I sighted it again. “Naw,” I said. “Only a barra plays dead like that.”
“You can go farm in Nebraska,” Champ said. “It’s a big king mackerel.” I donned the leather glove and stood ready. “If it’s a barracuda I’ll shove it up my ass.”
“Pull down your pants,” I told him, leaning over the rail. I grabbed the leader and raised the fish. It was big but a barracuda nevertheless. “This is how you do it,” I said, holding the wire with my left hand and slipping the thumb, second and third fingers of my other hand into the gill opening, then wrenching the hook from the wicked grin of the jaws.
“You fool,” Champ observed. “You’ll lose a finger doing that.” The fish shook against my grip, the twist and squirm of a thick snake. I laid it on deck, placed my foot behind its head and clobbered it once with the billy club. Champ threw his pole down and stomped away. Sea-Bop-A-Baby came back to speed.
One more fish to go and it was my catch more or less. Our two lines out dragging their temptations, both of us not disinclined to knife the other in the back, Champ and I sat watch on the froth, the bottle of rum passed between us and emptied before the strike. It occurs to me now that Lindy must have thrown up her hands in disgust and frustration when Champ hustled into the wheelhouse for the third time to choke the throttle. At the time I was acutely aware that Sea-Bop-A-Baby, apparently unpiloted, had begun a lazy clockwise circle, batted by the waves, that threatened to cross my line and slice the dolphin free.
There was a split second when neither of us, or both of us, could claim the fish. The dolphin struck on a head-on run, hitting the lure at top velocity and springing into the air upright, an iridescence. Dolphins are bull-nosed, elite warriors, potent and brawny, their vivid colors, a greenish-blue and yellow, unpresent in the same living hues in the world above the surface. When you land one you feel you have ripped the sea’s own muscle from the water.
At the strike neither pole reacted. We watched the fish dance and fall, each one of us declaring ownership. But I understood what was happening. I could sense the spirit of the fish like a heating coil in the butt of my rod, confirmed in a violent instant as my line erupted from its spool and I set my strength against the pure unyielding weight of the dolphin. Champ cursed until his tongue turned white.
The fish pierced the atmosphere once again, nearer the ship, its great size more evident, its resistance a ferocity. Bringing the beauty back up took a long time. Each attempt to haul it closer than twenty feet from the stern was denied with fresh power. I had to slack off or lose. The dolphin stayed out there just below the surface sweeping back and forth, a hot electric current, a blue curling form, flashing between the arc circumscribed by the limit of the line I allowed. My will and the will of the fish—this is a tired thought but true, the forces so precisely opposite and therefore exquisite, no chance for sentimentality, for hapless negotiation. Nothing was given. It could go either way—all rare joys are as simple as that.
To land the fish I knew would take good work and patience. It paced the water handsomely, back and forth, back and forth, and I took advantage of each turn to ease the fish alongside the hull. When it thought to duck under the ship I jerked its jaws skyward. They gaped at me through the spangled water and then the fish rolled so its huge yellow-ringed eye, a cold defiance, could form its last judgment on me. Each time I brought its blunt head out of the sea, the body still in its own world spasmed, and I would slack off in fear that the line would break.
“You’re gonna lose it,” Champ said.
“Stand back out of the way,” I ordered. “We need a gaff.”
“Well, of course we do,” Champ said derisively, “but we don’t have one. You’re gonna lose it.”
I glanced across my shoulder at him in an unfriendly way. “Now what would you know about it?”
“A fish that big won’t take the test of the line.”
“You just stand back.”
Champ removed himself from my line of vision and I listened to him scuff away. My plan was to wait it out, to let the fish defeat itself, and then try to fling it over the bulwark. The fish would exert its strength again once I committed myself. The line would snap when the fish was in the air, yet if I timed the move right and the momentum was good I had a chance.
I inched the head up through the sea and prepared myself.
“Hold her steady,” Champ commanded from behind me. He stepped forward, a shotgun raised to his shoulder. I could not protest before he acted. My ears boomed with the report. The tall forehead of the fish vaporized, disintegrating into crimson molecules, a residue of pinkish foam. The body slip-slided back down into the depths like a fluorescent leaf until it eventually disappeared.
Champ said, “Well, damn, that was a little high.”
“Son of a bitch,” I shouted. “A little high? You shot my fish.”
“You moved it just as I pulled the trigger.”
“You shot my fish.”
Champ tried a pout but it didn’t suit his nature. “It would have been all right if you hadn’t moved it.”
“You skunk, you shot my fish.”
“You were gonna lose it.”
I flung down my pole in a rage. “You’re nothing but a damn thief,” I said and stalked away. What I wanted more than anything was to have my own boat launched to the wind, out of sight to cities, banks and fools, blowing down to Barbados with Lindy. I couldn’t endure Champ Ransome a minute more. I stormed into the wheelhouse determined to get us back on shore with all possible speed. Lindy had been waiting for me to show myself, boiling her words before she threw them in my face.
“You!” The intensity of her shriek popped the gold studs from her earlobes. I stood dismayed before her wrath. “You with your toys and games. What do I have to do to get you to see me?”
My mood wasn’t right for taking rebuke or faultfinding. “Calm down,” I said. “Let’s concentrate on getting out of here.” I punched the throttle forward. Lindy wasn’t finished with me.
“I’ve told you every way I can,” she cried.
“Told me what? What’s this all about?” Innocence has always been a fine target and effective as provocation.
“Have you been blinded! My life has changed.”
“Well, don’t think I haven’t noticed a difference,” I said.
“You’re always flying off and leaving me alone. Whenever you go, I learn about myself. Things I didn’t know before.”
“So what’s wrong with that?” Champ had come to stand in the doorway and witness the knowledge arrow into me.
“The boat,” Lindy said, seething, her hands trembling in front of her. I didn’t know what she meant. “The ketch.”
“What about it?”
“Sell it,” she begged. “If you love me and I know you do, sell the boat and stay with me.”
Did I bellow and kick the wall? Maybe I did. What I remember is saying, Not-on-your-life, each word measured hateful and numbing. The engine gagged and shut down. My voice resonated in silence, the smell of raw fuel and scorched circuitry. We were dead in the water, as if together we had murdered Sea-Bop-A-Baby with the splitting of our faith.
Throughout the night we drifted forlornly, Ishmaels on the water, Lindy in the cold solitude of her bunk, Champ banging below decks, correcting a variety of failures I won’t go into. To prevent the ship from running aground, we let the anchor dangle over the side but it wasn’t necessary. Our electricity had been lost, too. It was my responsibility to sit on top of the wheelhouse through those loneliest of hours with a flashlight and beam it out into the shimmering darkness whenever I sighted another vessel. Here we are, I’d signal. Down on our luck, a tub of infants in the night. Stay clear. Steer away. For most of the time I had only the void to examine—me, my nose, and zero. I lay back often, my hands pillowing my head, made despondent by the stars. There were too many of them, a cruel fact. Except for the most practical communications, Lindy avoided me until near dawn when the weakest light transmuted space and c
aused the black atmosphere to ripple and quake as if it were coming apart. Then she joined me up top and we talked.
“It is beautiful,” she said, stretching out beside me.
“Tell me,” I said, selecting my simplest fear, “who’s Champ Ransome?”
“Nobody,” she said ruefully. She paused and then modified her answer. “A nice guy, a pretty fair listener. A wanderer, like you.”
“Tell me this,” I said. “Why’d you ever do that to your hair?”
“Oh.” She laughed, a quiet song on the ocean. “I thought you understood.” She lifted herself up on an elbow and gazed down on me. “If you could understand that you’d understand a lot.”
“Try me,” I said. “Give it a go.”
“It was a first step,” she said haltingly. “I dared myself. It seemed the most bloodless way to begin to tell you I wanted other things. I guess it was the least, um, what—?” She searched for a word that she never found.
The sun came up, painting a distant shoreline to the west. “Look,” I said, placing my hand on the warm nape of her neck and turning her head. “There are the beaches of Mauritius. Behind the low cloud is Mount Pelée in Martinique, the coast of the Seychelles. Sri Lanka, with elephants in the sand. Bali. The Azores.”
“Stop,” she said, shrugging off my hand. “It’s only Miami. We live there, Sims. It’s our home.”
She signed a new lease on the house and enrolled in a graphics design program at the university. I have sworn to send her postcards whenever I’m in port. The ketch has been out in the anchorage for a week while I settled last-minute business, all the paperwork that appears on the eve of leave-taking. Two days ago I visited the animal shelter and conscripted an overweight, cross-eyed cat as a shipmate.
I pulled anchor this morning. She had to go to class so I said good-bye at the house and took a cab to the bay. Everything I have is hers for as long as I’m gone.
Through Government Cut and I’m out at sea. Where Champ Ransome’s freighter rolled with the first swell, I nixed the engine and hoisted the sails, celebrating their silent powering ahead out to the ancient routes and mains, the currents that ushered men to new worlds. And now I’ve been talking to myself like an old salt, my voice returned to my mouth by the headwind I’m beating into. The cat dashes after imaginary mice, content as far as I can tell. Lindy, I said, honey, you should see this. You would be seeing this, had you shunned the lesser patriotisms, chose instead the outward passage, the heart’s adventure. I suppose I’m still rather stunned, I can’t get over it, I still can’t believe she’s not coming with me.
Redemption Songs
“These songs of freedom, are all I ever had.”
Bob Marley
Glasford had been on the edge now for days.
“De whole friggin world on top of us, boy.”
“Daht is so.”
Glasford and Fish were in the Crabhole, a two-seat rum shop owned by Momma Smallhorne. In these two chairs they sat, an oil drum between them for a table, each man facing the open side of the shop, wisely studying the lights of Georgetown in the distance. A kerosene lamp glowed beside their bottle on the drum, buttering their faces with its light.
“Ahnd de whole world friggin us too, ya know.”
“Yes, daht’s so.” Fish’s nature was to be aggreable.
Glasford did not speak with undue anger or bitterness. His words were confident, as if he had finally discovered the exact methodology he would use to overcome his oppression. Fish, as always a composed soul, a man hard at work on understanding the world, provided an ear blessed with patience.
“We is like rocks on de bottom of de sea,” Glasford continued. Each word was carefully enunciated in a low, scratching voice. “Cahnt move, cahnt go nowheres. Lissen, like rocks we is, ahnd everyting else swimmin by.”
“Yes, daht is so, too,” Fish replied matter-of-factly. “Look, gimme a smoke.”
Glasford made a show of searching his pockets. “I have none,” he said, and then called to Momma Smallhorne, “Momma, bring two cigarettes.”
Momma rose up slowly from her cot behind the counter, troubled by her arthritis. From a single carton of Marlboros on the empty shelves of her shop, she took a pack and spent some time removing the cellophane with her crippled fingers.
“Save me a step, child.”
Fish got up from his seat and gave her ten cents for the two cigarettes. When the fuss was over, Glasford spoke again. He spoke forcefully, although the only sounds to compete with him were the creaks of their overrepaired chairs, Momma’s hard breathing in rhythm with the soft notes of the sea along the beach, an occasional car racing to Georgetown along the surfaced road behind the shop.
“We must do someting,” said Glasford. Then he was silent, waiting for Fish to agree. Fish smoked his cigarette, puff after puff, enjoying it.
Finally Fish looked around. “Momma, bring de dominoes,” he said.
“No, Fish. I tellin you, mahn, no dominoes tonight. We must do someting.”
“What cahn fellahs like us do?” Fish asked. Glasford frowned into the night, his face beyond the cast of the lamp. The man’s insistence had teased out Fish’s curiosity. There had been similar conversations between them ever since Glasford had returned from the States a few weeks ago. But now, somehow, tonight, Glasford was creating a sense of movement, a line of potential. “What cahn we do?” Fish repeated.
“Pray, now ahnd always,” Momma Smallhorne croaked. She had started out on the journey to bring them the box of dominoes.
“Momma, be quiet,” Glasford snapped at her. “Is mahn’s talk we makin.”
Fish looked at his companion again. They had been friends all their lives. There were no secrets, no mysteries between them, until Glasford had gone to the States. Glasford had his face set the way he set it when he wanted people to know that he was a warrior and bad news to anybody who bothered with him. That made no sense to Fish. There was no one to scare but Momma Smallhorne, and even the devil had given up on her.
“How you lookin so dangerous, Glahs boy?” The veins in Glasford’s neck reflected the thick light as they swelled. Fish watched the glow race up them with each powerful throb.
“Dis mornin I wake up ahnd see a mahn burnin weed on his piece of land so he cahn plant some cassava. I tell myself, Glahsford, you been waitin ahnd waitin, ahnd now de time come.”
“How you mean, bruddah?”
“I see in dis weed burnin how God trew down Babylon. Fah de great day of His wrath has come.”
“Amen.” Momma Smallhorne kept herself ready to punctuate the word of God wherever she encountered it.
“Come out of Babylon, my peoples, lest you share in her sins, lest you receive of her plague.”
“Amen.”
“Glahs,” Fish said. “Doan get Momma excited.”
“De Queen of Whores will be uttahly burned wit fire. Great riches have come to nought.”
“Daht’s true. Amen.”
“Ah. Ah, I see,” said Fish, nodding his head in understanding. “I didn’t know you could scripturize so. You must get a callin, Glahsford?”
“We comin to a time of prophecy realization. Salvation reality.”
“Upon dis rock you shall build a church,” Fish said. He was enthusiastic about the idea of a theatrical Glasford, sowing fine language from a pulpit.
“Hallelujah,” cried Momma Smallhorne.
“Mahn, doan play de arse. Is revolution I talkin now.”
“Oh ho,” said Fish. The tone in Glasford’s voice had been condescending and Fish was offended. “Is Natty Dread I sittin wit. Johnny Too Bad. Mistah Castro.”
Glasford stood up. “Momma, we leavin,” he announced. Fish watched him disappear up the path that led to the main road. He finished the rum in his glass, and then the rum Glasford had left behind in his. He recapped the bottle and stood up also. Momma was just returning the box of dominoes to its customary spot beneath an unframed cardboard picture of Queen Elizabeth. He didn’t want to tr
ouble her further so instead of placing the bottle on the short counter for her to retrieve, he leaned over and put it away himself.
“Momma, you want company wit de light?”
She shook her head no and lay back on her cot.
“Good evenin, Momma,” Fish said. He blew out the kerosene lamp and followed after Glasford on the path.
Glasford was in the bushes a few steps off the path, shielded from the nearby road. Fish saw the flare of a match and let it guide him to his friend. On his heels, Glasford crouched forward, sucking a cigar-sized splif he had just rolled.
“We is bruddahs, true?” Glasford asked, not bothering to look up.
“True.”
“We is de same, you ahnd I.”
Fish did not believe this was quite true but he said it was so anyway, not to humor Glasford but to avoid obstructing his point. There was a change taking place in Glasford. In island life, any change in anybody, the motivations, the possible consequences, was worthy of a lot of talk. Glasford inhaled, and inhaled still more, until a coal like a fat red bullet burned between them. Then he blew out so much smoke that he was lost behind it.
“Mahn, come to town wit me tonight,” Glasford urged Fish.
Fish did not have to answer immediately because Glasford had passed him the ganja. Going into Georgetown with Glasford meant having to buy Glasford his beer and having to pay cash for it. At least Momma Smallhorne allowed him credit. And it meant giving up the bed of Althea, a woman he had been recently courting. Fish was not eager to make such a sacrifice.
“I cahnt do so, bruddah. My seed pointin me in de next direction.”
Fish had discovered certain truths about his life that made him feel solid and steady. The most significant, the easiest to understand, was this: Women made him happy. He didn’t even consider this much of a discovery until he noticed that for so many other fellows, the opposite was true: Women made them unhappy, women transformed their spirits, confused them, gave them their first breath of hatred.
The caresses, the smells, the closeness, the slick warm wetness, the words and thoughts he could only share with a female, these ran like a nectar through Fish’s life. Some women were spiteful toward him because he had so many lovers, but he told himself simply that love had made him a free and honest man. When he made a baby with one of them, he did not run away as if he had committed a crime, but divided his spare time as best he could among the households. When he could not give them a few dollars, he gave them fish or conch, turtle meat, mangoes from a tree on his small property, and sometimes pretty shells or a long feather for the children to play with.
Easy in the Islands Page 11
