Gone to Drift

by Diana McCaulay

  He wondered where she was going—the hotel, he thought. He watched her come closer to the dock and when she was at the nearest point, he stood up and shouted across the water, “Hi! Miss!” He waved his arms and she turned to look at him, almost losing her balance. She stopped paddling and the surfboard continued to glide in the direction she was headed.

  “Miss!” he called again. He wondered if he should swim out to her, but his doggy-paddle was slow and this part of the Harbour was dirty. He waited to see what she would do.

  And she dipped the paddle and turned her board and in a few strokes was standing in front of him on the surface of the sea. He saw it was the dolphin woman. She was wearing a short wet suit, leaving her arms and legs bare. Her toenails were painted, but not her fingernails. Her hair was very short, almost shaved clean. Her eyes were the color of beer. “You call to me, yout’?” she said. Despite her black skin, he had thought her a foreigner because he didn’t think a young Jamaican woman would be a dolphin expert. He was surprised to hear her speak with a Jamaican accent.

  “You the woman what save that dolphin outta Lime Cay,” he said.

  “Last month,” she agreed.

  “What happen to it?”

  “Died in the pick-up. Dolphins can’t cope with gravity. You like dolphins?”

  “Ee-hee. Where the dolphin was going in the pick-up?” Lloyd had not understood what she said about gravity.

  “Don’t know. Some other island, probably, but could be sold anywhere. Russia, even.”

  This seemed unbelievable to Lloyd but he wanted to keep the woman talking. “My granddaddy, he love dolphins,” he said.

  The woman smiled and rested her paddle on one end in front of her. She stood as if she were a sentry at a fort and the sea was solid ground. “Your granddaddy a fisher?”

  He nodded. “A line fisher.” He thought that was an important detail.

  “Anyway . . .” she said, and he knew she was preparing to leave.

  “Me never seen anybody stand on a surfboard like that. It hard?”

  “Easy in calm sea. Takes awhile to get used to if it’s rough. I like it because you can see far enough ahead. And it’s slow. Relaxing.” She laughed. “Sometimes the Harbour dolphins—you know them, right?—come up beside me and then I have to sit down. They’ll make me fall over for sure.”

  “What’s your name, Miss?”

  “Jules.”

  “Miss Julie?”

  “No. Jules. My father liked Jules Verne, you know, the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?”

  Lloyd shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he was glad she had not left him.

  “What’s your name then? You live in Port Royal?” she asked.

  “Lloyd. No, over by Bournemouth. Near Gray Pond beach. Looking for my granddaddy. He don’t come back from Pedro three—no, four—days now.”

  The woman, Jules, inclined her head, as if asking a question. She made a short stroke with the paddle and the surfboard bumped against the dock. He saw it was tied to one of her ankles. She put the paddle on the dock, and then her palms, and without pushing off with her feet, she eased herself to sit on the dock beside him. They both looked out across Kingston Harbour. She gave a little sigh. “You live with your granddaddy?”

  “No, my mumma. She sell fish in Liguanea. Gramps, he never go to Pedro, but he go this time and him don’t come back.”

  “What, he don’t have a cell phone?”

  “Yes, him have one, but him not answerin it. Me come over here to see if the Coast Guard go look for him.”

  Jules turned to face him then. “And you couldn’t get through the gate, right?”

  He was ashamed to say he had not tried, so he just shook his head.

  “You know the hotel? Morgan’s Harbour?” she said. “Wait for me there. In the parking lot, under the almond tree. I’ll take you over to the Coast Guard.” She eased herself off the dock onto the surfboard, finding her balance right away. He watched her heading away from him, the surfboard trailing a faint wake. She did not look back to see if he would do what she had told him.

  My four older brothers became Pedro fishers. I am trying to pin down the year in my mind. I suppose it was sometime in the fifties. Men were just beginning to go to the Pedro Bank from our villages. Before, fishers had to go on a bus to a place called Complex in Kingston, where they went to Pedro on big boats, like Snowboy, the one that disappeared. But engines were improving and fishers started to make the journey themselves, leaving late at night. The journey was long and there were the twin dangers of bad weather and poor navigation that could get a man lost at sea. No fisher went to Pedro alone in those days. We had no life jackets, no radios, and hurricane warnings came over crackling transistor radios. The old fishers knew the signs, of course, the way dawn broke, the way the swells ran, how the birds flew. They would pull their boats high on the beach and they would wait. They were not always right.

  The Pedro fishers brought home bounty—hundreds of pounds of fish—grouper and red snapper and parrot. They sold their fish in Kingston and with the money they made, they bought land in Treasure Beach. They bought herds of goats. The inside fishers thrived too and the Calabash Bay market expanded. The fishing beaches thrummed with activity—boats being repaired, boats being readied for sea, boats coming home. Luke and I earned money scrubbing the mossy hulls of boats with sand.

  My brothers went to Pedro in twos. We went to see them off and we waited for their return. Our father did not go. He had made the trip from Complex in his time, but he said it was now time for his sons to go. He was by then using a spear gun on the reefs near the coastline of our parish, St. Elizabeth, and his catches were good. Most fishers could not swim but my father had at one time been a lifeguard for a Montego Bay hotel—he was the best swimmer in Great Bay. He taught us to swim when we were very young—I do not remember a time when I could not swim.

  The first time Ben and Lewis went to Pedro, our mother left the house. We had heard her speaking to our father the previous night in a new voice. I know we must have heard the words themselves—the house was small, though the walls were thick—but I do not remember them. We knew she hated the idea and she did not return until my brothers had gone, after midnight. There was no dinner that night. We ate the remains of a roasted breadfruit, left on the coal pot from the previous day. Next morning, I saw the groove between her eyebrows was deep.

  My brothers went in a four-boat convoy to the Pedro Bank. It was late when they left and I thought the night was darker than usual. We stood on the beach and watched them go. The boats made a ragged triangle formation, like a flock of birds, and for a few seconds, their wakes were visible. Then they pierced the night and disappeared. The lead boat was Resurrection, the captain was an old fisher called Maas Jerome, who spent three months at a time on Top Cay on the Bank. He was considered a good man to go to sea with. I stared into the moonless night, the stars hidden by clouds, but it was too dark to see anything. We could hear the boat engines although we could no longer see any sign of them and it was a final, ebbing connection to land. I stepped closer to my father. Why them don’t take a light with them, Dada? I said.

  Close you eyes, he said and I obeyed him. Keep them closed. I stood on the beach and jumped when a wave ran over my toes, but I kept my eyes shut. I heard the sea, falling and rising and falling. Now open you eyes, my father said.

  I looked and I saw familiar shapes become visible. If you take a light to sea, you can’t see inna the dark, my father said. A man at sea need him night sight.

  How they will find their way back? I said.

  The lighthouse, my father said. The one at Lover’s Leap. I thought about going to sea on a dark night with the only point of reference being a slim sweeping blade of light on a cliff behind me. The story goes that slave lovers jumped to their death from that cliff rather than be separated.

  My brothers returned three weeks later. They were thin and their skins looked crisp, like a fish
fried too long. They went straight to where we washed and they used bucket after bucket of fresh water. Then they went to bed and they slept for almost a day. They did not seem hungry. They did not speak much about what they had seen, not at first, or what it was like out at Pedro, but they brought back both money and fish, big fat snappers and groupers, the likes of which were already becoming rare around Great Bay. They talked of going again. And so Luke and I wanted to see for ourselves. We wanted to take the long journey to the Pedro Bank. We told ourselves we would be men, fishermen, if we took that ride.

  7

  “Where you think you going yout’?” said the security guard at the Morgan’s Harbour Hotel. He sat in a little white building and lifted the red and white barrier up and down for cars. Lloyd had simply ducked under it, not seeing the guard until too late. He stopped.

  “Mornin,” he said, hoping a respectful politeness would win the guard over. “Me meetin somebody. She say me should wait for her under that almond tree.” He pointed.

  “What the name of the person?

  “Jules-somethin. Just meet her, over at the fishing beach.”

  “So where she is? She on a boat? How you meet her if she on a boat? You should know her last name, so it can write up inna the book.”

  “Not a boat. Surfboard. She soon come, man. Me will just wait over there, under the tree. You can see me. Me not going move from there.”

  “Can’t let you in yout’. Not without the person full name for the book. Step back.”

  Lloyd looked at the guard. He was young, in his twenties. His uniform was not properly ironed and he wore cheap dark glasses, the kind sold by downtown vendors. His hands were rough with big knuckles. Perhaps he had been a construction worker and had found easier work as a security guard and was not going to lose his job over a strange boy.

  Lloyd stepped back, ducked under the barrier, and stood on the side of the Palisadoes Road, looking around for a place to wait. He needed to see the entrance to the hotel as he was afraid that the woman would not come right out into the parking lot, but would simply stand on the front step and look for him under the almond tree. If he was not there, she would turn around and go back into the hotel and he might never find her again. There was a little shade beside the gate but it gave no clear view of the front door. Lloyd crossed the road and stood in the sun, waiting for the dolphin woman.

  He did not wait long—she could make that surfboard move fast-fast. As he had thought, she walked out of the hotel, stood on the curb and looked toward the almond tree. She shrugged and turned to go back inside. “Hi! Miss!” he called, as he had done from the dock. “Over here!” A bus drove past just then with a line of cars behind it, and he could not cross the road. She might not hear him or see him. “Miss!” he shouted to her back, jumping up and down, trying to be seen over the cars.

  “That her?” said the guard, coming out of his shelter.

  “Yes! Please, sah, please? Let me in. Do. Please.” Lloyd was finally able to run across the road. He waved his arms, hoping the movement would catch the woman’s eye. He could barely see her now—the inside of the hotel was in deep shadow. “MISS!” he shouted one last time, and the woman came out of the hotel into the parking lot.

  “What . . . ?” she said. She shook her head and said something under her breath. She walked over to the barrier. She was wearing rolled up jeans over her wet suit and a towel around her neck. “He’s with me,” she said to the guard and her voice was sharp.

  The guard was not impressed. “What him name and your name?”

  “You write up my name already. You don’t remember? Look in the book. Jules Collier. His name is Lloyd.”

  “Need him last name.”

  “Saunders,” Lloyd said. See! He wanted to say to the guard. He was sweating more than ever in his church clothes. He wiped his face on his sleeve. The guard wrote slowly in his big register.

  “Come inside, Lloyd,” Jules said. “I need to change. We can get you a drink and you can tell me your story.”

  They sat at a bar overlooking Kingston Harbour. Lloyd had never been inside the hotel although from the sea he had seen the bar and the masts of sailboats moored in the marina. The seawater pool was murky and seaweed grew on its sides. He could not imagine white people swimming in it. He saw no guests although many tables were set for lunch with bandanna tablecloths and white napkins and empty glasses.

  “What you want to drink?” Jules said, as the bartender stood in front of them.

  “Soda, Miss.”

  “Which kind? Pepsi? Coke? Ting? Ginger beer?”

  “Pepsi.”

  “A Pepsi and a Ting,” Jules said. “They on ice? You hungry, Lloyd? You want anything to eat?”

  “Kitchen not open ’til twelve,” said the bartender.

  “You don’t have any bar snacks?”

  “Cheese crunchies, plantain chips . . .”

  “Two each,” she said. “Plenty ice with the drinks.”

  When the drinks came, Jules got up and moved to one of the tables nearer to the dock. The wind was strong and Lloyd felt less noticeable. If he were to leave the table, if he were to walk over and sit on the dock, with his back to the hotel, if he narrowed his eyes and gazed out to sea, he could pretend he was on the dock of the Port Royal fishing beach and no one would come and tell him to move.

  A man washed down the decks of the nearest large boat, flying an American flag. Lloyd wondered what it would be like to go to sea on a boat like that—he could see tables and upholstered seats through the hatchway. He wondered if they needed crew, if they fished, or if they just moved around from place to place, marina to marina. What would it be like to own such a vessel, to truly live on the sea?

  “. . . your story?” Lloyd realized Jules was talking to him. He took a sip of his drink and it was so cold it hurt his teeth and he could not really taste it. She pushed two of the bags of snacks over to him and opened one for herself.

  “So tell me,” she said. “What happen to your granddaddy?”

  “He go to Pedro. Sunday night. Leave from Rocky Point. Him don’t fish at Pedro. Never. Him was supposed to reach back Thursday, but him don’t come back.”

  “When last you heard from him?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Him went alone?”

  “Dunno, Miss. Nobody at Gray Pond beach seen him. The fishers say to ask the Coast Guard; they say they go out there every Monday night. Me come over here to see if they will look for him. One time, a boat from the Yacht Club don’t come back and the Coast Guard did go out, and even the JDF send up a helicopter, and them found the boat wrecked down by Hellshire, and them found the men too, in life jackets. Dead.” Lloyd stopped. He did not want the JDF to find his grandfather’s wrecked boat, or his body. “Gramps, mebbe his boat engine give out. Mebbe him on a beach somewhere, can’t get back. Me just want somebody to look for him.”

  Jules ran her hands over her hair. “I don’t know if the JDF will look for him, Lloyd. But is true, a Coast Guard boat go out to Pedro once a week. They take men out and bring men back; maybe they will ask some questions. Give me a minute to shower and change and make us go over there and ask them.”

  “Them will take me with them to Pedro? Me can find him, Miss. Me know him is out there somewhere. Sea can’t kill my granddaddy.”

  Jules shook her head. “I don’t think they will take you. But let’s ask. Soon come. You just sit here, eat up. Sorry is not better food, maybe we can get some fish in Port Royal after.” She got up, left her drink on the table and most of the cheese crunchies uneaten, and walked around the dining room behind them. Lloyd felt the bartender’s gaze. He was sure the bartender thought the likes of him should not be allowed to sit at a table at the Morgan’s Harbour Hotel.

  He waited. He was anxious, sitting there alone, and he hoped Jules would come back quickly. He did not know how to talk to her. He wanted to ask her about her work with dolphins. Was she a scientist? He had seen scientists working in the Port Royal man
groves, with their wide-brimmed hats, their clipboards and rolls of tape. He did not know what they did there, but he saw them writing and taking pictures.

  He knew the mangroves as a place where it was safe to moor a boat when a hurricane threatened, that somehow the sea remained much calmer inside their lagoons and channels. Many kinds of bird lived there—old joes, terns, gulls, herons—and some types of fish hid among the roots. He liked the strange shoots that grew downward from the plants. The strong smell of the swamp did not bother him.

  If Maas Conrad was late coming back from sea, he always went into a channel through the mangroves to a place called Rosey’s Hole, where the leaves almost touched overhead and it was shady and quiet. Gramps would sling a line around one of the trees and pull the boat in close and there he would eat a bulla and an overripe pear and drink a hot Red Stripe beer. Sometimes he would lie back in the boat and sleep, while Lloyd slapped at mosquitoes and watched fallen leaves drift past.

  They would motor out, as slowly as possible, so as not to send big waves surging through the mangroves, disrupting the order of things, and Gramps would get upset when he saw garbage tangled up in the roots and he would tell Lloyd it would affect the fishing, but he didn’t say how. He always said “fish-nin” instead of “fish-ing.” Lloyd thought Jules probably knew about mangroves and why they might affect fish-nin.

  “You ready?” she said, from behind him. He got up. She was carrying her surfboard and paddle under one arm and held a backpack in the other. “Let’s go. Don’t want you to get your hopes up, though—I don’t know if Commander Peterson is even going to be there. But make us go and see what we can see.”

  Her car was an old Jeep with a canvas top. She loaded the surfboard in the back and tied a red cloth to it to show where it stuck out. “Get in,” she said and there was a touch of impatience in her voice. Perhaps she was already sorry she had talked to him, perhaps she wished she could just take him back to the dock in Port Royal.