From my vantage point, I could see the tiny shapes of fishing canoes going out and coming in and the sea began to curl and surge. Soon there were whitecaps and the cloud at the horizon spread and grew and became heavy with rain. My stomach cramped. The limestone rocks were sharp. I thought of Jasmine sitting beside me in the Arawak cave and she seemed like someone I had known too long ago to matter. The first drops of rain fell.
Soon a solid curtain of rain obscured the coast. I stripped off my shorts and undershirt and stood in the downpour. I turned my face to the sky and opened my mouth and I drank, and my stomach churned and knotted. The rain squall was heavy and short and when it was over I pulled on my wet, filthy fishing clothes and climbed down the hill toward Great Bay. I turned onto the track that led down to Great Bay, and then I saw a crowd on the beach and I heard raised voices. Perhaps someone had landed a shark. I did not hurry. There was nothing on that beach to make me quicken my step. Then Maas Lenny ran past me and I heard Maas Jacob shout to him, them is really back? The crowd parted as I came near and I saw Silver drawn up on the sand, and I saw my father standing next to my mother who held my brother in her arms.
I ran to them. Luke? I said and my voice broke. I saw my mother supporting my brother; it did not seem he could stand on his own. She fed him sips of water from a cup. His eyes were closed and he did not seem to hear me. He was bird-like, skin over bones. I saw my brothers standing nearby with lowered heads. We were silent and my heart pounded as if I faced a mortal enemy. The crowd around us was jubilant and the women praised the good Lord and his son Jesus Christ and arms were lifted to the sky. People asked questions of Luke and of each other—When him reach? Who find him? What did happen? The engine fail? Other voices made their contributions—me never did trust that Donovan. You see the power of prayer?
Donovan. I looked around. Only one man had come home.
24
The security guard at Morgan’s Harbour Hotel greeted Lloyd as if they were friends. “Wha’ppen, yout’?” he said. “You come back? What you name again? For the book.”
Lloyd told him his name. He had found Jules’s business card, borrowed Maas Benjy’s cell phone, and called her. She sounded as if she had been doing something important, but she agreed to meet him.
He walked into the hotel. Jules was sitting on a low couch across from the front desk with another woman, blond haired and freckled, clearly a foreigner. The two women got up as he walked up to them and Jules held out her hand. “Lloyd,” she said. “You granddaddy come back yet?”
“No, Miss,” he said, shaking her hand, liking the way she treated him as an equal, a big person.
“You don’t hear anything from Commander Peterson?”
“No. But I did go to Pedro,” he said in a rush. “I hid on Surrey.”
“You did what?” she said.
“I did stowaway. And a man on Middle Cay tell me Gramps get involve with catchin dolphins and I want you to tell me about it.”
Jules shook her head. “You were a stowaway on a Coast Guard boat! And they didn’t lock you up?”
“No, Miss. Tell me about the dolphin business.”
“Where to start?” she said, more to herself than to him. She gestured toward the white woman. “Lloyd, this is Madison Barry. She’s from the US. She studies dolphins too, but mostly the ones that have been captured.”
The American woman held out her hand too and Lloyd shook it. She was very thin and her hair was chin length and straight, bleached by the sun. Her eyes were blue, and the skin was crinkled at the corners. Lloyd thought she looked older than she was. Too much sun, probably. She smiled and her teeth were white and straight. “Very glad to meet you, Lloyd,” she said.
“Let’s sit down,” Jules said. She led the way onto the dock. Lloyd saw that the big white boat he had noticed last time was gone but the bartender was the same man. Jules ordered and paid for drinks and they sat at the table farthest away from the bar.
“So. The dolphin trade,” Jules said. “Basically, there are people—traders—who catch dolphins from the wild and sell them to tourist attractions in lots of different countries. Madison and I are trying to stop this trade—many people are working to stop it.”
“Why?” Lloyd said.
“Why what?”
“Why you tryin to stop it?” He thought dolphins should be left in the sea where they belonged; after all, they were not eaten and he knew Gramps would not approve of the captures, but if the tourist places needed dolphins, they had to come from somewhere. And if money was to be made from capturing dolphins, there were a lot of them in the sea and many poor people would get some money.
“Well, dolphins are very intelligent animals,” Jules said. “We don’t think they should be captured and made to perform for people. They’re taken away from their pods—their families—and some of them die.”
“That going on in Jamaica?” Lloyd asked.
“The traders aren’t Jamaican—it’s illegal to catch a wild dolphin in Jamaica. The traders are from all over the world, but they come to the islands, including here, and they pay fishers to catch dolphins for them.”
“Why them don’t catch them in their own countries?”
“Because law enforcement is better there and the penalties are high.”
“What happen after the dolphins get catch?”
“They put them on a plane or a boat and sell them. A healthy, young dolphin is worth a lot of money.”
Lloyd thought of the folded bills in his father’s hand. “You know who is doin it in Jamaica?”
“We don’t know for sure,” said Madison. “We’ve heard one name, an alias—Black Crab. You know someone with that name?”
Lloyd stared at her. “Not everything good to talk, Miss,” he said.
“What?” she said, turning to Jules.
“He’s telling you that trying to find out who Black Crab is might be risky.”
Madison shrugged. Lloyd could see she felt safe in her white skin. He wondered about her life, but it was too foreign to him. He didn’t know how to explain the dangers to these two women.
He remembered the last time he had gone fishing with Gramps, a week before the old man had left for Pedro, and on that morning even he had not landed many fish—only three red snapper, the biggest one not five pounds. Maas Conrad had stared at the fish in the old cooler and said to his grandson that fish-nin was dying, that no one could make a decent living anymore.
He told Lloyd things he already knew: how the fishers had to go farther and farther out to sea to catch the same amount of fish, but how the fish were different. They were trash fish, hardly any grouper and red snapper and yellowtail and even the parrot fish were smaller and smaller. Lloyd thought of the oily fish tea that was made with the trash fish, how it tasted of fish that had been dead too long. Gramps told how the price of gas kept going up, how the boats and engines were old and falling apart, how the uptown supermarkets were full of foreign fish in Styrofoam containers. As he talked, it seemed as if he had forgotten Lloyd was in the boat with him. “A man has to do somethin,” he said.
Gramps said some men turned to selling drugs, buying cocaine from boats coming from Colombia, heading for Miami, and then selling the cocaine to the local dons, who in turn exchanged the drugs for guns. He told how some men became thieves, pulling the fish pots set by good fishers; not the best, not the most experienced pot fishers, because those men set their pots without floats and ropes, so no one could find them. Other men became pirates, raiding the boats of fishers, stealing catch and equipment and cell phones and money at the point of a gun. Some fishers became desperate as the demands of their baby mothers mounted, causing violence in homes and in yards and in the rum shops. They got sticks of dynamite from the police, or chlorine from a bredren at the chemical company on the Boulevard, and that was how they fished. They could not afford to waste any time thinking about any other day except the day in front of them. It was the longest speech Lloyd had ever heard from his grandfather
.
He turned to the two women, who were still waiting for him to speak. “I heard that name,” he said. “Black Crab.”
“Can you help us find him?” asked Madison.
“Mebbe,” he said.
The men of Great Bay half carried Luke to our house and the women became businesslike. Miss Adina bustled off to make chicken soup, Miss Faith to find sinkle bible—aloe—to soothe Luke’s scorched skin, Miss Olga to convince Pastor Peter to keep a special service. Luke had still not opened his eyes, but he had lifted his hands and now held the cup. I touched his bare arm and it felt like the baked earth left behind when the pond dried up, as if his skin might crack and blow away on the sea breeze. I saw the shape of his skull and the long bones of his limbs and the rounded clumps of his joints, like marbles in a bag. Eight, nearly nine days at sea.
At home, my mother bathed her son and anointed his limbs with the cool jelly of the sinkle bible plant. She oiled his lips with Vaseline. She dressed him in clean shorts and led him to her own bed. She spread a towel on top of the sheets and he lay down like an old man. She sat beside him. We others hovered in the room like duppies—ghosts. We heard Miss Adina arrive and the clink of pots and spoons and bowls, the things of land. Miss Adina brought a bowl of chicken soup to my mother. It hot, she said, and fresh. And me cut up the chicken fine-fine. My mother blew on the soup and she held Luke’s head up, and she fed him, one small spoonful at a time. I thought again of birds. He did not finish the bowl. When it was about half done, he turned his head away and my mother let him sink into the bed. He closed his eyes. I was afraid to see him sleep, afraid that after his ordeal and his final long journey to land, he would die in his own home. We stood and watched him, marking every twitch of his eyelids, welcoming the sound of his drawn breath. Let him sleep, my mother said, and we left the room one by one.
My brother had come home. And I had not eaten for a day. I wanted his soup.
Robert arrived with a woman he knew from Southside; she was a nurse, he said. The clinic in Black River would not send a doctor to Great Bay—we would have to take Luke to them. The woman held Luke’s wrist and looked at a watch she took out of her pocket. She laid her palm on his forehead. The main thing, she said, is to get him to drink. Coconut water is best.
I ate a big bowl of soup and half a loaf of hard dough bread. I put on clean, dry clothes. My mother sat at the table with her head in her hands and she sobbed and prayed, thanking Jesus for her son’s return. I tiptoed into my parents’ bedroom. Luke had not moved. He looked as if he had been laid out in death. I watched his chest rise and fall. Then I left to find coconuts for my brother.
25
That same afternoon, Lloyd went back to the Tun-Up rum shop. He left the two women at Morgan’s Harbour Hotel with promises to ask around for Black Crab, but he wanted to talk to Maas Roxton. He was upset with himself for not thinking of Gramps’s old friend first.
Miss Violet was getting ready for the evening rush. She looked up when he came in and greeted him. “Evening, Miss Violet,” he replied. “How I can get to Rocky Point? I want talk to Maas Roxton.”
“Good idea, Lloydie. Me don’t see him come this way long time, but him and you granddaddy was always close. You know Django?”
“The taxi man?”
“Ee-hee. Him have a woman in Rocky Point—him go there all the time. Bet you him will take you for a small money.”
“Thanks, Miss Violet, me will ask him.”
“Go check the Harbour View gas station. That’s where him hang out. You a good boy, Lloydie,” Miss Violet said and she smiled at him.
Lloyd walked along the hard gray sand at the edge of the sea, turning his back to the sunset. He could see the colors of the sky in the water. Suddenly, he longed to be at sea. His trip on the Coast Guard boat seemed months ago. He wanted to be in a fishing canoe, even if it was not Water Bird. He wanted to carry out familiar tasks of casting a line or pulling a fish pot, he wanted the sea breeze in his face, to be free of the land. He stepped around one of the round jellyfish that were common in Kingston Harbour, avoiding its stinging tentacles.
Night came. He thought briefly of the wall on Gray Pond beach, of his wait for his grandfather, his role as sentry, as witness—but he was too tired and his grief hurt. He left the beach and walked home. He would look for Django the next day.
Django’s taxi was an old Toyota Corolla. It was closing on midday before they left Harbour View, with Lloyd in the back between two women. Another friend of Django’s sat in the front. Lloyd held no particular hope.
“How long to Rocky Point?” he asked Django.
“Mebbe three hours,” Django said.
They drove through Kingston traffic onto the Mandela Highway and through Spanish Town. One of the women got off and Django waited in a gas station for another fare. Lloyd closed his eyes. He hoped he would get to Rocky Point before nightfall.
He woke when the taxi fell into a deep pothole and Django swore. They were driving through cane fields. “Soon reach now,” Django said.
“When you going back?”
“Early tomorrow. ’Bout five-thirty. Need to beat the traffic into town. You comin?”
“Dunno. Tell me where you leavin out from and if you see me, you see me.”
Django took Lloyd straight to Maas Roxton’s small concrete house on the edge of a salt pond. There were other similar houses scattered around. The yard was dirt. Clothes flapped on a line. Lloyd estimated it was close to four o’clock. He walked up to the front door and knocked. There was no answer. He sat on the front step. He would just have to wait. People walked past on the marl road and looked at him waiting but no one said anything. After an hour, he saw the old man coming up the road. Lloyd stood.
“That you, Lloydie?” said Maas Roxton, limping into the yard.
“Ee-hee.”
“Him dead, Lloydie? Is that you come tell me? Me know, yout’, me know.”
Lloyd held his breath. “You see him dead?”
“Me no see him, but . . . come inside. Not good to talk these things where man can hear.”
Lloyd followed the old man into the house. The small dwelling had almost no furniture, and fishing gear and engine parts were scattered around. It was more storage space for fishing gear than a home. It was very hot inside. “Sit,” Maas Roxton said. Lloyd sat on a broken couch covered in plastic near the only window. At least he would soon know what had happened to his grandfather. It had been a very long day and he was weary.
At first, Luke only slept, ate, and drank. He used the chamber pot—the chimmy—and my mother studied the contents before she emptied it. The color of Luke’s urine changed from a rusty brown to pale yellow. My mother waited for him to move his bowels. That took days. His skin sloughed off in big flakes. He spoke in monosyllables and only about food or water. I climbed every coconut tree in the four villages of Treasure Beach and brought the nuts home in clusters and Luke drank the water and ate the jelly. The pale, sandy color of the grass in Treasure Beach turned green and shining after the rain, and water rose in the pond.
My mother moved a chair from the big room and one of us sat in the bedroom with Luke, day and night. We slept where we could find space. At the time, the hours Luke lay still in bed seemed endless—but now, I know my brother recovered quickly. Soon he needed no help to use the chimmy. Soon he was ravenous—he ate brown stew chicken, curry goat, oxtail, rice and peas, roast breadfruit, sweet potato pone, bulla, boiled yam, even steamed fish and mackerel run down. I had thought he would turn away from all things of the sea, but he did not.
He could not stand his mouth to be empty. Miss Faith brought him a bag of the hard sticky sweets we called Bustamante Backbone and he sucked on them through all his waking hours.
What happen? we asked. Where you were?
Luke’s story emerged. It had been a mistake to go to sea with Donovan—he had carried a full bottle of white rum and had drunk it all on the outward journey. They had spent three days on Top Cay, finding
meager shelter in an abandoned shack. Donovan had refused to go to sea and Luke had set his pots alone. Then they waited and Donovan cursed the sea and the small coral island and threatened to kill everyone and everything on Top Cay—the men, the birds, the turtles that came to land at night to lay their eggs. An elder, Maas Leroy, told Luke he had to leave. Luke argued with Donovan, who did not want to help him draw his pots, but eventually he agreed and they set out at dawn of the fourth day.
The pots were full and Donovan became exuberant. They filled the plywood iceboxes of the packer boats that took fish from the Pedro Cays to mainland fishing villages with red snapper and grouper and lobster and parrot fish. As the full weight of the sun fell on the sea, they left for Great Bay with money in their pockets and a small amount of fish for their families.
Me open the throttle wide, Luke said, and the sea flat calm and we going be home in four hours, the most.
But two hours into the journey the engine died and they could not get it started. What had seemed a flat calm sea held a deep, irresistible surge and they were pushed and pushed to the southwest. Here Luke stopped his account and his eyes became vacant. We ate the raw fish, he said, but it rot fast. Most of it we throw in the sea and the sharks come. We drank the water, but we never bring enough and Donovan finish it the first night. It never rain. Donovan die on the sixth morning, just after sunrise. Him jump overboard and he go straight down. He don’t even come up to take one breath.
Gone to Drift Page 11
