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Hatteras Island Mystery

By Anne Greene

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Misty Gordon dug her toes into the cool sand to steady the shot. Sunrays filtered through the light fog and touched her arms with gold.
She adjusted her camera until she captured the bride and groom with the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in the background.
She finished the photo array with a view of the couple in front of the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. This early morning series marked her as unique among the photographers on the island.
She bid good-bye to the bride and groom, stowed her camera in its bag, and took off across the sand to clear her thoughts.
Her business, Lighthouse Photography, made a comfortable living, and she loved her town, Hatteras, located on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, especially in December when most tourists had long departed.
Though she also offered an amazing portfolio of
landscapes and portraits, most of her pictorial art revolved around weddings. She enjoyed photographing brides in flowing white gowns coupled with smiling grooms sporting tuxes. Her most popular pose featured the groom’s hand cupping the bride’s chin, kissing her, the wind nestling her long gown around his legs, his polished wingtips and her spiked heels sinking into the sand with the sparkling Atlantic as their background.
Each bride and groom Misty photographed started their journey of life together expecting a happily-ever-after lifetime. Misty, a born romantic, did her utmost to record their happiness with her photographs.
Until last summer, when taking posed and candid shots of love-in-bloom had become bittersweet. The last of her three best friends had tread the sand aisle behind the most beautiful church on the island.
As life-long friends, since their teens, she and her three besties had planned weddings-to-die-for on the sands of the Outer Banks as the sun rose in a glorious blaze of color over the Atlantic. She’d been thrilled to photograph each one’s wedding as each friend saw her dream blossom into reality. But she, Misty Gordon, was the last bridesmaid standing.
Misty frowned and wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t getting any younger. But the men in her photos were.
With December’s arrival, Christmas in Hatteras threatened yet another sparse-in-the-single-male-department. She could look forward to fighting a bout of the holiday blues.
That pending holiday probably explained why at the last wedding she’d photographed, she’d snapped so many digital pictures of the one man in the Hamiltons’ wedding who appeared to be single. Misty kicked her bare toes at the firm wet sand along the water’s edge. Why hadn’t she asked the unattached male his name?
She’d always been a sucker for a man with a beard. The stranger’s dark hair and beard framed an attractive face, neither too handsome nor too rugged. Quite a photogenic face…with a tall, athletic body to showcase the fine head. If she’d obtained a release, she might have sold his pictures to one of the men’s clothing businesses and made a bundle. The man was a natural model with his relaxed manner and easy smile. She could have offered him that new career. And learned his name.
But the dreamy guy exited the wedding before she could ask him to sign a photography release. Her rainbow disappeared from arching over her pot of gold. She’d failed to get his name.
When the Hamiltons viewed their album, the new Mr. and Mrs. hadn’t appreciated her photographic pictorial of their wedding journey. They’d wanted more pictures of themselves and claimed the man wasn’t a close family member, and they didn’t appreciate so many shots of him.
She only taken four shots of the GQ man, but she’d returned the deposit money to her first dissatisfied customers. Even then, the couple refused to reveal the GQ model’s name. If he lived on Hatteras, he wasn’t a celebrity, but her label for the stranger stuck in her mind.
That day, she’d gone so far as to haunt the Hatteras Coast Guard substation sector field office, pretending to take pictures for an imaginary magazine, but hadn’t seen the extra-broad shoulders, tall athletic form, nor his easy-on-the-eyes features.
She should have realized the Coast Guard didn’t accept beards. The guys stationed there all wore dark blue, short-sleeved uniforms with their name ribbons on the right side of their chests and the Coast Guard ribbon on the left. Some had looked appealing but worn already-taken-rings on their left-hand finger. She’d never appreciated a military haircut anyway. She liked abundant locks on a man’s head.
She gazed at the waves rolling and frothing on the sand. Her thoughts weren’t clearing. Nevertheless, she bent, dug up a perfect sand dollar and flicked off the clinging sand. Brides adored their invitations photographed with these delicate shells, so this morning she could replenish her stock.
The risen sun painted the stark white shell pink, much like her rosy romantic dreams had been. She heaved a deep sigh. Naïve to think she could re-start a new life in Hatteras. Find a new love, one who wouldn’t betray her. Of course, the years had sped by, and she hadn’t. In her field of work, she met only already-spoken-for bachelors. Would her time to walk the aisle ever come?
Cool water washed over her feet. She slung her camera bag over her shoulder.
Something bumped her ankle. She jumped. Her
breath drained from her lungs.
Something large. Heavens, a body! Flat on his back, hair plastered over his face, navy slacks shredded, a ripped white long-sleeved shirt clung to his torso, feet bare, a man floated in the surf. Pushed one way and then another, the body undulated with the waves. She touched the wet shoulder.
His eyes were closed, but the slight rise and fall of his chest showed he was alive.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out her cell and dialed 911.
“Come on, answer, answer!” How much longer would this man breathe?
She knelt in the surf beside him, her knees sinking into the shifting sand, the sun warming her back, strands of her long, blond hair blowing into her eyes as she touched his carotid artery.
A stammering pulse beat erratic, but strong.
He looked to be in top physical shape. Had he been washed off a fishing vessel? Sand-matted dark hair plastered his forehead. A purple bruise marred his left temple and spread below his eye. A crease between his dark, straight brows showed the pain he must have endured when whatever injured him had hurled him into the sea.
She glanced out at Diamond Shoals, known for years as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. No wrecked vessel.
Normally she charged into situations before she considered the consequences. But this breathtakingly handsome man, rocking in the surf at her feet, left her panting like a tourist trying to
climb the lighthouse stairs. She glanced up. “Where is that medical help? I can’t let this man to die.”
His limp fingers bobbed in the water, long and graceful and empty of rings.
Shame on her for thinking of his marital status at a time like this.
She grasped his shoulders and tugged and strained until she dragged him out of the cool water and up onto dry sand. Beneath his tattered shirt, his skin felt cold.
A siren in the distance shrilled louder. She turned. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” She spun back toward the unconscious man and plunked in the sand beside him. Why hadn’t she learned CPR?
His eyes were open. Dark but blank.
She half-lifted him and turned his torso to the side. “Cough! Breathe! Sputter! Anything!” She bent him over and pounded his back.
He choked, his shoulders heaved, and water spurted from his mouth.
He looked familiar. Where had she seen him? She shook her head. He was a stranger.
“Where am I?” His voice sounded strangled, weak.
She massaged his back. “Near the Hatteras Lighthouse. What happened to you?”
He leaned against her, his upper body, wet, heavy and chilled. He moved his hand to his forehead and blinked. “Who are you?”
The sirens squealed louder and louder.
“I found you. What happened to you?”
He frowned. Shaded his eyes with his hand. “I don’t know.” His words slurred, and he coughed.
Paramedics ran toward them. One carried a stretcher, the other a large white bag.
“Were you fishing? Sailing?” She helped him sit up.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes with both fists. “I don’t know.”
One paramedic knelt beside her. The second ran to the injured man’s other side, his shoes spraying globs of sand and water over her. “What’s your name?”
The man shook his head, ruffling the sand from his hair like water shaken from a dog. He blinked and kneaded his eyes with his fingers.
The paramedic gazed across the stricken man at her. “What’s his name?”
“I have no idea. I found him here. Like this.” She dug her camera out of her bag.
The first responder leaned over the man. “How many fingers do you see?” He held up three.
“Three.”
Misty snapped his picture.
“Give me your name, sir.”
“I…I don’t remember.”

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