[37]
Wanchese, 1994
Buckley boarded the Tide, Paddy John’s thirty-six-foot North Carolina sportfisherman, at four in the morning to prepare the day’s tackle, rods, and bait. His thumbs and biceps ached from the previous day, when he’d had to brace himself in the fighting chair and reel in that Ohio lady’s blue marlin. His head hurt too because after the trip the three couples who’d chartered the boat had offered to take the captain and his first mate out for beers. Buckley cursed Paddy John, who knew Buckley couldn’t drink. Buckley should’ve refused outright, but Paddy John was a stubborn old man these days and wouldn’t take no for an answer from anybody.
Buckley, Paddy John, and the three vacationing couples sat at the Wanchese Marina’s bar, Pirate’s Way, drinking draft beers until past ten o’clock. Paddy John told one story after another, and Buckley kept saying, “We should go. Joan and Sissy come tomorrow.”
“We’re fine,” Paddy John said. “Have another beer.” In the cabin, Buckley popped two aspirin and sat in the recliner. He couldn’t believe he’d been in Wanchese five years now, watching the sun rise, watching the sun set, fishing for marlin and yellowfin tuna, king mackerel and wahoo. Watching the seagulls and the pelicans and the silver fish circling his fingers in the greenish brown muck of the Wanchese Marina. Buckley never thought he would live by the ocean, not after what had happened to his mother, and he told Paddy John as much that first day, riding from the bus depot in Elizabeth City to Wanchese. Paddy John said, “There’s a time when you have to let go.”
Now, according to Paddy John and evidenced by the tips Buckley raked in from the grateful fishermen, Buckley was a top-notch first mate. Paddy John said, “You’re as good as Tide ever was.” Paddy John was quiet then. It had been a long time since Tide had been good at much. It’d been a long time since Paddy John had spoken to his son. Buckley, on the other hand, kept in touch with Tide, but he knew enough to keep quiet. If he told Paddy John that he was still helping Tide with his bills and rent, Paddy John would be disappointed. It was better that Paddy John think Tide was making his own way in the world.
Buckley’s brown hair had grown shaggy and golden in the North Carolina sun. His stocky frame had grown muscular from life on the water. He was often mistaken for Paddy John’s son, and Paddy John never corrected the mistake. “Buckley,” Paddy John often remarked, “has grown up to be a good man.” He told Buckley, “Your mother would be proud of you.” There was nothing better, Buckley thought, than hearing those words and believing them true. She had loved the ocean. Now he did too, making it his home.
Today, Buckley was eager for the day to end and it hadn’t even begun. He looked forward every year to the two-week vacation he and Paddy John spent with Sissy and Joan Holt. They didn’t go anywhere or do much of anything. They rested. They sat on the deck of Paddy John’s beach house, a house built from cedar in 1946. They watched the ocean, the rise and fall of the tide, the stars’ and the moon’s reflection on the water. They walked the beach. Buckley read Paddy John’s dusty paperbacks, and each evening, Paddy John manned the grill while Buckley mixed tropical drinks, keeping Sissy and Joan happy. Joan Holt was very old. Ninety-something. Buckley guessed a hundred. She talked incessantly before nodding to sleep in the rocker while Sissy rolled her eyes at Joan’s musings. Joan rattled on about Wally Holt and her own mother—who survived the 1900 hurricane that killed more than eight thousand in Galveston, surviving with baby Joan swaddled and bound to her chest. It was a great story, but Sissy had heard it a hundred-plus times. Joan rattled on about the carnage of the sea oats; about the kids today, who no longer respect nature. Her mother had seen Mother Nature at Her most furious, and she’d taught Joan to respect Her.
Paddy John told Buckley, “Sissy won’t make it after Joan dies.”
Buckley wouldn’t think about Joan dying.
Paddy said, “She’s had a good life.”
Buckley tuned him out. Joan’s life is not past tense. He knew more than anyone the inevitability of death. We are born. We live. We die. But he wouldn’t anticipate anyone’s death, no matter how old the person was.
Joan was wrinkled from the Texas sun, so wrinkled that someone who didn’t know her might turn away. Sometimes she didn’t make sense, but the sound of her voice was like the sound of the ocean to Buckley. It soothed him.
This year, thought Buckley, wiping the salt from the captain’s bridge, will be our best yet.
At five-thirty, Paddy John boarded the Tide. He said, “They’re calling for gale-force winds offshore. I’m not going to risk it.”
Buckley emerged from the cabin, his head still foggy with last night’s beer.
“I thought you’d be glad. Let’s close her up.”
“Are there really gale-force winds?”
“There can always be gale-force winds.” Paddy John, his face cut deep with age, smiled. Birds chirped as first light appeared. “Get to work.”
Buckley rinsed out the big coolers and set the minnows in the well free. He carried the rods into the cabin and unfastened the fighting chair. He grinned.
For the past five years, Buckley R. Pitank had been happy—winning at the game of life. He helped out on the boat and around the house. In the fall, he boarded the windows when the National Weather Service called for nor’easters and hurricanes. He and Paddy John huddled in the living room, a bottle of whiskey and a candle between them. The island evacuated while he and Paddy John remained. After the storms blew through, Buckley was on the ladder, a pouch of nails at his waist, pulling down boards, reattaching shingles and siding, doing what needed to be done. It felt good to be needed.
When the storms devastated the island, Buckley and Paddy John delivered bottled water to many of the locals, who, like them, had chosen to stay.
For these five years, Buckley walked the cool sands of South Nags Head at night. He walked the beach just below where the sea oats rise and fall in the salty wind, watching sea turtles trek from the ocean to the dunes, watching ghost crabs scamper before his bare feet. He walked for miles thinking about nothing but the feel of sand on the soles and balls of his feet, the taste of salt on his lips. When the thunderstorms came, he watched the lightning play on the black water and remembered Becca Burke’s painting, Fish, Number Fourteen.