Up Through the Water

Начало книги

The author would like to thank Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her good advice and encourage, ment. And also Judy Sandman, Craig Mueller, and Paul Ross Leslie for their careful attention to the book.

If you come as most do, down 17, it's around Elizabeth City that the air gets the first sting of salt and handfuls of lost and disoriented gulls circle dumpsters. Then come the ten-shack towns of Camden, Shiloh, Jarvisburg, and Point Harbor, the road between them shaded on one side by low lush woods, green so deep its nearly black, and big-leafed tobacco plants lined out on the other. Warm blond peaches and watermelon are sold from stands at dusty intervals along the road. The bridge begins at Old Point and four miles later, the car delicately balancing like a high-wire acrobat over Currituck Sound, the outer banks swing out from the coast of North Carolina like the bony curve of a woman ship. Then the long descent past Duck Beach, then Kitty Hawk where Orville and Wilbur first flew, then Kill Devil Hill where a witch that makes the fish run lives in a shack on the dunes. Down by the arcades and Dairy Queens of Nags Head, past the birdish cottages on stilts in Waves, the road flares out to Avon and Buxton, where on bad days surfers play pinball and check the water every hour for a rise. The zebra-striped lighthouse signals Hatteras and road's end. Farther still the blue smear of the Atlantic and the wait for the boat that will ferry you across to Ocracoke Island.

Читать дальше →