Gone to Drift

properly schooled in the ways of the sea, who had left alone on a reckless journey to Pedro years ago. He had missed the Cays and many days later had been picked up by a South American fishing boat, most likely on its way back from fishing illegally on the Pedro Bank, arrested by the authorities and jailed for almost a year. He came home speaking fluent Spanish. The fishers said he had lived because his boat passed through a mat of seaweed and he scooped it up in his bait bucket and there were tiny creatures in it. He ate the seaweed and the seabugs and this saved his life.

After Slowly came back to Jamaica, after he had been in the newspapers and on TV, after men in bars stopped asking him to speak Spanish, he became one of those thin men who haunted the fishing beaches of Kingston Harbour, skin blackened by sun and dirt, begging not for food or water or money or work, but for ganja, which would bring him some relief from his memories and his hunger. The fishers of Gray Pond said he still ate seaweed, when he could get it from the deep sea.

The women buying fish were leaving when Lloyd got to the Gray Pond beach. He stood where the road met the beach and cast his eyes east and west. He knew instantly there was no sign of Water Bird, which was painted bright yellow with a red bow cap. At the end of the beach under a divi-divi tree, older fishers mended their nets and pots. Lloyd walked over to them. “Mornin, Maas Rusty, Maas Benjy,” he said. The men nodded in response, but did not look up from their work.

“You want some help?” Lloyd said to Maas Rusty.

“Is awright, yout’, me soon done,” said Maas Rusty. “You lookin for you granddaddy?”

“Just checkin, seein if him come back. You been out at Pedro?”

Maas Rusty shook his head. “Too many people out there in conch season. Me comin from Bowditch. But me did hear Maas Conrad was at Pedro.”

“Yeh. Him call Tuesday, say him leavin Thursday mornin at first light. But him shoulda reach back now.”

“What him was doin out there? Me never know Maas Conrad go Pedro yet.”

Lloyd shrugged. He did not know why his grandfather had gone to Pedro.

“You check with the Coast Guard boat?” Maas Rusty said. “Them go out every Monday night. Everybody know Maas Conrad. Mebbe them know somethin. Mebbe him get sick and him restin out there.”

“Me never see him sick yet.”

“Any man can sick.” Maas Rusty went back to mending the net and Lloyd felt there was more he wanted to say. A boat engine rattled behind them. Lloyd turned. Not Water Bird.

“You talk to you father?” said Maas Benjy.

“No. What him know? Him don’t go sea more than so.”

Maas Benjy shrugged. “Me hear them did have words, that’s all.”

“Words? What kinda words?”

Maas Rusty made a shushing sound and waved his hand at the other man. “Stop run up you mouth,” he said. “After you no know nuttn. Check with the Coast Guard, Lloydie. That’s you best bet. Go over Port Royal. Ask for Commander Peterson. Him awright. Him will talk to you. Mebbe him even take you out there.”

“Lloydie!”

Lloyd turned and saw Dwight running across the sand. Gramps is back, he thought, Dwight has seen him, no, Dwight has seen his body, and he felt breathless and afraid, as if he had run to escape a beating. “You find him?” he said.

“Find who? You mother is at the house and she mad as hell. She say she need you to help sell. You best get youself over there.”

Lloyd turned to the old fishers. “Respect,” he said. “You tell me if you hear anything?”

“Coast Guard,” said Maas Rusty. “That’s where you to ask.” Lloyd turned and ran across the sand with Dwight to face his mother.

The sea was more real to us than the land, so now I find I cannot remember many details about our house, our school, or the look of the land. I know we slept three to a bed, by age, and as I was the youngest, I slept crossways at the foot of my brothers’ iron bed. Often, I was kicked, but if I complained, they would push me onto the floor, onto my mother’s rag mat, so I learned to make myself small and still. I can see the sash window, swollen from the salt air, stuck half open. I can see the kerosene lamp on an oval wooden table, the only other piece of furniture in our room. We took this lamp to bed at night and I can hear our mother’s voice telling us to make sure the lamp was really out; we were to stare at it to make sure its last embers died because lamps had a way of flaring up again and burning down houses with children inside.

There was a big pond far behind our house, a salty lake that grew and shrank with rain and time. There was a time when it dried out completely and the sea breeze scraped the stinking dust from the bottom of the pond and coated our villages with it. That is why I remember the stuck sash window because while the dust whirled and settled we could not shut it out and our one thin sheet was full of grit. I did not mind the smell—to me it was a sea smell, caused by dying fish and a host of other animals. We did not know their names.

When the rain came, the pond filled and filled and found its way to the sea in small canals and winding trickles and the crocodiles—we called them alligators—came in and out. I do not remember ever being on the pond in a boat and now I wonder why.

Some boys tended their families’ goats. Others had to weed the skellion fields. We all played fling-fling and roamed the