Isle of Dogs by Patricia Cornwell Page B

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 thetrash-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 hell-bent 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.
    “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 atemper 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 backward 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