2021
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
roach over his gaping mouth, and then the building suddenly becomes engulfed in flames. In my head, he still eats the cicada. After Uncle Peter died, his wife and two daughters moved back up to Chatham, hoping to cure their haunted dreams of smoke and fire with salt air. Uncle Peter doesn’t have a grave here, just a rock with his name carved above the outline of a seagull. It is an unspoken understanding among my family that when you die, you have the option to remain on the island as a bird, shifting shapes within the protected coast of Morris Island. Uncle Peter would always be flying overhead, and that was better than any grave site or tombstone. Uncle Peter’s rock sits in a garden next to our house on Tisquantum Road, surrounded by bird feeders and nests woven from sticks and beach grass. That’s where my dad was driving when he left Popi’s house on Edgewater Drive and hit one hundred miles per hour on the half-mile strip of concrete connecting us. It was a game, reaching a hundred on the causeway. Every now and then you’ll hear an engine roaring across late at night and wonder if they made it to the end, and if the speed took them to that place they so desperately needed to be.
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
50
EVERY
NOW
The causeway is the only place within walking distance of the public beach where you can park for free. You’ll have to beat the clammers who park alongside the road when they’re digging in Stage Harbor, so don’t try to find a space at low tide. A few years ago, the town voted on whether or not to pave a parking lot over the marsh that grows
AND THEN
you’ll hear an engine roaring across late at night and wonder if they made it to the end, and if the speed took them to that place they so desperately needed to be.
Monomoy Island (MA) (batik on silk, 48x36) by Mary Edna Fraser