“Who Black Crab send to Pedro to find Gramps?”
“Me no know, Lloydie. Me know you father big up inna the dolphin business, but me no know if is him. Me not sayin is him. But me hear from ’nuff Pedro man that Vernon was out there—and him no like go sea more than so, you know that. If him was on Pedro, him go there for a reason.”
“You look for him, Maas Roxton? You go look for you friend, for you bredren?” Lloyd stood. He wanted to hit the old man, to throw the cup he held against the wall.
“Don’t facety to me yout’. You is outta order. Is not you one care about you granddaddy. But me have grandpickney too and it nah go help them to bury me, you hear? Yes, me look for him. Me look for him every time me go sea, me look for him at Hellshire and on Pigeon Island and on Pelican. But is a big sea. Me don’t find him. Me know the Coast Guard look too.”
“You see his boat?”
“Not a trace. Him gone, Lloydie. It hard, but him gone. You go home now and you forget ’bout it.”
Lloyd walked to the door and stopped on the doorstep. He did not know what to believe.
“Where you going now, Lloydie?” Maas Roxton said. “You can’t go back to town ’til tomorrow. Stay here tonight. I have some fish and festival, Miss Janet over by the Co-op fry it up for me. We beg a call over at the shop and tell you mother where you is. You get up early and go home with Django—is him bring you, don’t it? Or you can come sea inna the mornin with me. We take some fish for Miss Beryl.”
Lloyd’s eyes filled with tears. It would be so good to cry, to mourn, to admit defeat.
“C’mon, Lloydie, you just a bwoy. Hear what me is tellin you.”
Lloyd nodded slowly and he felt his body soften, and together the boy and the old man went in search of a cell phone with credit.
Luke stayed at home for three weeks. My family dispersed. Robert went back to Southside, Colin to Top Hill, Lewis to Billy’s Bay, Ben to Junction. My father went to Black River. My mother cleaned and cooked. I waited. When Luke took his first steps around our house I walked beside him. I watched his flesh fill out and soften the hard lines of his bones. He was still hungry and he drank a whole coconut every single hour he was awake. People from the community came by, mostly the women, and they brought gifts—a special oil for the skin, a tea that would bring sleep and a quiet mind, sweet potatoes just dug from the earth. No one spoke the words we were all thinking—would Luke go to sea again?
At night, I lay on the floor on my pile of blankets and listened to my brother’s breathing and I thought about a life on the sea, the life of a fisher. When the fish were biting, we had money. We had respect. We were big men in the community. If we were lost, a search was mounted and the whole community waited for our return. I had no other trade. Until Luke went to drift, I thought I knew the sea. I thought often about what he said, that the sea talked to him through the thin hull of the boat, and as I lay on the floor I listened for the words of the earth below me but it was silent.
I knew I would go to sea again. Never with a man like Donovan, never if the weather was bad, never if something simply did not feel right. And never to the Pedro Bank. I would never take the journey all my brothers had taken, never see the man with two rows of teeth like a shark, never sleep and wake on a cay in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. But I would go to sea, I would come home to land at the edge of the sea, but the sea was and would always be my world and my work.
In the fourth week after Luke’s return, our father came up to us where we sat on the front steps, Luke with a coconut shell in his hands. Tomorrow, he said to Luke. You be ready. My brother nodded.
Me can come? I said.
My father pursed his lips and looked down. Ee-hee, he said eventually.
The next morning we skimmed over a light chop into the whorls of sunrise and Luke took his place at the bow, holding the anchor rope, riding the eternal power of the sea. And that morning we saw the dolphins at the reef; we saw a female with her calf and a big male that rode our bow wave, close enough to touch. It was a morning of triumph and I grinned at Luke. I loved dolphins anew. All my life they reminded me of the day I made my peace with the sea.
I know I will die on this rock in the sea. There is no escape. A man born to drown cannot hang. The Pedro Bank has been waiting for me.
27
The next morning, Maas Roxton and Lloyd left to pull pots. The weather was dull and sticky and the choppy sea held a threat of something more. Lloyd had fallen asleep on an old army cot as soon as he had eaten and had slept deeply and dreamlessly all night. Yet he felt heavy. Maas Roxton said his grandfather was dead. Perhaps it was time to accept it.
“We go over by Wreck Reef,” Maas Roxton said. “Then to Gray Pond. You sell some fish, you pray for you granddaddy and you go about you business after that, seen, Lloydie?”
They left the cays of Portland Bight and the town of Old
