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anger in Daddy's face.
    “And there are no black surfmen at any other North Carolina stations,” he snapped. The blood throbbed in his temple, and his jaw clenched tight. “The whites don't want to work with colored men anymore, so they've put all the blacks here, and there's no place else to go.” He picked up a scallop shell and flung it at a squawking gull. “They've got eighteen stations for the whites. Some of those surfmen can't even read or write, and some hardly know the drills or how to swim. And you've got every black boy on Roanoke Island growing up wanting to be a surf-man, learning to swim, training himself in the drills, and knowing that one of the Pea Island crew will have to get sick or die before he can get the job.”
    I looked at the drum carcass lying in the sand. “It's like they've thrown us one fish,” I said quietly. “So we can fight over it.”
    Daddy nodded.
    The last gulls circled overhead, then flew off.
    “You leave the dreams of being a surfman to the boys from Roanoke Island. Most of them won't even get what they want. It's only the sons and nephews of the surfmen who will get the few jobs.” Daddy rose, picked up the drum carcass, and threw it out as far as he could into the water. “Fishermen have alwayshelped with the rescues, so you can keep on with that.” He looked at me and frowned. “And someday you'll get it through your fool head that having your own boat and nets is a damn good way to earn a living.”
    “I
know
it's a good way, Daddy….” I hadn't meant to be ungrateful.
    I had wanted to hope for more than being a fisherman. But if Daddy was right, that wanting to be a surfman just wasn't my dream to have, then I might as well give it up the way Grandpa had given up ever having his farm and be happy with what I did have.
    Daddy stood, squared his shoulders, and looked out to sea as if there was something out there he'd lost. Daddy hadn't gotten everything he'd wanted either. I know he'd have cut off his right hand if it would have given him a few more years with Mamma.
    I decided right then to show Daddy how much I appreciated having our own skiff. I decided to put thoughts of being a surfman out of my mind. I decided to become a very good fisherman.
    The hunters had begun coming and going from Pea Island in November, around the same time as the ducks and geese had flown in from up north. Daddy said some of the hunters were rich men from the Northern states who came for sport, some were Southerners from the mainland who came for food, and still others came to try to earn their fortune from the Canada geese, brant,and ducks that flew so thick their flocks darkened the sky. The hunters stayed in the cabins up near Oregon Inlet but wandered the whole of Pea Island, and shots ringing out in the early morning, or any time of day, were a familiar sound.
    One afternoon in January, the lifesavers were done with their drills and had gone off hunting or fishing, and Mr. Bowser was keeping watch on the lookout deck. I was sitting on a sand hill repairing our cast net, carefully tying knots with new line. I heard shotgun fire close by and thought nothing of it. Then I heard moaning and shouting. Two white men came stumbling out of the brush, one half carried by the other and trailing blood.
    “There's the station!” one of the men cried. Then he spotted me and shouted, “You, boy, call the keeper. This man's been shot!”
    I barged into the station and up the steps to the lookout deck.
    “Mr. Bowser, hunters are here. One has been shot!” I cried.
    Mr. Bowser used the spyglass to take one last good look at the calm seas, then followed me down the steps. We both hurried toward the hunters. The uninjured one was tall and sandy-haired. As we approached, he called, “Where's the keeper? We need the keeper.”
    “The keeper isn't here,” Mr. Bowser said. “I'm the second in command. You'd better let me stop that bleeding—”
    “Don't let that nigger touch me!” The