Gramps said some men turned to selling drugs, buying cocaine from boats coming from Colombia, heading for Miami, and then selling the cocaine to the local dons, who in turn exchanged the drugs for guns. He told how some men became thieves, pulling the fish pots set by good fishers; not the best, not the most experienced pot fishers, because those men set their pots without floats and ropes, so no one could find them. Other men became pirates, raiding the boats of fishers, stealing catch and equipment and cell phones and money at the point of a gun. Some fishers became desperate as the demands of their baby mothers mounted, causing violence in homes and in yards and in the rum shops. They got sticks of dynamite from the police, or chlorine from a bredren at the chemical company on the Boulevard, and that was how they fished. They could not afford to waste any time thinking about any other day except the day in front of them. It was the longest speech Lloyd had ever heard from his grandfather.
He turned to the two women, who were still waiting for him to speak. “I heard that name,” he said. “Black Crab.”
“Can you help us find him?” asked Madison.
“Mebbe,” he said.
The men of Great Bay half carried Luke to our house and the women became businesslike. Miss Adina bustled off to make chicken soup, Miss Faith to find sinkle bible—aloe—to soothe Luke’s scorched skin, Miss Olga to convince Pastor Peter to keep a special service. Luke had still not opened his eyes, but he had lifted his hands and now held the cup. I touched his bare arm and it felt like the baked earth left behind when the pond dried up, as if his skin might crack and blow away on the sea breeze. I saw the shape of his skull and the long bones of his limbs and the rounded clumps of his joints, like marbles in a bag. Eight, nearly nine days at sea.
At home, my mother bathed her son and anointed his limbs with the cool jelly of the sinkle bible plant. She oiled his lips with Vaseline. She dressed him in clean shorts and led him to her own bed. She spread a towel on top of the sheets and he lay down like an old man. She sat beside him. We others hovered in the room like duppies—ghosts. We heard Miss Adina arrive and the clink of pots and spoons and bowls, the things of land. Miss Adina brought a bowl of chicken soup to my mother. It hot, she said, and fresh. And me cut up the chicken fine-fine. My mother blew on the soup and she held Luke’s head up, and she fed him, one small spoonful at a time. I thought again of birds. He did not finish the bowl. When it was about half done, he turned his head away and my mother let him sink into the bed. He closed his eyes. I was afraid to see him sleep, afraid that after his ordeal and his final long journey to land, he would die in his own home. We stood and watched him, marking every twitch of his eyelids, welcoming the sound of his drawn breath. Let him sleep, my mother said, and we left the room one by one.
My brother had come home. And I had not eaten for a day. I wanted his soup.
Robert arrived with a woman he knew from Southside; she was a nurse, he said. The clinic in Black River would not send a doctor to Great Bay—we would have to take Luke to them. The woman held Luke’s wrist and looked at a watch she took out of her pocket. She laid her palm on his forehead. The main thing, she said, is to get him to drink. Coconut water is best.
I ate a big bowl of soup and half a loaf of hard dough bread. I put on clean, dry clothes. My mother sat at the table with her head in her hands and she sobbed and prayed, thanking Jesus for her son’s return. I tiptoed into my parents’ bedroom. Luke had not moved. He looked as if he had been laid out in death. I watched his chest rise and fall. Then I left to find coconuts for my brother.
25
That same afternoon, Lloyd went back to the Tun-Up rum shop. He left the two women at Morgan’s Harbour Hotel with promises to ask around for Black Crab, but he wanted to talk to Maas Roxton. He was upset with himself for not thinking of Gramps’s old friend first.
Miss Violet was getting ready for the evening rush. She looked up when he came in and greeted him. “Evening, Miss Violet,” he replied. “How I can get to Rocky Point? I want talk to Maas Roxton.”
“Good idea, Lloydie. Me don’t see him come this way long time, but him and you granddaddy was always close. You know Django?”
“The taxi man?”
“Ee-hee. Him have a woman in Rocky Point—him go there all the time. Bet you him will take you for a small money.”
“Thanks, Miss Violet, me will ask him.”
“Go check the Harbour View gas station. That’s where him hang out. You a good boy, Lloydie,” Miss Violet said and she smiled at him.
Lloyd walked along the hard gray sand at the edge of the sea, turning his back to the sunset. He could see the colors of the sky in the water. Suddenly, he longed to be at sea. His trip on the Coast Guard boat seemed months ago. He wanted
