“Clinic,” Dr. Faux answered.
“I need to talk at Fonny Boy,” a male voice said through loud crackling and humming over the line. “He thar?”
“That you, Hurricane?” the dentist asked Fonny Boy’s father, who went by the nickname Hurricane because he had a temper like one. “You’re due in for a checkup and cleaning and blood work.”
“Let me talk at Fonny Boy afore the devil flies in me!”
“It’s for you,” Dr. Faux said to his patient.
Fonny Boy got out of the chair and took the receiver as he swatted at a lethargic fly. “Yass?”
“Look a’ here! Lock up the door tight as an arster!” Fonny Boy’s father said urgently. “Don’t turn the dentist out! Now and again we got to do things for cussedness, honey boy. It’s all what we know to do in a situation like this one here. That dentist mommucked up your mouth again?”
“Yass! He wouldn’t do nothing to me, Daddy!” Fonny Boy said, which was over the left or talking backwards and meant, of course, that the dentist intended to mangle Fonny Boy’s mouth badly.
“Well, don’t you be out of heart,” his father said, encouraging his son not to be depressed or discouraged. “We gonna give him a dost of his own medicine and make the example of him, and break the police of going on us all the time. We are all kin together, honey boy. Now you keep quite and we’ll be right thar!”
“Oh my blessed!” Fonny Boy exclaimed as he sprang to the door and locked the deadbolt with the key hanging behind a painting of Jesus shepherding lambs.
He was not entirely clear about why he was supposed to trap Dr. Faux inside the clinic, but that durned dentist deserved what was coming and it was exciting that something was happening. Tangier was very boring for its young, and Fonny Boy had dreams of finding his fortune and one day leaving for good. He peered out the window at a crowd of watermen marching up the road in military formation, some of them armed with wooden oars and oyster tongs.
“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.