Chapter Fifteen: Hazard
“Here we fucking go!” Hazard shouts it to the sky.
He shouldn’t feel this good. Obviously. He knows that. When there’s a hurricane barreling toward his home, barreling toward his community. He should feel awful! Worried sick. Or furious with the fates. When, almost certainly, the people he cares most about are going to suffer—property damaged, property lost; god forbid, life lost. When the landscape that, daily, brings him joy is about to be battered, inundated, maybe rendered unrecognizable. When, if the forecasts are right, the road to recovery will be a long and a costly one.
Orville should feel like a curse. But instead, god forgive him, it feels like a gift. He can’t help it. As soon as he saw the first cone of possibility arcing toward the islands he perked up. He’s followed the updates with a fervor he usually reserves for the Wolfpack. And now, as his phone finally sounds with the order to evacuate, he laughs.
“Here we fucking go!”
The thing is, his excuse? Moments like these, they’re what he’s made for. An ace in a crisis, so he’s always considered himself. Doubtless this has something to do with his infantry training, something to do with his four tours, but he believes his proclivity predates the US Army. Is, in fact, his birthright. Which the Army simply harnessed for its imperial aims.
Really, it’s when he hasn’t got a crisis on his hands that he struggles. When, per his third therapist, he feels the need to invent one, to make the world feel right again, to give himself something to do.
Which is why Orville’s timing, for him, couldn’t be better. With the end of the theater season in sight, with the clock running out on his turn as Don Quixote, it was beginning to creep upon him, that old familiar feeling, that knowing: if something didn’t change soon he would have to change something—regardless of the cost or collateral damage. The Hand, as he calls it, was tightening its grip.
But no longer! He’s been freed. Given a purpose and direction. Given marching orders, almost literally. Given a new role to play, not so different from that of Quixote, not even so different from that of the Soldier—a man of action and of service.
Isn’t it funny how freedom can come from constraint? How the most turbulent times allow him the clearest sense of self? It’s funny, or it’s fucked up. But, it is how it is. How he is.
“Here we fucking go!”
He’s up on the roof of the Visitor Center with Clive, they’re on the clock for the Wright Brothers National Memorial, waiting for Rick to climb up with another box of screws so they can finish boarding over the last of these second-story windows. The arches, through which the sky enters the room below.
They’ve been at it all morning—he and Rick and Clive—sweating, collecting splinters, shooting the shit, while they prepared the structure for the storm. They’ve already secured the ground floor, two full walls of picture windows designed to let tourists stand beside the to-scale model of the Wright Flier that is the Center’s pride and joy and imagine it taxiing down the field beyond them, the field where the real plane really did take off, and then—miracle of miracles, triumph of physics, victory of human ingenuity—rising into the sky.
It’s a great choice, all that glass, if you want to evoke the feeling of being back with the brothers on that famous day—on December 17th, 1903. But it does present a vulnerability when hurricane force winds are on their way.
Which maybe makes the building like the Banks themselves—doomed, in the final analysis, by their design, however lovely they might be for a visit in friendly weather.
“Sure, yeah, but we’re all doomed, aren’t we?” Clive protests. “Ultimately, it’s a matter of time for us all.”
This Hazard has to concede. Which maybe makes both the building and the Banks fine metaphors for life itself. Precarious, impractical, treasures that we shore up for as long as we are able, until the day finally comes when they—when we—are swept away. Born back into the ocean from whence we came.
“Precisely,” Clive says. “Which is why I say, live it up while you’ve got the chance. When you might lose it all tomorrow, today you’ve got to seize the day.”
“Seize the day!” the men shout it out together.
Into the clear blue, into the calm. Because, the sky is giving no hint of the chaos to come. By early morning, so the forecast says, the rains will begin. But for now, it’s clear skies, a light breeze, the perfect late summer afternoon. Hazard breathes it in and surveys the scene, his workaday world, from a new perspective.
A perspective just a little bit closer to that of Orville as he rose from the earth and flew—flew!—for twelve seconds, one hundred and twenty feet.
It sounds like nothing—this is what Hazard likes to say when he’s leading the tours—but close your eyes and count it out. One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten…eleven…twelve…and all that time, wind in your face, ground gone below you, you know you are feeling what no human has ever felt before, a freedom your species has only ever dreamed of for three hundred thousand years.
That’s the magic of the Wrights’ story, isn’t it? The reason people still pilgrimage to this site more than a century later. Because what the brothers did stands as proof: that in an instant the impossible—an impossible dream—can be transformed into a foregone conclusion.
They come to wonder at the feat, but more than that, Hazard thinks, they come to find out: how can such a miracle occur? What’s the recipe? What does it take?
Across the field from them, the Memorial Tower stands sixty feet tall atop Kill Devil Hill. Dedicated in 1932, constructed from more than a thousand tons of granite, a weighty monument to the achievement of flight, around its base is carved this inscription: In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, conceived by genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.
Hazard loves that formulation. Loves it so much that he’s had the latter half tattooed on his chest: conceived by genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith. And isn’t that just what it takes!? To do anything outsized.
He believes it is the answer. But it’s one that begs another question: how do you know whether you’re really onto something? As the years pile up, of your resolute devotion—as they did for the Wrights; count it out: one…two…three…four—as you try and fail and try again…how can you tell if your impossible dream is one that’s doomed or one that’s destined? How, detect whether you’re Don Quixote, with a shaving bowl for a helmet, tilting at windmills, or whether you’re Wilbur and Orville, on the verge of making history?
Of course, the answer is, you can’t know. Until you achieve your dream or die trying, you’ll never be certain whether you’re a genius or a fool. Even if you die trying! Maybe you’ll die days, inches away from your goal. And the next guy, coming up behind you, will get to waltz right into the glory you sought.
“Dude,” Clive says, “like, what glory are you seeking?”
“The glory is hypothetical, Clive. The search is metaphorical.”
“I mean, with all due respect to us, we are not, even metaphorically, anywhere in the realm of the Wrights. Like, I’m not and you’re not and Rick certainly isn’t.”
“Huh?” Rick has reached the top of the ladder and tosses the box of screws to Clive. “Think fast!”
“I’m saying, you’re not going to make history, Rick. Am I right?”
“You’re right. Can’t argue with that.”
“Look,” Hazard says, “I don’t think you’re doing us justice. Obviously we’re not out here about to invent the next airplane, or whatever. The next AI drone gofer. But, so what? What does the scale of it matter? Every man has a dream. And I think every man’s dream is the same, basically. And I think it is to fly. Metaphorically, right? You know, to leave the earth. To soar! To feel what seemed impossible turn out to be real, all because he believed in it long and hard enough. On whatever scale, in whatever way.”
“Sure that sounds nice,” Clive says. “But I think it’s just a setup for disappointment, all that dreaming, floating off into the ether. Better idea is, live close to the ground. You really want to be happy? You take a look around at what you’ve got, right here and now, whatever it is, no matter how pathetic, and you call it good.”
It must be something about the height they’ve achieved up here on the roof, something about being a little closer to the sky. Or, it must be something about the storm approaching, the threat of danger inching nearer, the reminder of life’s stakes. Because, this isn’t the usual tenor of their conversations. Which are usually a lot more earthbound. A lot less existential.
“I don’t know,” says Rick. “I think you’re both missing something.”
“Oh yeah?” says Clive.
“What’s that?” says Hazard.
“Don’t get me wrong, either way sounds like a fine way to live. But I think…better than choosing either would be doing a little bit of both.”
“Explain.”
“You know, like, a kind of middle way. One eye on your dream, one eye on your reality, appreciating both. Like the saying goes: head in the clouds, feet on the ground. And I would add, if I may be so bold: heart on your sleeve. Because don’t none of the rest of it matter if you ain’t got love.”
They all fall to pieces at this. It’s perfect!
And his timing’s perfect, too. They’ve screwed the last sheet of plywood to the frames, their work here is done, but before they climb down they link arms, like three drunk friends at the end of the night, and chorus it:
“Head in the clouds, feet on the ground, heart on your sleeve!”
It’s a perfect description of Quixote, isn’t it? And as he climbs down from the roof, as he climbs aboard his motorcycle, Maddie—his Rocinante, old and faithful—he finds he feels more like that self-styled knight than he ever has on stage, gallantry no longer a performance, he sallies forth to be of service to his friends and neighbors.
From the Wright Memorial lot, he follows Rick south to his flat in Nags Head, where they plaster duct tape Xs on his windows and pack Polly, his French bulldog, and all her necessities into his Ford. Next, it’s north to Duck, where he links back up with Clive, who’s been helping his sister Annie move her bookstore’s inventory to the highest shelves. Then, it’s south again and west, to Manteo, to Søren’s, where they stow all the costumes from La Mancha in the trunk of his Volvo. He fills The Lindas’ generator. He helps his wheelchair-bound buddy Ben roll his grille and trash bins into the garage, then shoos his free-range chickens in there, too. He checks Miss Elmira’s gas and water lines, having surmised she wouldn’t have thought to shut them off.
It feels like a dance. He moves from one partner to the next, flowing, floating, sure of his step. The belle of this ball. And all the while he’s thinking, If only there could always be a hurricane. If every day was a disaster he would never doubt his worth, never wonder what life’s pain is for.
It’s little wonder, then, that he feels a little melancholy when at last it’s time to turn toward his own home.
Hazard lives on the water, in a houseboat he inherited from his Uncle Townes, who died tragically, unexpectedly in a freak hang gliding accident. He hadn’t known Townes well, and it came as a surprise that he should be included, in this way, in his will. Too late, he wondered about the life of that elusive man. Who perhaps, Hazard supposed, had seen something of himself in his wayward nephew.
It was a real boon, that’s indisputable, coinciding as it did, with one of Hazard’s unhoused stints. He might have hesitated, otherwise, having never learned to swim, to take up a nautical life. But, as it was, he embraced his only option, and now he can no more imagine life without her than he could anticipate her arrival before Townes’ lawyer called.
Hattie, he’s named her, and everyone tells him that’s just right.
The sun is low on the horizon as he rides into the marina’s lot, already largely emptied out. He parks Maggie and hurries down the dock.
Since his departure this morning, a good third of Hattie’s neighbors have been hauled out of the water and trailered away, the remainder secured with double dock lines, fenders and chafe protectors, the same measures Hazard will now need to take, to give Hattie her best chance of weathering the storm.
On his way to her mooring, though, he’s diverted one more time to help Barry and Barbara pilot True Blue to a larger slip and, there, tie off her spring lines, stow her mainsail and run her halyards to the masthead.
“Can we return the favor?” they ask when the work is done, as everyone has been asking him all day long. But Hazard waves them off, as he has waved off all the others.
“You’re sure now?”
“No need to be a hero.”
“We’ve got time.”
“No, no,” he assures them. “It’ll only take a minute. You should hit the road.” A native resistance to receiving the type of help he’s happy to give, a pattern Linda, in their AA meetings, gently flags. But tonight is not the night to break that old habit. Tonight, after a day in the constant company of others, he will be glad to make his last preparations on his own.
“Alright then.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Thank you, Hazard.”
“Thank you, man.”
Babs and Barry wave him down the dock.
“Good luck to us all!” He salutes them. Because there is no way to know what this world will look like when they see each other again.
And is he, now, at last, a little tired? Does fatigue here, finally break through the armor of his adrenalin? The weakness he feels is in his knee, his left, the bum one, the one that’s never quite been right, despite surgery, despite PT, since the spray of shrapnel lodged there.
But, never mind! He’s used to ignoring that pain, and he’s cruising on enough residual elation to believe it only adds to the glory of this day, shows what he has overcome to be of service. Maybe he limps a little, this last home stretch. Maybe he feels the twinge with every step, but it fortifies him, and he’s smiling again when he reaches Hattie.
He’s just stepping aboard, humming his namesake song from the musical, when he stops short, catches sight of a movement that resolves into the shape of a woman on the foredeck, bent low, peering through Hattie’s starboard portal.
“Desirée?”
“Oh, hi! Hazard!” The figure, resolving further into Kimberly Lane’s daughter, straightens up and strides across his own deck toward him. “I was looking for you!”
“Were you?”
“Why else would I be here?”
Why else indeed. Of course she was looking for him. But, why? “Is Kim alright?”
“Oh, yes, she’s fine. She’s over at the Lindas’.”
“That’s right, she was on her way when I stopped by. But I thought she told Linda B. that you’d left.”
“No, yeah, I was going to, but I kind of got distracted helping a few folks out.”
Hazard nods. He knows how that goes.
“And then, you know, I thought of you.”
“You thought of me?”
“I mean, of course.”
In the week that Desirée has been staying with Kimberly, Hazard has seen her a handful of times—at the Lindas’, at the theater, in Søren’s studio—but he has had little chance to truly get to know her. He would say he knows almost nothing about her. Just that she is Kimberly’s daughter, just that her friend just died, that she is grieving, that she is lost, that she has come to the Outer Banks searching for something (as, come to think of it, most people do). And that she is rich.
Every time he’s encountered her she has seemed distant, aloof. Speaking little, never smiling, rarely meeting his eyes, or anyone’s. And certainly she is in mourning, maybe that explains it. But is the shock of loss the whole reason for her attitude? She comes, it’s clear, from a world nothing like theirs. From a world above. So, doesn’t she look down on this one?
Hazard has, he must admit, made some assumptions about her, based on the car she drives and the wealth it implies. Maybe he was wrong to judge her so, as a product of her privilege. He’s frankly amazed that she thought of him in this moment of crisis, let alone that she would take any kind of risk on his behalf.
“I’m most grateful,” he says. “But you shouldn’t have. You’ve got to get on the road.”
“So do you.”
“And I will. Really, I don’t have much to do.”
“And it will be done even sooner if we do it together. I know my way around a ship.”
“I can’t ask you to take any risk on my behalf.”
“And you didn’t. I offered. I insist.” It’s now, Hazard realizes, that he’s seeing the effects of her privilege. She is no stranger, clearly, to getting what she wants.
“Look, Kimberly would never okay this. If anything happened. I’m the one who’s expendable.”
“No one’s expendable,” Desirée says.
And, feeling how much is implied by her words, Hazard relents. “Thank you,” he says. “But in an hour, you have to leave, no matter what.”
He is, quite quickly, grateful for her insistence. Not only is his knee acting up, but the exertion of the day is catching up with him. And, as she promised, she knows her way around a boat, perhaps better than he does, never mind that it’s his boat.
Together, they work quickly, efficiently, without much conversation. First they make Hattie fast in a web of nylon, tying her off on the tallest pylons. Then they clear the deck, stowing folding chairs, life rings, antennae, removing and sealing the cowl vents, taping the portholes.
When they go below deck, they divide and conquer, Desirée seeing to the bilge pump, securing any and all loose items, while Hazard packs his saddlebags and duffle.
He’s not used to having company in the cabin, and feels a certain embarrassment at the meagerness, the mess. But Desirée says nothing, gives no indication she has any particular opinion about his life. Only when they meet again at the stairs to the deck does she ask, “That’s all you’re taking with you?”
“It’s all I need. I’ve got everything important.”
“I mean, let’s hope we did well here and your boat rides out the hurricane. But, you have to think: it might not. Are you prepared to lose what isn’t in those sacks?”
The directness of her question startles him, but isn’t that the way with grief? Cutting through the pleasantries in search of the truth. And of course, the possibility of such a loss has occurred to him.
“Sure,” he says. “That’s life, right? That’s the risk of living. Anyway, never been much of a materialist. I’d be sadder to lose Hattie than anything inside her.”
Desirée nods. “Okay, well, why don’t you get those bags set on your motorcycle. I can lock up here while you do, save time.”
And just like that, he realizes, their work is done. All his work is done for the day, except riding to the farthest motel he can find before exhaustion overtakes him.
“I can’t thank you enough,” he says.
“Please, don’t thank me.”
“But I’m grateful! Would’ve taken me three times as long, alone.”
“Well, anyway. Toss me your keys and get that bike ready to ride.”
Hazard fishes Hattie’s keys from his pocket and hands them over, thinking how very wrong he was about her. Thinking how a disaster really does bring out the best in people.
Only when he’s waking up the next morning in the Lone Pine Motel, fishing through his duffle for his toothbrush, will he realize she never gave them back, Hattie’s keys; will he have to wonder whether this omission happened by accident or on purpose.
For now though, tonight, he is too swept up in the momentum of the day to notice. He settles Maddie’s saddle bags, he and Desirée say a last goodbye, he watches the taillights of her convertible disappear, and then he hops aboard the bike again and revs her engine.
Here we fucking go!
Seize the day!
Head in the clouds, feet on the ground, heart on your sleeve!
From the southeast, from whence Orville will come, clouds are just beginning to appear, beginning to erase the constellations, but to the west, where Hazard’s riding, a bright evening star hangs low on the horizon, looking to him like a kind of promise.
Of what?
That there is somewhere, something worth riding towards.
And so, into the deepening night he does ride, into the gathering wind, singing at the top of his lungs a song now rich with extra meaning:
I am I, Don Quixote
The Lord of La Mancha
My destiny calls and I go
And the wild winds of fortune
Shall carry me onward
Oh, whithersoever they blow
Whithersoever they blow
Onward to glory I go!