The SOB in the Carvel truck
Passed me on the right doing 75,
Heading up the beach to Manteo, on a Friday late.
I got outa the way, I wasn't in no rush,
& I watched him sway and skitter and bounce,
I didn't hear no bells or see no kids
But I kinda wanted me a chocolate cone--
After he'd disappeared.

It was late in the season, just before Labor Day,
And they roll em up when that gets past,
And then it's just guys layin' out on the beach
With a pole or three and a box of Busch,
The sun in their eyes, and salt on their faces,
Tough old birds and women the same,
Tending a fire and sliding bait on a hook,
Or sometimes when the tide's just right
Tossing a net out into the surf.

I was a couple of miles past Canadian Hole,
There was a guy in a Speedo out on a board,
And some people with glasses, looking for birds,
And I wondered just where those old salts came from?...
That you'd see out there in a month or two,
With nothing to say and a distant stare,
A torn plaid shirt and an old beach chair,
Brown as bats, as leathery too,
Laying out in the wind like an old canoe.

I could feel the pull myself, sometimes,
To just stand on the sand and look and look,
I'd tell myself it was dolphin I sook,
But I'd find my eye straying out too far:
To that farthest line, to the edge of the earth,
And my fingers would itch to feel the twine,
The hum and twang as it searched the surf,
The slightest twitch when a cold fish mouth
Leaned in close to kiss the hook.

And then I shook my head, and gripped the wheel,
Thinking: "That was a close one buckaroo!
Yep, that's the answer to your mystery--
It's a deadly vortex, a Bermuda effect,
Sucking you out of the life you own
And dropping you down on some spit of sand."
It made me sad for those haunted old salts,
Caught in a Rapture they couldn't comprehend,
And I made me a left over Roanoke Sound,
Stopped at a Mart for a chocolate cone,
And aimed my old Ford for some more solid ground.