An aerial view shows the checkmark-shaped hook of Cape Lookout. 



sides shimmering like wet opals. There 

 are gray and speckled trout, pufferfish, 

 croaker and skates. Without hesitation 

 Yeomans and the others wade into the 

 water, helping to keep the floating edge 

 of the net from sinking with the weight 

 of fish and to keep the sinking edge, 

 weighted with hunks of lead, from 

 bowing up from the bottom and 

 allowing fish to wriggle free. 



For a few minutes I work beside 

 them, but then I slip away and step back 

 up to the beach, suddenly aware that this 

 is a moment to which I do not belong, 

 except to bear witness. Quietly I watch 

 the old bankers haul net together on the 



Lookout bight beach — Yeomans with 

 his hand on his deaf wife's shoulders, 

 her hair in a powder-blue hair net; and 

 Madge Guthrie, whose mother was the 

 last teacher at the Lookout school and 

 who recalls dropping off to sleep in a 

 little shotgun house on the cape as the 

 lighthouse beam washed across her 

 bedroom windows. When one of the 

 fishers scoops a small sea turtle out of 

 the net and releases it into the open 

 water, Guthrie screeches, only half- 

 kiddingly: "Oh, no, put im in a pot with 

 spring onions and airsh potatoes! Oh, 

 come back!" 



All the crowd roars, and I see that 



time has suddenly turned back for them, 

 each of them who would tell you with 

 grim faith that their memories of the 

 cape keep them alive as much as breath 

 itself. They cackle with glee at the 

 swarming fish and holler out to the 

 watermen stacking net in an old wooden 

 boat, "Way to go, boys!" and "That's 

 some fish, ain't it? What you reckon, ten 

 thousand pound?" And as the buy-boat 

 waits in the bight to transport the catch, 

 they gather round for perhaps the last 

 time in their lives, hauling a net pulsing 

 with fish and the slippery fragments of 

 their own memories in the cape's clear 

 waters. □ 



COASTWATCH 15 



