A childhood memory now comes to me—I am searching for sea snails to use as bait, combing the rocks, pulling them from where they fastened themselves by tiny suckers. I would hold them up and they would send out their tiny bodies with two black antennas at the tip, like eyelashes. They would try to hold on to my fingers with their suckers. The sea snails all had black flecks on their shells but were shaded differently—green and pink and gray. Some were rounded, others triangular.
I remember the day I found a rock pool, a small thing, the size of a plate, but it seemed to me it contained the whole of the sea, the warm, constantly replenished water, the barely visible feathery plants and the sea snails, no two the same size, no two ever alike. A whole world in a small pool. I searched for two identical sea snails for my entire boyhood. Yet, I cracked them open with a rock to get at the meat inside their shells for bait.
I am on a rock in the Caribbean Sea. There are sea snails all around me now and I realize they are a source of food. They can neither fly away nor scuttle deep into a crevice in the rock where I now lie. These tiny morsels, full of bits of shattered shell, these will keep me from starving.
4
Lloyd waited outside the Tun-Up rum shop. All his mother’s fish had sold the day before, and when she had counted out the money, she said there was no need for selling the next day. If Saturday sales were not good, his mother would miss church on Sundays and go again to her place at the side of the road in Liguanea. On this Sunday morning, his mother shook him from sleep, insisted he wash and dress in his church clothes, and they walked together to the Church of the Living God in Bournemouth. Lloyd hated church. He hated getting dressed up, he disliked the sweaty women who fussed over him and the voice of Pastor Errol, always talking about sin and fire and brimstone. He sat on the hard pew and wished to be at sea. He knew that by the time the service was finished, it would be too late to offer to crew for any fishermen. He bowed his head and let the singing and the shouting wash over him. He would look for his father later that day at his favorite rum shop.
The rum shop was crowded and loud. Lloyd went around the back into a narrow lane with piles of garbage. He sat on a stone. He listened for his father’s voice, but it was hard to hear any individual voice, hard to understand what the men were saying, as they shouted and cursed and slapped down dominoes. A herd of goats came around the corner and started to eat the garbage, pulling the piles apart. How should he approach his father? And when? There would be no point if he got too drunk.
Lloyd stood and peered through a dusty window into the dark inside of the bar. He saw the wide and solid back of Miss Lilah, the woman who owned the bar, and he saw the domino players, who sat outside on the sidewalk. The other men were shadows. He would have to go inside. He sighed. He was sure his father would not like his questions.
He hesitated, thinking of his grandfather’s way of dealing with trouble. He remembered the time a sudden rain squall had blown over on the way home from Portland Bight, and how Gramps had turned the bow of the boat straight into the waves, away from home, the rain stinging their faces. They could not see anything except the rain and did not know what was ahead. His grandfather had held his course. He was a man who did what had to be done, the difficult thing, the right thing. When the squall was past, he turned the boat around and motored for home, the squall then ahead of them, smoothing out the sea. Lloyd walked around the side of the bar and went inside.
He saw his father right away, leaning on the bar, off to the left, a quart bottle of white rum in his hand. Lloyd tried to see how much rum was left, but it was too dark. As he watched, his father put the bottle to his mouth and Lloyd stepped forward—no point in waiting, his father would only drink more. He walked up to Vernon Saunders and touched his arm. His father shifted to one side, not looking to see who stood so close to him. “Pa?” Lloyd said. His father drank from the bottle again. The men shouted and laughed. “PA!” Lloyd said, more urgently. His father’s head came around and Lloyd looked into his eyes. They were red.
“Lloyd? What you doin here? You want you mother kill you?”
“Come outside,” Lloyd shouted over the noise.
“What?”
“Outside! Come outside!” Lloyd did not like to touch his father, but he tugged at his arm and pointed to the door. His father yelled, “Soon come!” to Miss Lilah and she nodded. Outside, the heat of the day was at its height. Vernon stood with his back to the sun and his face was in shadow. Lloyd squinted up at him, trying to read his expression. “What you want, bwoy?” his father said.
“You know Gramps don’t come home Thursday. Him go to Pedro from Sunday and him don’t come back.”
“So?” Vernon took another long drink from the bottle of rum. “Him must just decide to stay. Fishin must be good.
