The bus came and he boarded, paying the driver. It was almost empty and he sat by a window at the back. He needed a plan to get through the gate at the Coast Guard station to see Commander Peterson, the man Maas Rusty had told him about. He gazed out at Kingston Harbour, looking for the bright colors of Water Bird. Gramps could come home anytime, he thought. One minute the sea could be empty, and the next minute it could deliver his grandfather safely to land, as the sea had done over and over and over. He tried to convince himself that a man could not just disappear, not without trace, but he knew it was not true. A man, especially a fisherman, could disappear easily because the sea held many dangers.
He tried to imagine dying, but he could not. He could imagine violent acts and violent events, done to him, to his mother, to his grandfather, to strangers; he could hear the sound of gunshots, feel the pain of bones breaking, the fight for breath of drowning, but always his imagination stopped before the final end. In his mind, his father was always the one who held stick, gun, and rope.
Then he tried to imagine a world without his grandfather. A few days, even a week without him was normal—Maas Conrad lived alone at Springfield—but he ate with Lloyd and his mother at least twice a week, on nights when Vernon was not there. Gramps and Vernon did not get on. Lloyd wished he knew what had caused them to circle each other like wary dogs.
Lloyd knew bad things happened, but not every fear was realized. Perhaps if he told himself his grandfather was dead, then the opposite would be the truth. No one could tell the future and the worst things were always unexpected, and always lay wait in ambush. On the other hand, if a boy was sure his grandfather was dead, he would not look for him; he would not be on this bus on a Monday morning with workers going to their jobs at the airport. He could not fool the rules of the universe, of fate, of God. He should have paid more attention in church, perhaps he should have asked Pastor Errol to pray for Gramps. He could not make sense of his grandfather’s absence. Was it too early to worry, or too late?
Too much thinking. It was time to act. He needed a plan to get through the Coast Guard gate. He wished he were a man in a suit in a white SUV, not a boy in too small, too warm church clothes in a JUTC bus.
The bus stopped near Harbour View and more people boarded. “After work, me going to Gloria’s to eat a fish,” a man said to one of the women.
“Huh. You lucky. Me on double shift today.”
Gloria’s, Lloyd thought. Maybe if he waited there long enough he would see Commander Peterson. The man had to eat. Maybe the commander would come out from behind the Coast Guard gate in his uniform and he would sit at a table at Gloria’s and order lunch and perhaps that would be Lloyd’s chance to tell him about Maas Conrad.
It is hard to sleep on this rock; it cuts into my back and the surf booms all night, but last night I slept enough to dream of my mother. I dreamed she was asking the men of Gray Pond beach to look for me but they refused. As the sky lightens, I remember her songs. I can taste her food. I can see her wearing a white dress and her church hat at our school prize-giving events, wiping her face in the heat. What I remember most about her is a feeling, a feeling of safety and plenty and homecoming. These were her gifts.
Growing up, I occupied a world of men, of men who went to sea, and we all pulled away from the world of women. I often wondered what it would have been like to have a sister. There were girls at the Sandy Bank primary school, but they were a territory we Saunders boys did not explore. We laughed at their skipping games, their ring games, their games of jacks, the songs they chanted in their high voices. We threw lizards at them and watched them shriek and run away. Now, I wonder if my mother was lonely in our male territory. She died young, before I left Great Bay. I was a young man just turned twenty, I do not know her age. Sickle cell, the doctor told us. Now, I wish I could speak to my mother, man to woman. I wish there was another chance to know her.
No fishers came to the rock today.
6
Lloyd saw it was too early for the lunch trade when he arrived at Gloria’s. A young woman in a torn apron dreamily cleaned tables and the door to the kitchen was almost closed. The tables at Gloria’s occupied the sidewalk and one of them straddled a trickle of wastewater in the gutter; it was made to sit level with folded up newspaper under two of the legs.
Lloyd looked around for a place to wait, and saw a bench outside a building across the street, but a man lay full length on it, his mouth open, his limbs trailing on the ground. He thought about various places in Port Royal where he could wait—Fort Charles, but there was bound to be an entrance fee there, the Port Royal Marine Laboratory, behind a gate with a security guard, and there was no chance a boy in church clothes could just walk into the Morgan’s Harbour Hotel.
He walked to the familiar fishing beach and onto the rickety wooden dock jutting out into the Harbour. Here the smell of sewage was strong and there were few boats on the beach. Lloyd sat on
