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What is so important that you’d want to give up your extra wages to learn? I’m sure you could use the money …”
    He glanced over to me and then said, with something like thought, “Well, I’ll like to marry soon, and I aim to provide a good life for my family. Get a steady job, one that’s not so higgledy-piggledy. I figure it’s a little sacrifice for a better day later on.”
    He paused and smoothed his dirty hands on his cutoff trousers. “My pap thinks I’m dumber than a stump for throwing away my money on learning. I guess it does sound stupid to him. He’s been a fisherman his entire life. But I know things are changing ’round these parts, and I’m not the one to get left behind.”
    I saw Mama’s eyes appraise him with a touch more kindness. “I think that’s an admirable decision. Education is vitally important. It’s a new world now, and we all must adapt to it. Well, good luck to you,” she said. She rose from the table to leave us alone, and went to sit on the other end of the porch to read what looked to be an anatomy textbook.
    I didn’t really know how to begin teaching a grown man how to read and write, so I asked cautiously, “I thought I’d start by going over the alphabet. How many letters do you know?”
    “Oh, a few, I reckon …” he answered vaguely, looking toward the ocean.
    “Can you spell your name at least?”
    “Well, not exactly the entire name
Ben-ja-min …
but I do know that my name starts with a
B
!” he stated victoriously. “Though I ain’t at all sure I could call it out from a bunch of scribblings.”
    An exhausted, hopeless feeling began to permeate my very bones. I could not believe that I was stuck teaching the alphabet, something that even my little brother and sister learned at the age of three, to an ignorant, uncouth fisherman for an entire summer at the beach.
    Mr. Whimble ran a hand through his greasy hair. “I guess you got your work cut out for you, don’t you, Miss Sinclair?”
    I exhaled long and hard through my mouth, the way that Winnie sometimes did when everything was raking her nerves. Then I dragged the slate over, picked up the chalk, and began writing out the alphabet. When I finished, I asked him which letters he remembered, as I pointed to them with a finger. To my shock, he recited the entire alphabet, mixing up only
M
and
N
, and
X
and
Z
.
    “Not bad,” I said, surprise leaking into my voice.
    He grinned and said, “Had me pegged for the village idiot, I reckon.”
    “It’s just that you’re just catching on so quickly. How much school did you say you had?”
    He looked up to the porch ceiling. “Oh, ’bout a year, I reckon, give or take a couple months. It was a long while ago, though.”
    I peeked through lowered eyelashes at the cracked skin over his knuckles, at the meaty muscles along the length of his forearms. “So you’re a fisherman. All you do is fish.”
    He smiled. “Yep. That’s all I do. Just about every day and night. Takes a lot of time, fishing.”
    “How do you find the time to be a guide? And then come out here for tutoring? Do you really think you’ll be able to make it over here every afternoon?” I asked skeptically. Maybe he’d get fed up with the process and stop coming altogether.
    “It’s the slower time of year, summer is. We long-net down in the Pamlico Sound every couple of weeks, catch spot and croaker mostly. We always have a little extra time on our hands come July and August. But things’ll start ripping again in September, I reckon. Then it’s back to the ocean for us.”
    It seemed like such a hard life. “I hope you make some money at it at least.”
    “Not too much. As you can see,” he said, fingering his ripped shirt, “I’m lacking in niceties. But this spring Pap and me had a record catch of shad, at least for us.”
    “You fish with your daddy?” I asked.
    “Ever since I was nothing but a babe in arms. We get sick of each other most days, but he’s the only pap I