“Dwight. You comin or you not? Me gettin on a bus and me going to Port Royal and me going wait for night, and then me is going to climb that rope and get on the boat. If them catch me, them catch me. Me going to try.”
“Whoy,” Dwight said again. Then he smiled. “Well, is you them going throw inna jail. What you want me do?”
The rain clouds come. The weather always changes if you wait long enough. I crawl out from under the shade of the blue tarpaulin and the rain washes salt and blood from my skin. I drink. The hollows in the rocks around me fill with fresh water. Perhaps I now have a store of water for days. I forget the cuts in my back from the rocks and the pain in my right leg. I abandon my rationing and eat dozens of sea snails. There are only five whelks left. I open my mouth to the sky, rain fills my body and I feel strength fill my arms. I crack the biggest remaining whelk easily—I have learned the best place to hit their tough shells. I make a funnel of the tarpaulin and fill the plastic bottle, wishing I had another container. I taste the water in one of the rock pools but it is brackish. I realize the rocks hold millennia of salt from the sea and they cannot be washed clean.
Five days I have been on this rock. With water I can survive five more. I stand and turn a slow circle, searching for the horizon but it is hidden behind sheets of rain. Then the whole world seems to turn and I fall to my knees.
It rains for hours and hours and I mourn the wasted water that falls into the sea. When the rain stops, my skin dries quickly and I watch the sun sink into a bank of cloud. That night I have no dreams.
11
The boys sat right at the back of the bus and Lloyd stared out of the window. Where could they wait until dark? Port Royal was a small town and they would be recognized if they went to the fishing beach. Then Lloyd remembered a ruined fort he had seen from Lime Cay; he had never been there on land, but it was close to Port Royal. They would try to find it.
The bus turned onto the new road of the Palisadoes strip with the huge stones piled up by Chinese engineers to make a seawall. He saw the sea was rough. It was going to be an uncomfortable journey to Pedro.
The boys got off the bus at the Morgan’s Harbour Hotel and walked back in the direction they had come. Lloyd hoped the fort was not far; it was hard to tell distances from the sea. The sun beat down on his head and heat rose off the surface of the road. His bag had seemed light in the morning, but now the water bottle was heavy. He was dirty and tired and he had not yet boarded the Surrey.
The entrance to the fort was right on the main road. The site had recently been bushed and there was no one there. Lloyd led the way onto the beach—Lime Cay was straight ahead, swimming distance, if the currents were right. Although the sand was gray and hot, there was a strong breeze off the sea and it cooled the sweat on his skin. This was the place to wait looking out to Lime Cay where the uptowners went on weekends. Perhaps there would even be a pipe somewhere where he could wash the twine and his hands and face.
“It nice here,” said Dwight, and Lloyd realized it was true. The coast curved into a shallow bay and the sea was calmer just in front of them. The beach was covered with rocks of all sizes and shapes and colors, most smooth, and where the waves broke, the stones made a clacking noise as the sea rushed in and out. There was a line of garbage at the edge of the sea, plastic bottles and old shoes and discarded fishing gear and various kinds of wood. Behind them the sand dunes were covered with sea grape and macca bushes and different kinds of cactus.
Lloyd knew the pretty sea had a secret. Whenever Gramps came in from fishing, he would take Water Bird so close to the same strip of land on which they stood that Lloyd often thought they would run aground. “Bottom drop off steep-steep,” Gramps had said in explanation. “Man always drown here.” If the boys waded into the sea, within a few steps they would be out of their depth and caught in a tearing current heading for Wreck Reef and the Hellshire coast.
“So what now?” Dwight said.
“Make us look for a place to wait and a pipe. Want clean this twine—them will smell me before them see me.”
“No pipe out here, man. Nobody is here. Wash it in the sea.”
“Sea too clean. Come. Make us look around.”
The boys walked away from the beach and followed a short marl track into the fort. It was built around a courtyard—some of the walls were brick, others were a kind of crumbling concrete. There was an enormous spray-painted drawing of a gun on one of the concrete walls with the slogan, “Tek sleep and mark death!” The slogan was underlined with dripping red paint to look like blood.
Lloyd saw a small building under a straggly coconut tree. It was almost in the middle of the courtyard, and it looked like the shelters used by security guards all over the city. It had a new zinc roof and a modern door, which was closed. They walked over to it and saw a standpipe right nearby. Probably this was a place where a security guard was sent to look after the
