A Firing Offense

TWENTY-ONE




CROSSING WHALEBONE JUNCTION, we passed the sign for Cape Hatteras National Seashore and blew down Route 12 very early the next morning. The sun sprayed over the dunes to our left, highlighting sea oats and myrtle.

We rolled our windows down as the dawn chill faded, and sipped our coffee from Styrofoam cups. I had a neo-country tape playing in the deck—Golden Palominos, Dwight Yoakam, T Bone Burnett, and Costello, with some Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash thrown in for tradition.

McGinnes was singing along to what he knew, and laughed at my voice as I joined him on the occasional odd chorus. The lines around his eyes crinkled out from behind his aviators.

“This is beautiful!” he said emotionally, his arm straight out the window, his palm catching the wind.

“‘Everything Is Beautiful,’” I said.

“Ray Stevens, right? Worst Top Ten song ever recorded.”

“Right about Ray Stevens. Wrong about the honors. They go to ‘Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast’ by Wayne Newton. That’s the worst song to crack the Top Ten.”

“You mean, ‘Daddy, Don’t You Hump So Fast,’ don’t you?”

“Whatever you say, Johnny.”

Soon we were on the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge over the Oregon Inlet. Scores of trawlers and charter boats were heading out into the ocean. On the other side of the bridge lay the Pea Island Refuge, where flocks of snow geese and shorebirds flew by at regular intervals. Egrets laced the wetlands to our right.

We drove through the nearly empty beachtowns of Rodanthe, Waves, and Salvo, then cruised a long stretch along the coast to Avon and beyond. Near Buxton, McGinnes had me stop at a windsurfing mecca on the soundside called Canadian Hole. He peed on the grass next to my car while I watched the brightly colored sails and their boards ripping across the chop. Then we pulled back onto the highway.

We stopped once more to fill the cooler in the town of Hatteras, then raced to the end of the highway to make the ferry. I pulled into spot number nineteen just as the khaki-uniformed park employees began to board the cars.

We were directed to an area behind a North Carolina Christian Academy school bus, where a tan woman wedged wooden blocks beneath my front tires. A fully restored black and white Chevy with red interior parked to our right. The New Jersey vanity plates read “57 Love.” The driver was bearded and fat and wore an Alf T-shirt.

“Let’s get out and enjoy it,” McGinnes said, as the ferry finished loading and pulled away from the dock.

The crowd was an October mixture of elderly couples, young parents with preschool children, and a few tradesmen heading over to the island for work. The tourists began to congregate at the bow, where a woman was throwing bread to a few gulls. Those few gulls turned to dozens very quickly and stayed with the ferry for the entire trip.

McGinnes brought out two beers and handed one to me. I had intended to remain dry that day, but the weather was gorgeous, the final brilliant display of the long Carolina season. I took off my shirt, sat on the hood of my car, put my feet up on the iron rail, and popped the can.

McGinnes drifted away and struck up a conversation with a group of young men standing around a Bronco that had surf rods stuck in tubes mounted around the front fender. I folded my arms and enjoyed my beer and the view.

Forty minutes later we approached the island. The ferry ran parallel to the shore, which was crowded with all-terrain vehicles and fishermen, some of whom were throwing out nets. The family next to me waved at an old man motoring by in a Chris Craft, who waved back, mimicking them playfully. Finally we docked with a thud against the rubber-wrapped pilings.

We drove off the ferry and onto Ocracoke Island. The terrain was flat and covered with shrubs of myrtle, the two-lane road shoulderless and sandy. Many of the cars ahead turned off at beach access trails or state-run campgrounds.

The drive to the other end of the island took only ten minutes. But when we arrived, the Cedar Island ferry was full, and the next available was two hours away. I bought tickets and walked back to the car.

“Don’t worry about it,” McGinnes said. “We made good time getting down here. Let’s relax, drive back to the village. I saw a place there.”

We turned the car around and headed back up the road, where McGinnes directed me into the lot of what looked like an old house on pilings. The small gray sign, camouflaged against the gray house it hung on, read “Jacko’s Grille.”

“You coming?” he asked, out of the car before it stopped.

I shook my head. “I think I’ll grab a swim. I’ll swing back and pick you up.” He waved me off and ran up the wooden stairs.

I drove to a small turnoff that I had noticed earlier, a place with no facilities and no tourists. I changed into shorts and walked on a path through the shrubs, over a barrier dune, and out onto a wide, white beach.

On my trek to the shoreline there were sandcrabs and shells and no footprints. The swells were small, like those in a bay. I walked out in two feet of water for what seemed like quite a distance. Small fish moved around my feet. I reached deeper water and swam, then walked along the beach until I neared a group of fishermen. I turned and walked back, stopping occasionally to put the more interesting stones and shells in my swimtrunk pockets. Some high clouds drifted in the sky but they never neared the sun.

I changed back into jeans and drove back to the bar. Inside were picnic tables and a jukebox and a small selection of domestic beer. McGinnes was talking to and drinking with a couple of old-timers. I ordered a burger and a beer and took them both out back to the screened-in deck that overlooked the wetlands and the Pamlico Sound.


THE CEDAR ISLAND FERRY was a two-hour trip. I grabbed the opportunity to nap on the hood of my car in the warm sun.

McGinnes shook me awake when we docked. As we prepared to disembark, I noticed the license plates on a car ahead. The “mushroom cloud” on the plates of the men who attacked me was the state tree of South Carolina. I told McGinnes.

“What difference does it make now?” he said. “You didn’t get the number, so you still don’t know dick.”

As we drove off the ferry onto Cedar Island, I saw that the vegetation was more tropical. But the palmettos diminished, then disappeared as Route 12 became 70. We went through the lovely seaside town of Beaufort, then passed the more conventional Morehead City and turned off on 24 south. At two o’clock we entered Camp Lejeune, where McGinnes saluted the MP at the gate and told childhood stories all the way through the grounds and beyond. Then we were on 17 south along the coast, passing billboards advertising surf shops and hamburger stands.

At nearly four in the afternoon we reached Wilmington, a large city in the midst of revitalization, which was still filled with examples of old Southern architecture. McGinnes informed me in the same breath that Wilmington was once the premier city of the state, and that it was the birthplace of Sonny Jurgenson.

Wrightsville Beach was just across the bridge over Bank’s Channel. Driving onto its main strip, I saw the large hotels and general congestion of concrete that I associated with the Delmarva Peninsula and the Jersey Shore. We checked into a clean and expensive motel near the fishing pier.

McGinnes was sleeping when I came out of the shower. I dressed quietly, slipped out the door, and walked up to the pier. At its entrance was a snackbar that overlooked the beach. I sat on a red stool and ordered a tuna sandwich with fries and a coke.

The teenage girl behind the counter had black hair and thick eyebrows and wore a Byzantine cross. I asked if she was Greek and she said yes. Her parents owned the concession stand and the adjoining restaurant. I asked her if she knew a place called the Wall.

“It’s a surf-rat place,” she said. “In the summer they rage, but now in the off-season only the hardcores hang out there. If you’re not a local and you’re not in that crowd, it’s not too cool.” She told me where to find it, up near the Strand. I thanked her and left eight on four.

Traffic was light. I found the Wall on the soundside corner of the intersection the girl had mentioned.

The place appeared to be a converted service station. It stood alone on a shell and gravel lot. I was the only one parked in the lot. I sat in my car for half an hour and listened to top forty radio and beach commercials. Then a modified, black VW with two shortboards racked on the top pulled in. The doors opened and two guys got out.

They walked across the lot. The taller one of the two was in oversized baggy shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt and wore a red duckbilled cap, out of which came white blond hair. He was tall and in swimmer’s shape. The smaller one was dressed similarly but had a weak frame and the overly cocky strut of the insecure.

I got out of my car quickly and ran to the door of the bar, just as the tall one was turning the key. I startled him as he turned and for a moment he looked vulnerable, but only for a moment. He had thin eyes and a cruel, thin mouth.

“Hey,” I said, “how’s it going?” He didn’t answer but gave me the once-over. “Is Charlie Fiora around?”

“That’s me,” he said in a monotone. “What do you want?”

“I’m a friend of Kim Lazarus,” I said. His eyes flashed for a second, an emotion that he quickly shut down. “I heard she was in town. Heard you might know where she’s staying.”

“You heard wrong, ace. I don’t know any Kim Hazardous,” he said, and his little friend giggled. “Now I gotta get my place opened up. So later.”

The two of them walked in and shut the door behind them. I heard the lock turn. I stood staring at the door and the painted cinderblocks around it. Then I turned and walked back to my car. I sat there for a while. Nothing happened and I did nothing to make it happen. Finally I turned the ignition key and drove back to the motel.


MCGINNES WAS CLEANED UP and waiting when I returned to the room. We walked to the restaurant above the arcade and concession stand and had a seat at the bar, which afforded us a view of the pier below. The ocean shimmered orange and gray at dusk. I told McGinnes of my experience at the Wall. Afterwards, he put down his Pilsner glass and looked at me dourly.

“I didn’t want to bring this up,” he said, “but I’ve got to be at work tomorrow morning. If I don’t post, I lose my job.”

“I know.”

I settled the bill after finishing only half my meal. We walked down the stairs and out onto the pier. I turned my collar up against the wind as we neared the end, where some kids were spinning a cast-iron telescope on its base.

“What are you going to do?” McGinnes asked. His hair was blowing back to expose his scalp.

“They’re here in Wrightsville,” I said with certainty. “I didn’t go through everything and come all the way down here to drive back to D.C. now with my f*cking tail between my legs.”

“You want company?”

“No, not this time. But get everything together at the room. I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up.”

He nodded sadly and looked away. I left him there at the end of the pier and walked back, passing a small group gathered around a sand shark that was floundering and dying on the wooden planks.

I found my car in the motel lot, pulled out onto the highway, and headed for the Wall.