Dentists, Dr. Faux thought, had no choice but to supplement their incomes at the expense of the government, and he sincerely believed that subjecting the Islanders to unnecessary or shoddy or fake procedures was only fair in light of his great sacrifice. Who else would come to this forsaken island, after all? Well, nobody, he reminded everyone he worked on or pretended to work on. He adjusted a lamp and moved a mirror around Fonny Boy's back molars.
"Seems to be a lot of commotion out there," Dr. Faux commented, deciding that the tooth he had just filled would require another root canal. "Now Fonny Boy, I strongly remind you to cut back on the soda pops. How many a day are you drinking? Be honest."
Fonny Boy held up five fingers as Dr. Faux looked out the window at all the women and children washing a mysterious painted stripe on the street.
"Entirely too many," he admonished Fonny Boy, who was fourteen, tall and lanky, with windblown sun-bleached hair and a nickname he had earned because of his funny habit of shirttailing and progging-or wading about with a stick or net, not in search of crabs but treasure. "You're clearly more susceptible to cavities than most folks," Dr. Faux pointed out the same thing he did to all of his island patients. "So I think you should at least switch to diet drinks, but preferably water."
Fonny Boy had spent most of his life on and in the water, and for him to drink it would be like a farmer eating dirt.
"Nah, I can't drink it," he said, and his numb lips and tongue felt ten times their normal size. "I'm so swelled up, I'm likete choke!"
"What about bottled water? They have some really good ones these days with fruit flavors and lots of fizz." Dr. Faux continued to stare out the window. "Why does that spotter plane keep circling overhead? And who is that soaking wet trooper with a paint bucket and a bottle of Evian and why is everybody chasing him down the street? Well, while I've got you doped up, I may as well adjust your braces."
Dr. Faux paused to jot down several codes and notes on Fonny Boy's thick dental chart.
"Nah!" Fonny Boy protested. "That gives my mouth the soreness. The braces, they are good enough save for the little rubber bands always flying out for neither good cause."
Fonny Boy had never wanted braces in the first place. Nor had he been happy when the dentist had insisted on pulling four perfectly good teeth earlier in the year. Fonny Boy hated going to the dentist 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 the trash-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 hellbent 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 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.