Return to the Outer Banks House by Diann Ducharme

Author:Diann Ducharme [Ducharme, Diann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-18T11:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Eliza Dickens

December 20, 1875

He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him…

--Ishmael on Queequeg, Moby-Dick

It was nigh on a week after the lighthouse lighting when the Yanks left for home, leaving me and Iola to count the paper money we earned. We kept it all in a tin box under a rotten floorboard in the cabin. ‘Twas as good as a dead possum under there, as much as we ever touched that box. Had to travel way off the Banks to spend money like that.

There wasn’t much to be done at the clubhouse ‘til we went back to Nags Head in the spring: tending to the stock, gardens and tollers, mending nets, cleaning the poles and skiff and oars and decoys. Keeping watch out for poachers and thieves was another job altogether, and we both kept shotguns at the ready.

Iola and me had taken a shine to cooking our food in the clubhouse cook stove and eating at the dining table. Seemed at times Iola was over Amos and then the next minute she’d fall to pieces, back where she’d started. She wasn’t eating much, but she slept the day away sometimes. She’d wake and tell me about her dreams—wild dreams of color where she’d be flying in the sky, or swimming down deep in the ocean, or talking to cows and pigs and horses in a foreign tongue.

“Sounds downright tiring,” I’d said, after one particular yarn about digging a hole in the sand so deep she found a way into the past. She’d met up with the Indians used to live on the Banks, let ‘em tattoo her white body with inky spots.

“As if living your life wide awake ain’t enough, you’ve got to live a whole ‘nother life in sleeping.”

“It ain’t tiring,” she’d said. Though dark shadows marked the pale skin beneath her eyes. “Sometimes I don’t even want to wake up.”

I shuddered, thinking of getting stuck forever in Iola’s dreamland. “Good thing I don’t dream.”

She squinted at me like I’d told her a falsehood. “What?”

“I never dream.” I’d thought about Ben plenty before falling into sleep, but I’d never once had a night story about him.

“You just can’t recall what they were about.”

“No. I sleep, I wake up.”

Her blue eyes were big circles as she turned this fact over inside her head. “I just can’t imagine. I reckon I’m a little worried about you.”

“Worry about yourself, why don’t you.”

Next day Abner showed himself at the door. He had smudges under his eyes and a growth of beard. There were leaf bits in his hair, and his eyes were shot with blood. The knees of his britches were dirty and ripped. I reckoned he’d taken a bad spill not too long ago.

“You look like hell,” I told him.

“I been sick as a dog.” He started to hack. “But you see…here I am.”

“Ain’t I the lucky one.”

But he was so sorry-looking, I fixed him some yaupon tea, and we sat down at the table with the book he gave me and some of the men’s writing paper, pen and bottle of ink.

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