'At the end of the island, we came across this young man sitting in the sand, staring out across the inlet toward Portsmouth. He looked thoughtful and lonely, and I walked up to him and asked if he’d take a picture of Maxine and me. He obliged us. Your brother was such a sad young man, Andy. We got to talking. He told me he’d just quit college. I don’t know what was wrong with him. Depression probably. Whatever it was, I don’t think he’d have lasted much longer.
'I asked what he was doing on Ocracoke. Said he didn’t know. That he’d just been driving around from place to place, had never seen the Outer Banks, and so decided to come here on a whim.
'My wife, being the sweet angel that she is, invited him for dinner. He said no at first, but I could tell he was desperate for the company. We finally convinced him.
'Had a lovely dinner that night. Afterwards, Orson and I retired to this room. Sat in these very chairs. We were drinking black coffee and he was telling me about your father dying of cancer.
'Of course Orson’s coffee contained a substantial dose of Rohypnol. Boy, it’s always fun to watch them realize that something’s not quite right. Orson was chatting away, and all of the sudden he stopped and jumped to his feet. His legs just turned to milk chocolate and he staggered back into the chair and sat down, his chest heaving away. I explained that he would be staying with us indefinitely. He pissed in that chair you’re sitting in.'
Rufus smiles. He sucks on the pipe but his flame has extinguished. He relights it and smoke clouds around him again like a foggy halo.
I’m fighting tears when I tell him, 'But I read Orson’s journals. That’s how I found your house. I read about him kidnapping Luther.'
Rufus shakes his head.
'You’re telling me Luther never attended Woodside College?'
'My boy never finished high school, Andy.'
'I don’t understand. Why would Orson make that—'
'It isn’t necessary that you understand. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first thing Orson made up.'
Rufus rises and walks over to the window. The sleet has turned to rain.
'I know Orson took you to his cabin several years ago,' Rufus says. 'He told me all about it. Please understand. That was a poorly rendered model of the experience you’re having with me.'
I cannot ignore the horror that statement inspires in me. Rufus sets his pipe on the windowsill and runs his fingers through his hair. Then he nods at something behind me and a needle stabs into my shoulder.
Maxine stands behind my chair in a nightgown.
'Come on, boy,' she says as the drug begins to envelop me. 'Time for beddie-bye.'
'Where are the girls, Rufus?' I ask. 'Please. Are they dead?'
'Come on, boy,' Maxine urges, pulling on my shoulder.
I rise to my feet, face the tiny old woman.
Then I punch her fucking lights out.
She hits the floor, unconscious. I hope I broke her jaw.
Rufus claps his hands and laughs and laughs.
'She is a pushy bitch, isn’t she? I’ve wanted to do that for forty-nine years.'
I start limping toward him, intending to rip him the fuck apart with whatever strength I can muster. But the drug overpowers me and I sit down on the floor.
Rufus stands over me now, grinning and shaking his head.
'Hope you killed her, cause Maxine’s gonna want a little payback after that sucker punch, and I’m not sure I can blame her.'
Rufus blurs.
The back of my head smacks the hardwood floor and I stare at the ceiling.
It’s sleeting again.
There’s no greater horror than knowing your mind is softening back into clay, and the potter is a psychopath.
# # #
Several weeks later, at sunset, the Kites take their class on a fishing fieldtrip to the ocean. It’s the first time Andy, Beth, or Vi have seen daylight in more than five months, and they emerge from the stone house as frail and sun-shy as astronauts returning to Earth after months in space.
Everyone except Maxine and Rufus piles into the back of the old pickup truck.
The class is giddy, and as the teacher cranks the engine and they roll down the driveway through the thicket of live oaks, Luther passes around the mask and gives everyone a hit of gas from the silver tank between his legs.
Through gaunt, sunken eyes, Beth looks over the edge at the path speeding beneath the tires. Vi leans her head against Luther’s shoulder, and Andy lies on the rusted bed, staring up through spindly, leafing branches at pieces of a cobalt sky.
He wears a silly grin on his face. They all do.
At the end of Old Beach Road, Rufus turns north onto Highway 12, and they cruise the strip, passing realties and B&Bs and motels and gift shops. The tourists are back, out in force on this cool spring evening.
Just beyond Howard’s, Rufus makes a right turn onto the dirt road called Ramp 72. For three miles, over tidewater creeks and marshland, it winds toward the ocean. When the dirt road turns to soft white sand, Rufus stomps the gas pedal, and the truck hauls through a gap in the dunes straight for the sea. Upon reaching the harder, tidesmoothed sand, Rufus turns south, the old pickup truck now hurtling to the end of the island.
The sky is endless out here, the ocean stretching east into approaching darkness, the sand reaching south and west into the horizon, where the falling daystar, now halfway below the dunes, deepens from red into oxblood.
The incoming tide runs up under the truck, and the tires spray cold saltwater on everyone. Laughter abounds. Gleeful shrieks. Even Luther smiles.
Headlights of other Jeeps and trucks are visible far in the distance, cutting their own trajectories across the beach. Rufus veers up into the softer sand to avoid a fisherman marching in waders out into the surf.
At the end of the island, Rufus parks the truck beyond the reach of the tide and kills the engine. With the vegetation of Ocracoke hidden beyond distant dunes, there is nothing to see but acres upon acres of white beach, the inlet and sand spits to the south, and the sea, now shimmering and crimson as it catches the parting rays of sunlight.
Rufus and Maxine step down into the sand.
'Off with the shoes!' Maxine declares. Though the bruise on her jaw is fading, she still speaks predominantly from the right side of her mouth.
The class climbs out of the truck and the barefooted party lumbers off together toward the sea, like a flock of psyche patients.
'Gas ’em up!' Rufus says, and Luther, toting the heavy tank, calls Andy, Beth, and Vi over and hits them again with a ridiculous dose of nitrous oxide.
'Let’s run into the ocean!' Vi screams, and she sprints toward the sea, followed by Beth and then Andy, limping on his bad leg.
Not until he’s knee-deep in saltwater does Andy register the stinging. Though it’s been more than a week, the wounds on his back and legs are still fresh and raw from his hour-long whipping session with Maxine. But they’re friends again. Because they’re even.
After a cold frolic in the ocean, Andy and Beth stagger down the beach toward the rest of their party. In the distance, Rufus and Maxine have stopped to talk to someone, and Luther has left the tank in the sand and gone running after Vi, who has taken it upon herself to hike to a rise of dunes a half mile away.
Beth and Andy fall down in the sand and laugh until it hurts.
Andy stops laughing when he doesn’t remember what he was laughing about.
'I’m so happy,' Beth says. 'I’ve never been so happy.'
'Oh fuck, my buzz is fading.'
They scramble to their feet and head for the tank. Andy puts the mask over his mouth and inhales several deep breaths.
'I think you have to turn it on!' Beth yells.
