THE HOOK 



He waits for me at the old U.S. 

 Lifesaving Service boathouse he 

 converted to a summer cottage 40 years 

 ago. Within moments of our meeting, I 

 learn why he wasn't bom on the cape: 

 The island had no midwife in 1921, so 

 Yeomans drew his first salty breath on 

 Harkers Island. He was boated home to 

 the dunes of Cape Lookout. By the time 

 Yeomans was bom, the Cape Lookout 

 Post Office had shuttered its windows 

 (1911, after only 14 months in exist- 

 ence), the last whale had been killed 

 there (1916) and the Lookout school- 

 house had closed (1919). But a vibrant 



little community remained tethered to 

 the roadless, bridgeless island. And even 

 though the Yeomans family had a house 

 on Harkers, it stayed in the Cape 

 Lookout camp three seasons out of four, 

 going "off-island" only for Sunday 

 morning preaching. 



"I was raised right here to the 

 cape," Yeomans says proudly, defiantly. 

 He lived there until the age of 6, when 

 he had to move to the mainland for 

 schooling. But still he returned — 

 weekends, summers, evenings after 

 school and mornings before. 



When I think of the cape, I think of 



its mazes of marsh creeks, of dune fields 

 unscarred by roofline and rolling to the 

 horizon, of meadowlarks calling from the 

 scrub, of the tide pouring in over my bare 

 feet and over the sand of the spit where 

 pelicans huddle. But I think as well of 

 Yeomans' blowsy face, framed with ears 

 listing toward the overly large and a 

 cockade of crew-cut hair white as an 

 oyster shell. Hurricanes are etched in the 

 wrinkles around his eyes and blazing 

 August days writ in the dark blotches 

 across his brow. I remember that he closes 

 his eyes when he tells me about the square 

 dances in the big house they called 



8 SPRING 199H 



