After he was alone, my brother spent his days lost at sea wedged in the small V-shaped shade of the bow cap. He said he could hear the sea talking to him through the hull of the boat. He said birds pitched on the boat and he knew they were waiting for him to die so they could peck at his eyes. He never used the word “loneliness” but that is what I could feel—the desolation of being alone on the sea in a boat without power.
On the eighth night, he crawled out and looked at the sky. He said he knew he would die the next day when the sun came up. He was tired of trying to catch fish or birds or turtles. He was tired of praying for rain. It was over. And then he thought of the fuel in the engine and in his mind he saw fishers leaving Great Bay in the dark. When he saw the first faint tinge of gray in the sky, he poured the fuel on the surface of the sea and he lit it with a match. That is how he was found by Maas Peter, who saw the glow of burning fuel in the fading night.
26
Maas Roxton brought Lloyd a cup of water and sat opposite him on a chair. “Me sorry, Lloydie. Me know you and you granddaddy was close.” He shook his head. “Is just a dangerous time now, and him is—was—one ignorant old fool. Man can really get himself kill over a dolphin?”
So here was the truth. Why hadn’t he come to find Maas Roxton earlier? Why had he wasted time with the Coast Guard boat and the dolphin women? He faced the old man. “Tell me what happen,” Lloyd said. The wondering would soon be over. “Why him go to Pedro? Him never go there in him life. What him go there for?”
“Him go ’cause him see you father catchin dolphin for the foreign people.”
“My father?” Lloyd asked the question, but he felt he had always known Vernon had something to do with Maas Conrad’s disappearance.
“Ee-hee. Vernon. Your daddy. Conrad tell me one early mornin him comin home from a quick trip and him see Vernon with some other man. Them was loadin a dolphin into a pickup on Gray Pond beach. Him and Vernon did have words.” Maas Roxton stopped.
“Me know Gramps love dolphin, but is not the first time him and Pa have words. Them have words all the time. What happen after that?”
“Maas Conrad find out ’bout some big crackdown on the Pedro Cays, environmental people want stop night fish-nin and spear fish-nin and government bring in some kind of fish sanctuary place where no fish-nin allow. And the Coast Guard catch some fisher with one whole heap a cocaine, and some other boat with a pile of shark fin. Then two conch compressor diver dead from stayin down too long. Me no know the whole story. But plain and straight, the government stop the fishers from do what them used to do and them stop make money. So them start catch dolphin and sell them to the foreign dolphin people. Been going on for a while near Negril, but not so easy to find dolphin along the north coast ’cause the reef dead and the fish small and dolphin not there more than so. So them start catch them out at Pedro.”
“So Gramps go Pedro. For what?”
“Lloydie, me beg him don’t go. Him leave from here, y’know. But you know how him stay. Him get worse the older him get, all him can chat ’bout is how the sea is mashin up and how all of we is to blame. Them kinda thing. You memba how him nearly get kill last year out by Old Harbour after him try beat up that police, what him name again? Aaahm . . .” The old man stopped and Lloyd wanted to say, who cares about the policeman. He waited.
“Corporal Armstrong. Yeh. Him sell dynamite to fishers.”
“Me never know ’bout that.”
“Conrad nearly get kill! Is only him gray hair save him. Corporal Armstrong say him never want see him again in Old Harbour.” Maas Roxton sighed. “Me know why him go Pedro, but me don’t know what him think him go do when him get there.”
“So why you think him dead?”
“Him dead because a bad man say him must dead.”
“Black Crab, you mean?”
“What you know ’bout Black Crab?” Maas Roxton looked terrified. “Lloydie you can’t mix up-mix up inna these things. A big man thing. Bad man thing.”
“Where I can find him?”
“You no hear what me just say, bwoy?”
“Me have to find him. You think Gramps dead but you no know for sure. Right? Right?”
“Lloydie, I know it hard. But is, what, ten days now since Conrad leave from Pedro. Him must dead. Black Crab send man to get rid of him. Me know that. Black Crab come here, him come to Rocky Point and Welcome Beach and Old Harbour and him tell everybody to keep them mouth shut, that dolphin business a good business, and how nuff man eatin a food from it, and how one old man nah go stop it with him fool-fool chat. How dolphin just a fish, just one animal, like any animal, and what, we must stop eat chicken, stop jerk pork, nobody must have curry goat feed? Not a manjack agree with that. Not a man think anything wrong with catchin a dolphin. After we all catch fish, no so?”
“Dolphin not a fish,” Lloyd said.
“Same damn foolishness. Get it outta you head, yout’.
