Ocracoke was one of the barrier island strips of sand along the coast that kept the ocean from reaching the mainland. It bore the brunt of the angry sea and would soon serve that purpose again, according to the weather broadcast coming over her radio. Lizbeth didn’t care. Today the sun was shining and the skies were clear. Memories of her previous trips to Ocracoke flooded her mind as she drove past the waving sea oats on top of the dunes lining the ocean side of the road.
Lizbeth had been a regular visitor, with her family, every summer as far back as she could remember, until she turned sixteen. That was the summer she met James and begged to stay in Durham with a friend. Maybe things would have worked out differently if she had joined her family, but then she wouldn’t have her daughter. She thought about the first summer she brought Mazie down to Ocracoke. Laughing and kicking at the surf when it washed across her toes, at only six months old, she took to the water like a duck. That was back when she and James, though faced with the stress of being very young, new parents, were still happy and in love. Lizbeth tried to remember the pleasant times when she could, but the bad still outweighed the good.
Sea oats and twisted live oaks sprung up along the highway. Six miles into the drive, Lizbeth passed the Banker Pony pens, on the Sound side, where the National Park Service maintained a herd of about thirty formerly wild ponies. The ponies roamed freely for two hundred years, at times in herds as large as five hundred head. Depending on the story one chose to believe, the Banker Ponies were the descendents of animals left by Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition, Spanish ponies brought by DeSoto, or shipwreck survivors of vessels that lost the battle with the Diamond Shoals. The infamous shoals off the coast of North Carolina earned the nickname, “The Graveyard of the Atlantic,” now host to countless souls.
The island, a slender splinter in the Atlantic, grew broader then thinner again, as Lizbeth watched the Pamlico Sound come in and out of view. From an aerial map, Lizbeth thought the island looked like a fishing rod with the village resembling the reel, attached on the Sound side and protected from the ocean waves. She slowed the Mustang down to a crawl on the outskirts of civilization, represented by the first manmade structures looming up out of the marsh on the right. The charm of Ocracoke Village, like its speed limits, brought the hurried world to a creeping pace. The meandering speed prevented Lizbeth from running over several tourists, who were trying to share the skinny road with the vehicular traffic. She couldn’t wait to park her car.
Highway 12 turned into Harbor Road as it snaked to the right around Silver Lake Harbor. The sign at the turnoff for Howard Street read, “Drive Real, Real Slow,” another reminder of the slow pace of island life. Howard Street had never been modernized. It was merely a lane used by the residents to reach their houses, some of them standing since the early 1700’s. The street was paved with only crushed oyster shells, hard packed in the sandy loam. Moss-covered picket fences lined Howard Street, shaded by a live oak canopy entangled with cedar trees. With so few vehicles passing through, the road took visitors back in time, engulfing them in the quaint old cottages interspersed with aged family cemeteries.
Lizbeth pulled into the driveway of the familiar cottage. It was a classic “story and a jump” style, prevalent in the original homes. The “jump” consisted of the two bedrooms upstairs, shaped by the steeply slanting roof, having only half windows and low, cramped ceilings. Downstairs, at the front of the cottage, a narrow hallway leading to the dining area and kitchen at the rear intersected a small parlor and another bedroom. The wooden, slat-sided exterior was painted white, with blue trim. A sitting porch wrapped its way around the front and right sides of the house. The porch was screened-in, top to bottom. Two old rocking chairs and a small table sat next to the front door. A day bed called to Lizbeth from the side porch for her to come and take a nap. She dearly wished she could.
After an already long day of travel, she was anxious to unpack the car. Lizbeth pulled in slowly, passing the red brick chimney, and stopped at the end of the driveway. She fished around in her purse and finally located the keys to the cottage. Her great-aunt, Minnie, had lived in the cottage all her life. She played hostess to Lizbeth’s family and all the other members of the Jackson clan that had a notion to spend time on the island every summer. Aunt Minnie was a true “O’coker,” always welcoming her guests with smile and a bear hug. She would forever hold a special place in the Jackson family. She passed several years ago, leaving the cottage to Lizbeth’s cousins, who graciously agreed to let Lizbeth rent it this Fall at a discounted price. Still, this little sabbatical was costing Lizbeth nearly ten thousand dollars. She could afford it. Her ex-husband was paying dearly for his unfaithfulness.
Lizbeth got out of the car, stretching up to the sky, taking in a huge breath of the fresh island air. She opened the trunk and began the task of unloading the car. Using the key, she let herself in through the front door while balancing a box of papers on one hip. The cottage was spotlessly clean. Lizbeth knew her cousin Sharon had someone come in and make the place ready for her. She would have to remember to send her a thank you note.
She put the box down on the end of the couch and took a tour of what would be her home for the next fourteen weeks. The cottage, built in the late 1800’s, had few alterations over the years. With good maintenance, the cottage had survived hurricanes, tropical storms, and nor’easters for more than a century. White bead board covered the walls of the small rooms and low ceilings. A fireplace dominated one wall in the parlor and was bookended by windows made of antique panes of glass, the bubbles and swirls giving away their age. A few panes had been replaced over the years and were easily distinguished from the originals by their lack of imperfections.
The floors were old wood planking, worn smooth from years of sandy feet. The cousins had recently had the floors resurfaced, the final coat still glistening from its recent polish. The bedroom, across from the parlor, had two sets of twin beds stuffed into the tiny space. There was barely room to move in between the four beds. Now that it was a rental property, Lizbeth assumed they were trying to get as many beds in the small cottage as possible. Down the hall, on the same side as the parlor, was the only bathroom, with a tub, toilet, and sink all crammed into the tiny room. The recently repaneled walls enveloped her in the aroma of cedar.
At the end of the hall, the kitchen, a long narrow room, ran the entire width of the cottage with a breakfast nook at one end. Lizbeth found a bottle of wine on the top shelf of the otherwise empty refrigerator. A note and a bow were attached to the neck of the bottle. The note was from her cousin, telling her to enjoy her stay. Lizbeth intended to do just that as soon as she finished unloading the car. She opened the back door, stepping onto the little porch, where someone had left a few fishing rods, a tackle box, and a bicycle. She wasn’t sure she would do much fishing, but the bike would come in handy. No one who lived on the island drove around the village. Everyone walked or rode a bike. It was part of the charm of Ocracoke, to leave modern conveniences to the mainlanders.
A few modern conveniences were a blessing though. The old cistern, beside the house, was no longer needed to collect fresh water, but remained as an ode to the days before the island had a municipal water system. Thank goodness the outhouse was no longer necessary. Central heat and air had been added to the cottage in the nineties; until then the only air conditioning was the breeze from outside. The temperature today was in the upper eighties, with not much wind. Houses and trees sheltered shady Howard Street from the light breeze. Lizbeth began to sweat in the heavy humidity. She turned the air-conditioning on after a few trips up to the stuffy second floor. The cottage had been unoccupied for a few days and with the recent temperatures, it needed a good airing out. Lizbeth would open all the windows later, after dark, to freshen the air, but right now, she needed to cool the place down.
She chose the bedroom upstairs that looked out over Howard Street. She noticed an old woman sitting on the porch of the cottage across from her. The woman was working intently on a large bowl of snap beans, breaking off the ends and snapping the beans in two. She did this while watching the people walking up and down the street, stopping her snapping to wave or smile occasionally at a passerby. The woman was a local and vaguely familiar to Lizbeth. She knew she was a friend of her Aunt and remembered meeting her many years ago, although she could not, at the moment, recall her name.
At last, she shut all the doors on the car and locked it. Lizbeth hoped not to have to get back in it for a very long time. Now all she needed to do was make the walk down to the Community Store for supplies. It would take several trips over the next few days to get everything she would need, because she could only buy what she could carry. Lizbeth had packed a cooler with some meat, a few dry goods, and fresh vegetables, but she needed bread and milk. She’d have to check the bathroom for toilet paper. This wasn’t the sort of place where she could just pop off to the Seven-Eleven if she ran out in the middle of the night.
Lizbeth grabbed the canvas shopping bags hanging in the kitchen and headed out the front door. She had just stepped into the street when the lady on the porch called out to her.
“Howdy, neighbor.”
Lizbeth smiled, walking across the lane to the picket fence in front of the other woman’s home. She could see the woman clearly now through the screen guarding her porch from the ever-present mosquitoes. She had the worn leathery skin of someone who had spent many years outside. Her long hair was gray and pulled back in a ponytail. She looked to be in her seventies, but her blue eyes sparkled like a child’s.
Lizbeth answered, “Howdy to you, too.”
“You must be one of those Jackson girls. Y’all look so much alike.”
“Yes ma’am. I’m Lizbeth Jackson. My daddy is Aunt Minnie’s sister Olive’s grandson, David.” Lizbeth knew it was important to get the genealogy lined out for older folks. It helped them put things in perspective.
“Yes, Lizbeth, I ‘member you. You ain’t been to these parts in a while now.”
“No, ma’am. I haven’t been down to the cottage in fifteen years. My ex-husband’s family has a cottage in Atlantic Beach, so I spent my vacations there. I missed the island though. I can’t believe how much it’s grown.”
“Yep, they keep building more places to put those dingbatters. They’ll sink this island one day, with all their commercializin’.”
Dingbatter was a reference to the off-islander, or tourist, and usually not a bright one. A dingbatter might ask, “What time does the two o’clock ferry leave?” This and other unique words and unusual ways of using existing words, found on Ocracoke, had driven Lizbeth to study the locals’ distinctive way of speaking. She was happy to have such a perfect subject for her study right across the street. Lizbeth listened as all the long “i” sounds became “oi” in the older woman’s brogue. Island became oiland, like became loike, tide became toide, and so on. It was music to a Linguistic Anthropologist’s ears.
“Well, at least Howard Street is the same,” Lizbeth said. “I’m so sorry, but I cannot remember your name.”
“Darlin’, I’d forget it myself if they didn’t call me by it at least onc’t a day. It’s Fanny O’Neal.”
“Oh, yes, Miss Fanny, now I remember. It’s so good to see you again.” Lizbeth added the appropriate Miss, in the classic southern show of respect for one’s elders.
Fanny smiled broadly, her leather skin creasing into deep dimples on both cheeks. Fanny had smiled often in her lifetime. She asked Lizbeth, “How long you here for?”
“I’ll be here until mid December. I hope we can become great friends.”
“Well, Lizbeth, I don’t see that as bein’ no hard task.” Fanny flicked a bean tip off her lap, and added, “Where you off to?”
Lizbeth could have stood there listening to Fanny talk for hours and had forgotten about the canvas bags in her hand. Suddenly reminded, she answered, “I have to go to the Community Store for a few things.”
“First thing I’ll tell ya’ is buy your groceries off island. They charge a right lot for their wares down here,” Fanny offered.
“I brought most of what I need for this coming week. Later I’ll have to make a trip to Avon for bulk shopping, but for now it’s the Community Store for me,” Lizbeth said, smiling, holding up the bags.
Fanny seemed to be enjoying having someone with whom to talk. She continued, “My granddaughter, Gray, takes me up the beach ‘bout onc’t a month to get supplies. You’ll meet her. She lives here with me. You might remember her. Y’all are ‘bout the same age.”
“Maybe, I don’t remember much, just flashes. I was so young all those years ago. In any case, I look forward to meeting her,” Lizbeth said, then looked up at the sky. “It’s getting late. I better get moving. It was so nice to see you again, Miss Fanny.”
“If you’re out later, come on over and sit on the pizer and we’ll visit some more,” Fanny said, with a wave and a smile.
Pizer, pronounced with a long “i,” was the Ocracoke word for porch. Lizbeth suspected it was a bastardization of the word piazza. She smiled, saying, “Thank you for the invitation. I’ll take you up on it, if not tonight, sometime very soon,” before walking away.
As she walked toward the store, Lizbeth reveled in the feeling that she had done the right thing in coming here. Her work would be rewarding and her life was finally on a positive track. She was so happy she couldn’t hold it in. She felt wonderful and even skipped a few steps, before she thought about what she must look like, a grown woman skipping down the road with a grin on her face. Then, changing her mind, she smiled even more broadly and began to skip once again.