by Blake Crouch
Portsmouth. Turning away from the photograph, I felt the prickling exhilaration of discovery. But my heart stopped as my gaze fell upon the wall opposite the hearth.
The black soulless eyes of Luther stared back at me, grotesquely caricatured by the amateurish rendering. Though only a teenager in the oil painting, the vacuum in his eyes was unmistakable, a haunting prophecy of what he would become.
I hurried out of the study, crept past the kitchen where Mrs. Kite was still preparing her fish, and moved quietly through the foyer back out into the cold misty morning. Lifting the bike out of the grass, I mounted the wet seat and pedaled away between the live oaks.
35
IT started to rain on the way back to the Harper Castle—a metallic soul-icing drizzle. Riding into the parking lot, I threw down the bicycle and unlocked the trunk of the Audi. I opened the suitcase holding Orson’s journals and as I stood shivering in the steady rain, came at last across the passage that had been chewing at my subconscious for six days, since my first encounter with it at Brawley’s Self-Storage Co. in Lander, Wyoming.
When I’d finished reading over Orson’s journal entry, I tingled with relief and fear.
I could feel it in my bones.
I had found Luther Kite.
Wyoming: July 4, 1993
Independence Day. Luther and I drove down to Rock Springs this evening to drink beer at a bar called The Spigot. Met this kid named Henry, a young man about Luther’s age. Shared a few pitchers with him. Said he was working a ranch up near Pinedale for the summer. He got “tow up” as they say ‘round here. When he went to the bathroom to puke, Luther asked if we could take him home. Isn’t that cute? He thinks of the cabin as home.
Well, it’s 2:00 a.m., and Henry’s in the shed right now, sobering up for what will undoubtedly be the worst, longest, and last night of his short life.
Luther’s getting changed into his work clothes, and I’m sitting out here on the front porch where the moon is full and bright enough for me to journal by its light.
Tonight, on the drive back to the cabin, Luther invited me to come spend a few weeks with him in Ocracoke over my Christmas break. Wants me to meet his folks. Said they have this lodge on a remote island that would be perfect for the administration of painings.
Yeah, he calls them painings. I don’t know.
There he goes, down to the shed. On account of it being Luther’s last night in Wyoming, he asked me if he could have Henry all to himself. By all means, I said.
I’ve probably done too good a job on this one.
Drenched and shivering, I biked over to the Community Store on Silver Lake Harbor and walked to the shack at the end of the dock.
The door was closed but I heard the static of a weather radio spilling through the walls. The sign over the door read TATUM BOAT TOURS.
I knocked and waited.
A quarter mile across the water I saw the ridiculous façade 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.
36
BACK at the Harper Castle I took a hot shower and did not leave the steamy bathroom until the chill had been thoroughly driven from my bones. As I sat on the bedspread, tying the laces of my soggy tennis shoes, it dawned on me that I was utterly unprepared for my trip to Portsmouth.
I knew nothing of the island, had inadequate clothing for this raw November weather, and I was hunting for a madman without a weapon of any sort (My alias, Vincent Carmichael, didn’t possess a gun permit so it had been far too risky to smuggle my Glock, even in pieces, with my checked luggage).
I headed downstairs through the lobby and out the rear exit into the muddy parking lot. According to the visitor’s guide, there was a bait and tackle shop on Highway 12 at the north end of the village that stocked the supplies I would need.
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 wate
r 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 fucked 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.
A lank man in his mid-thirties emerged from the swinging doors of the kitchen. As he approached Vi, he wiped his hands off on his apron. She noted the fish guts smeared on the cloth and hoped he wouldn’t offer his hand.
“Help you with something, Miss?”
“Mr. Myers?”
Scottie stroked his dark mustache and cocked his head.
“Yes, why?”
“My name’s Violet King. I’m a detective from Davidson.” She reached into her purse, flashed her credentials. “May I ask you a few questions?”
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, no sir. You haven’t done anything.” She smiled and touched his arm. “Let’s sit down. Won’t take but a minute.”
They sat down at the corner of the bar and Vi came right out and asked him if he knew Luther Kite. Scottie had to think for a moment, stroking his mustache again and staring at the impressive train of beer bottles, nearly two hundred strong, lined up on the glass shelves where the liquor should have been.
“Oh yeah,” he said finally. “I remember him. He do something?”
“Well, I can’t really go into that, but… Do you know where he is right now?”
“Sure don’t. I hadn’t seen him in, God, ten years maybe. I didn’t even know him that well when I knew him. Know what I mean? He was one of those quiet, loner types. Me and him used to go crabbing with Daddy back in high school. That’s the only reason I knew him. Daddy gave him the job. We weren’t friends or nothing. Fact, I didn’t like him. That whole family’s strange.”
“Mr. Myers, anything you could tell me about him would be a great help.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know him any better than I know you. Who said I knew him so good?”
“His parents.”
“Well, sorry I can’t help you.”
Scottie glanced up at a nearby television. On the screen, an immaculately groomed couple stood in bathrobes kissing in lowlight before a fireplace. He looked back at Vi and grinned.
“So how old are you?” he said.
“Twenty-six.”
“And you’re a detective already? You’re just a young’n. You get hit on a lot, Miss King?”
“Sometimes.”
“I bet you do. Yes indeedy.”
Vi noticed the shift in his eyes. What had been fear at first was now pursuit, lustful interest.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Myers.” Vi stepped down from the barstool.
“I think it’s great what you’ve accomplished and all,” Scottie said. “You’re good at your job. I can tell. Don’t you ever take any shit from a man, okay? We underestimate you. Had lunch yet?”
“No, but—”
“Then why don’t you have lunch on me. My treat.”
“Oh, Mr. Myers, you don’t have to do that.”
“No, I want to. I wish my little sister were here to meet you. Be good for her. She’s married to a real son of a bitch who don’t think women can do nothing. You like oysters?”
“Um, sure.”
“I’m gonna go shuck a few and bring you an appetizer. Take a look at the m
enu and decide on a main course. See that string hanging from the ceiling over there?” He pointed to an alcove across the room. “There’s a ring on the end of it. What you do is you take the ring and stand back and try to catch it on the hook in the wall. Everyone who comes to Howard’s has to play ‘Ring on the Hook.’”
Scottie headed back to the kitchen and disappeared through the swinging doors. Vi glanced at her watch. She had almost two and a half hours until her second interview with the Kites and she’d been so excited this morning after taking the pregnancy test that she’d forgotten to eat.
So she walked over to the alcove and played “Ring on the Hook” while she waited for lunch. She didn’t feel guilty for loafing. The trail was frigid and it looked more and more as if Luther Kite hadn’t set foot on this island in a very long time. Besides, this was Ocracoke, the antithesis of haste, the sort of island where you stay indoors on a rainy autumn afternoon and turn idleness into a virtue.
38
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 18th and 19th 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.