“Andy!” Hammer was wide awake and offended. “You can’t keep secrets from me! Where have you been all day? Have you heard the news? Apparently not,” she added with emotion. “A woman was viciously murdered on Belle Island and the killer carved your name on her body!”
“My name? What the hell do you mean, my name?”
“I mean Trooper Truth.”
“Someone carved Trooper Truth on her body?” Andy was shocked and amazed. “What … ? What. … ?”
“I don’t know what the hell what or anything else. But I think it might be a damn good idea to scrap this Trooper Truth shit and return to normal police duties before any more damage is done.”
“You can’t blame me for what some deranged killer did! As awful as I feel about the victim, I had nothing to do with her death and I promise to help in any way. Listen, we had an agreement and you promised,” Andy reminded her. “And don’t forget what I said a year ago when we discussed all this. If you tell the truth, the forces of evil don’t like it, and shit happens. But in the end, truth will prevail.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Hammer replied unkindly and with impatience. “Please, don’t subject me to any more of your naive philosophizing!”
“That hurts,” Andy said, stung and disappointed, but more determined than ever. “Read Trooper Truth in the morning and maybe we’ll talk.”
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TANGIER ISLAND
by Trooper Truth
Although it may wish it wasn’t at the moment, Tangier Island is part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and was happened upon in 1608 when John Smith and seven soldiers, six gentlemen, and a doctor of Physicke were exploring the Chesapeake Bay in a three-ton open barge.
While searching for fit harbors and habitations, they found themselves in the midst of many isles, which they named the Russell Isles. When they crossed the bay to the eastern shore, they found themselves confronted by two grim, stout Naturals, or Salvages, as Smith called them, who bore long poles with bone heads.
“Who are you and what do you have in mind?” the Salvages boldly demanded in the language of Powhatan, called such because this was what the great chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, spoke.
Smith answered them in their own language, which impressed the Salvages considerably, and I pause here to digress a moment about the importance of communication, which certainly is a timely issue in light of what happened yesterday on the very island (Tangier) that John Smith discovered. No government, including
Virginia’s, should make laws and take initiatives that affect a people who speak backward. If an Islander says, for example, “Well, this is a nice one,” or “It ain’t rainin’ none,” he may mean quite the opposite, depending on his speech tune, as native Tangierman David L. Shores explains in his definitive work Tangier Island: Place, People, and Talk.
Now, in the old days, if an Islander meant the opposite of what he said, then he would signal as such by adding, “over the left,” which obviously meant he was talking backwards. He would say, “It ain’t rainin’ much, over the left,” which was only fair if he really meant it was raining like hell. Not so anymore. Only those intimately acquainted with the Islanders’ use of inflection and facial expression might detect what was really meant when, as another example, a waterman says, “I have neither interest in going” or “That’s a poor arster.”
“What you’re getting at, I guess,” said my closest friend, who from now on I will refer to as my wise confidante, “is if the Islanders’ reaction to the VASCAR speed traps was, ‘Well, this is nice!’ then what they probably meant was that the speed traps aren’t nice at all and they’re really pissed off about them. Based on what you’ve told me, clearly, the island woman Ginny Crockett was annoyed, even if she talked backward to the police, correct?”
“Exactly my point,” I agreed. “The governor shouldn’t do anything to or on that island without a full comprehension of backward talking. And it’s pretty clear to me that the governor’s administration is quite skilled at backward thinking, but not backward talking. And they’ve just done a brilliant thing.”