“A ticket,” Andy went on in a stern voice. “You know what a ticket is?” His paintbrush found the edge of the pavement, mere inches from Ginny’s fence and all the dead family members whose headstones were worn smooth and tilting in different directions. “We write you a ticket and then you go down to the courthouse and pay a fine. Cash or check.”
He knew very well that Tangier Island did not have a bank, and a check, in this old woman’s mind, was what the Coast Guard was always doing or what the tourists got when they ate the crab cakes and corn pudding at Hilda Crockett’s Chesapeake House.
“How much you make us pay when we get warranted, if we do?” Ginny was getting increasingly alarmed.
Andy stood up and stretched his aching back as he struggled to decipher what the woman had just said to him. Then he recalled his visit to The What Not Shop right before he had started painting the stripe and overhearing two Tangier women whispering about him and saying something about someone being warranted and that they couldn’t fathom who had done what, but it was probably that Shores boy who live cross from the school. He’s got more mouth than a sheep and here his daddy’s poor as Job’s turkey. That’s right, Hattie. Durn if his daddy don’t foller the water even when it’s the dog days while that Mr. Nutters a his can’t be learned nothing. Spends all his time progging, he does. Well, I swanny, Fonny Boy ain’t neither smarter than a ticky crab, Lula.
So warranted, Andy figured, must mean getting arrested, and according to Hattie and Lula, there was some island kid named Fonny Boy Shores who wasn’t much help at home, had a smart mouth, didn’t study, and preferred to spend his time wading along the shore and looking for things with a stick instead of contributing honest wages to his poor family.
“Fines for speeding depend on how many miles over the limit you were going,” Andy informed the unhappy island woman.
He didn’t let on for a moment that he thought it was appalling to hand out citations based on ground speed checked from the air. Planes and helicopters had neither radar guns nor good views of license tags, and he could just imagine a pilot calculating the speed of a northbound white compact car, for example, and radioing a trooper in his marked car to go after the offender. The trooper would roar out from behind shrubbery in the median strip and flash and wail after the most likely northbound white compact car, selecting the vehicle from a scattered pack of white compact cars whizzing along the interstate. What a waste of Jet-A fuel, taxpayers’ money, and time.
“It’s three dollars for every mile over, plus thirty dollars for court costs,” Andy summarized. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Why you want to know for?” Ginny backed up a step, threatened.
“Do you ever use the Internet?”
She stared mutely at him.
“No, it’s not something you catch fish with,” Andy said, slightly frustrated and disappointed. “I don’t guess you have PCs or modems out here.” He glanced around at small clapboard houses that lined the deteriorating road and eyed several golf carts bumping along in the distance. “Never mind about the Internet,” he added. “But I would like to know your name, and if you give it to me I can e-mail it to Trooper Truth so he can quote you and let the world know what you think of the governor’s new speed trap initiative.”
Ginny was baffled.
“It might bring more tourists to your crab tanks.” He pointed at them. “Those quarters add up, don’t they?”
“It’s well and all if I get me a quarter now and again,” Ginny said, trying to dilute her private tax-free enterprise. “But this time of year, there are neither pailers to show for a quarter, and all I got is a jimmy right in the tank there. Now, he’s a right big feller, but times is slow and soon enough strangers will take thesselves other places and won’t be coming here.”
“You never know. Nothing like publicity. Maybe things will pick up a bit.” Andy tried to coax her into giving him her name. “People read about your big jimmy and they’ll line up to take a look.”