Michael Colbert

We’ve started taking nighttime walks. On Monday evening, our class convenes over Zoom to discuss short novels. Animals leap into our Brady Bunch frames. People send each other private messages, praising the animals or else their points on the books we’ve read. Zoom classes end faster and it’s harder to focus, so J and I started going for walks for fresh air.

Our walks started with a purpose. We’d get fresh air but also ice cream. There’s this mart down the road from J’s apartment. They sell Ben and Jerry’s, and it feels earned after class, even if we finish the whole pint in one sitting, even if another customer ribs us for spending $6.50 on it. Once, the mart was our stop after a day of writing. Wilmington, North Carolina is a beach city, but our study spot is downtown. On days without class, we’d find a table at Bespoke, a café next to a hot dog shop and comic store, and write for hours. Bespoke is the MFA spot, generous with refills. After writing, we’d pick up supplies for breakfast sandwiches at the mart. The old man who works there came to know us and would preempt our search for English muffins when we opened the door. “They’re coming in an hour.” When they have all our supplies, he says, “Enjoy your sandwiches.” Above the register is a signed and framed Dawson’s Creek poster. He remembers when the film crews used to take over the town.

Bespoke was one of the first places in the city to close. First, they served all food and drinks in to-go containers. We’d find our table to write and wash our hands as soon as we got home, singing twenty-second choruses like Hit Clips. Then Bespoke went to-go only and cordoned off the space beyond the register. They upended their tables and chairs. It looked like we were inside a bunker. The laidback staff we know so well accepted our credit cards with gloved hands. Days later, with expanded unemployment benefits, Bespoke closed their doors and now post on Instagram to wish their regulars well and remind us they still exist.

Wrightsville Beach closed a few days later, shortly after photos of spring breakers in Florida went viral on Twitter. The beach down the road, its surf shops and bungalows were what first taught me I was no longer in New England. On one of my first nights in the city, I drove to the beach with fellow graduate students, and we swam. Coming from Maine, I was used to gritting teeth to jump in the ocean in August. Here, we rolled under waves past eight. The fact that the city closed down the beach ahead of the curve is significant. But what told me the city as I knew it was bracing itself were the businesses closing down, one-by-one. The beach and Wilmington Riverwalk give us Cape Fear flavor, and so do the taco shack, the used bookstore, Bespoke with its spooky characters painted on white brick walls. Wilmington has never felt like home, but, as the city began shutting down, I saw how much I was rooting for all these businesses, the faces we see every day.

In another Zoom class, our professor asked where we are, if we’re reading and writing. Answers varied. Some of us are reading a lot, some are writing. Everyone in our orbits tells us to write about COVID-19. People say we should use this as a writing retreat, which feels loaded if you’ve been denied a spot at a residency or summer conference, which who knows if they’re happening anyway. Most of us are still in Wilmington, though people have dispersed. In early March, several of us flew to San Antonio for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference, a conference that stirred Twitter vitriol for the week leading up to it as people were angry that it was happening and others were angry that people were angry. Half of the tables were occupied at the exhibit hall. New panelists subbed in for others who had to sit the conference out. Nobody shook hands. There was hand sanitizer everywhere. Everyone was a bit afraid to admit it, but this felt like a less intimidating, easier introduction to the conference than the thousands of people we had originally imagined. We were all bracing ourselves, but we still didn’t know exactly what it was we were bracing for.

After the conference, MFA students continued to other points: Arkansas New Orleans. I rushed back to Wilmington. J picked me up at the terminal, like I could’ve just been coming back from a weekend away and wasn’t rushing back to hunker down. We’re both New England transplants. I’d never been to North Carolina until I moved here for school. At the holidays, we drove up the east coast, stopping in New York where he showed me his old haunts–pool halls, ramen restaurants, cafés and bookstores. When the states started preparing their responses, we discussed making the drive back while we still could. Our families would be better stocked. There would be more space, dogs to play with. The Carolina warmth would be our only sacrifice.

We’d play it by ear.

And then we grew accustomed to the rhythm, to writing by day, reading on the front porch whenever the weather allows. We’ve gotten used to Zoom classes at night, to picking up tacos from a window after class with no human contact, handling takeout wrappings like toxic waste.

We stopped by the mart for supplies as needed. Until the state issued a stay-home order, the mart remained open. They sold essentials. They had stores of toilet paper nobody thought to find there.

We’ve gotten used to strolling at night. Once, a woman in a magician’s top hat led blanketed tourists in carriage rides down Second Street, holding up traffic. We’d swerve down side streets to pass her and zip to the café. Once, there were people out to stare at a gay couple (don’t worry, there still are–they peek behind curtains, they do a double-take from six feet away). Once, undergrads who might be our students lined up for rooftop bars on Front Street, where maybe they could watch the Cape Fear River, which now sits dormant, which has gone dark with fewer headlights on the bridge, fewer boats in the water.

We walk down brick roads until we remember cars use them, too. It feels like New England winter, when people walk in the middle of the road after snow and look through windows lit by Christmas trees. Here we wear shorts, hear sandals smack on brick and concrete. Far away, silhouettes of other solo walkers appear, getting exercise, air alone. We pass by outdoor cats, careful to socially distance from them, too. On the mart’s last night before the state’s stay-home order kicks in, we’ve forgotten our wallets, so we stand outside and watch while the light is still on.