Three minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of Bubba’s Bait and Tackle. A hundred yards further up the highway, the village abruptly ended, and as I stared through the rainbeaded glass I could see where 12 continued on and on for the full thirteen remaining miles of Ocracoke, accompanied only by the sound, the dunes, and the sea.
The store was a tumult of overstimulation—three sea kayaks, a blue marlin, and a red canoe hung from the ceiling. Along the back wall stood a phalanx of fishing rods. Reels shined under glass at the front counter. I noticed an aisle devoted solely to tackle boxes, another to waders.
A T-shirt had been tacked to the wall above the register:
FISHED ALL DAY AT OCRACOKE INLET AND ALL I CAUGHT WAS A BUZZ
A rotund young man emerged from behind the counter and asked if he could help me with anything. Dressed in camouflage, his bottom lip swollen with tobacco, I recognized the rural distrust in his eyes and smelled the wintergreen Skoal.
“Are you Bubba?” I asked.
“I’m Bubba’s boy. My name’s Brian.”
I told Brian I was going to Portsmouth this afternoon, that I might be spending the night, and that I’d be willing to purchase anything that would keep me from freezing my ass off in this bitter rain.
“You going to Portsmouth in a nor’easter?” he said. “Who’d you find to take you?”
“Just show me some camping gear, okay?”
Forty minutes later I stood at the counter, Brian behind the register, ringing up an ungodly assortment of camping equipment. He’d talked me into Moonstone raingear, a three season, two-man tent by Sierra Design, a Marmot 30ºF sleeping bag, Nalgene water bottles, a Whisper-Lite stove, MSR fuel bottles, a Pur water filter, Patagonia fleece pants and jacket, Asolo boots, and the kicker, a 5500 cubic inch internal frame backpack by Osprey, just to catalogue the substantial purchases.
“Sell any maps of Portsmouth?” I asked as he swiped my credit card and handed it back to me. He reached under the counter, set one on the glass.
“Oh, I’m sorry, that f**ked up the total, didn’t it?”
Brian chuckled. “Mister, you just spent,” he glanced at the receipt as it printed out, “a little under fifteen hundred dollars. The map’s on me.”
He tore off the credit card receipt and handed it to me.
I signed it, said, “I was hoping to eat a hot meal before I head out. Can you recommend something?”
“Right across the street. Place called Howard’s. If you don’t eat there at least twice when you come to Ocracoke, you’ve wasted your trip.”
“I’ll check it out.” I handed back the receipt and looked down at the heap of gear on the floor. “Brian,” I said, as he opened a can of Skoal and chose an earthy pinch, “you’re telling me all this equipment is going to fit into that backpack?”
He shook the pinch of tobacco in his hand, inserted it into the pocket between his lower teeth and gums, and licked his tongue across his bottom lip.
“Oh sure,” he said.
“Care to show me how?”
37
THOUGH Violet longed to tell him in person she didn’t know if she could hold out that long—through interviews with Scottie Myers and the Kites and reporting to Sgt. Mullins and the subsequent nine hour return trip to Davidson. So as she sat in the Cherokee in the parking lot of Howard’s Pub, she took out her cell and dialed Max’s mobile.
He won’t answer, she thought as the phone rang. It was Thursday afternoon, 2:15, which meant that 6th period had just begun—11th grade honors English, his favorite class. Max was finishing up a unit on Poe (he always taught Poe in the vicinity of Halloween). She’d seen him reviewing his heavily-underlined text of “The Black Cat” the morning she left for Ocracoke.
It came as no surprise that Max didn’t answer. He’d probably turned off his phone during class but she wasn’t so desperate yet as to leave voicemail. So instead she dropped the phone in the passenger seat, and sitting behind the wheel, rain pattering on the roof, rehearsed various ways of telling him.
Max, I’m pregnant… Max, we’re pregnant… You’re going to be a daddy… Max, I’m going to be a mommy… You know how before on the pregnancy tests, only one line appeared? Well, there were two today, baby.
Glowing, joy flushing her cheeks, she thought, How strange to be on this dreary island, under these awful circumstances, when I come upon the happiest moment of my life.
Even the rain turned beautiful. Even a nearby dumpster. And especially that bathroom sink in her suite at the Harper Castle, upon which she’d set the pregnancy test and watched it declare her a mother.
She praised God and basked in euphoric eddies that kept coming and coming, eroding the lies she believed about herself—you wouldn’t be a good mother, you’re just a child, you are unworthy, undeserving. She saw her insecurities in plain unflinching light, glimpsed their cowardice, their impotence, their hiding places. She waxed powerful, immune, and it occurred to her, Life could be so amazing if I always felt this way, if I weren’t saddled by my dread of failure.
Opening the door and stepping out into the rain, she encountered the sweetest image of all—the enormous calloused hands of her daddy, cupping his squirming grandchild.
Vi walked into Howard’s Pub into the smell of frying fish and stale smoke. The teenage hostess came out from behind the bar where she’d been watching a soap opera on one of the half dozen televisions.
“Hello,” she said, taking a menu from the podium. “One for lunch?”
“Actually, I’m here to see Scottie Myers. I understand he’s working today?”
“He’s in the kitchen. I’ll get him for you.”
As the hostess left to find Scottie, Vi strolled into the main dining room to absorb this unassuming pub that had been recommended to her five times since her arrival in Ocracoke. In one corner she spotted a foosball table. In another, a dartboard. Pennants for every major collegiate and professional sports program hung from the wood beams of the ceiling.
A screened porch adjoined the dining room where a long-haired man, the pub’s sole customer, occupied a table under one of the glowing space heaters.
Howard’s exuded the energy of an old baseball mitt, this local hub that never closed, not even for Christmas or hurricanes. Even on a cold and rainy afternoon like this when the pub was dead, she could hear the laughter and the salty yarns told over shellfish and pitchers of beer. They had accumulated in the smoke-darkened walls, on the smooth floorboards, in the dinged furniture. Howard’s had a warm history. You could feel it. People wanted to be here. It was a loved place.