Speedy swore. “We doing it now! Take the wheel!” he shouted at Jules and she took his place. Speedy grabbed the rope from Lloyd and jumped into the canoe. Jules used the engine to hold Skylark steady. “Make haste!” she said. “Do what I say! Put on your shoes!”
Speedy put his hand on the canoe’s engine. “Warm,” he said. “Them just reach.” Skylark was secured, Jules shut down the engines and adjusted the fenders. She was steady on her feet and knew exactly what to do. Lloyd’s life had been spent around men of the sea – he had never before met a woman of the sea.
He hauled on his shoes. “Tie the laces tight,” Jules said. She leapt into the canoe and then onto Portland Rock staggering a little on the sharp, uneven ground. Speedy steadied her. He held out his hand to Lloyd, but Lloyd did not take it. He jumped too and was proud that his balance held. “Stay with the boat,” Jules said to Speedy.
“You and the boy can’t deal with two big man, maybe more,” Speedy said. “Me comin with you.”
“Need you to stay with the boat so we can leave,” Jules insisted. “Suppose they cut the boat free?”
Lloyd left them to argue. He saw piles of dried human turds around him and a faint path. Seabirds soared in the sky, circling and gliding and plunging, and the air was full of their cries. He thought he heard human voices and he climbed, pushing away fears of falling on the jagged rock. “I am here,” he shouted to his grandfather. “Gramps! I am here.”
The dawn is gray and I believe a storm is coming. In the dreams of my final night of life my only son is still a child, I am with Jasmine and Luke in Great Bay, and a different future is possible. Now I am an old man and I come from a line of fishermen all the way back to Hatuey, the old companion of my mind, and here I lie, near death, sand and salt crusted on my body and one leg heavy as a felled tree. The rest of my body is light, like the froth of sea spray. I watch the ghost crabs at their business, their sideways sidle into their holes, their sprouting eyes and I am no longer moved to try and catch them. They will feed on my body and this is as it should be.
I have been on this rock too long. At first I counted the sunrises and lined up shells to mark the passing of days until one day a seventh wave washed them away. At first I stood for hours and watched the sea, looking for fishing boats, but it was not long before my legs would not hold me and I spent day and night in the small rough space under the tarpaulin.
My head has healed quickly, but one of the cuts on my right leg has festered; it has swollen and now throbs without cease. I welcomed the pain of living at first, but now I am done with it. I am cold and I shiver in the blazing sun. Day and night, I dream of Hatuey and the wave that tried to take the island back to the sea before the conquerors came. I dream of the day Beryl came to me with my grandson in her arms and her offer to buy my fish and of the many sunrises I saw at sea with Lloydie. I will not see him reach manhood but he taught me good can come from bad.
I think I hear a boat engine, and then another. It is the end of things and it must be imagination, more mad dreams. I listen hard but all I can hear is the thundering sea and the cries of the birds. Shh, I whisper to them but they go about their business, screaming to each other. I wish I understood their language; I wish I could fly. I wish I could see the face of my grandson just one more time.
35
Lloyd heard a snapping sound and saw a piece of tarpaulin sail away on the breeze. “Gramps!” Lloyd shouted again. “You there?” All he could hear were the birds and the heavy surf. His heart pounded. “Gramps!” he called again, looking around. He could not see all the parts of the rock, it had many peaks and hollows, many places a man could lie hidden. It would take a while to search every inch of it and it would be easy to fall and break a limb. “Gramps!”
He saw a flash of blue and realized it was the remaining scrap of a tarpaulin in a small sheltered hollow. He saw orange, the color of a life jacket. Then he heard Gramps say his name: “Lloydie?” And his father’s voice said, “You lose you mind, old man.” Lloyd climbed the last few steps and saw Selvin standing beside his father, and Gramps lying on the ground. Vernon Saunders held a billy club in his fist.
“Get away from him,” Lloyd screamed and ran full tilt into his father’s chest.
Vernon staggered. “Bwoy, you lick you head too! What you doin here?”
“You try to kill him! You owna father. What you was going do now? Bash in him head like him is one moray eel you find inna pot?” Lloyd pointed at the billy club and his voice shook with rage.
“Lloyd! Where are you?” It was Jules. Vernon’s gaze shifted from his son to Jules. “Me nah trouble him,” he spluttered, letting the club hang from its loop. “Me come to save him. Like you.” He held his hands wide. “No gun. Me just fishin and me find him.”
“You too lie!” Lloyd shouted.
“Lloyd. No time for this. You were right and we found him,” Jules panted. The boy knelt at his grandfather’s side. The old man was wreckage on a rock. Lloyd saw his right leg
