She turned when she heard him come into the room. “How the catch?” she said. “What you go with that old fool Popeye for? After him don’t know nuttn ’bout fishin. Bet you don’t bring home not even one so-so grunt.”
And Lloyd nodded. The easiest lies were the ones never spoken. He waited for the next question, as to whether gentle Popeye, so named for his height and thinness and his white beard, had paid him, but the question never came. He saw tension in his mother’s shoulders as she cooked. It was dark outside—the day of his return had come and gone.
He put their two plastic place mats and their two plates and their two forks on the rickety table and then he sat in silence, waiting for the food his mother cooked to be ready. He would eat, he would sleep for a few more hours, and then he would go back to his place on the wall at the Gray Pond beach and watch for his grandfather.
On the seventh day of the search, I said good-bye to Luke in my mind. Lewis and I were near the place where we had seen the dolphins and as I always did, I looked for them, but they did not come. It was very still—the sea was held suspended without motion. Ahead was the reef where we often set our pots, and not even there could we see the surge or break of waves. Luke is dead, I thought, and it seemed a small thing, no bigger than the death of any fish we threw into the bottom of our canoe. My brother was not exempt from death; nor was I. I wanted to find his body because I would only then be released from this pointless search, this understanding that life itself was indifferent to any particular life. That day, it was my hand on the tiller while Lewis stood in the bow, staring at the unnatural sheen of the sea through east and west, north and south. I turned Silver for home.
Where you going? Lewis said, when he realized what I was doing.
Me done, I said. Done, finish.
He argued, but I did not speak again. When we neared Great Bay I cut the engine, and at the point where I knew the seafloor was sandy and shallow I vaulted into the water and swam away from the canoe, my eyes burning in the salt water.
23
“Where the bwoy is, you wut’less son?” Vernon Saunders yelled. The front door slammed. Lloyd had gone to bed, intending to sleep for a few hours only, but still tired from his trip to Middle Cay he had not woken to go to the seawall. He sat up, wishing his window was bigger and he could escape. His father was drunk, of course.
“Ssst!” his mother hissed. “Stop you noise! You want everybody hear you damn foolishness? What you going on with?”
“Me no care who want listen. Where him is? LLOYD! Find you backside in here!”
Lloyd got out of bed. His father was free with his fists and his belt, but this was nothing remarkable—most of Lloyd’s friends were regularly beaten by mothers and fathers and visiting men; there was almost a pride in it, in being able to take it. But there was something more in his father’s voice that worried Lloyd. He pulled on his clothes.
The shower curtain was torn aside and his father stood in the doorway. Lloyd was trapped—he should have walked out himself into the outer room, perhaps he would have been able to dodge his father’s blows and get through the front door. If Vernon was really drunk, avoiding him would have been easy. But now he filled the doorway and there was no easy escape.
“Where you tell you mother you go Monday night, bwoy?” he shouted, his face close to Lloyd’s, his hands balled up into fists.
“What wrong with you, Vern?” his mother said. “Him did a little crewin for Popeye, that’s all. Come outside. Leave the bwoy alone.”
“That’s what you think! Crew for Popeye? Is a damn lie! You know where you good-good son was Monday night? Him was on the Coast Guard boat! Him stowaway on the Coast Guard boat to Pedro. You lucky him not in jail!”
“Lloydie?” his mother said. “Is true?”
How had his father found out? Lloyd wondered. He stared at the floor.
“Lloydie?” his mother said again, her voice sharper now. Lloyd backed away from his father and reached for the dangling switch to the one lightbulb in his room. He turned it on and his father blinked in the sudden light. Lloyd took his chance and squeezed past his father and out of his bedroom. The front door was shut. His mother caught his arm.
“Hear me dyin trial!” his mother said. “You stowaway on the Coast Guard boat? What you do that for?”
“Me went to look for Gramps,” he said. And then a righteous anger filled his chest. He dragged his arm away. “Nobody care! You don’t care! Gramps lost at sea and nobody lookin for him. So yes, is true; me go on the Coast Guard boat. And me talk to the fishers on Pedro, but nobody tell me nuttn. Until me see Slowly. Him tell me Gramps have sumpn to do with them foreign people what catch dolphins. Me hear you talkin about it at nighttime. You think me is a fool? Me think Gramps is dead over some foolishness to do with dolphins!”
The loss and fear Lloyd had carried for a week broke like a wave on the sharpest of reefs and he began to cry. He was a twelve-year-old boy. He was not a
