Ocracoke

That night was the first full moon after Analise and I fell in love. It was the summer after the last year of high school, and it was hot. We lived on a small island called Wocomac, a sand bar east of the mainland, held together by trees. On the inland, west side there’s a sound full of good fish; on the ocean, east side there’s the gulf stream. The sands gather on the shelf at the edge of the continent. Where grasses and bushes and trees take hold they keep a bunch of sand together long enough for it to become an island.

There were people here before our people got here. The sound’s waters are difficult to navigate for our big boats because they’re shallow, but for small boats they’re easy. They’re wide enough, though, that you can’t see Wocomac from the mainland, or the mainland from Wocomac. The former people would come out to this island to eat the oysters that grow in the fertile water trapped between the continent and the outer banks. They left the shells on the shore and among the trees in stacks as cairns to mark their passing by.

The town of Wocomac is on the south tip of the long, narrow island. Not even a thousand people live here. Most of the island, besides the road running through it that bisects the island from end to end and connects it to the outside world, is a nature preserve. People aren’t allowed in, and haven’t been for a very long time: ever since our people became the rulers of this island.

Really the first inhabitants died out long before we came to live here: they were killed by disease, or famine, or war. We drove them before us as we came, but the shallow sound kept us from making this island our home for a long time. Pirates used to come here to hide from the authorities, and a little town of fishing folk accreted around the natural harbor at the island’s southern tip.

This harbor, by the beginning of the century before last, was important enough to merit a lighthouse: a white brick plinth of the old school, wide at the base and tapering to its full height just above the cedars. The walls are an arm’s breadth wide at the base, and only a narrow spiral stair winds up its center to the light at the top. Back in the day the light was operated by families who lived in a house at its base, but now it’s entirely automatic.

There’s a nature preserve next to the town, a copse of gnarled trees huddled on the beach against the south-west wind, known as ’Sam Garland’s Grave’; that’s since it’s a piece of land last owned by a gentleman known by that handle who died and left the whole parcel to the village as a park on the condition that he be buried in his beloved grove and that he and his trees be left undisturbed in perpetuity. The place is now a park open during the day to tourists to walk through.

Its cedars’ and oaks’ roots hold the sand. They’ve come in as the climax species after the sedge and grasses have built up a bank above the water. The sand underneath moves and wobbles with the waves, and channels open and close with a big storm. The plants have so far bound together this island against adversity, but what with rising sea levels and the dying oceans it’s not clear how long there’ll be life here to hold the island together.

The former people’s stacks of shells are still here, though. We stepped over them as we walked through the copse before sunset, Analise, Rosa, Toby, and I. Analise and I were in love and had been for weeks. There was a crunch of shell underfoot.

“Hey, don’t step on that!” Rosa admonished Toby as he kicked another oyster shell down the trail. The fragments left under his boot as he lifted it shone in the last light of day: a beam of sun set the iridescent shell a-shimmer.

“I’ll do what I’ll like.” Toby stomped on another shell to prove his point.

“Why’ve you got to be like that?”

“Why’ve you got to tell me what to do?”

“Hey, I’m just saying is all, man.”

“Yeah man, well, I’m just saying…” Toby craned his neck to look back at Rosa, “I’m going to step where I want.” He laid his boot down on a pile of oyster shells next to the trail and smashed them with a sound like dinner plates falling.

“Yo, man, chill.” I step over and put my hand on Toby’s shoulders. “Those are old piles. You shouldn’t be messing with them.”

“Hey, why are you being weird? Toby didn’t mean anything by it, and besides, it’s just some piles of junk.” Rosa puts her hands on her hips as she says this.

Analise calls back from ahead of us: “can’t we just enjoy the sunset? I want to get to the beach before it’s over.” There’s a reason I fell in love with her.

When we got to the beach the sun was sitting on the western horizon, and the sky was drenched in purple and amber. The breeze coming off the water was cool, which felt good after a hot day. The trees of Garland’s Grave crowd the water, leaving tiny patches of sand around them.

“We made it,” Analise sighed as the sun began to fall behind the water. She sat down on the root of a tree, leaning forward to avoid hitting her head on a branch, and dropped her bag on the sand.

“It’s beatiful, isn’t it?” I sat down on the branch next to her. Our hips were touching, and she leaned against me. The warmth and weight of her body were reassuring against my torso. Her hand found its way to mine.

“Yeah, it is.”

Rosa stood in front of us, looking out at the water, to the left and right, and back into the copse we’d come through. Toby squatted at the edge of the water picking at the shells the wavelets lapped over. “Hey, here’s a pretty one!”

“Let me see,” Rosa reached her hand out to Toby, and he dropped it in her palm. “Ouch, it’s sharp!” She dropped the shell and shook her hand. A drop of blood rolled down her palm and she sucked it up. Toby ground the shell to bits beneath his heel: “there, now it can’t hurt anyone.”

The sun continued to disappear below the distant horizon: only half of it now showed above the rim of the water, and the sky behind us was dark. The breeze cooled even more. The sun now hid entirely behind the water, but the sky above the horizon was still painted scarlet. Behind us the first stars were now visible.

“Look, the lighthouse has come on.” Toby pointed off to the right. The light was warm and reassuring above the sleeping village. Besides the stars coming into view, there was no other source of light to be seen. I pulled out my flashlight and flicked it on, pointing it at the ground. The light cast a pool of brightness and made the rest of the copse seem dimmer by comparison.

“Now we can watch the moon rise.” Analise stood up and, stepping towards the water, turned around to look over the mound of trees we had come through. She put her hands at the small of her back and leaned back, rolling her neck from side to side. I stood up and walked next to her. Rosa and Toby took our seats on the tree root. I turned off my flashlight and listened to the little waves rolling in behind us. Shells crunched underfoot every time we took a step.

I looked at Toby and Rosa and said, “Analise and I are in love now, and we wanted you to know.” Analise squeezed my hand as I said it. My heart fluttered in my chest, and my solar plexus felt like it had been weighted down. Analise and I had said it to each other, but never to anyone else. Rosa and Toby were our best friends from school, and we wanted them to be the first to know.

“Yeah? Is that so?” said Toby, “and what are you going to do about it?”

“Well, I’ve been saving up tips, and so has Peter, and we were going to move in together. Now that we’re out of high school it’s time we start thinking like adults.” Analise and I had worked this all out already. “We’re going to work in the park or running the ferry, and we’ll have a beautiful life together.”

“And college? What happened to ‘leaving this pit’?” Rosa asked Analise, ignoring me for the moment.

“There’ll be time for that someday,” Analise said dejectedly. “For now it’s just too expensive, and besides, all I…, all we’ve ever known is Wocomac. What’s wrong with being here?” The breeze off the water was decidedly cool now, and I shivered.

“You won’t catch me getting stuck here,” muttered Toby to himself as he dug in the sand with a stick. “No sirree, I’m getting on that boat and never looking back.”

“Me too,” said Rosa. “What happened to our plans? School, the city, travelling the world?” She looked skeptically at Analise. “Are you pregnant?” Analise dropped my hand and doubled over in laughter. “Well? Are you?”

“No, of course not! I’m nowhere near ready to have kids. But when I do, I want them to be from here like you and I are from here: we grew up here, this is our home, and there’s no reason I’d want to leave.” She became more adamant as she said it, and her voice pitched down at the end of the sentence in a practiced tone that said that any further argument would only entrench her further in her position.

“Well, I don’t see as I can do anything about it, but I for one think you’re both crazy,” said Toby as he straightened up and turned to throw his stick into the water. It sailed out under the sky and landed in the water with a tiny plop. “Now where’s that joint? You’re trying to stay out here till the moon rises, right? I’ll need some refreshment if I’m going to make it that long.”

I handed it to him crumpled from my shorts pocket. He straightened out and lit it with a lighter from his chest pocket, shaking it first as he held the joint in his lips, then cupping his opposite hand to bring the lighter to the joint’s tip and light it. As he did the fire lit his face, which became the brightest thing around. Then the joint’s tip flared and the lighter died; the cherry danced in the darkness as Toby took a deep drag.

He passed it to Rosa, who passed it to Analise, who passed it to me. By this point we were all sitting on a pair of branches next to each other, Toby and Rosa on one and Analise and me on the other. The sand was cool to the touch and the waves frothed on the strand. The stars came out. We watched them until the joint was out.

Toby dropped the roach in his chest pocket and stood up. As his knees straightened I became convinced that everybody hated me and that I would be better off dead. This was a familiar feeling and one I ascribed at the time to the cannabis’s influence. I struggled against my disintegrating subjectivity and rose to my feet. Analise stood next to me; I put my arm around her shoulder and leaned against her. She put her arm around my waist. We all turned and faced the east. There was no moon.

Rosa: “Shouldn’t it have risen by now?”

Analise: “How long’s it been?”

Rosa: “Like twenty minutes.”

Analise: “Yeah, it should be rising about now. Maybe give it a few minutes? I’m sure it’ll come up.”

Toby and I shrugged at one another.

“Got another joint?”

“Nah, I’m all out.”

I turned and stepped down the beach line, ducking under the low branches of the tangled trees of the shore.

“Here’s another one of those piles!” Sure enough, there was a mound of oyster shells about knee high and a pace across at the bottom. Algae grew in the cracked and peeling husks. I stepped carefully around it.

“Who knows how long that’s been there. I guess since before our people got here.”

“Must’ve been.”

We continued down the strand in silence for a few moments, each stewing in their own thoughts while we waited for the moon to rise. Analise and I lagged behind Toby and Rosa. I came to a stop next to another pile of shells. The beam of the lighthouse swept across the water, warm and reassuringly like home.

Toby turned back to us. “Well, lovebirds, your app or whatever must be wrong: there’s no moon tonight. Come on, Rosa, let’s get out of here. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, and I hope you’ve come to your senses by then.” This last was directed at Analise and me. Toby took Rosa’s hand and turned on to one of the trails cutting from the beach through the copse back to the road.

I stopped and dropped Analise’s hand: “should we follow them?”

“I guess, but it’s weird there’s no moon. Maybe we just can’t see it behind the trees.” These loomed on the sky behind us, their twists and branches becoming sinister in the darkness. Behind them we could see Toby’s light bouncing as he and Rosa picked their way back to the road. “Hey, wait up guys! I’m getting cold!” Analise ran after them. I ran after her. The trail was a string of soft sand cutting through the brush. Low hanging branches and brambles tugged at me, and I ducked under them. As I stood up, I couldn’t see any of my friends.

“Analise?” No response. “Toby? Rosa?” I cried into the copse. Only the silence of trees and the distant lapping of wavelets answered me. Perhaps they had turned the corner ahead and been lost behind a mound of trees, I reasoned to myself. I continued on my way through the copse.

After walking in a straight line for much farther than I thought possible, I emerged on the shore once again. The crushed shell was right where Toby had left it, and Analise was sitting on the branch watching the sea and the light. The old familiar light was cooler than I was used to seeing it, but by this point I was tired and thirsty and ready to go home. I sat down next to Analise.

“I’ve been thinking…” she said.

“Oh no.”

“I’m serious!”

“So am I!”

“Alright then. I’ve been thinking that maybe we’re rushing into this.”

“Rushing into what?”

“This!” Analise waved her hands at herself and me as if she were stirring something I couldn’t see. “I wonder whether we’re going too quickly.” I put my arm around her waist, and she stood up. "Maybe Rosa’s right: maybe we shouldn’t tie ourselves down here too quickly. I stood up too and stepped behind her. I hugged her from behind and rested my lips on her exposed shoulder. She leaned her head back and rested it against mine. We stood for a moment, watching the water. She brought her hands to mine where they were wrapped around her belly and, after holding them for a moment, gently parted them. She stepped forward and turned to face me, taking my hands in hers. She was silhouetted in the light shining back from the water, and her head blocked out the stars. I watched her, afraid to say anything. She looked down at her feet, then up into my eyes.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I know,” she said. I dropped her hands and stepped down the strand. My heart surged in me. To my left up under the trees was a stack of oyster shells. Their insides glimmered in the reflected light of the lighthouse, and algae blemished them. I was overtaken by rage. Before I knew what happened I had began kicking the pile, scattering and shattering the shells that had lain undisturbed for so long. Analise stood by the water, watching me with her arms crossed. I finally wore myself out, and where the cairn had been were only fragments of shells. I was breathing heavily as I turned to face her.

“Do you feel better?” Her voice was patronizing.

“No, I don’t. I’m tired and pissed and high. Let’s just go home and talk about this later, okay?”

“Okay.” She dropped her arms and began to walk off into the copse. “I wonder where Rosa and Toby got off to?”

“I guess they made it out. I don’t know how I got lost: usually it’s a straight shot back.” We walked in silence, I behind her, as she picked her way along the trail. The trees above and around us blocked out the sky and wrapped us as in a cocoon. We continued silently along the trail, and I shone my light out past Analise’s feet so she could see.

Suddenly she stopped. “Hey, isn’t that Garland’s grave?” She pointed to a mound to the right. “Why’s it got a pile of shells on it?” I looked and saw what she did: a small fenced square of clear ground to the right of the trail among the trees. I could barely pick out the tip of the grave marker behind a pile of oyster shells piled up in front of it. I shone my light on them, highlighting them among the brush. They glimmered and shone, perfectly clean and dripping with water. “They’re brand new!” I stepped over to the small rickety fence and leaned over it to pick up one of the shells. It reeked of the sea when I held it to my nose.

“That’s so strange…” Analise said. “I don’t know why someone would drag a bunch of shells out here to dump them. It seems like a hell of a lot of effort.” I was glad to have the distraction from our earlier conversation as I fell in step beside her. We continued on our path, leaving Garland’s covered grave behind.

“Yeah, it is weird, isn’t it? I wonder what the deal is.” We walked on in silence for a while. As we walked I reached my hand to take hers. As my fingers brushed hers she brought her hands up to her chest and hugged herself.

“I’m freezing!” It had gotten cold.

“Let me give you my sweatshirt.” I stopped to pull it off, but she said:

“It’s alright, we’re almost there. Isn’t that the street ahead?” But as we approached the opening in the woods we saw that it wasn’t the street but the shore that we approached. Rosa and Toby were sitting on the branch when we arrived. Rosa looked pissed and Toby, afraid.

“Hey guys, what’s going on? I thought you went home ahead of us.”

“So did we,” said Rosa, “but we ended up back here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve never been so lost before. It’s like the paths just curl us back around and dump us here, no matter which way we go.” Toby shivered as she said it.

“Well goddamn if we’re going to be stuck in this hole.” Analise was getting frustrated. “We’re just going to have to find our way out of here if it kills us. You see that light?” She pointed up at the lighthouse’s beam, its origin just visible over the low mound of trees, their twisting branches merging into a sullen mass in the darkness. “We’ll just go towards it.” She set off in the direction of the light, pushing and shoving through the branches.

“Wait!” I ran after her, grabbed her shoulder, and turned her toward me. “What are you doing? There isn’t a path that way. You’ll just hurt yourself trying to get through all the brambles. Let’s just follow the path back towards the road again. We’re just high and tired and cold and confused. If we take it slowly and go all together, what’s the worst that can happen?” She looked past me at the water as if she hadn’t heard me. After a second she looked in to my eyes.

“Yeah, you’re right.” I saw there were tears in her eyes. They glimmered in the indirect dimness, tiny pearls under her irises. “I don’t want to stay here,” she said.

“Neither do I. Let’s get home.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” I had dropped my hand now, and Toby and Rosa were perched by the water watching us watch each other.

“You know what I meant.”

“No, I really didn’t. Let’s just get out of here.”

“I don’t want to stay on this island. Rosa is right.”

“What?”

“I want to leave. I don’t want to get stuck here like our parents, or their parents, or their parents…” she trailed off. “I want something better for…” she hesitated, then started again with confidence “I want something better for myself.”

“But what about our plans?”

“What about them? Is working the ferry a plan? Is being at the park a plan?”

“We love it here! This is our home!”

“Look around you Pearson!” Her words carried out to the water and were swallowed by the lapping waves. I looked. I saw the copse of trees, twisted together like tangled yarn; I saw the sand piled under them, littered with leaves and shells; I saw the grasses fringing the trees and the seaweed that washed up to the shore. I saw the water whose soft foam shone in the starlight and the water whose surface undulated under the moon.

The moon!

“Look!” I stepped back and pointed over Analise’s head. Above the tiny light in the firmament of stars had appeared the moon, a disk of blazing white, brighter than any pearl, closer than any breath, that shone and shone and shone in the endless sky. Rosa and Toby were standing now, staring at it. Analise stepped past me towards the water and turned around.

“There it is,” she whispered, “big as life.” I turned and watched her watch it, and the light bathed her face. “It’s beautiful,” she said to herself. I stepped towards her and tried to put my hand around her waist. She stepped away from me, towards Rosa and Toby. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”

Toby and Rosa stood entranced for a moment staring at the moon, then looked at one another, then at us. Analise walked towards them and said, “we can go now.” They all looked at me.

I said, “I’ll be right behind you. I just want to look at it a little longer.” They nodded and walked up the path into the copse of trees. I was now alone. The moon floated in the sky and shone into me. The water was terribly clear, and its light reached the bottom. I stepped towards it and could see the crabs skittering about on the bottom and the fish flying over their heads. There was a crunch underfoot: a broken shell reflected the moonlight. I picked up the pieces and held them in my hand. I squeezed them to feel something: the edges cut into my palm and fingers as I ground them into my skin. I was overcome with rage and fear and pity and contempt and distain and remorse and regret and confusion, and everything in my life up to this moment came crashing around my ears even as the waves licked my shoes.

I threw the pieces of shell into the sea. They soared through the air, seperating from one another in their flight, and impacted the surface of the sea like shotgun shot, leaving tiny craters on the surface that the moon shone on. The waves swallowed them. The moon behind me cast my shadow out on to the water. The light was bright, now. Maybe the tears in my eyes made everything seem to wobble, but I thought I saw small canoes coming across the water towards me from the mainland. For a moment I saw tiny torches floating and bobbing, then hundreds and thousands of lights filled my eyes. The water exploded in a million colors as the tears overflowed and dripped salt water down my face. I felt the blood in my hand and leaned down to rinse it off in the burning saltwater.

I walked back through the copse by myself, past the pile of shells I had smashed, now fresh and clean as though they had only just been deposited, past Sam Garland’s grave and the pile of shells that had grown since we passed it last till it loomed over me like a mountain without ever reaching the tree limbs overhead, through the tangle of branches and leaves and sand until I reached the road. Then I walked home alone.