THE waitress promised me that the oysters I’d ordered had been harvested from the Pamlico Sound early this morning. I asked for a double Jack Daniel’s, neat, and was informed that Hyde County was “semi-dry,” in other words, no liquor-by-the-drink. So I settled for a glass of sweet tea and leaned back in my chair, relishing the radiant drafts from the space heater and this last interlude of solace.
I’d chosen a table on the screened porch of Howard’s Pub so I could dine alone and listen to the rain falling on the bamboo that cloistered the building. Having already changed into my long underwear and fleece pants, I was ready to depart for Portsmouth as soon as I finished my meal.
I took out the map, unfolded it across the table, and skimmed the brief history of Portsmouth. Much to my surprise I learned that it had once been inhabited. During much of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries it was the main port of entry to the Carolinas and correspondingly the largest settlement on the Outer Banks. In 1846 a hurricane opened up Hatteras and Oregon Inlets to the north. Deeper and safer than Ocracoke Inlet, they became the favored shipping lanes. With its maritime industry doomed, Portsmouth foundered for the next hundred years. The two remaining residents left the island in 1971 and it had existed ever since in a state of desertion, a ghost village, frequented only by tourists and the National Park Service.
From what I could discern from the map, the island consisted of beaches, extensive tidal flats, and shrub thickets throughout the interior. There were several primitive trails through the wooded regions and twenty structures still stood on the north end of the island, remnants of the old village. Hardly a substantial landmass, it barely warranted mapping-just a sliver of dirt separating the sound from the sea. If Luther were there, I’d find him.
The door to the main dining room creaked open and a young woman bundled up in a Barbour coat stepped onto the screened porch. She took a seat at a table across the room, beneath the other space heater.
When our eyes met, I smiled and nodded.
She smiled back.
A southerner, I thought. Who else smiles at strangers?
A waitress brought her a plate of oysters Rockefeller for an appetizer and the little blond read the back of the menu while she ate. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. I wondered if she lived on the island, and if not, what she was doing on Ocracoke alone.
I turned my focus back to the map and studied the topography of Portsmouth until the waitress brought my plate of fried oysters with sides of coleslaw and hushpuppies. As she walked back into the dining room, I glanced across the porch at the adorable blond.
She gazed back at me with a look of captivation.
Her eyes averted to her menu, mine to my map.
I hadn’t been hit on in years and it felt amazing, particularly coming from this gorgeous young woman.
I picked up an oyster and took a bite. Excellent-briny and crisp.
A chair squeaked.
I looked up, watched the blond rise from her table and come toward me, her heels knocking hollowly on the floorboards.
She stopped at my table and smiled down at me, a lovely nervous simper.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “Could I borrow your horseradish sauce?”
Her accent was unmistakable. She hailed from my old stomping ground, the piedmont of North Carolina.
“Sure. I’m not using it.”
As she lifted the bottle I noticed her chest billowing beneath her coat.
“I see you got the oysters, too,” she said, then took a sudden breath.
“Wonderful, aren’t they?”
She brushed her short yellow hair behind her ears, her eyes moving across the map of Portsmouth, then back to me again.
“Are you from Ocracoke?” she asked.
“Oh, no. Just visiting.”
“Me, too,” she said, still strangely breathless. “Me, too. Well, um, thank you for the ketchup, I mean horseradish.”
As she walked back over to her table, I saw that a full bottle of horseradish sauce already stood uncapped beside her plate.
Thinking back to the way I’d first caught her looking at me, I finally put it all together.
That wasn’t captivation.
That was recognition.