Hatteras Girl
Books by Alice J. Wisler
Rain Song
How Sweet It Is
Hatteras Girl
Hatteras Girl
Copyright © 2010
Alice J. Wisler
Cover design by Paul Higdon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wisler, Alice J.
Hatteras girl / Alice J. Wisler.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7642-0732–7 (pbk.)
1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Outer Banks (N.C.)—Fiction. 3. Bed and breakfast accommodations—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.I846H38 2010
813’.6—dc22
2010016287
* * *
For Carl,
who convinced me to grow old with him
“To be satisfied with what one has;
that is wealth.”
—MARK TWAIN
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Questions for Conversation
1
Seated at the mahogany counter on a wobbly barstool, I wait for Mr. Wealthy and Available. As I sip my Diet Pepsi, I run my index finger across the grooves in the wood, pretending that I’m admiring the surface and the way the overhead lights bring out the soft shine. Really, I’m eavesdropping. Other people’s conversations are wonderfully fun—particularly those of Outer Banks tourists.
At a table near me, a father with a Boston accent tells his sons that tomorrow they’re going fishing in Pamlico Sound and then to see the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. One of his sons slurps his drink and then asks when they’re going to see the alligators at the wildlife place. I imagine he must be talking about Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.
“Dad, you promised,” the boy says eagerly.
Dad agrees, but not without clarifying the rules: “You two need to eat all your chicken tonight. And no texting at the table.”
James Taylor’s melodic “Carolina in My Mind” fills the restaurant, but I tune my ears to other fragments of chatter.
“I know he’s balding and a little round,” I hear a woman confess to another at the right side of the bar. She sounds like she might be from New York. “But I love the way he treats me.”
“He’s a Red Sox fan,” someone—I presume her friend—says with disdain.
“I know,” comes the reply. “And my team will always be the Orioles.” A sigh follows. “He told me I’m the glittery constellation in his sky. Isn’t that romantic?”
“That is.”
“With true love, baseball shouldn’t matter.”
A giggle forms in my throat, and to squelch it, I quickly lower my head, pick up my pen, and open my notebook. Flipping to a clean page, I draw clusters of miniature globes, add stems to their bases, and place leaves near the petals. After shading them with the tip of my pen, I’m pleased with the garden of geraniums I’ve created.
I’m not as pleased with my reason for being at the Sunnyside Grille tonight. My aunt Sheerly has set me up with yet another man. I hope this one will be all she claims he is. My relatives here in Hatteras have a goal this year—to see a diamond on my finger by December 31. They’re a bunch of sweet folks, worth far more than Blackbeard’s treasures to me, and as hardworking as the summer sun. But lately, I think they’ve gone into overtime trying to find Mr. Right for me. I don’t want to appear finicky; I appreciate their efforts and that’s probably why I’ve been on four blind dates just this spring. Also, I’ll be thirty in August.
The unsuspecting staff of the restaurant thinks I’m here writing up an article for Lighthouse Views, the Nags Head magazine I work for. Betty Lynn, barely twenty-one and dressed in a pair of khakis and a yellow T-shirt—the uniform for the Sunnyside Grille employees— stops beside me on her way to a table of guests. She whispers, “Always busy writing. When are you going to interview me?”
Betty Lynn is the type of girl who thinks her good looks and ability to balance a quarter on her nose while sipping juice through a straw are worthy of a magazine article. Actually, my editor usually assigns me interviews with the owners of Outer Banks businesses for features in the magazine.
“I’ll never get a break tonight,” she tells me, fluffing her blond hair. “The hostess didn’t show, so I have to seat guests and wait tables.”
“Maybe you’ll get twice as many tips,” I offer hopefully.
Her blue eyes hold doubt.
I glance at my cell phone to check the time. He’s late, this wealthy-and-available man. I wonder if he’s doing a million-dollar business transaction with other successful people. Maybe he’s tied up in a board meeting or taking his yacht for a cruise down to Beaufort.
When Betty Lynn leaves, my mind wanders to wondering why we label folks with money as successful. I think about how God must rate our success and decide it has to be on much different terms. Jesus chose twelve disciples to hang out with, and had they lived today, I don’t think any of their names would appear in Fortune 500 magazine.
Buck Griffins, one of the waiters, motions toward my empty mason jar. “Would you like more Pepsi?”
Closing my notebook, I give him a smile I’ve been practicing all afternoon. Each time I get ready for a date, I borrow a pair of my housemate and friend Minnie’s gold hoop earrings and smile into my dresser mirror for a while.
“What time is he supposed to be here?” Buck asks as he refills my drink from the soda fountain.
I watch the bubbles float to the top of the glass. “What do you mean?”
Buck grins. “Your date. You are meeting someone, right?” He nods toward the neon green fisherman’s hat I’ve placed beside my notebook.
So much for incognito. Buck knows me too well. Of course, I have suggested the Grille for all of my recent blind dates, and Buck was working at least two of those nights when I entered the restaurant with the fisherman’s hat. Carrying the hat is one way I make it easy for my dates to spot me. When they ask what I look like, I briefly describe my looks and then say I’ll have a bright green fisherman’s hat with me.
Tonight will be better than all those oth
er dates, I tell myself when Buck heads to the end of the counter, where a customer orders a burger. Please, God, let this Douglas Cannon be pleasant. Oh, more than that. Let him be interested in me, and me in him. As I finish the silent prayer, my eyes roam around the restaurant.
There’s an assortment of old-fashioned skillets and Pepsi glasses lining the shelves across the back wall behind the bar. Aunt Sheerly told me the owner picked up these pieces at an auction years ago. The Grille’s décor also includes travel posters of New Orleans— masquerade masks, a jazz band, and patrons dining along a busy section of Bourbon Street. I want to be like one of the couples at a corner table on the poster near me. The woman has a contented look on her slender face, and the man is gazing into her eyes over a plate of what looks to be oysters on the half shell. I catch my reflection in a narrow mirror by the sign for the restrooms, smile, and smooth my straight black hair. Maybe tonight I’ll get to dine with a contented look on my face.
Buck saunters back over to me and picks up my hat. He twirls it around with one finger as a whimsical look stretches across his face. This guy hasn’t changed a bit. He’s as silly as he was when he and my younger brother Ron were kids. The two of them once got away with putting jellyfish into a large pot in the high school cafeteria. I don’t think Mrs. Straybutton ever forgave them for the scare she had when she took the lid off the pot to prepare spaghetti for lunch that day and was greeted by three slimy sea creatures. I overheard her in Principal Miller’s office exclaiming, “Those nasty critters were swimming in filthy water in my kitchen! We must shut the school down and have it cleaned top to bottom! Call the janitor; alert the fire department! Does the mayor know?”
I glance up at Buck and tease, “I just hope you haven’t put any jellyfish in my Pepsi.”
He raises his hands, feigns innocence. “In the whole history of Manteo High, no one has ever proven Ron and I were guilty.”
“You two were lucky.”
Buck’s eyes flicker, and I see that they still hold that childhood mischievousness. He’s had shoulder-length blond hair ever since ninth grade when he and Ron decided to grow their hair out. Watching him place my hat on top of his head, I picture him as he looked at fifteen in swimming trunks—wiry and thin. Now the lines of a muscular chest fill out his yellow Grille T-shirt.
Taking off the hat, he asks, “Do you ever wear these, or just bring them along for show?”
I’m about to tell him how my fishermen’s hat collection started when at my left shoulder I hear a man’s voice. “Excuse me. Are you . . . Jackie Donovan?”
2
The first thing I notice is that his voice is deep. When I turn, he’s there in full view. The wondering what he looks like is over. He’s not Johnny Depp, George Clooney, or even my mother’s all-time favorite, Humphrey Bogart, but he’s breathing—and male. In reply to his question, I nod.
“I’m Douglas Cannon.” When he stretches out his arm, it brushes against the woman seated on the stool beside me. He murmurs, “Oh, sorry.”
He’s nervous. It’s not that he’s stuttering, or that his hands are shaking; I just sense that he’s nervous by the way his voice crackles like static in a sound system.
Stepping off the barstool, I steady it as it tilts toward the same woman, then grab my purse. I wait for Buck to hand me my hat. Turning to Douglas, I give him a smile that I hope is kind, happy, and able to set him at ease. “Nice to meet you. I’m Jackie.”
His Adam’s apple moves as he clears his throat. “Shall we get a table?”
As she approaches, Betty Lynn sizes this man up. She glances at the floor and then at his shoes, the ceiling, and then his face. I follow her and Douglas to a table by a window with a view that overlooks the quiet Albemarle Sound.
Seated across from each other, Douglas and I look at our plastic menus in silence. The menu is like the face of an old friend; I almost have it memorized, and usually I have the chicken salad sandwich with coleslaw on the side. Although my favorite item is the bacon cheeseburger, I think I will avoid that tonight. I enjoy this burger best with lots of mustard and mayo, and by the time I’ve added those condiments, it’s too drippy to eat on a first date. The magazines always warn you to be careful about these kinds of things.
Douglas has brown eyes and a sincere look about him, the kind of man who probably believes in justice, truth, and helping old ladies across busy streets. He asks what I’d like to drink. Suddenly, I’m aware that I left my mason jar of Diet Pepsi at the counter and did not offer to pay Buck for it. I relax; I’ll ask Buck to add it to my tab.
“I’ll have Diet Pepsi.”
“You drink that diet stuff?” When he makes a face similar to the one Minnie’s son, Zane, displays when Minnie insists he try a bite of flounder, I feel my heart slip into my sandals.
“I like the taste.” I try not to sound too defensive.
“I read how they make the diet stuff. Disgusting. I’d never touch it,” he tells me. “That low-calorie soda isn’t good for you, anyway.”
Perhaps I should have asked his approval before ordering my beverage. When Betty Lynn comes by to take our order, I eye Douglas to see if he’ll comment on my choice of the chicken salad sandwich.
He doesn’t have anything to say to that. He orders a Reuben without any mayo and asks if he can have fries instead of coleslaw. He tells me he doesn’t like mayonnaise. And that he doesn’t eat broccoli. Or artichokes. And on pizza, he prefers just sausage and the best brand is actually made in Bari, Italy, and called Bari Sausage.
I feel like I’m supposed to be taking notes.
He then tells me he would like to be in Asia, and I wonder if he’s saying this for my benefit since I’m half Korean. All my life, people have either tried the affirmative by saying something like, “I really like ramen noodles” or gone to the other extreme and made jokes about slanted eyes. No one has ever told me they would rather be in Asia.
Through the window, I watch a seagull swoop onto one of the thick posts by the pier. He poses as if waiting for a photographer to snap his portrait for a postcard.
Sometime after Betty Lynn brings our meals, commenting as she always does that “The fries are extremely hot, so be careful,” and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” has finished, Douglas tells me he recently spent five weeks in the Philippines. As I try to recall where that country is located on a map, and then am pretty sure it’s south of Mom’s homeland of South Korea, he says, “I fell off a jeepney once.”
He looks at me expectantly. Swallowing a bite of chicken, I wipe my mouth with a napkin. The paper napkins here are large, but stiff. Buck’s told me with a smile that they’re starched at a nearby dry cleaner. “What’s a jeepney?” I ask Douglas.
Leaning across the table, his elbows touching the edges of his plate, he explains. “Jeepneys are old American G. I. jeeps converted into public transportation. They’re open in the back where you enter and exit. Passengers sit on parallel benches. The jeepney drivers are madmen as they skirt around Manila. It can be a harrowing experience.”
I try to picture one of these vehicles as Douglas continues with his story.
“The driver let the six people in front of me off, and they managed to stay safe, but when it was my turn to step out, he just took off. He didn’t even bother to check his rearview mirror, I guess. I had one foot on the road and one in the back of the jeepney.”
I swallow a mouthful of Diet Pepsi and try to imagine the scene. I’ve spent all my life in North Carolina; I don’t even own a passport.
“But I was only bruised a bit because I fell on my face. I didn’t need stitches or anything.”
“Oh, good,” I say weakly. I stare at the rest of my sandwich and then twirl my fork around in the coleslaw. I know the cook in the kitchen who makes the coleslaw; they call him Dude of Slaw. I’m pretty sure Buck gave him that nickname.
Douglas’s story is like the bunny on the Energizer commercials; it keeps going and going. Around a mouthful of bread and corned beef, he says, �
�That wasn’t as bad as when I got stung in the South China Sea by something that looked like a baby shark.”
“Really?”
He continues, the food in his mouth packed in each cheek. “We were scuba diving at a coral reef. I felt something tug at my leg and then felt this burning pain.”
“How horrible,” I say when he pauses to take another bite of his sandwich.
“Blood was gushing out, I mean it was gruesome. Then my whole leg began to swell.” He moves his hands across his plate for emphasis. “I managed to get out of the water without too much difficulty. Then I couldn’t move my leg. It was throbbing with this terrible pain.”
“How horrible.” I guess I won’t eat any more of the chicken salad.
“The friends I was with wanted to get me out of the sun, so they found this cave down by some rocks. I could hardly walk but managed to go inside the cave. It was dark and filled with bats and snakes.”
Again I say the only thing that comes to mind: “Horrible.” Suddenly I wish I was home playing my flute, or walking on the beach, or watching the sunset.
“The snakes weren’t poisonous. At least that’s what Sergie told us. However, the bats were swooping low and tugging at our hair.”
I feel claustrophobic, and as he continues on, I try to refrain from saying again how horrible this all sounds. Suddenly, something inside me tells me that I don’t have to stay any longer. My meal is finished—well, almost—and I don’t want, or need, dessert. I recall a sitcom episode I watched with Minnie in which the main character was out with a drastically boring date and pretended she got a text from her mother. She claimed her mother was in jail and she had to go bail her out. Could I pull that off?
I reach into my purse, find my cell phone, and take a breath. I rub my thumb across the front of the phone as Douglas talks about his hospital visit to treat his infected bite. Through the window, the sky’s light has faded, the seagull taken off from its perch on the pier.
Douglas doesn’t seem to mind that I’m more interested in what’s outside. His story is still going. “The doctor spoke with a heavy accent, so I only understood every third word. From what I could tell, he was saying things like needle and injection and I swore he said surgery.”
Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3) Page 1