The sky was cloudy and Lloyd saw that when the moon rose, it would be hidden behind clouds. The sunset was an orange smear over Hellshire. The strong breeze kept off the worst of the mosquitoes and sandflies. They waited.
Night came. Dwight fell asleep. Lloyd sat up straighter and listened to the noises in the bush. He wished a sea turtle would come up on the beach in front of him. It was early in the nesting season, but not impossible. He wished he would hear the breath of a dolphin cruising the deep water just offshore. These were signs of the sea, signs of life, of hope, because they were animals his grandfather loved. “You know sea turtle eat seaweed, Lloydie? Them is like a lawnmower, keep the seaweed short and strong,” Gramps had said, the time when they had seen a single turtle hatchling make its way to sea at Tern Cay, struggling over small heaps of sand and mangrove leaves. Lloyd had wanted to help the baby turtle, but Gramps had said no. The turtle’s journey was his journey, it could not be avoided. “I thought them eat jellyfish,” Lloyd had said, watching the baby turtle scrabbling through beach vines.
“Different kinda turtle. Green turtle eat seaweed; hawksbill eat jellyfish.”
Dwight stirred beside him. It was time to get up. The hours spent sitting needed to be walked out of his muscles. Lloyd wanted to spend as short a time as possible in the water. Although it was August and the night was warm, he knew he would start to shiver in the sea if he were there for long. He was glad he had the ice chest—he could hold on to it and it would bear him up, he would not have to tread water while he waited for Dwight to start yelling. He shook his friend awake and they drank from the spare water bottle. He was hungry again.
It was a short walk to the fishing beach and no one noticed the boys on the poorly lit road. Port Royal was a fishing town of less than two thousand people and at night, the men drank and played dominoes on sidewalks, the women operated the bars and sold fried fish from wooden cases, and Kingston people came to Gloria’s to eat. A sound system was being set up at the bar closest to the fishing beach. If the music started up, Lloyd wondered if the sailors would hear Dwight’s cries.
The fishing beach was empty; the boats pulled high on the beach and the one light on the dock was broken. They sat on an old utility pole behind a storage shed and Lloyd pulled off his shoes. There was a stinking pile of fish guts off to one side and his stomach clenched. He was used to the smell of fish guts; it was fear making his stomach tighten. He stuffed his shoes in the backpack and pushed his fear down. He tied the ice chest and the backpack to the belt loops in his shorts. The chest was white and easy to see, but it would not be unusual to see any kind of garbage floating on the surface of Kingston Harbour.
“You ready?” he said. Dwight had taken off his shoes and shirt and hidden them behind the pole.
“Yeah man. You awright?”
“Ee-hee.”
“I did forget to buy the white rum and drink a little, make the sailors smell it on me.”
“Don’t really matter,” said Lloyd. “Just don’t make them hold on to you.”
“When you think you come back?”
“Late tomorrow.”
“Check me, awright?”
“Yeah man, no must?”
They went into the warm, dirty seawater together.
When I was seventeen, Jasmine was my girlfriend. We walked along the stony lanes of Treasure Beach together under the lignum vitae trees and looked for a private place where we could sit and hold hands and maybe kiss. We found a cave on the ridge behind Billy’s Bay, a strange place with sand on the floor and big boulders with funny raised round marks. Jasmine said it was an old Arawak cave. The elders said the Arawaks had a line of shelter caves along this ridge until a massive wave came and mashed up their caves and killed them all. She said the big wave brought the huge sand dunes of Treasure Beach and that was how Sandy Bank primary school got its name.
In the cave with Jasmine, I thought of Hatuey, my Arawak prince—I had not thought of him for a long time. But I laughed off Jasmine’s story of the massive wave. I brought old feed sacks from Maas Donald, who kept chickens, and lined the floor of the cave. Jasmine and I would sit in the entrance, catching the sea breezes, looking out to the horizon. I was struck by the softness of her palms compared to mine. It was not long before I persuaded her to lie on the floor of the cave with me. Do you think the Arawaks made those marks, she said, pointing to the round things on the boulders. Probably, I said, although they looked more like the kind of tiny plants that grew on rocks in the sea.
Jasmine did not like the sea. It was dangerous, she said. She hated the never-ending noise it made. She wanted to go to Kingston and as soon as she was old enough she would be gone. She did not care if she never saw Great Bay or Billy’s Bay or Frenchman’s or Calabash Bay ever again. Her mother had taken her to Kingston once and she was full of stories about how it looked—the many cars, the concrete buildings—and the movie theaters. As she chatted, I felt only her hand in mine.
14
The boys
