Isle of Dogs

His comment and his bright, perfect, natural teeth cut Gi

"I don't suppose you read Trooper Truth," Andy said to her as he resumed painting the stripe. "But he has some interesting things to say about facing the truth and, in fact, demanding truth. But the only way you get truth, ma'am, is to stare what you fear straight in the eye, whether it's a mummy or a shifty, harmful dentist."

Gi

"Now, don't you be throwing off about the stripe like you ain't paintin' it right afore my very eyes," she declared, changing the subject.

"I'm not," Andy said. "I have to paint this speed trap- on the orders of the governor, ma'am."

Gi

"Well, theys many a road on the main and you don't need to be a painting up ours. Doncha stop that? Afore you're going to catch it, young feller!"

Andy wasn't sure what the island woman had just said to him, but he detected a threat.

"Just doing my job," he said, dipping the brush in the paint can.

"What happen you drive over it?" Gi

"Nothing yet," Andy explained in an ominous tone, in hopes he might encourage the woman to complain and provide him with a few good quotes for the next Trooper Truth essay. "I've got to paint another one exactly a quarter of a mile from this one. Then when our helicopters patrol the island, the pilots can time how long it takes for a vehicle to get from stripe to stripe. VASCAR will tell us exactly how fast you're going."

"Heee! Jiminy Criminy! They going to bring NASCAR here to Tangier?" Gi

"VASCAR," Andy repeated, and he was thrilled that Virginians might confuse VASCAR with NASCAR. "It refers to a computer that knows if you're speeding."

"Then what?" Gi

"Then a trooper on the ground goes after the speeder and gives him a citation."

"What he go

"A ticket," Andy went on in a stern voice. "You know what a ticket is?" His paintbrush found the edge of the pavement, mere inches from Gi

He knew very well that Tangier Island did not have a bank, and a check, in this old woman's mind, was what the Coast Guard was always doing or what the tourists got when they ate the crab cakes and corn pudding at Hilda Crockett's Chesapeake House.

"How much you make us pay when we get warranted, if we do?" Gi

Andy stood up and stretched his aching back as he struggled to decipher what the woman had just said to him. Then he recalled his visit to The What Not Shop right before he had started painting the stripe and overhearing two Tangier women whispering about him and saying something about someone being warranted and that they couldn't fathom who had done what, but it was probably that Shores boy who live cross from the school. He's got more mouth than a sheep and here his daddy's poor as Job's turkey. That's right, Hattie. Durn if his daddy don't foller the water even when it's the dog days while that Mr. Nutters a his can't be learned nothing. Spends all his time progging, he does. Well, I swa

So warranted, Andy figured, must mean getting arrested, and according to Hattie and Lula, there was some island kid named Fo

"Fines for speeding depend on how many miles over the limit you were going," Andy informed the unhappy island woman.

He didn't let on for a moment that he thought it was appalling to hand out citations based on ground speed checked from the air. Planes and helicopters had neither radar guns nor good views of license tags, and he could just imagine a pilot calculating the speed of a northbound white compact car, for example, and radioing a trooper in his marked car to go after the offender. The trooper would roar out from behind shrubbery in the median strip and flash and wail after the most likely northbound white compact car, selecting the vehicle from a scattered pack of white compact cars whizzing along the interstate. What a waste of Jet-A fuel, taxpayers' money, and time.

"It's three dollars for every mile over, plus thirty dollars for court costs," Andy summarized. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Why you want to know for?" Gi

"Do you ever use the Internet?"

She stared mutely at him.

"No, it's not something you catch fish with," Andy said, slightly frustrated and disappointed. "I don't guess you have PCs or modems out here." He glanced around at small clapboard houses that lined the deteriorating road and eyed several golf carts bumping along in the distance. "Never mind about the Internet," he added. "But I would like to know your name, and if you give it to me I can e-mail it to Trooper Truth so he can quote you and let the world know what you think of the governor's new speed trap initiative."

Gi

"It might bring more tourists to your crab tanks." He pointed at them. "Those quarters add up, don't they?"

"It's well and all if I get me a quarter now and again," Gi

"You never know. Nothing like publicity. Maybe things will pick up a bit." Andy tried to coax her into giving him her name. "People read about your big jimmy and they'll line up to take a look."

Gi