But Possum was distracted when he clicked on FAVORITES and accidentally pulled up Trooper Truth instead of Captain Bonny. Possum was surprised to see that Trooper Truth had posted yet another essay.
“Now what do you think of that?” Possum excitedly whispered to Popeye, who was snoring on the bed. “Two in the same morning! Man, that Trooper Truth’s up to something.”
A SHORT DIGRESSION
by Trooper Truth
The people of Tangier Island are a secretive, sensitive people who know little about the facts of their origin because, unsurprisingly, when one begins to spin legends and pass down misinformation, he eventually forgets what really happened and believes his own distortions.
Throughout the centuries, the people of Tangier hid the truth of their pirate past, preferring to believe their own legends. One afternoon while disguised as a reporter, I visited the island and talked to a local woman who had dropped by Spanky’s because things were slow at the gift shop.
“I guess you get fed up with all these tourists invading your island,” I commented to the woman, whose name was and perhaps still is Thelma Parks.
“I don’t suffer them poorly when they leave us be,” she replied, eyeing me with suspicion.
“And I assume they don’t.”
“Nah, they don’t. The other day, they was in my shop with the video camera and they was videoing me and I wanted none of it.”
“Did you tell them not to videotape you?” I inquired, taking notes.
“Nah.”
Thelma went on to tell me that she now charges a quarter for all photo opportunities while she works the cash register, and the added income makes it somewhat easier for her to tolerate the host of strangers who seem to find her Tangier gift shop exotic and unlike anything they’ve ever seen, which is inexplicable, she confided. None of the trinkets, such as the plastic lighthouses, crabs, crab pots, lobsters, fish, skiffs, and so on, are made by hand or in America. In fact, she added, lobsters are not common in the Chesapeake Bay and most islanders have never seen one except on TV or in seafood restaurant ads that regularly run in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper.
From Spanky’s, I continued my wanderings and happened by the medical clinic. I stepped inside and found no sign of a dentist, doctor, or nurse–only a lanky young man with blue eyes and a mop of blond hair. He was sitting in the dentist’s chair, staring off, lost in reveries and completely unaware of my presence. I assumed he was a patient and the dentist would return momentarily, not realizing that the dentist was, in truth, being held hostage, since neither his abduction nor the threat of civil war had been made public at that time.
“Hello?” I politely announced.
The boy’s eyes were glazed and he was unresponsive.
“Are you there?” I asked.
He wasn’t.
“I’m wondering if I might find any medical staff who have a minute to talk to me,” I said. “I’m working on a history of our nation’s beginning and present condition and believe Tangier Island is key.”
“The key is in my pocket.” He suddenly blinked to and protectively covered his pocket with a hand. When he didn’t recognize me, he was startled and jumped up from the chair. “What for are you doing here? I thought I locked the door!” He ran to the door and threw the bolt across.
I heard muffled sounds coming from a back area and the scrape of a chair moving across the floor.
“The dog’s back than” The young man indicated the area the sound was coming from.
“Why is he making a chair scrape?” I puzzled. “He tied up to it or something?”
“Yass.”
The chair scraped some more.
“It must be stuffy and lonely being tied up in there,” I worried, not at all pleased by the idea of a dog tied to a chair inside a clinic. “Why don’t we let him out so he can get a little air and attention?”
“That’s it!” The young man blocked the doorway leading to the area in question as the chair scraped again. “He bites. That’s what for he’s tied up. He’s the dentist’s dog.”