He finished dressing and left the house. His mother would be angry to find him gone when she returned; she would want his help with the Saturday selling. His mother did not sell her fish on the Harbour’s fishing beaches or in the downtown markets. She took Maas Conrad’s high-value catch uptown to an old fridge turned icebox on the side of the road near a Liguanea supermarket. She was Nicey-the-fish-lady, and the white people from Jacks Hill and the brownings from Mona trusted her fish. “You have lobster next week?” the women would ask from the windows of their huge cars. “I only buy fish from you, Nicey,” they would say.
“Mebbe next week,” his mother would reply. “But why you don’t try this nice-nice silk snapper?” That was why his mother was called Nicey; her fish was always nice-nice. Her real name was Beryl. “Next week, Nicey,” the uptown women would say as they pulled out into the stream of cars. Lloyd thought the uptown people were like sharks, certain of their status, unafraid of the multitudes of other creatures with whom they shared a home, barely noticing them. A shark could turn on a small fish at any time, and in the flick of a tail and the crunch of jaws it would all be over. He never made eye contact with the uptown people.
He walked toward Gray Pond, squinting in the rising sun over Long Mountain. In the distance, the stacks at the cement company were without the usual cloud of dust. If the plant was not working, it would be a good day for a swim at the nearby mineral baths. Maybe later he would do that—he would not be allowed into the proper baths, of course, not unless he could pay the entrance fee, but the springs found their way under Windward Road and came out at the edge of Kingston Harbour, and there boys often swam in a shallow canal edged with reeds. He liked the slightly metallic taste of the mineral springs, he liked the coldness on his limbs—it was a much better bath than the sponge bath in the outhouse at home, and he loved to let the slow force of the springs take him into the sea.
People said Kingston Harbour was polluted and he knew it was true; the sewage and garbage of the city ended up there, and the soot of the factories, and the oil and bilge of ships, but he was not afraid of the Harbour’s waters. He made sure he did not swallow the water and always washed off in the fresh water of the springs.
“Mornin, Miss Lavern,” Lloyd said to Dwight’s mother. She was sweeping up breadfruit leaves in the yard. Lloyd looked up. The tree was bearing and the breadfruit would soon be ready for roasting.
“Mornin, Lloydie. You hear from Maas Conrad?” That was the way of it. His mother could pretend there was no need to worry yet, but the community of fishers and vendors and Harbour dwellers knew when someone was lost at sea.
“No, Miss. Nuttn yet. But is only two days.”
“Is true. Maas Conrad be awright. You want Dwight? Him inside, still sleepin. That bwoy can’t wake a mornin time.”
“Me going talk to the fishers at Gray Pond beach. You can tell him for me?”
Miss Lavern nodded. “Maas Conrad have a cell phone, don’t?”
“Ee-hee. But mebbe the battery dead or it fall inna the sea.”
“True-true.” Lloyd could see she did not believe Maas Conrad had let his phone battery die, or that he had lost his phone. It could have died, he thought. Surely it would be hard to charge a phone on the cays of the Pedro Bank, where the fishers stayed. And there could have been bad weather, the phone could have got wet and stopped working. Perhaps when he went to the beach he would see Gramps pulling Water Bird out of the water.
Lloyd had never been to the Pedro Cays. His grandfather was dead set against it and his mother had listened to the old man. The most daunting thing about the trip to the Pedro Cays was the possibility of missing them entirely in the dark, the five hours becoming six and then seven and then eight. Then, as the dawn turned the black sea gray and then navy blue, there would be no sign of the turquoise water of the Pedro Bank rising from the seafloor, no sign of three small cays in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. There would be the awful knowledge that the next stop was the coast of South America, that gas would soon run out and the boat would be at the mercy of the sea, spinning and wallowing like a coconut, taken south and west.
A man who missed the Cays would eat the raw and rotting fish in his bait bucket until it was done, he would vomit until all he had left was dry heaves and cramps, he would take tiny sips of the warm water in his plastic bottle, and he would pray for rain, for clouds, for anything to dim the sun, and he would stare at the water level in the bottle going down and down. It happened once or twice a year—Jamaican fishers would be found by foreign boats, starving and dehydrated, sometimes driven mad by exposure and hopelessness, by the sight of the endless sea and by the possibility of food fish under the hull of the boat, but too deep, too speedy to be caught.
Lloyd thought of Slowly from Gray Pond, a young man, not yet
