Issue One

I am deep in North Carolina, inland below the Outer Banks. Nikki is ten years old, one of the pair of ten-year-olds I am traveling with. I allow her to choose the route. "This way," she says, pointing to a thin gray line that slid in the south direction. I see that it connects with another route, 258, that I would like to pick up, and so I give her the thumbs up for her choice.

We are whizzing along in a 1999 white Ford Explorer. She is a gas-guzzler but I like the compass just above the dashboard mirror. "Just make sure we always go south or east and we’ll be fine," I tell the two. The Explorer also tells me the time and outside temperature: 99 degrees and 4:00 PM.

At 10:30 PM, I am too tired to drive any longer. It is ten degrees cooler. I heave the Explorer up into the dusty parking lot of the Pecan Grove Motel. I choose the place because there is no way the Pecan Grove will be over 25 bucks a night. I am reminded of Hitchcock movies or black and whites that starred a young Robert Mitchum. It is a place where criminals in the ’40s and ’50s could have easily hid for a while to foil justice. Pecan Grove probably flourished in that time, when a person had a chance to run. Get a head start. Or maybe it was a place for people who were just plain scared. I am not scared but I have a feeling that the kids will be.

I am reminded of 1966, traveling with my grandparents. My grandfather liked to pull the nose of his ’65 Cadillac right to the front door of his freestanding cabin? Cabana? Little shack hotel room? What in the world is this type of place called?

I am sure there is a vacancy. I see one van parked quietly in front of number six. I ring the bell and a man not younger than 70 years old opens the top half of a door.

"Twenty-eight, ninety-five," he tells me, and I slide two bills towards him. He gives me change, two towels, a washcloth, a key and a gesture to cabin number two. Not a bad price for a memory and a bed.

Outside, the large lush trees (pecan?) ring with cicadas, crickets and other unidentifiable insect noises.

"There’s no phone," Nikki observes first.

"It smells," Sam tells me.

"It’s old," I point out. "Put the air conditioner on." I gesture towards the sagging brown box in the window.

I hear the poor old machine roar up loud and never guess that by morning it would barely be heard. It sadly made more noise than cold air. As predicted, the dark night scares the living daylights out of my companions, so it was I who made four trips out to the Ford to bring our luggage in. The last trip was to retrieve the sleeping bags and pillows when they flatly told me they were not going to sleep on strange sheets. They had turned back the covers at the Wilderness Hotel in Disneyland and I remember both of them hogging the sheets at the Courtyard Marriott in Washington. I don’t want to know why not here, though after looking at the worn, mushy bed, I have a pretty good idea.

"What now?" I ask their sarcastic, angry expressions.

"The TV," Nikki says, as if I’m supposed to know what that means.

"What about it?" I yell from the spacious bathroom with the ripped linoleum.

"The knob fell off in Sam’s hand," she reports.

I put the knob back on the television and realize it must be the same television I turned off back in ’66 as my grandfather revved the Caddy up for take off.

"You turn it, you don’t pull or push buttons on these kinds of televisions. It’s a turn" I show them how to turn the two knobs and demonstrate the physical effort it takes to crank it towards one of the three channels. They are confused about channels that don’t exist and come up fuzzy and gray. I have to explain to them that that’s how it used to be. If it’s not a channel, the television doesn’t skip over it, nor does it tell you what would be there if you were a subscriber. This television shows, not tells, that it is not a channel.

It’s one thing to tell your children how it was, and quite another to watch them live it. Their faces are confused question marks. No cable. No remote. No shampoo in the bathroom. No ice machine. No room service to call. No light over the bed. No candy on the pillow. No triangle carefully folded at the tip of fresh toilet paper. An old man instead of a young maid.

As if they’re not scared enough, we decide to watch the news. We are close to the Atlantic where recently five unfortunate people drowned, caught in rip tides. There is a clip about the most recent shark attacks along the Australian coast, which to a ten-year old is just outside the door. In another story, the camera pans over the millions, billions of grasshoppers that died out at sea and now line the coastal beaches. A wind problem, the newscaster explains. A strange shift. Confused crazed grasshoppers. From my cot, I see them grip the edges of their Marlboro sleeping bags. The ones that I got for cashing in 470 cigarette-pack miles.

We did not take showers the next day and messed up the bed a bit before we left. I wet a towel and opened the soap.

"I don’t want the old man to think we didn’t use the place," I tell the kids, feeling a bit like a Hitchcock story. I am someone with something to hide.

Three hours later, the 1999 white Ford Explorer rolled and rocked down the dirt pothole-riddled road where Rae lives. Falling trailers and rotted homes strangled by the brush flanked the way. Panting mongrels walked along side of us, as if escorting us to our final destination. When we piled out of the vehicle they jumped on us as if we had known them forever.

Rae’s home is a shack and I instantly love it. It is gray from the weather. There is white peeling paint hanging in shreds from her sides and deep dipped slopes in the roof. The front porch sags. I knew right away that I wouldn’t be needing my high heel shoes or lipstick for a while. I did know enough to tell the kids to bring in their sleeping bags. They were going to want them here.

Rae is pleased to see us and she proves it by bringing out some Budweisers, a bottle of cheap Merlot and a half carton of cigarettes. My vacation has finally begun.

I cushion the old wooden rocker that sits on the porch with some comforters that I find on the front lawn, and settle in. Rae is in a torn flowered dress. I remember the time she bought that dress for a quarter at a church rummage sale in Cattaraugus County, New York, long before she became a Creeker. The shoulder strap falls and she lets it hang even though it interferes with her drinking motion.

"I don’t even wear underwear around here. It’s so damn hot," Rae says when I complain about the heat. "Look!" She shows me something and laughs hysterically.

The dogs belong to no one and have no formally given names. Rae tells us to call them Shorty, Dixie, Hanks, Sweep, Bob and Queen. The cat is Mugger.

"They don’t come when they are called but it makes all of us feel better if they have a name," she adds.

Nikki may have picked the route, but it was I who chose the destination. We are with the Creekers. A name that has nothing to do with a creek since there isn’t a creek nearby. The Pamlico Sound is down, the road but we are told it’s too weedy to swim. Three dirt roads connect the group of people who, like Rae, live in either run down homes or long trailers. Rae says that when she tells people where she lives, they say, "Oh you’re a Creeker." She waves her hand in the air and continues, "People are afraid of Creekers and won’t come down this way. I don’t know why, it’s not that bad. You’re the first real company I’ve had since I’ve been here." She’s been there a year.

A large old car rolls by and Rae yells out. "Friends! From New York!"

The passengers eye the Explorer and one of them asks what it is. Rae tells them it’s big and that’s all they need to know. The woman driving is drinking a Bud and tells us that she found herself a cowboy. The man leans forward so we can have a better look at him. He does resemble a cowboy but only because of the hat he’s wearing. I figure if he took it off he would look like the rest of us. I hear Rae explain to the woman that it’s not legal to give your kid away even if it is for only six months while she travels with her cowboy. The woman waves Rae off and they roll away. Dust and dogs are their wake. The dogs see she is going nowhere so return to crowd the porch.

The ten-year-olds think the Explorer has landed in heaven and have a ball rummaging through the stuff on the property. There is a torn up 1973 Recreational Vehicle that Rae’s dad is going to someday fix up and leave forever in. There is a shed stacked to the gills with whatever comes to mind, from old eight-track tapes to wrought iron poles to tools to wood pieces to dirty old lawn ornaments. I went through the shed in search of something good and took a moldy, low beach chair I thought I could use in Hatteras—the way home. Rae tells me that in one of the sheds there is soap, shampoo and dog-food, stuff her dad took from the local department store garbage.

"He’s a diver. A dumpster diver." She tossed me a can of lime smelling gel soap. "He got a case of these last month." I beg her to take me diving but she tells me that lately the pickings are slim because the store has started locking their dumpsters. She thinks it’s a shame. Homeless people could use the stuff. I agree with her. She shows me a case of perfectly good taco mix retrieved from a supermarket dumpster.

The bedtime experience isn’t as bad as it was in Pecan Grove for my companions because I believe they are distracted and delighted by Rae’s big screen television, complete with remote. Her air conditioner battles the 92-degree humid heat with ferocious energy, and the remodeling she’s done inside helps them forget where we are.

I made a vow that before I left I would kill the cockroach that Rae said lived in the bathroom. One night I almost cornered him but, when I approached with my sandal, he started running towards me. Not away, like a regular cockroach. Things are different in North Carolina.

We awake to the sound of a tractor engine, and all join on the porch. It is Creeker Larry who, for reason unknown to Rae, has never walked and speaks slurred. Behind the rusty tractor he is pulling a wooden wagon filled with watermelons and tomatoes. Rae offers him a cup of strong coffee; he declines but gives her one of the melons and a couple of tomatoes. I listen to their morning conversation and learn that Larry’s mother lives in the shack across the road. From where I stand, I can see the ripped screens of her front porch and wonder at its abandoned appearance. Apparently, Larry keeps taking his mother’s furniture and blankets for his own trailer, leaving her with nothing. Rae yells at him for this as his twisted hand waves goodbye. I watch as the wheels of his vehicle crush the large empty clamshells someone has tossed in the road. The dogs do not follow Creeker Larry.

There are no annoying laws living where the Creekers live. Dogs can exist without numbers and shots. Rae said that the cops never ever come into the woods. Speeding down the road is impossible and taxes on a shack are 100 dollars a year. It is easy living as a Creeker.

Ten miles down the road onto highway 70 you can pick up a Carolina Skiff to take you to Shackleford Island and look for wild horses. Closer than that is the town of Morehead—a long street of strip malls and T-shirt sales. Atlantic Beach has public access to the ocean and there are plenty of places to dine—both casual and elegant. But these are the places that I skip because these types are everywhere. You can’t find the Creekers just anywhere, you gotta know someone. And pick a good route.