Bound for the Outer Banks Read online

  Also by

  Alicia Lane Dutton

  _____________________

  Going Home to Dixie

  Southern Sirens

  Wedding Belles

  Dixie’s High Point of Beauty, The Musical

  Southern Sirens, The Play

  Wedding Belles, The Musical

  Wedding Themed Comedic Monologues

  Bound

  for the

  Outer Banks

  Copyright © 2014 by Skywater Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2014

  Chapter 1

  Eleanor Augusta Barrantine had become accustomed to riding in the back of police cars. She was convinced that she held the record for being chauffeured by FBI agents, and state Bureau agents for an individual who had never actually committed a crime. Ella was living the life of a fugitive on the run even though the real culprit had practically kidnapped her two years earlier. Dante Vitali had not been the man she thought he was and now she was to be the star witness in his and his coconspirators’ trial. Because of this lack of judgment in character, she had been moved approximately every three to four months in hopes that no members of the Vitali crime family could “snuff” her, as Dante used to say, before the court date.

  Ella thought she was too young to know so much about the Federal RICO Act which was used to prosecute organized crime leaders for racketeering and illegal activities. She was constantly asking herself how such a straight laced, quasi southern girl had found herself in this predicament. She always referred to herself as “quasi” southern because she had been born in Brooklyn but to a North Carolinian mother who insisted she grow up southern somehow, and the fact that her family resided in Brooklyn, New York be damned.

  Ella’s mother, Blythe Beatty Barrantine, “ BeBe” to her family and friends, religiously took little Eleanor to summer in Biloxi, Mississippi every year of her life until she began boarding school in South Carolina as a teenager. BeBe would say, “Honey, it just doesn’t get much more southern than Biloxi, Mississippi. If it was good enough for Jefferson Davis, it’s good enough for us Barrantines.”

  The Barrantines’ small one thousand square foot bungalow was within walking distance of Beauvoir, the home where Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy, resided after what BeBe called the war of Northern aggression against states’ rights. BeBe often referred to Jefferson Davis using phrases like, “Well Jefferson Davis would roll over in his grave!” Ella was convinced she did it because it made her mother’s New York neighbors raise their eyebrows. BeBe clearly had a thing for shock value. When BeBe saw the run down little bungalow while passing through Biloxi on her way to take her new husband to show him a good time on Bourbon Street, she yelled for him to stop the car. Johnathan Barrantine, although married to his new bride only a few months, didn’t blink an eye. He was used to her outbursts of giddy excitement and he was amused by it. BeBe asked Johnathan if she could have the bungalow and before they left Biloxi, an offer was placed and accepted in the local real estate office, and BeBe showed Johnathan her appreciation “six ways to Sunday”, another one of her favorite sayings.

  BeBe named the little beach bungalow “The Southern Siren” which Johnathan thought was most appropriate. BeBe had cast a spell on him much like a siren would a hapless sailor. Ella had always hoped she would find a love like her parents shared but she was quickly losing hope that the dream of finding her soul mate was ever to be realized. Ella thought of her summers in Biloxi with great fondness.

  BeBe and Ella would make the trek at sunrise every morning past Beauvoir and down to the beach to watch the dolphins play and to pick up any interesting shells which had washed up on the beach. BeBe taught Ella how to use a dichotomous key to determine the scientific name of each mollusk. Then they would take the path that wound around Beauvoir back to their little bungalow for breakfast.

  Beauvoir was a raised cottage style plantation home facing the Gulf of Mexico. It was surrounded by large magnolias and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.

  After lecturing her daughter on things like states’ rights and unfair tariffs, BeBe would spin yarns of adventure with Beauvoir as the backdrop. Yarns featuring porcelain skinned maidens in hoop skirted dresses riding side saddle through the low slung branched oaks to send covert messages to protect their sweethearts fighting the Yankees. She would explain how tough and resilient the women of the South had to be during that time, surviving on poke salad and rabbit or squirrel stew.

  Ella’s mother loved the South and spent every summer teaching Ella about “where her folks came from” as BeBe put it. She’d drag Ella to the theater to see shows like Big River, Second Samuel, Steel Magnolias, and A Streetcar Named Desire. BeBe would drive Ella all around Biloxi and point out different types of southern architecture. She’d give Ella graph paper and have her make crude drawings of different homes, incorporating lessons on proportion, symmetry, and perspective.

  Sometimes BeBe would say, “I’ve got a wild hair to go to New Orleans, Ella.” They’d leave Biloxi at the crack of dawn, Ella’s drawing tablet in tow, and they’d spend the day in New Orleans. Sometimes they’d shop at the French Market then eat beignets at Café du Monde. They’d sometimes sit on a curb on Burgundy or Bourbon Street and make sketches of the creole cottages or the old hotels with wrought iron laced balconies.

  There were times when BeBe would assign Ella different wrought iron patterns to replicate in her drawing tablet. “You know honey, during the civil war it was a badge of honor to have your house surrounded by a modest picket fence instead of fancy ironwork because people knew you had your iron melted down to aid the confederacy.”

  She would explain to Ella that she told her these things because it was part of America’s history not just the history of the South. “I want you to know historical facts Ella. Owning another human was wrong and I understand the South had an agricultural based economy, but those owners should have done the work their damn self or at least paid a wage to the workers. Unfortunately this is our history. It happened and there are things to learn about it, interesting things that happened in the lives of everyday folks. Believe it or not one day a mother and a daughter will discuss things that happened in our lifetime that they find compelling. To us it’s just business as usual.”

  Sometimes Blythe Barrantine would share some of these interesting facts regarding the South at parties back in New York. Inevitably a guest would make a remark about all those racist slave owners. “Whomever are you speaking of? Surely not all Southerners. I’m a Southerner and I’m descended from the Irish slaves that you New Yorkers took for five sterling because the African slaves were fifty sterling. You see the Irish were the first slaves in the New World sold to wealthy New Englanders like yourself. They were taken first to the West Indies to work plantations and then you Yankees decided to try some Irish slaves for yourselves. Families were torn apart in Ireland and shipped over. After many of the men were taken as slaves you came back to get the helpless women and children. The New England slave masters started breeding the Irish women to make more slaves. The Irish were often beaten to death as opposed to the African slaves because the African slaves were far too expensive to beat to death. You see I’m a descendant of one of those slaves from the West Indies where someone got the bright idea to breed my
Irish great grandmother with an African male slave. That plantation owner was from right here in New York City. So what was that about those racist Southern slave owners?”

  BeBe was often satisfied when nothing could be heard in the room but the creaks arising from the floor where guests were uncomfortably shifting their weight from foot to foot. BeBe would smile and saunter off refilling her glass of whatever libation she was partaking of that night. Johnathan Barrantine would chuckle to himself about what a little firecracker he’d married. He enjoyed watching some of the known megalomaniacs be schooled by his feisty, southern wife. Ella marveled at how her mother could take a conversation that seemed on the verge of humiliating her heritage and then with little known facts, she would ultimately leave an otherwise boisterous businessman standing in silent disbelief with little left to say, often after a rude comment alluding to her Southern heritage which usually included KKK references, civil rights, slavery, etc. BeBe would turn the conversation around defending the majority of Southerners who didn’t own slaves and citing all types of interesting facts of which the other party seemed to be oblivious. BeBe, tired of the unending comments about her southern accent and about the atrocious southern way of thinking, would politely ask the person to go read a history book and come back when they weren’t so ignorant and maybe they could have a conversation because until then it would just be one sided. “Just me and your ignorant ass,” she would say.

  During Biloxi summers, often BeBe would take Ella to Miss Flossy’s house. Miss Flossy had been their housekeeper in Biloxi since Ella could remember. BeBe would bring a few bottles of good wine and peach Nehi for Ella and Flossy’s children. At Miss Flossy’s they would dine on what Flossy called “soul foods” such as poke salad, squirrel brains, pig’s ears, and ox tails. BeBe would tell Ella, “Don’t ever let me catch you saying, ‘I’d never eat so and so’ little missy because until you’ve been really hungry you don’t know what you’d eat.” BeBe would remind Ella that people were always one step away from starving because nothing in this life was for certain. Now BeBe’s words rang true for Ella because she’d certainly had the rug pulled out from under her two years ago.She now secretly thanked the eccentric BeBe for preparing her for the possibility of things going awry at any given point and learning to roll with the punches.

  Like BeBe, Ella didn’t have that many friends. She had little tolerance for liars, cheaters, pretentious people, and women who were materialistic and shallow among other things. She’d had good friends at boarding school and college but everyone went their separate ways and she had lost contact with most of them. She realized what a good thing this was since she essentially had to disappear for two years and there’d be no one asking questions. She was just now realizing how many similarities she had to Blythe Barrantine. Blythe used to say, “I don’t have a lot of friends but the ones I have are true friends and those are the only ones you want anyway.” Of course there was none more true than Harmony Beauchamp, the girl who was the main reason BeBe ended up disowned from her family and married to “the most wonderful Yankee I’ve ever met,” she’d say.

  Chapter 2

  Ella had thought of Blythe Barrantine a lot in the past two years of her nomadic living. She wondered if BeBe would be proud of her daughter for basically risking life and limb to help convict a man who’d taken her hostage in order to keep himself company on his new life on the run.

  “What a selfish, cowardice Jackass,” would surely be her mother’s take on the situation. Ella constantly wondered if BeBe was aware of Ella’s tenacious character when faced with adversity. Her mother was such a believer in the phrase, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Ella wished BeBe had lived long enough to know that she was truly her mother’s daughter. Of course, if BeBe had been living, Ella would often chuckle to herself that there would be no need for any of this because BeBe would have found Dante Vitali and had his testicles mounted on a nice wood panel over the fireplace. Ella could hear her mother now explaining to some unsuspecting city dweller, “Oh yes, I bagged this one in Tunisia where I found him holding my daughter against her will. He used to be under the impression he had big balls working for some dangerous Italian Mafia outfit and keeping my little girl hostage, but they don’t seem so big anymore mounted up there on that big panel of Brazilian cherry.”

  Ella knew that BeBe loved her more than anything else in life, and since Ella had lost her parents while only seventeen years old she felt cheated. Dante Vitali had begun to fill a void in her heart. With him she felt loved and protected for the first time since high school.

  In a way Ella’s life had paralleled BeBe’s to an extent. BeBe lost her entire family, not due to death, but of her own accord. BeBe did not have a close circle of friends, and aside from a few work acquaintances Ella didn’t either. Eventually Ella’s mother married the love of her life and had a family. Ella had always assumed she would to. She had actually thought Dante Vitali was “the one.” Ella guessed this was where the parallels ended. There was also the lack of a best friend from childhood. She had never had a best friend like most kids.

  Ella had always been the top student in her class, a fact which many of her classmates resented. Also, it seemed to Ella that the moment she walked into a room, every female in it made a conscious decision to hate her or avoid her altogether. BeBe used to reassure Ella that it wasn’t her problem. “Honey that’s those girls’ insecurity. You’re smart, talented, and beautiful. It’s just easier to be jealous or forget about you than to stand beside you and be compared to you. Don’t hate them back just because they’re ugly, stupid, and have no self-confidence.”

  Weirdly enough this made Ella feel a little better about the situation. She knew there was nothing she’d done to deserve these girls’ ire. It was an inner conflict issue they needed to work out themselves.

  “I’m so sorry you don’t have a Harmony in your life. I always pray that you’ll find one.” BeBe would often say.

  Ella figured a lot of folks misunderstood what BeBe was saying and actually thought her mother was praying for harmony in Ella’s life, but she had spoken correctly. The similarities ended in BeBe’s and Ella’s young lives regarding having a Harmony.

  Blythe Barrantine had been raised in the small town of Manteo, North Carolina on Roanoke Island, which was part of the chain of islands referred to as The Outer Banks. It was a coastal community full of history. She was the daughter of Hadley and Jackson Beatty. Hadley was the quintessential, entitled southern wife.

  She was a member of the DAR, Junior League, and she hosted teas and brunches in their palatial late Queen Ann style house. Jackson was a well-respected attorney in the area who was known as an honest, forthright person. Three streets over, just out of the designated Manteo Historic District, was a run-down Texas cottage style home with weathered boards and a rusted tin roof. In this cottage lived Harmony Beauchamp, BeBe Barrantine’s best friend since they were “knee high to a grasshopper,” Ella’s mom would say.

  BeBe and Harmony Beauchamp rode the school bus to and from the small Manteo Primary School together for six years. After school they’d pretend they were explorers and build forts made from downed limbs and pine straw. The two would roller skate down the streets of Manteo, play with their Barbie’s, and do their homework together. On weekends they would take little nets into the estuaries and try to find baby stingrays and seahorses. BeBe and Harmony were always careful to slide their feet along the sand under the water so as not to step on the back of any stingray bedding beneath the sand. They knew the result of being stabbed by a barb from a stingray and an injection of its venom would mean debilitating pain, muscle cramps, swelling, and possibly being banned from playing in the estuary by their parents, which would have been the worst result of all.

  Harmony and BeBe stayed close enduring the “awkward” years through Manteo Middle School. They endured braces, periods, training bras, and all the other trials and tribulations of that transitional period together, before both
blossomed into beautiful young ladies.

  Both girls were tall and lanky with dark hair, striped with glossy copper highlights. They would always tell unsuspecting strangers they were twins and they would introduce themselves with silly made up names like Tilly and Milli, Cassie and Lassie, and Lovey and Dovey, as if BeBe and Harmony weren’t silly enough. Manteo was always full of tourists visiting The Lost Colony where in the 1500’s, a group of English settlers essentially disappeared, and to this day there were no definitive answers regarding what happened to them.

  The girls were always making up tall tales about wild Indians still living in the woods rumored to be feeding on the occasional tourist. They told the unwitting sightseers of Manteo’s own Loch Ness type monster, a goliath sized sea snake they had dubbed “Leviathon.” BeBe and Harmony liked to tell this story most to the inexperienced tourists in the Kayak rental line.

  The girls both tried out for cheerleader their freshman year at Manteo High School. They practiced their double stunts, tumbling, try out cheers, jumps, and dance routines together. At the end of tryouts, after both of their names were called out as having “made it,” the girls squealed and jumped up and down, hugging and congratulating one another.

  They ran to Blythe’s house first announcing to Miss Hadley the good news. Blythe and Harmony repeated the tryout cheer for Miss Hadley ending it with a loud, “Goooooo Redskins!” followed by perfectly executed Herkie jumps. Hadley clapped her hands together and yelled “Bravo!” and hugged both girls.