“Was he okay?” said Lloyd. “Not sick or anything?”
“Him not sick. Him soon come back, man.”
The few fishers on Middle Cay told the same story. Yes, they had seen Maas Conrad, they knew about his catch, which had been reasonable, they had shared a drink with him, he had watched TV at night over at Miss Leona’s bar, until the generator went off, and when they woke on Thursday morning Maas Conrad had gone. They did not know if his phone had stopped working; he had not said so. He had sold some of his catch to the men who plied packer boats back and forth to the mainland. They assumed he had fished early on the morning of his departure and had left for Port Royal or Rocky Point right after. The weather was not the calmest, but there were no storms. Unless his engine had failed, they were all sure he would turn up.
Lloyd had no watch, but he knew his hour was almost up. He was near tears—all for nothing, he thought, all this way for nothing. He walked away from the shacks and onto the beach, looking for a secluded place where he could sit for a minute and stare out to sea. He found a slice of shade beside a wrecked fishing canoe and sat on a rock. The waves came in and out, foaming at his feet.
“But see yah now, is Lloydie! What you doing out here alone?” Lloyd turned to see Slowly, the fisher who had been lost at sea and ate seaweed to survive.
“Wha’ppen, Slowly?” he said. “What you doin out here?”
Lloyd saw the canoe was just a shell and there was some kind of bedding laid out near the bow. Slowly must have been asleep in the canoe, his head under the bow cap for the little shade it offered. Did he now live there, in an old canoe, open to sun and rain? His clothes were rags and his skin was crusted with salt and fish scales and sweat. His eyes shone with a mad light.
“What me doing out here? Staying close to God, Lloydie. This is where him go come to take us up. Him go come in the night and me is ready. Mine eyes have seen the GLORY of the coming of the LORD . . .” Slowly leapt out of the canoe and, turning in a circle, stretched his arms out. Then he belted out the rest of the hymn, marching in place on the sand. Poor Slowly, Lloyd thought. Him turn madman. It was time to go to the Coast Guard base for the journey back to the mainland. He stood up. “Awright, Slowly. Me gone. You take care.”
“Wait!” Slowly said. “Wait wait wait wait wait. El mal en la tierra. God has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. Them got him, Lloydie. The foreign man got him. The sins of the father got him, carried down from generation to generation. El mal en la tierra. You have drinks money for me? A smalls?” His last request was made in a normal voice.
Lloyd shook his head. “Sorry, man, don’t have any money with me.”
“Is awright man. Likkle Lloydie. What a way you grow big! You far from home out here. Bwoy, be fearful of the sea, for it contain the leviathan! You hear me, yout’?”
“Me hear you, Slowly. Me gone though.” Lloyd turned and walked toward the Coast Guard base. He fought his tears. Behind him he heard Slowly start on another hymn. At the door to the base, Lloyd looked back across the sand. Slowly was playing imaginary drums. Suddenly he stopped. He pointed at Lloyd. And then he began a strange movement with his arms, almost like the shape of waves, a kind of dance. “Watch me, Lloydie!” he shouted from the beach. “Me know the truth! Black Crab know the truth! Find the dolphin catchers. Go talk to Maas Roxton. Find a rock in the sea.” He continued his weird dance in the sun.
Lloyd ran back to him. “What you saying, Slowly? Beg you talk sense. Black Crab is a man?”
Slowly widened his eyes and again rattled off a string of Spanish phrases.
“Talk English,” Lloyd pleaded, holding Slowly’s arm. “And talk slow. Everything is cool, Slowly. Just cool.”
“Yout’! Find youself over here!” It was Foster shouting at him from the Coast Guard base. His time on Middle Cay was over. Lloyd tugged at Slowly’s arm and held the man’s gaze. “Slowly, me is begging you, who is Black Crab and what him have to do with Gramps?”
“Forget Black Crab. The evil thrive like the green bay tree and evil is abroad in the land. Abroad in the land, me say. Talk to him friend, Maas Conrad friend. You know him? Maas Roxton. Him live at Rocky Point. Go to him, Lloydie. Go to him fast-fast.”
Lloyd heard steps behind him and Foster grabbed his arm. “Me hear you, Slowly,” he said, as Foster dragged him away. “Bless up.”
“You waste you time talking to a madman, bwoy,” sneered the sailor. “You fool-fool just like him.”
At the entrance to the base, Lloyd looked back again. Slowly was still doing his strange dance on the beach. And Lloyd remembered Gramps’s dolphin stories and his descriptions of how they moved through the water, up and down at the surface. Slowly’s dance was a dolphin dance. Definitely, his grandfather’s disappearance had something to do with dolphins. Lloyd felt a bubble of hope in his chest. He knew Maas Roxton, his grandfather’s best friend. He should have thought of going to see him first. And he had another name, a name his parents knew—Black Crab.
Lloyd joined the sailors going back to the mainland, anxious for the return journey to be over.
Lewis and I went together to look for Luke. My second oldest brother was twenty by then, a big man. He lived in Junction in
