The years passed. Luke and Cordella had no children. Luke said she was a mule. My brother had trouble remembering my son’s name, calling him Vincent by mistake. Then one Sunday night Sheldon’s son answered the phone and told me Luke was dead. Bwoy, me sorry, he said. Me sorry me have to tell you.
How him die? I asked. The dynamite kill him?
No, Sheldon’s son said. Him die out a Pedro, compressor diving. That’s where the money is now. The big thing is conch.
The Pedro Bank had claimed Luke after all.
33
Skylark headed southeast as the sun rose. The sky filled with streaks of color. Although the boat was new and modern, the hull slammed into the waves and they were all drenched. Every boat have it sea, Gramps used to say. Lloyd thought of his trip to Pedro on the Surrey, the long hours hidden under the dinghy in the dark. He smiled. Despite the heaving swells, his stomach was steady and he loved the breeze in his face. The life jacket warmed his body. Maybe his mother was wrong and he would be a fisher.
“How long now, Miss?” he asked Jules. She was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and holding a pair of binoculars in a plastic bag.
“Still a ways to go, Lloydie.” She looked at her watch, and took out the binoculars. She looked through them in a wide sweep across the sea and then returned them to the bag. She made a mark on a plastic card. She did it again, about fifteen minutes later.
“What you doin, Miss?” Lloyd said.
“You want to be a scientist, this is what we do. I’m looking for dolphins, writing down whatever I see. Conditions are bad, though. I don’t think we’ll see any until we get close to Portland Rock.”
“You write down that you don’t see anything?”
“Sometimes nothing can tell you as much as something,” she said. A big burst of spray came over Skylark’s bow and they fell silent. I am comin, Lloyd said to his grandfather in his mind.
Another dawn. This one is spectacular and I am glad to see it unfold. Sometimes sunrise is a muted affair, at other times this brilliance, this celebration. I hear the clicking noises of crabs and the calls of gulls and the boom of the surf and the smaller splashes of pelicans diving for fish. The holes in the rocks are full of seawater again and the sky is clear. There will be no more squalls, at least not soon enough to matter. My mind is sharp even as my body shrivels. It is time to face what I remember about my journey to Portland Rock.
What were the chances of finding the dolphin catchers on the wide Caribbean Sea, on this piece of the whole earth rising from the seafloor, this Pedro Bank? The odds of finding my only son must have been the size of a grain of sand, one single grain of sand among uncountable millions—yet still I found him. I found him in the deep clear water near this rock where the dolphins come to feed and play. I found him and his bredren chasing them with banging pots and splashing oars into the nets they set. I found him because Slowly had told me where to go.
I was not afraid of Vernon nor the men with him, young and strong as they were. I wanted to ram their boats, but did not want to damage Water Bird. I pulled up beside them and I shouted at them. One of their boats circled away and I watched it. I did not see or feel whatever struck the back of my head, nor did I see who struck the blow. I did not see Water Bird float away.
I must have lost consciousness, for when I opened my eyes the sun was high. It was middle day and I was gone to drift without my boat. I floated face up on the surface of the sea and at first I could not understand why. Then I realized what had saved me—the life jacket I now lie on, a small softness between me and the rocks. All my life I wore my life jacket only intermittently, but on that last morning, when I left Middle Cay to find the place Slowly told me about, the place the dolphins were captured, I pulled it from under Water Bird’s bow cap and put it on, grumbling to myself about the way it would make me hotter.
I turned in a circle, looking for boats. I was alone. I rose and fell in a shining sea with sharks all around and my blood in the water. I had never seen such clear water. I could see right down into it. The sharks were large—twelve, fourteen feet long. I felt no fear. Perhaps the blow made me lose a little of my mind. I hung in the water and tried not to move my arms and legs. Then I remembered something my father told me from his lifeguarding days—if you ever get stuck in the water with sharks roll up into a ball on the surface. You not going to look like food then and it will save your energy. Bobbing, he called it. I put my face in the water and felt the sting of salt on the back of my head. I felt for the wound—it was long but not deep. If this had happened on land I would have survived. I reached for my legs and curled into a ball.
It was hard to hold on to my legs in the ball shape, the life jacket was in the way, but it did keep me bobbing on the surface. As my father had shown me in my boyhood I turned my head to one side to breathe. I held my breath for the count of ten, and then I
