Gone to Drift Read online

  Dedication

  For Fred

  (aka my marine biology textbook)

  and for the much abused Caribbean Sea

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  The boy sat beside the crumbling wall and stared out to sea. It was full dark and rain hissed on the water, but he was sheltered from the downpour where he sat. He saw a swirl of phosphorescence in the sea, gone so quickly he might have imagined it, might have merely wished for it because it was his grandfather who had told him about the tiny creatures that lived in the sea and at night shone blue in the wakes of boats and drew the deep ghostly shapes of fish. His grandfather said Kingston Harbour had once been full of them, that no night’s fishing would have passed without seeing the shining mystery. “Where they go, Gramps?” the boy had asked.

  “Sea too dirty for them.”

  “Why the sea get dirty?”

  His grandfather had grunted. He was a man of the sea, not a man of words. Now Lloyd was sure he was lost at sea.

  No one else was worried yet. Maas Conrad was only a day overdue from his trip to the Pedro Bank.

  “Lloyd? But where the pickney is, eeh? Him is pure crosses. Only the good Lord know the trouble I seen.” It was his mother’s voice. Lloyd stood and turned to meet her. “You want get sick, pickney?” she said. “Out here inna the pourin rain a nighttime?” She stood under the brightly colored umbrella someone had left on the bus and she had taken. “Come. You grandfather be awright. You think the sea can kill him?”

  Lloyd walked toward his mother and the shelter of the umbrella and together they walked through the dark streets of Kingston, the rainwater sweeping the streets, hiding the smell of human waste, taking the garbage of the city into the sea. Lloyd heard his grandfather’s voice in his mind: I come from a line of fishermen.

  Lloyd held the umbrella while his mother struggled with the front-door padlock of their small house near Bournemouth on the edge of Kingston Harbour. The nearest streetlight had blown many years before. His mother kissed her teeth. “Me tired to tell you wut’less father to buy one new lock,” she said. Finally, the lock scraped open and they went inside. The air was full of water and the house was damp. “Go to bed, pickney. As God is my witness, you nah be a fisherman. As God is my witness.”

  He went into the narrow room at the back where he slept and untied the shower curtain tacked to the top of the door opening. There was no lightbulb or lantern in his room but light from the only other room in the house crept under the curtain, which smelled of plastic and mildew; smells of home to him. There was no window in his small space and he imagined it was like a cabin in a ship, below the waterline. He had never been on a big ship but he had seen them in Kingston Harbour making their slow way into and out of port—containerships, tankers, ships picking up gypsum from the gypsum wharf or flour from the flour mill, sitting in a cloud of dust as they loaded up. He thought of them as sea buildings, sea businesses.

  He stripped off his wet clothes and hung them over the sagging line that held his school uniforms, pushing the uniforms to one side to make space for his undershirt and shorts. He dried himself with his rag and changed into the torn briefs he wore at night. He sat on his cot and felt hungry. Had he finished the bun from lunchtime? He thought so, but looked through his backpack just in case he had left a small piece. He found only the wrapper and he licked it for the crumbs, for the cinnamon and sugar smell.

  “Lloydie?” his mother called as the wrapper crackled. “You hungry? Some fry sprat and bammy is here; come nuh?”

  “Me awright,” he answered, although saliva flooded his mouth at the thought of fried fish and bammy. His grandfather might be hungry, wherever he was, so Lloyd would be hungry too. He lay down and closed his eyes. He saw Water Bird alone at sea on a moonless night, lost, missing land by miles.

  Why had his grandfather gone to the Pedro Bank? He was not a Pedro fisher. A man had to motor almost sixty nautical miles to find the Pedro Bank, sixty miles in an open boat, with no navigational equipment, no radio; just eyes and experience and stamina. The Pedro Bank was an underwater mountain southwest of Jamaica with three small cays—Top Cay, Middle Cay, and Bird Cay—and the fishing was still good. Although Gramps knew how to find the Pedro Bank, he never went there. He fished instead at Bowditch and the California banks and where the bottom of the sea fell off into the deep.

  There were few fish inshore these days. Of course there were the fishers who cast their lines and nets close to the old sewage pipes emptying into Kingston Harbour where the garbage floated, and they did catch fish. But Lloyd’s grandfather was not one of those men. He did not sell his fish to the women vendors who used burial fluids to make the fish look fresh. He would never use dynamite or chlorine to kill fish and make them float to the surface. No one had to tell Gramps when lobster season closed, or that Queen conch never lived where there were shattered conch shells on the floor of the sea, or that parrot fish should be left to graze the reef.

  Maas Conrad was a deepwater fisherman, a line fisher. He did not use nets or pots, because, he explained, those methods were wasteful, catching everything above a certain size: trash fish, juveniles, eels, turtles.

  Lloyd had first gone to sea with his grandfather before he was a year old, so his mother said, just for a spin around the Harbour, over the shoals of gray and green, into the flat calm water of the Port Royal mangroves. His mother said he had not cried. Later, when the boy had learned an awkward doggy-paddle that he could keep up for many hours in the water, he wondered about that first sea trip, which he did not remember: Where had he sat in the boat? What would have happened if the boat had hit a reef and sunk? He was sure his grandfather would have carried him safely in his arms to land.

  I am Conrad, Maas Conrad they call me, except for my grandson Lloydie, who calls me Gramps, and I come from a line of fishermen. When I was a boy, we lived in a fishing village called Great Bay, part of the Treasure Beach area of Jamaica’s south coast. We were a family of six sons and we lived in one of the concrete nog houses set back from the beach, on a small hill. My father took us all to sea, one at a time, each in our turn. I was the youngest and, as I watched my brothers leave and go to sea, I longed to be with them.

  They came back telling of things I wanted to see for myself, dolphins and sharks and leaping rays, turtles as big as canoes and the royal colors of marlins and jewfish that hid in underwater caves. They told of a kind of jellyfish that floated on the surface of the water like a plastic bag, a man of war, they called it, and they said it had stinging tentacles so long and so long-lived they could sting you day
s after the jellyfish had died. They listed the names of different types of sharks—nurse and tiger and mako and hammerhead and white tip. They talked of barracuda and dolphin fish and cutlass fish and wahoo and mackerel and how to take a wenchman off a hook, holding down the dorsal spines so they would not stick into your palm and get infected.

  They learned to swim and use a mask and snorkel and a spear gun. They learned to draw a seine net and make a fish pot and where to go with a hook and line, up on the slabs of rock on the bluff. They knew about the phases of the moon and tides and when the sea breeze came up and when it died. They knew where and when the kingfish ran and when it was not safe to eat a barracuda. They learned to drive a boat and repair an engine, and one by one I saw their muscles grow, and their spines lengthen, and their eyes turn to slits suitable for staring at horizons. They became men on the sea, men in fishing canoes, men in bars with stories. They became big men in the community while I was still a boy.

  2

  Next morning, Lloyd woke early. It was a Saturday in August, just after the long Independence weekend, and the summer heat made it impossible to sleep late. His mother had left the house to meet the fishers as they came to land, to buy the best fish. Already? Lloyd thought. A new fisher already? She should wait. Suppose Gramps come back with his fish, and she done buy already? Had his mother already written off his grandfather?

  He wondered where his father was. Vernon Saunders did not live with them, but he visited often and filled the two-room house with complaints. Lloyd did not understand how Gramps could have had a son like Vernon. Maas Conrad never complained. For him, words were used to get things done. Pass the bait bucket. Leaving at four sharp. Squall coming.

  But his father talked a lot. The house was too hot; they must get a cheap fan from Princess Street. He had been fired again, but it had been a stupid job, not enough money. He had plans, ambitious plans, he could be somebody, but the big man was against him. His friend Selvin was fixing up a car for him, nothing fancy, but he could run taxi with it. And there was a money job coming up, a secret job.

  Although when times were especially hard, Lloyd’s father did go to sea with Selvin. Vernon was a sometime fisher, for he said fishing was for old-time people. The most frequent sentence he sent Lloyd’s way was: Bring me a rum, bwoy. And his mother would always retort: You bring any rum inna the house? When you bring rum, then you get rum.

  Lloyd did not look forward to his father’s visits, but as he dressed that August morning, he wondered if he had heard anything about Maas Conrad or if the fishers at the Gray Pond fishing beach had news. Perhaps one of his father’s friends who hung out at the beach might know something. Lloyd decided he would find his best friend, Dwight, and they would begin looking for Gramps. He was glad it was the summer holidays and he did not have to go to school.

  The fish and bammy were still on the two-burner stove from last night, covered with an oily cloth. He ate with his fingers, standing, looking out of the front-room window. The rain was over and the morning shone. He could see a slice of Kingston Harbour—it was calm. He especially loved to be at sea on calm mornings, when Water Bird would skim across the water, stern low, bow high, and the speed was the best kind of drug. He preferred big waves to the usual chop of Kingston Harbour and calm seas best of all. He liked the days when not even the slightest of breezes ruffled the surface of the sea and he could stare down into the water and see what it held—sea grasses and coral and small schools of fish. He longed to be on a boat. He licked his fingers, loving the oil and the salt and the taste of fish. Should he wait for Dwight or go alone? His friend would not be up this early.

  He finished dressing and left the house. His mother would be angry to find him gone when she returned; she would want his help with the Saturday selling. His mother did not sell her fish on the Harbour’s fishing beaches or in the downtown markets. She took Maas Conrad’s high-value catch uptown to an old fridge turned icebox on the side of the road near a Liguanea supermarket. She was Nicey-the-fish-lady, and the white people from Jacks Hill and the brownings from Mona trusted her fish. “You have lobster next week?” the women would ask from the windows of their huge cars. “I only buy fish from you, Nicey,” they would say.

  “Mebbe next week,” his mother would reply. “But why you don’t try this nice-nice silk snapper?” That was why his mother was called Nicey; her fish was always nice-nice. Her real name was Beryl. “Next week, Nicey,” the uptown women would say as they pulled out into the stream of cars. Lloyd thought the uptown people were like sharks, certain of their status, unafraid of the multitudes of other creatures with whom they shared a home, barely noticing them. A shark could turn on a small fish at any time, and in the flick of a tail and the crunch of jaws it would all be over. He never made eye contact with the uptown people.

  He walked toward Gray Pond, squinting in the rising sun over Long Mountain. In the distance, the stacks at the cement company were without the usual cloud of dust. If the plant was not working, it would be a good day for a swim at the nearby mineral baths. Maybe later he would do that—he would not be allowed into the proper baths, of course, not unless he could pay the entrance fee, but the springs found their way under Windward Road and came out at the edge of Kingston Harbour, and there boys often swam in a shallow canal edged with reeds. He liked the slightly metallic taste of the mineral springs, he liked the coldness on his limbs—it was a much better bath than the sponge bath in the outhouse at home, and he loved to let the slow force of the springs take him into the sea.

  People said Kingston Harbour was polluted and he knew it was true; the sewage and garbage of the city ended up there, and the soot of the factories, and the oil and bilge of ships, but he was not afraid of the Harbour’s waters. He made sure he did not swallow the water and always washed off in the fresh water of the springs.

  “Mornin, Miss Lavern,” Lloyd said to Dwight’s mother. She was sweeping up breadfruit leaves in the yard. Lloyd looked up. The tree was bearing and the breadfruit would soon be ready for roasting.

  “Mornin, Lloydie. You hear from Maas Conrad?” That was the way of it. His mother could pretend there was no need to worry yet, but the community of fishers and vendors and Harbour dwellers knew when someone was lost at sea.

  “No, Miss. Nuttn yet. But is only two days.”

  “Is true. Maas Conrad be awright. You want Dwight? Him inside, still sleepin. That bwoy can’t wake a mornin time.”

  “Me going talk to the fishers at Gray Pond beach. You can tell him for me?”

  Miss Lavern nodded. “Maas Conrad have a cell phone, don’t?”

  “Ee-hee. But mebbe the battery dead or it fall inna the sea.”

  “True-true.” Lloyd could see she did not believe Maas Conrad had let his phone battery die, or that he had lost his phone. It could have died, he thought. Surely it would be hard to charge a phone on the cays of the Pedro Bank, where the fishers stayed. And there could have been bad weather, the phone could have got wet and stopped working. Perhaps when he went to the beach he would see Gramps pulling Water Bird out of the water.

  Lloyd had never been to the Pedro Cays. His grandfather was dead set against it and his mother had listened to the old man. The most daunting thing about the trip to the Pedro Cays was the possibility of missing them entirely in the dark, the five hours becoming six and then seven and then eight. Then, as the dawn turned the black sea gray and then navy blue, there would be no sign of the turquoise water of the Pedro Bank rising from the seafloor, no sign of three small cays in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. There would be the awful knowledge that the next stop was the coast of South America, that gas would soon run out and the boat would be at the mercy of the sea, spinning and wallowing like a coconut, taken south and west.

  A man who missed the Cays would eat the raw and rotting fish in his bait bucket until it was done, he would vomit until all he had left was dry heaves and cramps, he would take tiny sips of the warm water in his plastic bottle, and he would pray for rain,
for clouds, for anything to dim the sun, and he would stare at the water level in the bottle going down and down. It happened once or twice a year—Jamaican fishers would be found by foreign boats, starving and dehydrated, sometimes driven mad by exposure and hopelessness, by the sight of the endless sea and by the possibility of food fish under the hull of the boat, but too deep, too speedy to be caught.

  Lloyd thought of Slowly from Gray Pond, a young man, not yet properly schooled in the ways of the sea, who had left alone on a reckless journey to Pedro years ago. He had missed the Cays and many days later had been picked up by a South American fishing boat, most likely on its way back from fishing illegally on the Pedro Bank, arrested by the authorities and jailed for almost a year. He came home speaking fluent Spanish. The fishers said he had lived because his boat passed through a mat of seaweed and he scooped it up in his bait bucket and there were tiny creatures in it. He ate the seaweed and the seabugs and this saved his life.

  After Slowly came back to Jamaica, after he had been in the newspapers and on TV, after men in bars stopped asking him to speak Spanish, he became one of those thin men who haunted the fishing beaches of Kingston Harbour, skin blackened by sun and dirt, begging not for food or water or money or work, but for ganja, which would bring him some relief from his memories and his hunger. The fishers of Gray Pond said he still ate seaweed, when he could get it from the deep sea.

  The women buying fish were leaving when Lloyd got to the Gray Pond beach. He stood where the road met the beach and cast his eyes east and west. He knew instantly there was no sign of Water Bird, which was painted bright yellow with a red bow cap. At the end of the beach under a divi-divi tree, older fishers mended their nets and pots. Lloyd walked over to them. “Mornin, Maas Rusty, Maas Benjy,” he said. The men nodded in response, but did not look up from their work.

  “You want some help?” Lloyd said to Maas Rusty.

  “Is awright, yout’, me soon done,” said Maas Rusty. “You lookin for you granddaddy?”