engine. You in the navy?” The kid nodded and McGinnes told him of a base he had once been fictitiously stationed on. We were driving out of town.
“What was it like? Hopping a train, I mean.”
“I’ll tell you what,” McGinnes said. “Let’s grab some cold beer, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I hunched down in the seat and folded my arms. I closed my eyes, confident that when I opened them next we would be parked in front of the Gates motel.
I woke early the next morning, hiked back into the woods, and found my knapsack in the clearing. Returning to the room, I woke McGinnes, showered, shaved, and gathered up our gear.
After checking out we stopped for coffee and juice, then got back on the highway and traveled east to 158, then south across a bridge over the intracoastal waterway, our windows down and the radio up.
Less than two hours later we crossed the bridge at Point Harbor and, announcing ourselves with a raucous whoop from McGinnes, rolled onto the Outer Banks.
TWENTY
SO, JOHNNY,” I said. “Who’s Virginia Dare?” We were driving down the beach road that bore her name. To our left were oceanfront cottages and houses on pilings.
“First child born in this country to English parents.”
“I’m impressed.”
“And I’m hungry. Let’s get some breakfast,” he said, and then, embarrassed, as if having knowledge of the state history was in some way a feminine trait, added, “Besides, I gotta’ lay some pipe.”
We switched over to the 158 bypass and pulled into the lot of a pancake house. It was warm as summer but there were few patrons. The town was in its off-season.
McGinnes ordered a pot of coffee, french toast topped with a fried egg, sausage, and practically everything else from the kitchen that would clog an artery. I had eggs over easy and scrapple.
When we finished, McGinnes grabbed a section of the USA Today he was “reading” and a book of matches and headed for the bathroom. I borrowed the phone directory and a blank sheet of paper from the cashier and wrote down the names and addresses of several restaurants.
Back in the lot I removed my sweatshirt and tossed it in the backseat. We drove to a variety store on the highway, where McGinnes bought sandwiches, beer, and ice for the cooler. While he did that, I pumped gas into my Dodge, then paid a young attendant who had a back wider than a kitchen table. He sang “Tennessee Stud” while I gave him the money and kept singing it as he walked back into the garage where he was working.
We returned to the Virginia Dare Trail and drove south out of Kitty Hawk, through Kill Devil Hills, past the Wright Brothers Memorial and into Nags Head. All of these towns were pleasant and indistinguishable from one another. Near the huge dune of Jockeys Ridge we stopped at a motor court named the Arizona and checked in.
We changed into shorts and walked across the road to the beach. We put our gear down in front of a white cottage on stilts that had boarded windows. The tide was receding and the swells were high at four feet and breaking far from the shore.
When I broke a sweat, I jogged to the shoreline and dove in the ocean. The water was pleasantly cold and clean. I swam parallel to the shore for roughly a quarter mile, then breaststroked back and rode in a few waves.
McGinnes handed me a cold beer as I toweled off. I drank it sitting upright on the blanket. McGinnes pulled another beer from the cooler and announced that he was going for a walk. I watched him go north, stopping to talk to an old man wearing long pants, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap.
When I finished my beer, I pulled another from the ice and walked up the wooden steps and onto the porch of the white cottage. The window frames were peeling and the rusted storm door was permanently weathered half-open. Wooden Adirondack chairs painted a bright green sat in front of the boarded bay window on the splintering deck. I turned one of them to face the ocean, sat in it, and put my feet up on the railing.
The constant crash of the waves was punctuated by the cries of a flock of gulls that sat on the gravelly beach. A young father was surf fishing a hundred yards down the beach, his tackle box, white bucket, and cooler by his