“You go to sea with your granddaddy?” said Captain Blake.
“Yes, sah. From me a baby.”
“You close to him, then?”
Lloyd knew he did not have the right words for his relationship with Gramps. “Yes, sah,” he agreed.
“So tell me what happened to him.”
“Nuttn more to tell. Him don’t fish at Pedro, but him go last Sunday. Him call us on Tuesday, say he comin back on Thursday. But him don’t come back. Him not answerin the phone.”
“You talk to fishers at Port Royal and Gray Pond and Rocky Point?”
“Yes, sah. Not Rocky Point. Too far. The fishers at Gray Pond beach say to ask the Coast Guard.” Me tell you this already, he wanted to say. He remembered the way Captain Blake had reacted to the suggestion that the Coast Guard would search only for important people.
“Well, youngster, you have guts, I’ll say that for you. And it’s good you love your granddaddy. Come. I will get you onto Middle Cay and we see what we see. Don’t hold out too much hope though. I checked. Commander Peterson did tell the Middle Cay detail to ask around. Your granddaddy was here, but he left on Thursday and nobody out here seen him since.”
Lloyd let the words pass over him like the bursting spray on his long journey. “Thank you, sah,” was all he said in response. You don’t know everything, he thought.
Squall after squall came to Portland Rock last night and I was happy to exchange sleep for water. I stripped off all my clothes and lay naked under the sky on the life jacket. At dawn I was cleansed but when I tried to stand, I fell. In the dark I had not been able to fill the plastic bottle. My right leg aches and aches. The whelks are finished and the gulls are very loud this morning. I imagine they are disappointed I have not yet died. It is good to lie washed under the open sky. I listen for the sound of a boat and I don’t know what to hope for because if it is the wrong boat, I am finished.
20
Lloyd and Foster walked the narrow alleys between the dwellings on Middle Cay. Most of the shacks were empty and Lloyd realized this was another obstacle—the fishers were already at sea. Perhaps by the time they returned to the cay the Surrey would have weighed anchor and be heading back to Port Royal. Maybe the captain would let him stay on Middle Cay. He could return to the mainland with any fisher. He knew his mother would worry more with each passing night, but he could get a message to her. Maybe the captain himself would call her.
He was surprised to see women on Middle Cay. Two very young women wearing wigs and skimpy clothing sat on an old boat engine outside one of the shacks. A much older woman squatted over a basin, cleaning fish. Fish scales clung to her forearms. Some of the shacks were actually shops with shelves lined with tins of Vienna sausages and bully beef and mackerel, bags of flour, sodas, beer, rum, even clothes. Some shacks contained several rooms, others were just a single room enclosed in plywood and zinc. A man slept in a slung hammock in one of the houses, the door open to catch the sea breeze. Lloyd saw barrels containing water and some shacks had rusty gutters for collecting rainwater.
He saw a generator outside one of the bigger dwellings. There were two small but substantial buildings on the island, one rectangular and the other looking like a huge can, half buried in the sand. The sailors were gathered around the rectangular building—the Middle Cay Coast Guard base, Lloyd figured. The other building was locked. There was a large area of smoking garbage off to one side and seabirds circled in the sky, making their loud calls. A woman walked out of one of the shacks and threw fish guts onto the beach. The birds descended on it, shrieking and pecking.
“Where you want to start, bwoy?” snapped Foster, clearly annoyed by the duty he had been assigned. Lloyd looked around. The women avoided his eyes. They were probably afraid of the sailors and unlikely to talk freely in their presence. “Sah?” he said. “You can wait somewhere for me? Me can’t run from the Cay. Them not going talk to me if you standin right there.”
Foster kissed his teeth. “Awright, bwoy,” he said. “See that building over there? The base. Me wait for you there. One hour. That’s it. Then we going back to the Surrey. If me have to search for you, me personally lock you in a cabin until we back at Cagway. You get me?”
“Yes, sah.”
“And don’t go that side.” The sailor pointed past the burning garbage to one end of the cay where there were three damaged concrete structures. “Middle Cay bathroom is the beach. Captain, he don’t want any mess on the Surrey.”
Lloyd nodded and set off. Middle Cay was like every fishing beach he had ever visited—old boats pulled up out of the reach of all but the highest seas, piles of nets, fish pots, rusting gear. Strong smells of salt and fish. There were hundreds of birds, including a type he had never seen, pure white with the amber eyes of a goat behind a mask—those birds held the ground near the garbage, despite the heat and smoke.
It took him less than an hour to speak to everyone he saw on Middle Cay. One woman with the best stocked shop remembered Maas Conrad. Her name was Miss Alice, and she said she had lived near Gray Pond one time. Yes, Maas Conrad had been at Pedro, he had bought a fried fish from her and a bottle of Stone’s Ginger Wine, and they had chatted about the old days when fish were plentiful in Kingston Harbour. “The elders, them always talk about that,” she said to
