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Shifting into drive, I stepped on the accelerator, the back tires slinging weeds and sand as the car surged between the elegiac live oaks and sped down the dirt road into thicket gloom.

Curtains of dying Spanish moss swept across the windshield, the Impala bumping along through puddles, over washboards that threatened to rattle the car apart.

When I reached the pavement of Kill Devil Road, I followed it east toward the ocean, past slumbering beach houses nestled among live oaks and yaupon.

I stopped at the intersection of Old Beach Road and Highway 12.

My insides quivered with nausea.

Night thawing in the eastern sky.

I knew the Kites were leaving Ocracoke by ferry.

That left me two choices.

They could either take the one departing from Silver Lake Harbor, or the ferry that embarked from the north end of the island. The ferries that left Silver Lake for Swan Quarter and Cedar Island ran less frequently and required reservations to insure passage. The ferry from Ocracoke to Hatteras was free and ran on the hour, beginning at 5:00 a.m.

The dashboard clock showed 4:49.

I scoped Highway 12, vacant at this hour, lights from the Pony Island Motel twinkling nearby.

Hatteras.

I punched the gas, accelerating through the northern outskirts of Ocracoke Village, past Jason’s Restaurant, the post office, Café Atlantic, and Howard’s Pub.

It was twelve lonely miles to the north end of Ocracoke and the ferry to Hatteras. I had eleven minutes to get there, in a shitty car, on the verge of losing consciousness.

The speedometer passed eighty, the engine screaming as the Ocracoke Light waned in the rearview mirror.

Gray dawnsky, dunes, and marsh blurring by.

The wild dog sea rabid and foaming.

Sleet ticking dryly on the windshield.

Pavement streamed under the car, the road reaching north into the dullblue nothingness of daybreak.

4:56.

I pushed the engine past eighty-five, the stench of hot metal seeping through the floorboards.

4:57.

For the first time I noticed my clothes—the fleece pants melted, my undershirt pocked with quarter-size, black-rimmed holes where the electricity had eaten the polyester.

4:58.

The world dimmed.

My head went light.

I slumped into the steering wheel, swerved into the other lane, tires dipping over the shoulder.

My vision sharpened.

I swung back into the road.

It ended.

Taillights ahead.

I stomped the brake, tires screeching.

In the immediate distance five cars waited in the boarding lane at one of the docks. As I steered the Impala to the back of the line, a crewman started waving vehicles onto a ferry vessel called the Kinnakeet.

First to board was a dilapidated old pickup truck, its puttering engine expelling gouts of smoke into the stonegray dawn.

67

THE Kinnakeet is a long barge, broad enough for four cars to park abreast. From the centerdeck rises a narrow three-story galley—restrooms on the first level, an observation lounge on the second, and crowned by a small pilothouse. North Carolina and United States flags hang regal from the mast.

The six vehicles on the 5:00 a.m. ferry were directed into two singlefile lines—three cars starboard, three portside.

I was parked in the back of my line, the Kites in the front of theirs, separated by the galley so that we couldn’t see each other.

As I turned back the ignition, the ferry’s engines went to work and the Kinnakeet wended slowly between the pylon bundles and away from the Ocracoke docks.

We chugged out into open water. The wind picked up, gusting now, shaking the car, sleet bouncing off the concrete deck, seagulls swarming the vacant stern, crying for a breakfast they would not receive at this hour.

The tip of Ocracoke dwindled into a smudge on the horizon, and suddenly there was nothing but mile upon mile of mercurycolored swells, the eastern sky flushing now with a tincture of purple.

Several passengers abandoned their cars and ascended the steps to the lounge—departing vacationers, workers making the long watery commute from Ocracoke to Hatteras. The gentleman in the Chevy Blazer directly in front of