Teetoncey and Ben O'Neal (10 page)

Well, I guess it was possible that a twelve-year-old girl could do that—run an estate. At any rate, Tee did not seem to have fear of it.

"I could go to school and then come home in the afternoon and see to everything. I might need help with the finances."

"Well, you're sure not poor."

"I don't mean that, Ben. Maybe Barclays would make the schedules." She said "shed-yules."

"Barclays?"

"That's our bank."

There was a bank up in Manteo but most people on the sand strips wouldn't let them manage a penny. "Watch out you don't get robbed," I warned.

She smiled. "I shall."

I got to thinking about her running her own life, not having to answer to anyone; doing what she wanted to do and when. It was just possible that she'd come on luck when her parents went loo'ard.

"What'll you do when you're not managing the house?" I asked.

"Oh, go to the theatre. To the Haymarket or Lyceum, or to Royal Albert Hall for the opera. Mums took me now and then."

"Out in the carriage?"

She nodded.

"Or I could go ice-skating in St. James' Park. You should have seen it four years ago. It was frozen for a month."

"You ride those buses with seats on the roof?" After seeing nothing but pony carts and mule wagons, the buses had caught my fancy.

She laughed. "They're very funny. We call them knifeboard buses. Everyone sits back-to-back on the roof. They've got advertisements all over the rear. Pears Soap, Horlick's Malted Milk, Remington Typewriters, Heinz 57 Soup..."

"You got Heinz over there?"

"Yes."

It was a small world. We sold Heinz cans down at the Burrus store.

"And what'll you do at night?" I asked.

"I'll read poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning or embroider, same as Mums." A slight look of sadness passed her face, and I knew she was remembering.

"And you'll live there the rest of your life?"

"Oh, I don't think so. I shan't be an old maid, Ben. I shall marry and have children. I want two boys and two girls, so they won't be an only child like I've been. I so much wanted a sister or brother..."

Looking at her that day, I just could not connect Teetoncey and a midwife, but I suppose that, too, was possible in the future. She could gain some weight and do it all right.

Then she asked me, "Do you plan to get married?"

"Yeh, when I'm about forty. I don't need any baggage until then."

"That's awfully late," she said.

Late or never. Jabez was forty and hadn't married and seemed perfectly happy. He darned his own socks as well as any woman could do it; sewed his britches' splits, and no one at Heron Head Station complained of his cooking when it was his turn.

"It must be nice to have a brother," she said, changing the subject away from marriage since it was a dead end with me.

"I don't see Reuben very much, but I like him. I just wish he'd talk more when he got home."

"You don't love him?" she asked.

I had to laugh. "How do you love a man?"

"If it's your father or your brother you love him just as well as you love your mother or sister."

I had to think a moment. "I believe I would have loved my papa if I'd known him. From everything I've heard, he was the finest man that ever walked these beaches."

She was silent for a while, then asked, "Why don't you ever hug or kiss your mother? Or say something nice to her?"

I almost fell off the porch. I flustered up. "Boys my age just don't go around hugging and kissing their mamas."

"Even now and then?" she asked.

I said, "Tee, she is just a mama like all of them. I'm living with her just now because I have to."

"But you could at least be nice to her."

What was this? I said, "I'm nice to her. I fill the wood boxes every day. Empty the ashes. Do a thousand things. I give her four dollars a month. What else can I do?"

"Don't you love her?" Tee asked.

My head shook in pure exasperation. How did she get on this subject? Feeling very uncomfortable with the whole trend of conversation, I got up and went around to the back of the house and split some wood, slamming the ax in.

Tee was too serious and womanly for me.

O
NCE
I
WENT
to a Manteo tent revival with Mama and sat on the front row with my feet in sawdust. During the preaching, the Reverend Peter Pender, imported from Gastonia, shouted into my face, "The devil's gotcha! You're goin to hell!" He had red hair a shade lighter than Kilbie's and very sour breath. Why, I didn't even know that preacher; he'd never seen me until that night. But there have been times when I think he was right. I also think the Lord and the devil sometimes get together to undo a person. On certain occasions, they seem to work hand in hand and leave human waste in the wake. However, I did not figure on
Him
and the devil teaming up in the weather department.

Not a full, raging nor'easter had hit us since December and one was overdue. From November until April, we usually averaged a big gale once a month. Winds and seas just as high as the afternoon the
Empress
plowed in.

Fates of one kind or another soon decided that the northeast wind would visit in the period of the new moon in February, informing ships at sea and coastal folks by barometers that fell slowly but surely. The needle told us that this wind would howl like it came from the icy backside of Hades, driving water over Diamond Shoals to treetop height; churning Wimble and Heron Head into a frenzy; mount waves of ten to twelve feet all along the Banks.

Big storms, not those pesky squalls that hit and run, send out their warning feelers and we began getting rain before first light opened. I filled the wood boxes after breakfast and tied off
Me and the John O'Neal
to a scrub oak; then checked around to make sure there wasn't anything that would kite up against the house. I put some corn in a bucket in the shelter. Fid predicted as well as anybody what was coming and would soon leave the marsh to keep his shag partially dry. Boo Dog got ready to take his post on the hooked rug by the stove.

All the while I knew that the surfmen and keepers from Wash Woods, up by the Virginia border, on south, were checking equipment; looking out of their rain-spattered cupolas. Undoubtedly, on the previous sunset, with heavy clouds to north and east, they'd seen sails; plumes from steamers hull down on the horizon. The parade of ships by the Outer Banks never stopped although many were probably trying to hightail it to port this rainy morning.

Before noon, the first hard swipes of wind attacked the sand strips, gusting to forty knots; by noon, it was blowing steady, driving rain ahead of it with enough force to knife paint off bulkheads. The house vibrated and the myrtles and oaks, always bent west, bowed lower and hung to sand roots.

I took Tee to a special upright oak beam that Papa had sunk into the sand, lodging it on a big rock It came up through the floor and went right to the roof. "Put your ear against it," I instructed. "You can feel the boom of the surf and hear it." I sometimes listened to it during storms—a crash every few seconds running up the grain of that old oak upright.

"Are we safe here?" Tee asked, slightly jumpy.

Mama called over. "This is jus' a gale o' wind. Not a hurrycane. We're safe as Boos fleas. Only time to worry is when the water walks across the Banks. Even then, John O'Neal built this house to stay."

But as the afternoon wore on, Mama got the Bible out and read awhile. Not to beseech watch over us, however. Brother Reuben was on her mind, of a certainty. She asked, as usual, "Where do you think Reuben is today?"

"Safe in port in Trinidad," I said. I didn't know.

Tee and I played checkers after supper until it was time to blow the lamps out. The house was dancing by then and the last thing I did before I went to bed was caulk the front doorjamb with burlap bags to keep wind from driving rain in.

Though it was still pelting, the worst of the gale was over when we woke up and by midmorning, when Kilbie rode up, the wind was down to five knots or so. Banging water droplets off his sou'wester and rubber coat on the porch, he came on in to say, very soberly, "It's a bad one, Ben. I jus' come from the store. Four ships are wrecked. Closest one is between here an' Chicky. Filene's crew is out. Prochorus has his crew out; Cap'n Davis; Cap'n Etheridge; Cap'n Drink-water. Ever crew on the Banks is out, I expect..."

Kilbie was anxious to ride and wanted company.

I couldn't resist, as usual. The Chicky wreck wasn't that far away. I looked over at Tee. "You want to go? You'll see a sight."

Mama said peevishly, "Why, Ben? Why?" She was thinking Tee had already had her fill of storms and wrecks.

"It may be the only time she'll ever see a lifesaving crew in action."

Mama sighed. "Why does she need to see it?"

I left the decision to Teetoncey. "I'd like very much to go," she told Mama. Well, who wouldn't? You name me a mainlander who wouldn't like to see a Hatteras wreck? Name me an exile from England who wouldn't like to see one.

So we dressed and I brought Fid out of the shelter and then we headed toward Chicky Station, riding double in the light rain; Kilbie slopping along beside on that slow old mule.

When we broke to the beach, surf roaring so loud we had to shout, the ocean stretched before us in mountains of white cresting water with foamy, gray valleys. Salt spray was heavy in the air, mist scooped from wavetops, still flying inland. For a mile offshore, the water was the color of bean soup from the boiling sand. Ever thus after a gale.

We rode on past Heron Head Station but didn't stop. No one was there, of course. Along with the lifesaving equipment, they were at the wreck, a little below Chicky Station. The Chicky boys were working a previous wreck to the north.

In another fifteen minutes, through the light rain, we picked up the vague shape of a ship near the beach; masts still up but rigging in a mess; hull still in one piece but probably already pounding apart. I judged it was about a hundred yards offshore. Kilbie said it had grounded about 9
A.M.
, a much better time to wreck than in pitch night.

Closer, we got a better look. "Three-masted schooner," I said to Tee.

The ship was sideways, parallel to the beach; breakers slamming against her starboard side. She was tilted over about twenty degrees.
Geraldine Solari, Brooklyn, New York,
was on her stern.

"Those men," Tee breathed, awed by it all, to my great satisfaction.

Yes, there were still some men aboard her, clinging midships along the port rail. The ship lifted and slammed against the bottom as each wave passed, shaking stem to stern.

As we reached the scene, Filene was getting ready to launch again. Four survivors were already huddled on the beach, staring anxiously out at their shipmates. "Filene'll save 'em all," I reassured Tee.

To those who have never watched a cedar-planked, oak-ribbed double-ended twenty-five-foot lifesaving boat go out through high surf, it is a moment beyond description. Papa once told Mama, "You feel like you're sitting on a half-hollow matchstick an' the breakers look like Smoky Mountain peaks."

Jabez and Mark Jennette were already in the heavy boat, cloaked in glistening oilskins, hooded under sou'westers, oars set to take the first sweep of storm water. Their faces were taut. Luther Gaskins, Jimmy Meekins, Malachi Gray, and Lem O'Neal, along with Keeper Midgett, were bending down to shove her full into the water, with Filene leaping aboard last to use his arms and back on the sweep oar, which would steer her.

We saw Filene watching the breakers, waiting for the best one to roll in, then he bellowed, "Let's take her out," and the crew bent to shoot her into white water, leaping into their seats, grabbing oars, all in a molasses-smooth move.

Filene tumbled over the stern as Jabez and Mark heaved back mightily. The bow rose on froth and she speared toward the first big breaker.

The breakers were the killers and could make kindling of the thousand-pound boat, mangling every man aboard, in an eyeblink.

They rose on the first big one, climbing almost straight up.

We could hear Filenes hoarse yell—just a "Yaw——yaw——yaw" as he timed the oar strokes.

They crested it, spray flying, slamming over it, with ten feet of bow in sight; then buried in the wild trough of water and rose again to climb the next one.

Tee's mouth had dropped open and she was staring at the plunging boat, absolutely speechless.

The boat rose again on a hill of water, staggered a moment on the crest and I thought maybe Filene would broach, but then I saw that massive back literally swing the hull straight as it hung in air on the steering oar. In a moment, they were past the breaker line.

Tee said, "I never want to see that again." Under the brim of her sou'wester she was chalky. For mainlanders, maybe once is enough. But I reminded, "They got to come back, Teetoncey."

Filene steered to the portside of the schooner, the lee side, sheltered somewhat from the seas, and we watched as eight men went over the rail and into the pitching boat, one so weak he fell and almost went overboard. Then the boat pulled away for the return trip.

Kilbie said, "There's still one man aboard."

I looked closer. He sure was—by the foremast, and seemed to be clinging to it; not even offering himself for rescue.

Tee said anxiously, "They won't leave him, will they?"

"Never have," I answered. "They'll go back after him."

In a few minutes the survivors were safe on the beach without even getting their feet wet, and the crew was hauling the boat higher from the surf line.

"They're not going back out to get that man?" Tee asked worriedly, her voice squeaking.

I looked toward the schooner again, but Tee didn't really need to fret. Already Jabez and Lem O'Neal had the bronze Lyle gun in position; Jabez fixing the four-ounce powder charge and Lem getting the seventeen-pound ball shot and
shot line
ready.

"They'll take him off in the breeches buoy," I said, having some firsthand knowledge of that operation.