“Entirely too many,” he admonished Fonny Boy, who was fourteen, tall and lanky, with windblown sun-bleached hair and a nickname he had earned because of his funny habit of shirttailing and progging–or wading about with a stick or net, not in search of crabs but treasure. “You’re clearly more susceptible to cavities than most folks,” Dr. Faux pointed out the same thing he did to all of his island patients. “So I think you should at least switch to diet drinks, but preferably water.”
Fonny Boy had spent most of his life on and in the water, and for him to drink it would be like a farmer eating dirt.
“Nah, I can’t drink it,” he said, and his numb lips and tongue felt ten times their normal size. “I’m so swelled up, I’m likete choke!”
“What about bottled water? They have some really good ones these days with fruit flavors and lots of fizz.” Dr. Faux continued to stare out the window. “Why does that spotter plane keep circling overhead? And who is that soaking wet trooper with a paint bucket and a bottle of Evian and why is everybody chasing him down the street? Well, while I’ve got you doped up, I may as well adjust your braces.”
Dr. Faux paused to jot down several codes and notes on Fonny Boy’s thick dental chart.
“Nah!” Fonny Boy protested. “That gives my mouth the soreness. The braces, they are good enough save for the little rubber bands always flying out for neither good cause.”
Fonny Boy had never wanted braces in the first place. Nor had he been happy when the dentist had insisted on pulling four perfectly good teeth earlier in the year. Fonny Boy hated going to the dentist and often complained to his parents that Dr. Faux was a picaroon, which was the Tangier word for pirate.
“He gave me a look at a photo of his car,” Fonny Boy had said just the other day. “He got a huge black Merk and his lady got one, too, only of a different color. So how come he can have cars so dear if he works on ever one of us for neither money?”
It was a good question, but as usual, nobody took Fonny Boy seriously, and in part this was because of his nickname. His neighbors and teachers found him amusing and peculiar and loved to trade tales about his poking through the trash-strewn shore for treasure and his uncontrollable compulsion to make music.
“I swanny,” Fonny Boy overheard his aunt Ginny Crockett comment after a recent Sunday prayer meeting. “He has a mind that ransacking the shore’s gonna land him a barrel a silver dollars. Heee! His poor mom’s always blaring at him, and I can’t say as I fault her. She’s done all what she can for that boy, and on back of that, I wish he’s keep quite on the juice harp.”
“I’m a die! He totes that juice harp everywhere and sure plays a pretty tune.” Ginny’s friend said the opposite of what she meant, because it was everyone’s opinion that when Fonny Boy played the harmonica, which was constantly, he made nothing but an awful racket.
“His daddy ought to give him the dickens, but he’s always bragging on that boy,” Ginny replied, and in this instance, she meant exactly what she said, because Fonny Boy’s father was hellbent on believing that his only son was the envy of the island.
“Soon as we get these braces off,” Dr. Faux said as he pulled on a new pair of surgical gloves that would be billed for three times their value, “I’m going to recommend crowns for eight of your front teeth. You up for a little blood work this morning?” he added, because Dr. Faux had discovered there was quite a market for selling blood to shady medical researchers who were doing genetic studies of closed populations.
“Nah!” Fonny Boy jerked in the chair and gripped the armrests so tightly his knuckles blanched.
“Not to worry about crowns, Fonny Boy. I’ll use precious alloys and you’ll have a million-dollar smile!”
Just then, the old black telephone rang inside the clinic. The phone dated from the days when cords were covered with cloth insulation, and as usual, there was a lot of static.