When I reached the pavement of Kill Devil Road, I followed it east toward the ocean, past slumbering beach houses nestled among live oaks and yaupon.
I stopped at the intersection of Old Beach Road and Highway 12.
My insides quivered with nausea.
Night thawing in the eastern sky.
I knew the Kites were leaving Ocracoke by ferry.
That left me two choices.
They could either take the one departing from Silver Lake Harbor, or the ferry that embarked from the north end of the island. The ferries that left Silver Lake for Swan Quarter and Cedar Island ran less frequently and required reservations to insure passage. The ferry from Ocracoke to Hatteras was free and ran on the hour, beginning at 5:00 a.m.
The dashboard clock showed 4:49.
I scoped Highway 12, vacant at this hour, lights from the Pony Island Motel twinkling nearby.
Hatteras.
I punched the gas, accelerating through the northern outskirts of Ocracoke Village, past Jason’s Restaurant, the post office, Café Atlantic, and Howard’s Pub.
It was twelve lonely miles to the north end of Ocracoke and the ferry to Hatteras. I had eleven minutes to get there, in a shitty car, on the verge of losing consciousness.
The speedometer passed eighty, the engine screaming as the Ocracoke Light waned in the rearview mirror.
Gray dawnsky, dunes, and marsh blurring by.
The wild dog sea rabid and foaming.
Sleet ticking dryly on the windshield.
Pavement streamed under the car, the road reaching north into the dullblue nothingness of daybreak.
4:56.
I pushed the engine past eighty-five, the stench of hot metal seeping through the floorboards.
4:57.
For the first time I noticed my clothes—the fleece pants melted, my undershirt pocked with quarter-size, black-rimmed holes where the electricity had eaten the polyester.
4:58.
The world dimmed.
My head went light.
I slumped into the steering wheel, swerved into the other lane, tires dipping over the shoulder.
My vision sharpened.
I swung back into the road.
It ended.
Taillights ahead.
I stomped the brake, tires screeching.
In the immediate distance five cars waited in the boarding lane at one of the docks. As I steered the Impala to the back of the line, a crewman started waving vehicles onto a ferry vessel called the Kinnakeet.
First to board was a dilapidated old pickup truck, its puttering engine expelling gouts of smoke into the stonegray dawn.
67
THE Kinnakeet is a long barge, broad enough for four cars to park abreast. From the centerdeck rises a narrow three-story galley—restrooms on the first level, an observation lounge on the second, and crowned by a small pilothouse. North Carolina and United States flags hang regal from the mast.
The six vehicles on the 5:00 a.m. ferry were directed into two singlefile lines—three cars starboard, three portside.
I was parked in the back of my line, the Kites in the front of theirs, separated by the galley so that we couldn’t see each other.
As I turned back the ignition, the ferry’s engines went to work and the Kinnakeet wended slowly between the pylon bundles and away from the Ocracoke docks.
We chugged out into open water. The wind picked up, gusting now, shaking the car, sleet bouncing off the concrete deck, seagulls swarming the vacant stern, crying for a breakfast they would not receive at this hour.
The tip of Ocracoke dwindled into a smudge on the horizon, and suddenly there was nothing but mile upon mile of mercurycolored swells, the eastern sky flushing now with a tincture of purple.
Several passengers abandoned their cars and ascended the steps to the lounge—departing vacationers, workers making the long watery commute from Ocracoke to Hatteras. The gentleman in the Chevy Blazer directly in front of me crawled into the back seat and laid down.
I sat listening to the sleet.
My burns killing me.
There was no movement on my side of the deck.
I opened the door, stepped out into the cold, motes of ice needling my face.
I walked back to the sternside of the galley, crouched by the steps that rose to the lounge and pilothouse. Portside, three cars were parked along the railing—a Honda, a Cadillac, and an old Dodge pickup truck the color of a zinc penny save for its rusting blue doors.
The Kites had left the truck.
I peered around the steps.
They stood at the bow, their backs to me, gazing north across Hatteras Inlet. Rufus, his white hair twisting like albino snakes in the wind, was pointing west at an inconsequential landcrumb, dry and visible only for moments at the nadir of lowtide.
The Kites and I were the sole passengers on deck.
I made my furtive way to the navy Honda at the rear of the Kites’ three-car line and ducked under the backend. Through the side mirror I glimpsed the reflection of its driver, sleeping, his head resting against the window. I crawled between the Honda and the railing amid a brief spate of sleet, finally reaching the next car in line, a Cadillac, its passengers having retired to the lounge.
I leaned against the back bumper to regain my breath. Glancing under the sedan, I saw the three pairs of legs still standing by the canvas-lattice gate at the bow.
I crept on.
My scorched clothing did little to shield me from the piercing cold, and I was shivering violently by the time I arrived at the back of the Kites’ truck.
The tailgate was closed, the truckbed covered by a bright blue tarp.
The seagulls had discovered the Kites and besieged the bow of the ferry, their lamentations cut and diminished by the gale. I crawled to the driver side door, peered through the glass. The cab was empty. Violet had to be in the truckbed.
I noticed a pistol and a pumpaction shotgun in the floorboard, tried the door but it was locked.
I sensed movement, looked up.
Rufus walked quickly toward me, just three steps from the passenger door.
I hit the ground, rolled under the truck as he pulled it open.
Staring at the corroded innards of its underbelly, warm motor oil dripping on my throat, I heard Rufus shout, “You want the whole loaf, Beautiful?”
Then the door slammed and I watched his legs propel him back to the bow, a bag of squashed bread dangling at his side.
Get Violet to the Impala before you do anything.
As the gulls regressed into a ravenous frenzy I wriggled out from under the truck. Their squawks and the engines and the moan of the wind masked the grating squeak as I lifted the handle and lowered the tailgate.
Still fettered with duct tape, Violet lay unconscious on the rusty truckbed in a smattering of damp pineneedles and splinters of bark—remnants from a load of firewood.
While the Kites fed the seagulls—three breadbearing hands thrust into the sky—I climbed into the truckbed, took Violet by the ankles, and pulled her onto the tailgate. Breathless, on the verge of blacking out, I lifted her from the bed and set her gently on the concrete deck beside the railing. She stirred but did not wake. I closed the tailgate and proceeded to drag Violet by the shoulders toward the end of the line.