He found a standpipe but it was dry. He bought suck-suck and a boiled corn from a vendor and he walked toward the waterfront. He sat in the shade of a coconut tree and ate his lunch, taking care not to touch the corn with his dirty hands. He thought again about climbing onto the Surrey and his hopefulness left him. It would never work. It was too much for a boy, small for his age, a boy who did downgrow, according to his mother. He threw the suck-suck plastic bag into the Harbour and immediately heard his grandfather’s voice in his mind: Turtle going think that a jellyfish.
There was a parking lot nearby. He watched the security guard at the entrance and the comings and goings of drivers and vehicles. There was a group of men skylarking on a small mound of uncut grass at the edge of the parking lot farthest away from the entrance. He saw the security guard watching them, his attention divided between motorists and the men. Then one of Kingston’s many homeless men ran across the two-lane road right in front of an oncoming car. The car’s brakes screeched and the noise pulled everyone’s gaze, including the guard’s. The homeless man was safe on the median strip, but he began a loud cursing.
As Lloyd watched, he saw one of the men on the grassy mound take a long metal strip from the grass, jump down into the parking lot, fit the strip into the window of the nearest car and, in a few seconds, open the door. He took something out of the car—Lloyd could not see what—shut the car door and went back to his bredren. Lloyd knew the guard had not seen what had happened and later, when the loss of the car owner’s property was reported, he would swear it could not have taken place on his shift. That’s what I need, he realized. Something to make the sailors look away while I climb the rope. He would have to find Dwight.
It was Luke who saw them first. My father was tinkering with the engine, there was a sputtering noise he did not like. Look, Luke said, and pointed. I saw a splashing in the water near the reef but it was too far away to see what was causing it—it could have been any school of large fish. Dolphins, my father said, looking up from the outboard.
We went slowly over to the reef, my father taking Silver through the rocks and coral heads. When we were still some distance away, he cut the engine and tilted it forward over the stern so the propeller was no longer in the sea. That way we could cross over the reef wherever there was two feet of water without grounding the boat. We glided. And then right beside us, clear against the sandy seafloor, I saw the gray shape of what I took to be a shark. Shark, I said. And then the gray shape came to the surface with the same sound I made after I dived down for a conch and held my breath too long. Dolphin, said my father. Not shark. Dolphin go up and down at the surface, shark swim straight. I saw the dolphin’s dorsal fin go up and down and then it dived and then they were all around us.
Now, I am not sure what enchanted me. Yes, they were big, bigger than most animals we were used to seeing. Yes, they had smiling faces and bright eyes. But I think it was the way they seemed to be playing in the sea that caused me to remain staring down into the water long after they had gone, hoping they would return.
Pass the oar, my father said. Not yet, I wanted to say, but I remained silent. There was work to be done. He had just been humoring me on my first trip as a fisher. He pushed us off the reef and when we were in deeper water he started the engine and we began to pull my father’s fish pots. Whenever we rested, I stared at the place where the dolphins had made their splashing and wished there was some way of marking it, so I could be sure I could find it again.
I left one swallow of water in the plastic bottle last night and this morning it is gone. I don’t know if I left the top open a little and it leaked out or if I imagined the tiny amount of water. I stare out to sea and I think I see rain clouds. I sit and watch them, willing them to me. My head wound is better but one of the cuts on my right leg hurts. It is getting harder and harder to stand.
10
Lloyd found Dwight at Victoria Pier casting a line into Kingston Harbour, a bucket on the beach for his catch. “Yow, bredren,” he called out to his friend.
“Wha’ppen Lloydie? How come you not sellin uptown?”
“Need to do sumpn. Want you help.”
“What you want?”
“Come over here and me tell you.”
Dwight reeled in his line and splashed through the shallow water to where Lloyd stood on the beach. “Whoy! Why you smell so, bredren?”
“Just dog doo-doo on this twine me find. Me soon wash it off.”
“What you want?”
“Gramps still don’t come home. Me want hide on the Coast Guard boat, go out to Pedro with them, see if me can find him.”
“What!? You turn fool, bredren? Them nah going let you on that boat!”
“Listen me. Me going climb the anchor rope. Or the stern ladder. Me need you to do sumpn so them all look at you while me is doin it.”
“But see here
