Busted Heart Boys of Bald Head Island

Across the river, in the old pirate haven of Southport, North Carolina, above the happy-hour oyster bar and next door to the happy-ending acupuncturist is a bookie who is taking bets on which of us busted heart boys will drop dead first. The bookie is also certified to write life insurance policies. As good neighbors do. 

On our side of the river is Bald Head Island. The southernmost (and least frightening) point of Cape Fear. There are no roads to get on the island, though at low tide you can take your chances following the land bridge from the old rebel base of Fort Fisher. On the island, the roads are paved-over goat trails fit only for golf carts. And goats. Rollerblades, maybe. To reach Bald Head Island from the mainland, one must employ watercraft, catapult or helicopter. Most arrive via the ferry from the old pirate haven of Southport. Once on the island, those without an overnight reservation for a beach bungalow should devise an exit strategy or risk being marooned at the ferry terminal overnight. 

We’re not getting marooned, dude-bro, Tusk says. Not with all the sugar-mama widows on the loose. Did you bring your heart meds, Neverman?

I did. I have one pocket full of cornbread. Another pocket full of blood thinners and statins. And a fanny-pack carrying tiger balm, nitroglycerin and the battery to my defibrillation vest. 

Tusk has parked our rented golf cart at a mid-island dive bar, the Jailhouse, where he has spotted a gathering of ladyfolk. The untrained eye would have never noticed them, blended-in as they are in their linens and wools, camouflaged against the wicker furniture & driftwood exterior of the establishment. Our eyes, naturally, are quite trained. This must be the place, Tusk says. 

It was Tusk’s bird-watching radar which detected the migration pattern for this very particular flock of women bearing plumage specific to their socio-economic status. “Coastal Grandma” is the aesthetic, despite the multi-generational adherents having ages anywhere between 25-65. These females can be distinguished by their unblemished skin. Pale. Botox treatments. Softly bleached hair occasionally betrayed by dark roots. Layers of clothes colored various hues of beige. Beige & beige on top of beige. Bejeweled fingers & wrists & ankles & necks & earlobes. Perfect chompers. A thinness spectrum ranging from bulimia to heroin. They communicate softly. No belly-chuckles or diaphragm-cackles here. Laughter is offered only as a courtesy in well-rehearsed gasps of feigned delight. Xanax & chardonnay play emotional gatekeeper, ensuring very little can actually startle them. Males of the species may vary between CEO or a finance bro or a golf pro. Or females might mate with the common flannel-breasted coastal Carolina “flounderman”: bearded, ball-capped, potbellied, t-shirt advertising something fish adjacent. 

This place is like the audition room for a Martha Stewart biopic, Tusk says as he unbuttons his shirt to sun his itchy wounds.

We split up. Divide & conquer. He grabs a patio table as I head to the bar for beers. 

I am waiting in line behind the lone brunette I’ve seen on the island. She is wearing sandals which do not cover the tattoos written in French cursive. Something something crepes, I think. She frowns at me when I attempt a closer look. Definitely something about crepes. I think. She orders a mimosa at the counter and pats the pocketless pastel-colored pajama pants when seeking payment. Her phone must be in her golf cart, she says to the cashier as she looks back over her head. Her brow is as forlorn as the botox allows. 

I will cover it, I say, stepping forward. Oh you don’t have too, mademoiselle says with an expression of relief. Her delicate hand touches my forearm. Our eyes meet. She doesn’t take flight. She must think me someone of similar good breeding. Mistakenly. We make the idlest of chat as I grab two Heineken Zeroes. And then it happens. My defibrillation vest goes into DEFCON 1. 

The first sign is a quiet tremor quaking against my torso.

Shit. 

I abandon mademoiselle and initiate evasive maneuvers. The second warning tremor hits. 

Shit. 

I put down the two beers at Tusk’s outdoor table and disarm the fuzzbox in my fanny-pack as the last of the warning tremors hits. I manage to disarm the defibrillator before it has a chance to shock the living shit out of me. Or shock the living shit back into me, if circumstances were so dire. But this event is not over. The fuzzbox announces it’s robotic demands quite loudly from its position on my hip bone: 

Those dining on oysters and champagne on the patio deck look around, wondering where this announcement is coming from, never guessing it is coming from my pelvis. Tusk is sinking down into his chair, covering his face in shame. I look in the direction from whence I came to see mademoiselle casually plop into her golf cart and drive away one-handed with her mimosa held aloft. If she was mystified by my disappearing act, she never showed it. 

Well, shit. 

Dude-bro, Tusk says, what the heck was that? False alarm, I say, sitting down opposite of him. My vest must’ve detected a flutter in my heart. What?, Tusk asks, did your ass rip a big one or something? No, I was talking to a woman. I bought her a drink. Really?, Tusk says, and what did she do? She thanked me, I tell him. And what did you say?, he asks. Uh. Well, I told her “no sweat”. 

Tusk skewers his face until his round, nearly hairless head looks like a tight fist. You said “no sweat”?, he asks. Oh no!, why dude-bro?, why?, why would you mention your lack of perspiration, Neverman? Ugh!, Tusk groans with frustration. He says, if you buy a woman a drink and she thanks you, you should say – real suave – you should say you could see she was thirsty. Emphasis on “thirsty”. Really drag out the word. Give her a wink & grin. She would’ve been melting, Neverman. Melting like a stick of butter in Icarus’s jock-strap. Woo!

Shamed, I drink half of my fake beer in one pull. It’s deceptively satisfying. 

Well?, Tusk asks. Is that it? Was that all it took to flutter your heart and trigger the alarm?

I asked her if she ever goes upriver, I say to Tusk, to the city. She said she doesn’t get out much and then, as if to explain why, she blurted out she has cats. And that’s when my defibrillator was triggered.

Cats?, Tusk asks, she’s held captive by cats? He’s leaning forward, holding his chest as he suppresses a pained chuckle. Damn-it shit, Tusk says, you two deserve each other. He reclines back in his chair, allowing the sun to warm his broken pieces. The wounds are still fresh. Nothing has scarred yet. His flesh is sewn together where they cracked him open like a pistachio to get at his heart. If you listen to Tusk tell the story, when the surgeons did the open-heart bypass, they took one look at him and realized the pig artery wasn’t going to be big enough. Get me the horse dong!, the cardiologist ordered. How Tusk heard this dialogue when his extracted heart was resting on the surgeon’s charcuterie board is irrelevant. Don’t interrupt him. Let Tusk have his big fish tale. 

The bare chest he is tanning resembles a fleshy vest due to the perpendicular stitchings in his sternum. His procedure was preventative. Proactive slicing & dicing. Under my linen shirt, I have an entirely different vest designed to react to any aftershocks to my already kicked-in heart. I did have a heart attack. 13 hours into my cardiac event, I stumbled into a drugstore and the chemist called EMS. Two ambulance rides later, I was thrown onto a slab under a cardiology pit crew where I died a little bit. Doc Frankenstein jumper-cabled me to a lightening rod and brought me back to life. But no open heart surgery was needed. Lucky me. A couple stints and I was on my way. 

We are the Broken Hearts Club Band. Convalescing on Bald Head Island. “Life at 18 MPH”, as the BHI t-shirt says. 18 miles-an-hour is a reference the maximum speed of golf carts, though Tusk is convinced he can hit 23 on a straightaway if he really leans into it. How did two dudes in their prime both get concrete in their arteries? We’ve been tossing around theories on our concurrent cardiac funk. We had never been stronger. Or more goddamn good-looking. So… what unholy acts did we commit for the gods to smite us both?

Our hearts are strong, Neverman, Tusk says. If they weren’t, we’d be worm food. Lesser hearts wouldn’t have survived the jungles of Cape Tribulation! Cape Fear has nothing on Cape Trib. If we weren’t being chased by crocodiles & sharks, it was those damn dinosaur cassowaries we had to worry about. No, our hearts are sound. Our engines are good, dude-bro. It’s just that something has gunked-up the fuel lines. 

Why then our mutual demise? Could it have been a byproduct of Covid? Or were the QAnon uncles right when they warned us against the Fauci vaccine? How much butter did the Nevermum put into her brownies?

Foul-play!, Tusk says, cannot be ruled out. He’s implying my ex-wife might have poisoned the village well to get at me. Nah, I tell him. Jo didn’t want you dead. She tried to keep you in the divorce settlement. Tusk shrugs and says, I could be collateral damage. 

It’s plausible. I suppose. When Tusk’s mother-in-law asked me how he & I could both have heart issues at such a young age, I told her the only thing we had in common was the same bad taste in women. 

Fittingly, Bald Head Island is along a stretch of coast called, “the Graveyard of the Atlantic”. Legions of sailors have met their end on the nearby Flying Pan Shoals. There is a history of wreckage on Cape Fear and the Outer Banks to the north. And there is a legacy of wreckers – pioneers who made a living off of ruined ships. That happens to be Tusk’s legacy. He is here in search of familial fortune & glory. 

Onto the patio table, beside his Heineken Zero, Tusk has placed local surveys of Bald Head Island alongside old colonial maps. He is looking for cemeteries. Grave stones. Any evidence of Tusks being here before him. His family, before they were ship builders in North Florida, were ship wreckers & salvagers in North Carolina. Before they were wreckers, their direct paternal ancestor worked for Black Beard. While the firecracker pirate was hirsute, the original Tusk of 300 years ago was not. This hairlessness was passed down over the centuries like an Old Testament curse, eventually inherited by contemporary Tusk. As evidenced by his sunburnt dome. And it is this genetic link which has him believing Bald Head Island was named after his direct ancestor, the original Tusk, Quartermaster of Queen Anne’s Revenge!

It’s my island, Tusk says with a forced Irishy-Jamaican lilt. Over my shoulder, he spots a waitress, raises his empty beer bottle and shouts, medic!, another round of virgins, please!, two of your coldest beerless beers, thank you. 

I saw an advertisement for sunset yoga on the beach, Tusk says. If all else fails, we can go into the harbor town and buy us some yoga gear. How do you look in yoga pants, Neverman? We’ll find you a sugar-mama yet. He chuckles as a joke begins form in his rawhide skull. Tusk says, I can be your wingman in a downward dogfight. Tusk laughs at his own brilliance, ceasing once it starts to hurt his chest. 

A round of cold Heineken Zeroes has arrived. 

Your mama’s swamp chili did give me dysentery, I say to Tusk. How much roadkill manatee did she put into it?, I ask. I mean, the river does flow past the nuclear plant. Maybe that’s where we…

Bitch!, Tusk says, don’t bring my mama’s chili into this. He takes a strong swig of Zero and sets the bottle down hard on the patio table. Damn-it, shit, you need to recalibrate, dude-bro. There’s a freedom which comes with a 2nd chance at life. We should be dead. We’re not. We’re very much alive. Aliver! Everything from here-on is gravy. It isn’t borrowed time, it is life seized! Balls-out, dude-bro. No more hesitations. Let’s find your cat lady. If she gets scared-off by your robo-vest, that’s her loss. Flaunt your history, Neverman. Show-off your scars. I do. 

We pause to watch another beige flock drive by at 18 mph. 

C’mon, Neverman, let’s get you into some yoga pants.