I knocked and waited.
A quarter mile across the water I saw the ridiculous facade of the Harper Castle and the Ocracoke Light beyond in the foggy distance.
The door finally opened and a whitebearded old salt looked me up and down. He smiled and spoke in a coastal Carolina accent laced with Maine, “You’re a sight there.”
“Charlie Tatum?” I asked.
“All my life.”
“Mr. Tatum, I was wondering if you could get me over to Portsmouth this afternoon?”
I glimpsed all the mercury fillings in his molars as he laughed.
“On a beautiful day like this?”
He motioned to the harbor, gray and untrafficked and filling with cold rain.
“Well, I mean, I know the conditions aren’t ideal, but-”
“Day after tomorrow, probably the next time I’m going out. Besides, you don’t want to visit Portsmouth when it’s like this. Supposed to rain a few more hours as this low passes offshore. I was just listening to the forecast when you knocked.”
“Mr. Tatum, I have to get to Portsmouth this afternoon.”
“It’ll still be there on Saturday.”
Beth Lancing might not.
“Yes, but-”
“And look, forget the rain, come three o’clock this afternoon, that wind’s gonna turn around and start blowing in off the sound at thirty knots. Three, four foot seas, we’re talking. Ain’t safe in that boat.” He pointed to the thirty foot Island Hopper moored to the rotting timbers of the dock. “Ya, you don’t want to be out there in that. For damn sure.”
“Mr. Tatum-”
“Chalie.”
“Charlie. What do you charge for a boat ride to Portsmouth?”
“Twenty dollars a person.”
“I’ll give you two hundred to take me this afternoon.”
He stared at me and blinked.
“Can’t do it,” he said but his hesitation convinced me that he had a price.
“Five hundred dollars.”
He grinned.
“Seven fifty.”
He laughed.
“All right,” he said, “but if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer we get you over there soon as possible. Before this wind turns around.”
I wiped the condensation off my watch.
“It’s one o’clock now,” I said. “I’ll be back in two hours.”
As I walked back down the dock I noticed something following me in the water-a brown ramshackle pelican, grounded with a mangled wing. He watched me through small black eyes and I wondered what he thought of his old flying days, if he missed them, or just wrote them off as dreams.