Emendare, p.2
Emendare, page 2
Doodie covered his mouth to stifle another giggle, but Hains still said, “Shut up, Doodie,” and splashed him until he dove under to escape the onslaught.
The five of us waded in chest-deep water just off the deep channel used by the mainland ferry. Sometimes we slid dangerously close to the sandy edge of the frequently dredged chasm. Even good swimmers were wary. In the cold black water under the ferry dock lived a creature that dragged kids beneath the surface to their deaths.
We knew of one high school kid who dove in and wasn’t found until his bloated body floated up a week later. We all saw him, bobbing there on the surface, while the Sheriff’s men tried to grab onto him with a gaff hook. They said he got caught up in some tree branches sunk down in the channel. But we could clearly see claw marks on his back when they pulled him out, making the ferry dock creature more plausible in our minds.
Doodie resurfaced close enough to the abyss to require a frantic backstroke away from the reach of the ferry dock monster, which we’d all decided looked a lot like the creature from the Black Lagoon. Only Malachi had insisted on long octopus-like tentacles for fingers because we had all felt the icy grip around an ankle, just the tip of something slipping by, and seen a shadow in the darkness recoiling away. Of course, it could have been a fish or an eel, but the mere possibility it could be a monster negated dismissing anything unknown as benign.
Cindy sought another way out. “Why does it have to be him? Why can’t it be Hains?”
“I told you. The clue says only a male Doe kissed by a virgin is protected from the curse.”
Popping up from the water between Cindy and Malachi to demonstrate how little he knew about genetics, Doodie said, “What about me? My mom is your momma’s sister, Jane. Doesn’t that make me part Doe?”
Doodie’s real name was Brian Duty. His last name, as pronounced by his peers, unfortunately, rhymed with a euphemism for shit. Our socially awkward pal was unaware of boundaries and slow to catch on to this fact. He was almost as tall as Hains and thickly muscled, also a bit uncoordinated and clumsy. He barely made the cut to be in our grade, which made him almost a year younger than the rest of us. An only child, spoiled and overprotected, he matured a little slower. These facts made him the lowest ranking in our group dynamic.
Though goofy and awkward, Doodie actually read a lot and made good grades. He was a nerd-filled with random facts and our loveable teddy bear. Being Doodie’s friend was like handling a hot biscuit as it dripped butter down the back of your hand. The mess was worth it; even if it required a thorough clean up afterward. We loved him and helped him try to fit in, though our methods were sometimes harsh. We were children, modeling behavior demonstrated for us by adults in our lives. The most famous character on TV was a crude, ignorant bigot. People thought it wasn’t reality, but they didn’t live in Doe’s Ferry.
“Shut up, Doodie,” the four of us said in unison.
The “courthouse kids” ruled Doe’s Ferry. We were given the label, not for our delinquency, but because we all lived within shouting distance of the county seat. Malachi lived next door to me, and our houses backed up to the Albemarle Sound on the north side of the mainland ferry dock. Hains lived by the courthouse on the southern side of the dock. His lawn sloped down to a short sandy beach with a long wharf paralleling the ferry channel. Doodie lived across the canal from Malachi’s house on the north side.
Cindy’s house was the biggest and newest. It sat across from the ferry dock next to the longstanding Swann place. The petite pretty girl foil to my solid-bodied tomboy athleticism, Cindy, already twelve, had completed the sixth grade where the rest of our cadre headed in the fall. She also had boobs, which made me, the only other local girl for miles around, invisible.
The road we lived on followed an old wagon path to the courthouse, where we all had ties. Cindy’s father was the district judge; Hains’s father, the Sheriff; Malachi’s mother, the custodian; Doodie’s mother cooked for the jail, and his dad was a jailer. My father, whose ancestor lent his name to the original colonial trading post now known as Doe’s Ferry, was a frequent guest of the county’s drunk tank. According to my grandmother, I would be too if I didn’t change my ways. I was eleven, hardly a hardened criminal or a drunk, but there was time.
“Look,” I said, trying a different approach with our stubborn virgin. During Cindy’s bible study, she had missed several of the seven deadly sins. I appealed to her vanity and greed. “If this clue leads us to Bonnet’s treasure, you can move to New York and be an actress. Like you said you would if you had the money.”
“I’m not sinning for financial gain. You cannot serve both God and money,” Cindy complained loudly, with full Southern Baptist preacher inflection.
This was the same girl that would share a stolen cigarette with all of us and had been known to sip a beer, at least that one time when I took one from my dad’s cooler. We chased it with orange soda. Damn the temporary reformation qualities of vacation bible school.
“You know, you get like this every summer when you come back from staying at your grandma’s. That church camp makes you mean.”
“It isn’t mean to follow the Lord.”
I pointed at Malachi’s deeply tanned bare chest and said, “But Mali isn’t any blacker than I am. He’s brown. Besides, we’re cousins. So, what does that make me?”
Cindy refused to listen. “Bertie’s daddy was a bastard son of James Doe. That doesn’t make you cousins. It makes him an abomination according to the word.”
“Goddammit, Cindy. Just stop quoting the bible and kiss him so we can get on with it.”
Cindy turned and walked away, calling over her shoulder, “I won’t be your friend Jane Doe if you’re going to take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Fine. We’ll find a virgin somewhere else.”
She wheeled around, red-faced. “I don’t believe that stupid pirate’s map is real anyway.”
“When we’re rich, we’ll send you a postcard from Hawaii,” I said, pretending not to care if she stayed.
Cindy glared at me and then went for the kill. “Aren’t you a virgin? Why don’t you kiss him?”
Cindy knew why. She was just being hateful now. I wasn’t about to lose my chance at finding the “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet’s treasure over a technicality. We found the map and accompanying directions to the cache in an iron-strapped wooden box. It was buried in the woods behind the salvage yard attached to my family’s service station up on the new road. The new road had been there since the early 1800s, but as long as there was an old road, it would always be the “new” one. The fenced lot filled with rusting wrecks towed in off the county byways was part of our playground. The courthouse kids roamed freely in the twenty acres between the sound shore and the busy highway.
I hollered after Cindy, “I’d rather go to hell than kiss you again, anyway,” and then kissed Mali on the cheek.
We all stared at the sky when it rumbled a warning of the coming summer squall.
“God is going to get you for that, Jane Doe,” Cindy yelled at me.
Already out of the water, she ran toward her house. The rest of us scampered for the shore when lightning streaked across the sky.
Mali shouted over the sound of our legs churning against the shallow water, “Jesus, Jane. You’ve cursed us all.”
“Do you think God is about to strike us down?” I said, laughing at the thought.
I wasn’t the typical god-fearin’ churchgoer that my peers were. My grandmother’s response to my irreverence was to say she thought I read too many of my father’s books while he was overseas. She complained that the preacher didn’t come by as much after I started talking.
Mali, who had heard my take on the “good book,” said, “No, not that bible stuff—the pirate curse. You ain’t exactly pure. Maybe you just put a hex on us.”
Having been raised by two devout Methodists and one avid atheist’s book collection, I got a kick out of what people thought unseen forces could do to you, but I believed with all my heart in pirates and pirate treasure. We could see the evidence of their existence all around us. Pirates built wharves for unloading spoils in what was now my backyard. The ancient pilings were still there. We dug up artifacts all the time. My grandpa had a flintlock pistol he found when he was cleaning out the ditch that drained the low spot across the road.
Malachi believed in pirates and pirate curses. He picked up his pace.
Hains added his take on the matter. “I guess we should have found a real virgin.”
Doodie tripped and fell face first while trying to say something, “Lightning travels on the surfa—” Splash. Splash. “Dang, did you see me step in that hole?”
The air filled with the smell of rain. Another flash and thunder pounded against my chest. We pushed through the shallow water, arms pumping at twice the speed of our knees. Our legs fought against the dense milfoil, an invasive aquatic grass that grew near the shoreline.
Mali looked over at me with his dark chocolate eyes and smiled. “It’s just God making sure you don’t get any ideas about kissing a black boy again.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it,” I said, laughing as the sky opened up.
We could no longer hear each other over the roar of the rain pounding the surface of the Albemarle Sound behind us. Lightning cracked across the sky. Danger loomed. In our youthful innocence, fear only made us laugh louder and run faster. The storm would pass, and we still needed to find a virgin. Our original plan kept the treasure and map within our trusted gang of five. Cindy’s reaction would force us to seek help from outsiders.
I couldn’t figure why Cindy was so hung up on kissing Malachi. He had near as much white blood as I had. Mali and me, we were both naturally tanned; like coffee with cream, only I got an extra splash of half and half. Cindy and Hains were blonde and blue.
One time when my dad was home on leave, he called them the “evidence of European expansionism.” I laughed, even though I’m not really sure what he meant.
Mali and I were on the other end of the color scale, with our dark black hair and deep brown eyes ringed in amber. But in the summer, when we wore little clothes and browned every exposed inch of our bodies, Malachi turned a deeper bronze that amplified his father’s ethnic roots. His head was full of shiny black curls while mine lay flat. He was the prettiest person, boy or girl, I’d ever seen. I wasn’t alone in my thinking.
Earlier that morning, we had passed some women I knew from Grandma’s bridge game afternoons. With teased hair and bows carefully centered behind identically trimmed short bangs, the evidence they had the same hair stylist was overwhelming.
Hains stopped, as the rest of us ran past. Ever the gentlemen or politician—both in his nature and genetics—he said, “Good morning, Mrs. Sprague. Good morning, Mrs. Dowdy.”
“Thank you, Hains. What a polite young man,” Mrs. Sprague said.
We plopped onto the creaky porch steps of Swann’s store with our grape sodas and cheese nabs.
The women stopped on the porch above us, not knowing we could hear them or just not caring if we did.
Mrs. Sprague said, “That mulatto boy is so beautiful.”
Mrs. Dowdy answered, “Sin is always attractive, Beth.”
I glanced at Mali. He just shrugged and turned up the soda for a long swig. After several cooling gulps, he pulled the bottle from his lips and let out a loud, “Ahhhhh,” so the women would notice. He smiled up at them, dimples in full charming rascal position, and boldly winked.
Grown women blushed and covered their mouths because an eleven-year-old black boy winked at them. Mali was just learning the power he wielded with his looks. I laughed when he turned that magical smile on me, as the women scurried away.
Malachi never cared what people said about him. He probably should have.
3
Howdy, Sheriff…
Malachi’s smile faded from my memory, his image replaced by the Englisher’s silhouette. Richard blocked the last rays of sunset and my chance to appreciate them. He attempted to communicate through sign language, managing to convey only gibberish with his hands. He also spoke his words deliberately and loudly, which I’ve never understood. Why yell at a person who can’t hear you?
“Can you hear me? I require assistance.”
“Might I be able to help you, sir?”
To my rear, a friendly male voice offered a way out of having to deal with Richard. Skinny jeans man looked over my shoulder and sighed with relief. He stepped around the picnic table to greet the new member of our ferry dock party.
“Hello, officer. Chuffed to see you.”
“I hope that’s a good thing,” the officer responded.
Richard laughed. “Yes, an excellent thing. I seem to have been left without transportation. I can’t locate a cell signal and need assistance.”
I had a good idea to whom the approaching voice belonged without looking. I could also imagine Richard indicating me with a tip of his head or glance of the eye, he may have even pointed at my back.
He lowered his voice and informed the new arrival, “I think she’s deaf and dumb.”
My former playmate said, “Who, Jane Doe? I’ve never known her to be shy.”
Richard responded like the rest of the world. “Her name is Jane Doe? Really? You aren’t joking?”
“Yes. Her father’s name was John Doe. Her mother’s last name was Smith. Jane Smith Doe, that’s her. Her dad said he guaranteed her anonymity for life. Thought it was funny.”
“Probably hard to get a bank card,” Richard said, “or use one. Merchants must suppose them some sort of sample sent through the mail.”
“TSA is a real bitch, I imagine,” my friend added, chuckling audibly.
My head bobbed slightly, as I involuntarily agreed with both men.
Richard should have stopped there, but he didn’t. He mistook the locals’ amusement as a sign to continue.
“I imagine sticking your child with that name would serve as a family jest among the ancestral progeny of the lawless colonial coast. Wasn’t this place run amok with pirates and people who wished not to be found?”
“Yes, sir. We are part of the pirate coast.”
Richard should have stopped, but he continued, “The chances are one’s DNA might lead to a life requiring anonymity. Still doesn’t explain why she won’t acknowledge a person in need.”
Intending to be entertaining, Richard’s comments showed the familiar disregard held among people living north of the Virginia/North Carolina border for those living south of it. William Byrd surveyed the line in 1728 and wrote of the fitness of the land and its people only for the husbandry of pigs, pinning forever the label of simpletons struck by laziness to those living in the Carolina colony. After his disparaging remarks, Byrd bought a broad swath of the land straddling the border and founded a family that would make its way to the highest offices in the nation. The chip on our collective Carolinian shoulders had grown with the weariness of our hick reputations. I could hear the resentment in the Sheriff’s response.
“It’s Sheriff, not officer. I work for the county. We don’t have any city police officers around here.”
I was thinking we didn’t have a city or a town. The best we could muster was a blinking caution light at the only major crossroad and a bunch of colloquial village names where old families happened to settle together. If there were enough people, the government had made whatever name the villagers settled on official and gave them a post office. It still didn’t mean we were ignorant swamp dwellers, at least not all of us.
I’m pretty sure Richard heard the change in the Sheriff’s tone, too. He took a few steps back. Able to see his lower legs in my peripheral vision, I watched as he shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot while the Sheriff spoke.
“It’s probably a turn of your luck that ol’ Jane there decided to give you a pass. Your date is waiting for you with the patrolman.” There was a pause and a chuckle before he sent Richard on his way. “Be nice. At least until you get back to Virginia.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
In the practiced style of one whose department budget depended on tax dollars generated by tourism, the Sheriff regained control of his emotions, and let his schmoozer pitch follow Richard down the sandy path by the road until he was beyond earshot.
“My pleasure. Y’all come back when you can stay longer. Stop and get some of Miss Edna’s pie on the way back. Her place is just about a mile north on your right. It’ll put the sweet back in your sweetheart. You’ll come back for more, guaranteed.”
Then my blood brother, sealed in a ceremony inside a candlelit boathouse fifty years ago, turned his attention to me. My shoulders were probably still visibly moving, as I tried to subdue the laughter at his hokey delivery of Edna’s sales pitch.
I heard him take a step closer, before he said, “What’s the word of the day?”
“Reditus.”
“I’ll have to dig my old Latin dictionary out.”
“It’s a returning, a turning back.”
“Appropriate.”
“How’d you know it was me, Hains?”
“You’ve been sittin’ here for two hours, according to my deputy. By the way, he’s on to you. He’s certain you’re a risk and should be reported to the feds.”
“I’m the last person you anticipated finding in Doe’s Ferry, I expect.”
“I don’t know. With all that’s going on, it isn’t all that surprising to find you here. I know it’s the last place you could be anonymous, name or not. So, you aren’t hiding from anyone.”
“I forgot how quickly strangers who linger are singled out here.”
“You’re not a stranger, Jane.”
“Oh, I’ve been that from the day I was born, but tell me this, what prompted the Sheriff to personally check out the report?”
Hains moved around to stand just in my peripheral vision, an old cop trick to make a suspect turn or remain uncomfortable. “My deputy’s description of the stranger down at the ferry dock: female, forty to fifty.” He paused to say, “You should thank him for that.” And then continued the description from memory, “Short, five-three or four, salt and pepper gray hair, tattoos on inside wrists that read ‘No Justice’ on one, and ‘No Peace’ on the other, muscular build, probably works out. Awfully accurate I’d say.”
