“Here,” Dwight said. “Some fry fish.” Lloyd clapped his friend on the shoulder. If he was sick later, he would have to cope.
The boys sat on the beach while Lloyd ate. “Found out a whole heap,” said Dwight. “Bucked up Maas Garnet, you know him? One elder. Used to fish, but him old-old now. Anyway, now him selling coconut. Him go inside the base all the time—”
“You don’t tell him anything?”
“No man. Me tell him me doin a project for school. Him say them load up the boat by ’bout ten o’clock. Him say plenty confusion while boat is loadin. Him say everybody go on board by about eleven and then the boat go out by midnight.”
“Still need a way to make them look at sumpn else.”
“Listen me. Two of we swim over there. You wait on the starboard side—away from the dock—nobody watch that side. Then me go to the side where them is loadin up and me start shout and carry on and say me want come with them. While that going on, you climb the rope. Argument done.”
“Them go think you mad,” Lloyd said. “Them might arrest you.”
“Me go on like me get hold of a bottle of white rum. Me dive back into the sea. Them nah come after me.”
It was a simple plan, but it had a chance of working. Lloyd looked into his friend’s face—his eyes were bright and he was smiling—he thought it was a game, like many they had played. “We not pickney anymore,” he warned. He wanted Dwight to know what was at stake. Dwight shrugged.
“You think Gramps is awright?” Lloyd asked.
Dwight stopped smiling. “I dunno man. He could be, but I dunno. Is good you go look for him.”
“Me wrote on a paper at home that me crewin for Popeye. If my mother ask, that’s what you tell her, okay?”
“Yeah man. Me don’t see you since Sunday. Where you want wait? Here or close to Port Royal?”
“Here. On the beach. The security might come back. See that tree? Make us sit under it. Don’t make me fall asleep again.”
“Awright. Memba the twine.” Lloyd unpacked the bigger plastic bag and stowed his backpack inside it, shoving it tight against the hole in the ice chest. The backpack fit perfectly. He walked along the beach, coiling the twine between palm and elbow; it still had a faint smell, but nothing came off on his hands. The boys crawled under the low branches of a sea grape tree and began their wait for nightfall.
I was not yet thirteen when I left school. Luke and I started fishing with other fishers, sometimes making two or three trips in a day. The bed I slept in with my two brothers was far too small and I moved to a rough, heavy blanket on the floor. I was fourteen, then fifteen. All I desired was a girlfriend so I went to sea as much as I could—I would need some money to catch a girl.
The one I really liked, Jasmine, was from Billy’s Bay and the white blouse she wore under her school tunic was starched. She wore her hair in plaits, held by elastic bands with round balls at the ends. Sometimes her head was covered with these balls because her mother had made so many plaits. They reminded me of a thin cactus that bloomed round yellow balls once a year in June. I took Jasmine’s hairstyle to be a sign of her mood—many plaits, I decided, meant she was happy. It was her way of singing in silence.
My brothers started leaving the coast when they had earned enough money. Great Bay had become too small. In Sheldon’s Bar they drank and smoked and talked about women. They left only when the bar closed. Sometimes they spent the rest of the night under a coconut tree. In the morning, they were gone.
We started seeing foreign fishers. They were from Nicaragua and Honduras. Their hair was black and straight and they spoke Spanish. They came for our fish. There were fights with knives and broken bottles.
It is easy to say now that I thought about manhood, that I wondered what the life of a man should be, but I did not. Manhood was like a squall on the sea; it would come and you would not know its force until you were in it. My father fought with my brothers and the house was noisy with their angry words—Silver’s engine was dirty, the gas had not been mixed right, they had gone to the wrong place at the wrong time, no fish could possibly have been located there and then. They came back too early or too late. They wasted their earnings on drink. Their traps were poorly repaired and fish escaped. They were excuses for men. I noticed Robert and Ben were taller than my father. Taller and stronger. I no longer had that sense of peace and plenty in our house.
The rock I lie on is called Portland Rock. Slowly told me about it on Gray Pond beach in his mad way, half in Spanish, half in English. That is where the dolphin catchers go, he said. I did not ask him to name the dolphin catchers because I knew them. Bad things go on there, he said, and I knew it was a warning. Still, I took Water Bird to Pedro and then to Portland Rock. Slowly was right. I know who caused me to be here, but I don’t know how.
13
The boys had no way of telling the time. Lloyd thought of being in jail in a dirty cell through nights of dark, slow hours. He
