel breechloader beneath them. Reuben had shot that buck over at Matta-muskeet. She looked at everything. The table off the wreck of the
Hermes;
the chest, with brass trimmings, off the
Minna Goodwin.

Rachel came back with a bowl of broth and a teaspoon. "Let's try an' sit up an' sip a lil' broth," she said.

Ben held the bowl while his mother raised the girl and got her hands out from under the covers. "All right, now, let's open your mouth an' try to sip."

Some went down and she choked.

Rachel said, "Help me, child."

The girl swallowed and some more went down. It took five minutes to get ten spoonfuls down her. Then Rachel said, "She's tuckered out," and let the blond head go back to the pillow. She was asleep again within a minute.

 

It was after dark when she awakened the next time and they didn't know how long she'd been awake. They were eating supper when they heard the moan. It was almost a hurt animal cry.

Rachel rose swiftly and carried the lamp to the bed. Ben went over, too.

"You were in a shipwreck yestiddy durin a terrible storm. You remember? You almost drownded. An' Ben here brought you home last night."

Ben nodded.

The girl just looked at them.

"That's why you feel so poorly. But don't fret about it. Jus' lie there an' rest. Get your strength back We'll tell you everythin' later."

The girl seemed to be making an effort to think. At least, she was staring at them and her eyes narrowed.

Rachel smiled down. "Child, what's your name?"

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Ben could see the confusion grow in panic. She raised up in bed and then fell back. Her chin began to quiver and then tears leaked out of the comers of her eyes. She was too weak to do more than cry silently.

Rachel sat at the edge of the bed and gathered the girl into her arms. She murmured, "That's what I was hopin' for."

"She can't remember her own name?" Ben whispered.

Rachel shook her head violently.

In a few minutes, the girl went back to sleep and Rachel stood up thoughtfully, making some decisions. Finally, she turned to Ben.

"Run over to the station an' tell Filene she's come aroun'. Tell him to get a message to Doc Meekins if the phone line is still up. Have Doc come when he can. But you tell Filene we don't need no visitors tonight, especially him. An' if he asks you what the child's name is, tell him she don't know or can't talk, either one, an' not to bother his head about it."

Ben went to Heron station under a sky chocked with stars, finding it hard to believe that anyone could forget their own name.

He located Filene in the keeper's room, working on his report of the
Empress
by lantern light. The keeper always wore his spectacles halfway down the bridge of his nose, and looked out over the top of them. His knotty, meaty hands made the pen a thistle. His hair was the gray of new-forged iron and shocked up. His eyes seemed to be under moss cliffs. Ben was always frightened of him and felt that he somehow never said the right thing.

"Shes come aroun'," Ben said.

Filene got up excitedly.

"But Mama said for you to stay right where you are."

The keeper let out a bellow. "That mama o' yours ought to have her tongue burnt out."

"She said to get a message to Doc Meekins. Have him come when he can."

"What's that girl's name? I got to write it down."

"She don't know, an' Mama said for you not to bother your head about it."

Filene knocked the chair away from the desk, and Ben scurried off.

W
HY, HE COULD NOT
exactly say, but the next day Ben tried to stay away from home as much as possible. Maybe it was because they had a stranger in the house, especially the female variety. Maybe it was because the excitement of the wreck was over. He didn't know.

After he'd asked her how she felt in the early morning, he didn't have anything else to inquire about because there was no answer. She'd just stared. Then he caught her looking at him when his back was turned. It made him nervous.

Perhaps it was because the girl looked so funny with those circled eyes and dead-white skin. Besides, he truthfully didn't know what to say to her. How do you talk to anyone who doesn't talk back? Who doesn't have a name? It was like trying to talk to a scared rabbit.

Maybe she was crazy, Ben thought. They could have been bringing her up from somewhere to put her in an insane asylum. They had one in Raleigh, he'd heard.

Ben worked a couple hours for Mr. Burrus out behind the store in Chicky, cleaning hen pens, and then filled a sugar barrel with ducks, head down. They'd go on to Elizabeth City to be iced up; then to Norfolk.

After that, he took Fid, the tackie, and went up to Big Kinnakeet village for no reason at all and then wound up at Heron Head to talk to Mark Jennette and Jabez about the wreck.

It was Friday, always a dull day at the station. The crew practiced first aid and resuscitation that day; then did routine things. Ben knew the schedule by heart. Monday it was drill with the beach apparatus and overhauling the boats; Tuesday, drill with the boats in the surf; Wednesday, practice with the international flag code signals; Thursday, drills with the wreck pole; Friday, practice pushing water out of victim's lungs. Saturday, housekeeping.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were the best days. Saturday was awful and Ben never went to Heron station on Saturdays. Filene was worse than a fussbudgety woman. He had the men rake the sand even though there wasn't a leaf to fall. The decks were dean enough to roll bread dough on. He refused to call them floors.

Ben waved at Luther Gaskins up in the lookout. On dear days the men on watch peered at passing ships with the long glass, logging them down as to time of passage and direction.

Then he found Jabez and Mark in the equipment room. They didn't seem to be doing much, except keeping out of Filene's way. Jabez asked about the girl.

"Hasn't said a word," Ben replied.

Mark shook his head in dismay. "Hmh."

"I think she's crazy," Ben said.

"Mebbe she's plumb scared to death. She took a beatin' in that surf," Jabez said.

"If that had been a boy, I think he'd of swum on in; kept his head off the bottom," Ben said.

Jabez answered, "I'm not sure o' that, Ben. Wattah that rough, hard for anybody to swim. I got knocked ovah when the
Peggy Neylan
broke up. If it hadn't been for your papa, I'd of never made it. He took a boat hook an' gaffed me like a shirk. Put a hole in me, he did. But better that hole than bein' e't by the shirks an' crabs. I think she done right well. That toide was settin' south somethin' fierce." Jabez always pronounced
tide
as "toide."

Ben had often heard the story of Jabez getting knocked overboard when the
Peggy Neylan
grounded, and it changed a little each time. This was the first time he'd heard that John O'Neal actually put a hole in Jabez Tillett.

"Well, anyway, I'd a sight rather have had a boy wash up," Ben said.

Mark laughed. "Put six years on you, an' you'd rather have a woman wash up. One 'bout eighteen, with good legs."

They all laughed.

Ben stayed away until almost dark and when he got home there she was, still in bed, staring out from eyes that were pouchy and nearly black around the sockets. He'd never seen a girl with black eyes. They'd turned from the circles to berry color during the day.

Ben gave her a slight wave and went on into the kitchen. "How is she?"

"I think she's better."

"Her eyes blacked up."

"If someone hit you acrost the head with a postie, so would yours."

"She wasn't hit with a postie."

"That sand's just as hard as post wood at the surf line. Where you been all day?"

"Up at the store."

 

Late next morning, Doc Meekins and the British consul, who wore a derby hat and had what looked like muskrat fur on his coat collar, paid a visit, along with Filene Midgett and the district assistant inspector from the Lifesaving Service, an important man named Timmons. The consul, down from Norfolk, didn't appear to be very-happy and walked over the sand like it was swamp mud.

Ben listened to him for a minute. It was certainly strange talk. The consul looked all around, outhouse to Fid's lean-to, and said, "Ext-traaaaaaaward-e-nary."

They'd all boated in, and the sounds can be chilly in November. The consul's oval face was pink from wind and his nose kept dripping. But there was no other way to get to the Outer Banks. Only by boat. Filene had collected them all at the Chicky dock. Jabez Tillett was minding Filene's cart for the doctor.

Ben stayed outside near Jabez while Meekins checked the girl over in his mother's presence. They never let Meekins tend a female unless another one was present. The women said Doc had "evil hands."

Leaning against the station's wagon, the men talked about the wreck of the
Malta Empress,
but they didn't say anything, in Ben's hearing, that wasn't already known. The consul said he was trying to find out her last port o' call; get a passenger and crew list, if one existed. He said he'd notified, by mail, Lloyds of London.

Ben whispered to Jabez, "What's that?"

"Insurance people."

About thirty minutes later Doc Meekins came out to say, "Girl has had brain damage, I'm reasonably sure. She may be sufferin' from catatonia or worse." He was a stubby man with mutton-chop sideburns and usually smelled of whiskey. He reminded Ben of a hairy peg. He'd doctored Ben once for a broken ankle.

"Catta-what?" Filene asked.

"She may be catatonic. It's another word for confusion and worse. I don't know much about psychiatry. I'm not a brain man, either."

"What causes it?" Filene asked, very much alarmed; shaking his head, his mossy brow furrowed.

Ben had never heard of it, either. But it sounded bad.

"Shock of one kind or another. It can be temporary or permanent. If she has brain damage, fare the' well. She'll be a vegetable. Better you ought to have left her in the surf, Filene."

A vegetable? Ben couldn't believe it. But despite the fact that no one liked him very much, Meekins always seemed to know what he was talking about. He'd gone to school in the North. A place called Harvard.

"How do you cure it?" Inspector Timmons asked.

Doc Meekins rammed some snuff in under his lower lip and sniffed what was left on his stained finger. "You don't. She'll have to, if she can."

Ben wondered how she'd do it.

They all went inside and began to ask questions. Mosdy, it was the British consul.
What was her name? When did she come aboard?

Meekins said, "You're wasting your time."

Where did she live? What was the last port of the
Malta Empress?

Ben hung back by the door.

Although the girl seemed much better this day, except for the purple traces beneath the eyes, he could tell she was frightened with so many people around. The consul, who was dressed fancy enough to go to a wedding, was beside himself because she couldn't answer.

Finally, Rachel walked up from the back of the room. "Now, jus' stop, all of you. That's enough."

They quit pestering her and went back outside.

Ben listened again as they talked about what to do with her. It almost sounded like she was a piece of wreckage that no one would bid on at
vendue.
Jabez looked disgusted and spit a big cud of Ashe's Best Black. That was sweet plug from Statesville. Reuben chewed it, too.

The British consul said he'd have to wait for instructions from the embassy because no one clearly knew if she was British, American, or what she was.

Mr. Timmons said he could probably make arrangements to put her in a charity home in Norfolk temporarily.

Doc Meekins said she could probably travel in another week, whether she spoke or not.

Filene didn't say much of anything in the presence of Inspector Timmons now that it had reached this point.

Rachel had come out and had listened for a few minutes. She fumed at them from the stoop. "Never in my life have I heerd grown men talk in such circles. She'll stay right here until she knows who she is."

Doc Meekins cleared his throat as if that circumstance might take a long time. They all looked over at Rachel.

Only Filene was brave enough to answer. "Now, Rachel, don't go aggravatin this. We all have our official reports to make out..."

He got a glare back for his efforts. "Well, you go right ahead an' make 'em out. Meantime, leave her be.
Leave her bel
Filene, I'll never get over you cormin' down here yestiddy with those two dead bodies for her to identify..."

"Calm down, Rachel," was Filene's embarrassed reply.

Mr. Timmons broke in. "I think we should accept Mrs. O'Neal's kind offer."

The British consul seemed relieved.

So the girl stayed on at the O'Neal house.

 

They all left, Jabez Tillett driving Doc Meekins in the station cart to his other calls down island. The doctor never came over for just one call. Somebody always had a rupture or the red sprangles—fevers and rashes of one kind or another.

Still outside the house, watching them go, Ben said to his mother, "You hear what Doc said? She may be crazy. He used a word for it. Her brain's hurt."