feature

[Barbara Need]

I just finished reading a Martha Grimes mystery in which she has an
American from Virginia (at least as far as I can tell) use _feature_, as in
_I just can't feature that". The only other place I had ever encountered it
was in the speech of my 90+ year-old cousin in Indiana (north of
Indianapolis). As far as I can tell, it means 'imagine' or 'figure out' or
something like that. Can anyone tell me what the range of use of this form
is? Is it used in Virginia? Or was that application by Grimes like
Christie's use of _I guess_ in all her Americans? What DOES it mean?

Barbara Need
University of Chicago--Linguistics