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.

"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.

"He-ey! You have to broke the door!" he shouted to the angry mob.

The watermen did and thundered inside, waving their oars and tongs.

"Down with Virginia! Down with Virginia!" was their furious battle cry. "You daren't go back to the main, Dr. Faux, hear? You're wer prisoner!"

"You're going to catch it!"

"That's right! That's right!"

"Heeey thar, Dr. Faux. How feels it, you being the one stuck in that thar chair?"

"Give him the dickens!"

"I did!" Fonny Boy said, full of himself. "I scobbed him right in the nose and down he went ass-over-tin-cup!" he boasted.

"We should yank out ever one of his teeth! Look at all the teeth a' ours he always a' pullin'!"

"Take him potting, we should! And tie 'im up good and feed 'im to the crabs!"

"And that ain't no way to go, I tell you!"

"Durn it, if it ain't what he got comin'! Hear?"

"Wait a minute!" Dr. Faux protested loudly enough to briefly silence the watermen as he cowered in the dentist's chair and rubbed his nose. "I do hear! And what I'm hearing is first you're mad at Virginia, and now you've suddenly turned on me! Make up your mind!"

"We mad at ever one of you on the main," someone decided. "There's neither one from the main who don't take our advantage."

"Well, if you're fully decided on kidnapping me," Dr. Faux thought quickly and with fraudulent intent, "then your plan will only work if you send notice to the governor. Otherwise, no one will know I'm here and what good will it do to lock me up? And as for your unfair and ungrateful accusations about how I've taken care of your dental needs, I must point out that I have come here for many years with nothing but goodness in my heart, and without me you would have no dentist at all."

"Better none than you."

"My wife, she would still be with all her teeth. And I get the ache in my tooth when it gets right airish out. A tooth you fixed!"

"Well, maybe we should have another mind about this." One of the watermen had second thoughts and leaned his oar against a wall. "We don't want neither trouble."

"Exactly," Dr. Faux agreed. "You watermen are projecting. You're furious with the governor, and I can't say as I blame you. Clearly, you're being persecuted and discriminated against as usual, and I'm not sure what these painted lines are about, but they weren't put there with your best interest in mind."

"Nah, neither interest that might be a good turn for us."

"Don't listen to him talking at us!" It was Fonny Boy who took charge. "He's of the main, and how did it come to us that the troopers and him are here at the same time? He's spying, he is!"

"I'll swagger! What's in your head to make you notion him spying on us, honey boy?" Fonny Boy's father asked with growing anger and resentment.

"Spying on potting and drudging and then he go telling untruths about jimmies and sooks and arysters. Soon enough, they'll make the law that we have no business follering the water," Fonny Boy declared without the thinnest fabric of evidence.

"This one thar let on that to you?" Fonny Boy's father asked as he jerked his chin at the dentist.

"Yass. Durn if he didn't!"

"What words did he put to you?"

Fonny Boy shrugged, his yarn running aground, but the seed had been planted.

"Can't be taking no chances," another waterman spoke up.

"Nah."

"Nah. That's right."

"The governor already's cut our crabbing to the wick, and now that arster drudging is pretty near on us, what if are told to leave that off, too? Why, there'll be nothing in our pockets, neither a red cent."