Patricia Cornwell - Isle of Dogs

"Sit in the chair thar and mind your step!" Fonny Boy ordered the dentist.

"I need to get the cotton out of your mouth," Dr. Faux reminded his patient. "You need to sit in the chair, then

I'll sit in it after we're finished, if you want." Dr. Faux supposed the lidocaine had agitated Fonny Boy and precipitated a transient nervous disorder.

Even the most experienced dentist couldn't be sure how certain drugs might affect some patients, and Dr. Faux always inquired if the person had any allergies or adverse reactions to medications. But the Islanders were so rarely sedated or subjected to even the mildest anesthesia or mood-altering substances, except for the alcohol they weren't allowed to drink, that Dr. Faux's patients were rather virginal and perfectly suited for blind studies with placebos and other concoctions that various pharmaceutical companies wanted the FDA to approve and were happy to donate to Dr. Faux for experimental purposes. The dentist slid gloved fingers around inside Fonny Boy's mouth, fishing for the cotton.

"You didn't swallow it again, did you?" Dr. Faux worried.

"Yass."

"Well, you may be a little constipated for a few days. How come you locked the door and what did you do with the key?"

Fonny Boy felt his pockets to make sure the key was safely in his custody. It was not. What did I do with it? he thought, his eyes darting around the examination room as feet and angry voices sounded from the street. Excited, Fonny Boy popped the dentist in the nose, not with malice, but with sufficient force to draw blood.

"Ouch!" Dr. Faux cried out in surprise and pain. "Now why did you do that?" he asked as the watermen yelled for Fonny Boy to unlock the door.

"I can't!" he yelled back to them. "I ain't got holt of the key! I disremembered where I put it at!"

"Why did you hit me?" Dr. Faux was shocked and upset as he dabbed his nose with a tissue.

Fonny Boy wasn't sure, but it seemed important to prove himself through violence. He rather much liked the idea of the watermen seeing that he had used force to subdue the dentist. Certainly, his father would be pleased, but Fonny Boy just wished he could recall what he had done with the key as the commotion outside intensified.

"He-ey! You have to broke the door!" he shouted to the angry mob.

The watermen did and thundered inside, waving their oars and tongs.

"Down with Virginia! Down with Virginia!" was their furious battle cry. "You daren't go back to the main, Dr. Faux, hear? You're wer prisoner!"

"You're going to catch it!"

"That's right! That's right!"

"Heeey thar, Dr. Faux. How feels it, you being the one stuck in that thar chair?"

"Give him the dickens!"

"I did!" Fonny Boy said, full of himself. "I scobbed him right in the nose and down he went ass-over-tin-cup!" he boasted.

"We should yank out ever one of his teeth! Look at all the teeth a' ours he always a' pullin'!"

"Take him potting, we should! And tie 'im up good and feed 'im to the crabs!"

"And that ain't no way to go, I tell you!"

"Durn it, if it ain't what he got comin'! Hear?"

"Wait a minute!" Dr. Faux protested loudly enough to briefly silence the watermen as he cowered in the dentist's chair and rubbed his nose. "I do hear! And what I'm hearing is first you're mad at Virginia, and now you've suddenly turned on me! Make up your mind!"

"We mad at ever one of you on the main," someone decided. "There's neither one from the main who don't take our advantage."

"Well, if you're fully decided on kidnapping me," Dr. Faux thought quickly and with fraudulent intent, "then your plan will only work if you send notice to the governor. Otherwise, no one will know I'm here and what good will it do to lock me up? And as for your unfair and ungrateful accusations about how I've taken care of your dental needs, I must point out that I have come here for many years with nothing but goodness in my heart, and without me you would have no dentist at all."

"Better none than you."

"My wife, she would still be with all her teeth. And I get the ache in my tooth when it gets right airish out. A tooth you fixed!"

"Well, maybe we should have another mind about this." One of the watermen had second thoughts and leaned his oar against a wall. "We don't want neither trouble."

"Exactly," Dr. Faux agreed. "You watermen are projecting. You're furious with the governor, and I can't say as I blame you. Clearly, you're being persecuted and discriminated against as usual, and I'm not sure what these painted lines are about, but they weren't put there with your best interest in mind."

"Nah, neither interest that might be a good turn for us."

"Don't listen to him talking at us!" It was Fonny Boy who took charge. "He's of the main, and how did it come to us that the troopers and him are here at the same time? He's spying, he is!"

"I'll swagger! What's in your head to make you notion him spying on us, honey boy?" Fonny Boy's father asked with growing anger and resentment.

"Spying on potting and drudging and then he go telling untruths about jimmies and sooks and arysters. Soon enough, they'll make the law that we have no business follering the water," Fonny Boy declared without the thinnest fabric of evidence.

"This one thar let on that to you?" Fonny Boy's father asked as he jerked his chin at the dentist.

"Yass. Durn if he didn't!"

"What words did he put to you?"

Fonny Boy shrugged, his yarn running aground, but the seed had been planted.

"Can't be taking no chances," another waterman spoke up.

"Nah."

"Nah. That's right."

"The governor already's cut our crabbing to the wick, and now that arster drudging is pretty near on us, what if are told to leave that off, too? Why, there'll be nothing in our pockets, neither a red cent."

"It ain't fittin'!"

"Nah. For sure it ain't!"

"I say we let 'im make one call over the phone and talk our intentions," Fonny Boy's father suggested in a wild, angry voice.

"Who's he gonna call for?"

"I say he talk at the state police, that's what. They was the ones who painted on the street out thar. And maybe the dentist is spying for the police on part of the gov'ner."

Dr. Faux was handed the old black phone, and after calling directory assistance and going through a series of transfers, he got Superintendent Judy Hammer on the line and prayed she wouldn't think to run a record check on him.

"Who is this?" Hammer asked, and she could hear angry murmuring in the background.

"I'm a dentist from the mainland," a voice replied. "I take care of Tangier Island and am here now and in a passel of trouble because your trooper painted stripes on Janders Road and the governor is taking over the island so he can turn it into a racetrack."

"What in the world are you talking about?" Hammer asked, and she almost hung up on the so-called dentist, who clearly was a whacko, but then decided that maybe she ought to hear him out. "The stripes are a speed trap and part of the governor's new VASCAR program."

"If you don't remove the stripes immediately and sign an agreement that prohibits the state police, coast guard, and others from ever molesting the Islanders again, they're going to keep me as a prisoner against my will!"

"Who is this?" Hammer asked again, taking notes at her desk.

"I'm forbidden from giving you my name," the voice said.

"Down with Virginia!" someone with a strange accent cried out in the background.

"Neither body here voted for the-gov'ner, as I recollect it."

"We ain't done nothing but fish our floats and make an honest living, and what we come home to? Stripes on the street and him, the dentist, pulling out ever one of our teeth!"

"I haven't pulled out every one of your teeth!" the dentist objected with his hand over the phone, but Hammer heard him and everybody else anyway.