by Phil Bowie
She was quiet a moment, and then said, “Well, you know, almost all.”
8
DAYBREAK FOUND SAM BASS RUNNING NORTHEAST ON the Ocracoke beach, not another soul in sight, no sign whatsoever of other human habitation on the planet. The pain had left him three miles ago as he’d gotten his second wind and his fluidly pistoning legs were moving easily on their own now, his sneakers hardly touching down, flicking small regular sprays of sand up behind him, his forearms swinging slightly in perfect rhythm in front of his chest, the clean cool air flooding his lungs and softly brushing the light perspiration from his forehead. He could picture his endorphins and all his other little blue-jeaned peptides in there tumbling out of the bunkhouse raring to have a real old-fashioned rodeo. Who needed a sixty-dollar set of magnets?
The stark nightmare had visited him again last night, filling him with the same sickening hollow hopeless feeling of being rooted to the spot, unable to do anything, and he had jolted awake sweating in the dark room with Val stirring but not awakening beside him.
With the light of day it had all receded into what now seemed a distant past.
The stars had faded and the eastern horizon was afire, long motionless ropes of cloud flaming up crimson and scattering sparks onto the sea. The clear new sky overhead might have been from a perfect day a thousand years ago. The sea birds soared and cried, greeting the day around him. He ran on for another two miles beside the glossy swells that each curled and broke with that ancient sustained sound that, if you closed your eyes, could be the exhalation of some magnificent coruscating serpent risen up from foraging the deeps. Then he turned back, never slowing until forty-five minutes later when he drew abreast of the line of early anglers parked on the sand near the cut through the dunes onto the access road near the airstrip. He walked to the plane feeling loose and refreshed.
He did a leisurely walk-around, singing Waylon Jennings’ “Good Hearted Woman” and thinking of Valerie.
He climbed in and went through start-up, the airplane trembling alive under his hands. He taxied out onto the strip, lined up, went through the run-up checks, and pushed the throttle smoothly all the way to the stop. The Cessna faithfully gathered up her skirts, the prop invisible now, and sprinted nimbly down the faded dashed line, faster and faster until Sam felt the familiar little shot of euphoria as she broke free and left the world of groundlings behind. The dunes fell away below and they climbed into the morning, the cool air rushing in through the wing root vents, the four-cylinder Lycoming bellowing strongly and the prop slapping the breeze smartly. The Cessna’s previous owner had fitted her with a 180-horsepower engine, thirty horses more than she’d been born with, giving increased speed and useful load capacity, and Sam had often had cause to bless that fact when he was hauling three well-fed adults or getting out of a short strip somewhere.
The sea was hammered gold off to his left and the wide Ocracoke Inlet was spread out ahead. Beyond lay the narrow twelve-mile-long stretch of uninhabited Portsmouth Island. He flew low over the ghost town of Portsmouth at its northern tip, a jumble of old overgrown buildings—crumbling cottages, the tiny post office, a boarded-up store, the shuttered abandoned Coast Guard station off by itself—and the one pristine structure left, nestled up near a cluster of yaupons, the small white chapel that a few volunteers from Ocracoke kept painted and in good repair, also tending the little fenced cemetery in a shady grove out behind it.
Earlier that year Sam had visited there with Ralph, Adele, Valerie, and Joshua, in a borrowed eighteen-foot flat-bottomed outboard skiff, picking their way through the maze of shoals for what seemed ten miles—although the dead town was actually only five miles as the pelican flies from Ocracoke village—backtracking twice, nudging aground three times, and finally tying off to the crazily tilted Coast Guard station dock, a loose shutter up on the old gray structure banging a slow unsettling cadence in the hot light breeze.
They had explored the silent town for only fifteen minutes before the big seasonal deer flies had found them. Capable of inflicting a bite like a sudden match burn, the persistent maddening flies had driven them from the island in haste, Sam trying to keep them brushed away from Joshua until they could get the boat clear.
Portsmouth had once long ago been home to inlet and sound-side pilot skippers, seamen, fishermen, and their families, but the spreading shoals had gradually choked the island off and now it was left to its birds, its tough scrub trees, its dunes cloaked with shivering sea oats, and to its ghosts.
Bo and Spud were in the skimmer, anchored where Bo had said they would be, two miles southwest of the inlet, three hundred feet from the back side of Portsmouth Island. There were stacked boxes in the skimmer and some big coolers. There were other small boats scattered out but none near them. Sam flew over them at six hundred feet, thumbed the yoke switch, and said, “I have the traffic in sight.”
A bright orange ellipse appeared atop Bo’s shaggy head and Spud started hauling in the anchor line. It was hard to tell for sure from this altitude, but Sam could have sworn Bo was suffering from a pirate-class hangover. He flew on and let down to three hundred feet, searching along the ragged back side of the island, but the bottom was colored in many hues, shadowy and grassy here, rippled lighter sand there, sky glare all over the surface, and it was difficult to see much, though he thought that twice he caught glimmerings in among the marsh grasses.
This wasn’t going to work. So he let down to a hundred feet, and the details below began to sort themselves out, although they of course appeared to be going by much faster. He slowed and put down ten degrees of flaps. Right there, by a small grassy hummock. A tight school of good-sized sleek gray fish. Maybe ten or fifteen. Had to be them. He climbed up in a long arc, taking a quick fix on the hummock, noting that it was roughly aligned with a particular notch on the island shoreline. He flew back over the skimmer at five hundred feet, thumbed the switch, and said, “Downwind for two zero.”
The skimmer sprouted a white feather at the stern and bounded away on the heading, Bo’s bright orange hat prominent. Sam watched the boat’s progress but then checked around for any other airplanes and waited until it was almost too late, the boat no more than seventy-five feet from the school, so he said quickly, “Short final for two zero.” Bo got the message and immediately chopped his throttle, Spud kneeling in the bows pointing toward the hummock. The boat sped up smoothly again, curving out in a neat fast circle, net tumbling off the stern over an upright H-shaped support, quickly surrounding the whole hummock. Bo was good, give him that.
Sam flew off down the Banks for a few minutes, then came back. The skimmer was waiting by the hummock, the net piled neatly back inside, and Spud was icing down what looked like a fair number of fish in boxes. When Sam went over, Bo took off his hat and swept it wide as he bowed deeply like a Musketeer.
It was working like a charm. Sam found another two small schools over the next hour and a half, then while they were boating the most recent load he flew down to Michael J. Smith Field in Beaufort—named for the commander who lost his life aboard the Challenger in 1986 and who had first learned to fly here—to get a Coke and top off the fuel.
By early afternoon the skimmer was heavily filled and Bo took off his hat. The boat looked overloaded and too low in the water, but when Bo poured the coals to her, she labored up onto a sluggish plane and headed west across the sound for the fish house in Hobucken. Sam flew over a last time, climbing, and both Bo and Spud looked up and pumped their right fists enthusiastically in the air. Sam smiled to himself and banked away for Ocracoke.
That night Sam went to The Privateer just before closing and sat at the bar. Tony drew a beer for him and gave him a greasy envelope. Sam took the cash out and counted it, leaving two twenties on the bar top. Tony nodded and said, “Bo says how about five miles up the back side of Ocracoke from the ferry docks at eight tomorrow.”
It went well for three days, Bo and Spud hauling large loads off to Hobucken each day. On the morning of th
e fourth day it was overcast but the ceiling was above twelve hundred feet and the wind was light. Sam met the skimmer in the gray light farther down the islands where the sound narrowed to just four or five miles across between the Core Banks and the waterfront hamlet of Sealevel on the mainland. Sam had only been flying for half an hour when he saw Bo wave his hat in agitation and then stuff it away out of sight.
Sam scanned the few other small boats in the area. There were two more skimmers, a runabout with two men in it using rods, and what looked like a very old couple in an ancient outboard skiff working crab pots, but there was no boat that he thought might be law. Then he looked around in the sky and there it was, another light plane at his altitude, a Cessna about two miles back and closing. It looked to be another Skyhawk. Good. It likely had the smaller engine.
Sam kept at five hundred feet, making a shallow left turn to see if the other plane followed. It did, as though it were on a tether, so he straightened out, heading west, retracting the ten degrees of flaps he had out and fire-walling the throttle. He picked up even more airspeed as he put her into a shallow descent, flying inland over the desolate salt marshes of Carteret County, bearing left because there was a Marine Corps bombing range not far off to his right now and he didn’t know if it was currently hot, keeping the transponder off and leveling out at two hundred feet, looking back.
The trailing Cessna was losing the race, falling farther and farther behind into a gathering haze until finally it was out of sight. Sam turned northeast along the mouth of the Pamlico river, skirting the bombing range, then let all the way down to fifty feet, below Cherry Point’s radar, and headed east across the sound for Ocracoke, pulling the power back to normal cruise.
After he landed he went to the Burger Box and treated himself to a Monster Special with a thick slice of Vidalia onion and a goodly slathering of their excellent chili on it, along with a large root beer float. He topped off the plane with auto gas using the cans in the back of the Jeep, did some more on the dry wash job, then stopped in to talk with Brad Meekins for a while. Brad planned to go over on the Cedar Island ferry the next day for materials, so Sam said he would be available for work the day after that, intending to call Bo that night and strongly suggest they cool it for a few days anyway until the coast seemed clear again. He stopped at The Privateer to tell Tony his services would not be needed until further notice, and to have two leisurely drafts while he watched the national news on Fox, then he went shopping for a few things he needed at the General Store. After all, he had a few dollars in his jeans, although they smelled a little fishy, and his kitty was no longer so undernourished.
When he got back to his cottage in late afternoon there was a spotless Dare County Sheriff’s car parked in his yard.
He parked the Jeep alongside and got out. Deputy Thomas Mason, a very black man in his fifties with a dusting of close-cropped white at his temples showing under his squared-away billed cap, got out of the patrol car and adjusted his tie minutely. “Somebody ought to cite you for the muffler on that thing,” he said, not smiling. “But that’s not why I’m here. Hello, Sam.”
The crisply-uniformed Mason gave the impression of being starched top to bottom. Not a large man, he nevertheless projected a certain aura that warned those nearby not to try anything dumb. Sam had done a favor for him a few months back. He’d been in Manteo dropping off a charter party when the distraught Mason had asked him which way he was headed. Sam had asked where do you want to go, and Mason had explained that his brother had been in a wreck in Wilmington and was in poor shape at the hospital, so Sam had flown him down there, refusing any fee, and had grabbed a courtesy car at the FBO to drive them to the hospital at some speed. They had been too late, but Mason had been grateful to at least get there to offer immediate comfort to his sister-in-law and three nephews.
“Good to see you, Thomas.”
Mason leaned back slightly against the fender of his car and crossed his well-toned arms. “The reason I’m here, Sam, is because I’ve got a certain lady friend with Fisheries. Do you know a man named Bo Brinson? He’s a real charmer who might have been an award-winning con man, or one ace of a used car salesmen, if he wasn’t a fisherman.”
“Well, you know, Thomas, I meet a lot of people—”
Mason held up a palm and said, “Never mind. Wrong approach. I’m sorry. Let’s do it this way. My friend in Fisheries called me this morning. She’s been calling around asking questions of several people on our side of the legal fence in the coastal counties. She told me that they—the good people at Fisheries—think that an aircraft, coincidentally marked a lot like yours and with a last tail letter that could possibly be an S for Sierra, may well have been spotting sea mullet recently, specifically for this one Mr. Brinson. It seems he’s been uncommonly fortunate to have hauled in big loads of mullet for several days now, earning for himself and his partner respectable sums.”
“Thomas, I—”
“No, now, let me finish my little story here. It’s just getting interesting. It seems that spotting for the big mullet is very much against the law. Fisheries would dearly love to hook somebody perpetrating this particular crime in order to gaff him, string him up, and take an eight-by-ten of him to serve as a clear example that will cause all potential sea mullet rustlers out there to perhaps get religion. With any kind of proof, they can cause an offending aircraft to be grounded and levy a fine of up to five thousand dollars against its hapless pilot.”
“That much.”
“Yessir. That much. The thing is right now they have no real proof of any such nefarious activity, other than Mr. Brinson’s rather sudden good fortune and the fact that when a Fisheries patrol plane happened upon a suspicious aircraft this morning the aforesaid aircraft hightailed it for the hills, so to speak, like a turpentined tabby cat. That’s the end of my story, and I believe I told it well.”
“Yes, you certainly did.”
“I’m gratified you agree. Now, of course, if anybody should ask, the reason I put off serving several warrants today and drove all the way down here from Nags Head, waiting for fifteen minutes to catch the forty-minute Hatteras ferry ride and waiting for another thirty-two minutes right here with only that shabby cottage to look at—with the result that even if I use the lights and siren on the way back I will probably still incur the wrath of my wife when I am late for supper yet again—was to ask on behalf of my lady friend that if you should happen to stumble over any information about mullet spotting in the Ocracoke environs would you be so kind as to let the good people at Fisheries know?”
“Sure thing, Thomas. I’ll be on the lookout. Always glad to help the forces of justice.”
“Yes. Well, it’s been good talking to you.” Mason tipped the bill of his khaki cap and with a creaking of highly polished leather got back into his car. He started up, then rolled down the window. “One other thing,” he said.
“Yes, Thomas?”
Mason said, “That was a damned stupid stunt you pulled about the Stilleys.”
“I know.”
Mason extended his hand out the window and Sam shook it.
“I’ll see you, Thomas, and thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. And I mean that.”
As the patrol car pulled away briskly the phone started ringing in the cottage.
“I’m callin’ for Beaufort,” the female caller said.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, yor his new pilot ain’t you? Sam Bass? Beaufort Brinson from over to Pantego?”
“I’m his new pilot?”
“What I just done said. I didn’t figure you could stay a pilot if you got hard of hearin’. Or maybe you just plumb forgot you was his pilot.”
In North Carolina the town of Beaufort was pronounced Bo-fort, while a city of the same spelling in South Carolina was called Bew-fort. Sam had only heard of something like the latter version ever being used for a man’s first name, that from an older movie about a real-life southern sheriff by the last name of P
usser who, as he recalled, did not walk softly and who did carry a very big stick.
“You must be Mrs. Brinson, Bo’s mother?”
“Lucinda Brinson. That’s me. Think you can remember that?”
“Bo has a message for me?”
“Only reason I’d be callin’ you, ain’t it? ‘Less you notion I want a date at my age. Mr. Sam Bass, maybe you want to go get a checkup, see if they think you’re slippin’, too. Beaufort says—lessee, I got it wrote down here some-wheres—Beaufort says you ought to lay low for a few days. He’ll get over there in a day or so to pay Tony what’s owed for this mornin’. That’s it.”
“Mrs. Brinson, would you please tell Beaufort something for me?”
“If it ain’t too much. This’s long distance and it’s my seventy-five cents, though I can surely remember when it used to be a quarter.”
“Just tell him he needs to hang up his orange hat. He’ll know what I mean.”
“He done said you might talk in some kinda code. That’s it, then?”
“Well, ma’am, you could tell him I might be in touch one of these days about going into the used car business.”
“Don’t hardly think so, mister. Beaufort’s daddy done that sorta thing on the side. It’s what got him locked up in the end.” And she hung up.
Sam could hear it now. A story would soon be circulating among all of the six or seven other double-wides that constituted most of Pantego that there was this dim-witted pilot over to Ocracoke, who was also likely a car thief, trying to get their good ol’ Beaufort into trouble.
9
ON TUESDAY EVENING, THE LAST DAY OF THE ILL-FATED sea mullet caper, Valerie said, “I’ve got an unexpected day off tomorrow and I don’t think playing hooky for one day will hurt Josh, so what about you?”
“I don’t have much that really needs doing,” Sam said. “What do you have in mind?”
“Josh has never seen Kitty Hawk and I haven’t either. Could we fly up there and maybe bring along a picnic? This warm weather isn’t likely to last much longer and we might as well enjoy it while it’s here.”
