Dedication
For Fred
(aka my marine biology textbook)
and for the much abused Caribbean Sea
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
The boy sat beside the crumbling wall and stared out to sea. It was full dark and rain hissed on the water, but he was sheltered from the downpour where he sat. He saw a swirl of phosphorescence in the sea, gone so quickly he might have imagined it, might have merely wished for it because it was his grandfather who had told him about the tiny creatures that lived in the sea and at night shone blue in the wakes of boats and drew the deep ghostly shapes of fish. His grandfather said Kingston Harbour had once been full of them, that no night’s fishing would have passed without seeing the shining mystery. “Where they go, Gramps?” the boy had asked.
“Sea too dirty for them.”
“Why the sea get dirty?”
His grandfather had grunted. He was a man of the sea, not a man of words. Now Lloyd was sure he was lost at sea.
No one else was worried yet. Maas Conrad was only a day overdue from his trip to the Pedro Bank.
“Lloyd? But where the pickney is, eeh? Him is pure crosses. Only the good Lord know the trouble I seen.” It was his mother’s voice. Lloyd stood and turned to meet her. “You want get sick, pickney?” she said. “Out here inna the pourin rain a nighttime?” She stood under the brightly colored umbrella someone had left on the bus and she had taken. “Come. You grandfather be awright. You think the sea can kill him?”
Lloyd walked toward his mother and the shelter of the umbrella and together they walked through the dark streets of Kingston, the rainwater sweeping the streets, hiding the smell of human waste, taking the garbage of the city into the sea. Lloyd heard his grandfather’s voice in his mind: I come from a line of fishermen.
Lloyd held the umbrella while his mother struggled with the front-door padlock of their small house near Bournemouth on the edge of Kingston Harbour. The nearest streetlight had blown many years before. His mother kissed her teeth. “Me tired to tell you wut’less father to buy one new lock,” she said. Finally, the lock scraped open and they went inside. The air was full of water and the house was damp. “Go to bed, pickney. As God is my witness, you nah be a fisherman. As God is my witness.”
He went into the narrow room at the back where he slept and untied the shower curtain tacked to the top of the door opening. There was no lightbulb or lantern in his room but light from the only other room in the house crept under the curtain, which smelled of plastic and mildew; smells of home to him. There was no window in his small space and he imagined it was like a cabin in a ship, below the waterline. He had never been on a big ship but he had seen them in Kingston Harbour making their slow way into and out of port—containerships, tankers, ships picking up gypsum from the gypsum wharf or flour from the flour mill, sitting in a cloud of dust as they loaded up. He thought of them as sea buildings, sea businesses.
He stripped off his wet clothes and hung them over the sagging line that held his school uniforms, pushing the uniforms to one side to make space for his undershirt and shorts. He dried himself with his rag and changed into the torn briefs he wore at night. He sat on his cot and felt hungry. Had he finished the bun from lunchtime? He thought so, but looked through his backpack just in case he had left a small piece. He found only the wrapper and he licked it for the crumbs, for the cinnamon and sugar smell.
“Lloydie?” his mother called as the wrapper crackled. “You hungry? Some fry sprat and bammy is here; come nuh?”
“Me awright,” he answered, although saliva flooded his mouth at the thought of fried fish and bammy. His grandfather might be hungry, wherever he was, so Lloyd would be hungry too. He lay down and closed his eyes. He saw Water Bird alone at sea on a moonless night, lost, missing land by miles.
Why had his grandfather gone to the Pedro Bank? He was not a Pedro fisher. A man had to motor almost sixty nautical miles to find the Pedro Bank, sixty miles in an open boat, with no navigational equipment, no radio; just eyes and experience and stamina. The Pedro Bank was an underwater mountain southwest of Jamaica with three small cays—Top Cay, Middle Cay, and Bird Cay—and the fishing was still good. Although Gramps knew how to find the Pedro Bank, he never went there. He fished instead at Bowditch and the California banks and where the bottom of the sea fell off into the deep.
There were few fish inshore these days. Of course there were the fishers who cast their lines and nets close to the old sewage pipes emptying into Kingston Harbour where the garbage floated, and they did catch fish. But Lloyd’s grandfather was not one of those men. He did not sell his fish to the women vendors who used burial fluids to make the fish look fresh. He would never use dynamite or chlorine to kill fish and make them float to the surface. No one had to tell Gramps when lobster season closed, or that Queen conch never lived where there were shattered conch shells on the floor of the sea, or that parrot fish should be left to graze the reef.
Maas Conrad was a deepwater fisherman, a line fisher. He did not use
