Gone to Drift

by Diana McCaulay

  We motored for what seemed like an age, but was probably only an hour. Then I realized I could see my hands and feet as a gray light stole across the sea. And to the east I saw the sky turning into a hundred different colors—from the blue of a summer day to the dark purple of the thickest squall, from the pale pink of the inside of a conch shell to the bright orange of a ripe mango, until the round ball of the sun itself came up and the colors of the sky spread over the water and even warmed our faces. I knew then that the best place to see a sunrise was at sea.

  When the sun came up, I saw it was the same sea I knew and my nervous anticipation left me. After that, it was just a long learning of all the things my brothers had already learned: the gear, the methods, the times and places of a fisherman. I absorbed this learning with ease, it was nothing like the torture of a school desk, of chalk and blackboard; this was a learning of the body, of all the senses. My father hardly spoke to us; he showed us what to do. This way, he would say. Sit beside me and take the tiller. You see that over there, that funny flat cloud? Time to run for home.

  That first morning, the best thing I saw was the dolphins.

  9

  Lloyd got up at fishing time. He had hardly slept. He had to get out of the house before his mother woke—she would not let him miss another day’s selling. He wrote her a note saying he was crewing for a fisher nicknamed Popeye; he was not sure when he would be back, but he would be home with money. He knew his mother might go to Gray Pond beach to speak to Maas Benjy or Maas Rusty, but he hoped she would not do it until the next day and by then he would be long gone.

  He had thought about the trip for most of the night. He had no idea how long the Coast Guard boat would take to get to the Pedro Cays so he had packed a bottle of water in his school bag and three bullas from the food cupboard. He had put a cap, his rag, and a change of clothes in a plastic bag to keep them dry. He counted his money. He would need another plastic bag for that. He dressed in his fishing clothes—the torn up ones in the darkest colors—they would not stand out in the night as he tried to find a hiding place. Then he looked at the bag and shook his head: fool-fool. He had to swim to the boat and then climb up a rope and through a small hole—how could he take a bag with him? Could he put the whole bag in another plastic bag? Could he find an old piece of Styrofoam and float the bag along with him? He thought that was worth trying and if he mashed up his school bag, he had more than a month to find a new one before school started again.

  He spent the day on Princess Street among the vendors. It was one of the most crowded parts of downtown Kingston and he made his way unnoticed through the vendors’ stalls on sidewalks and in the streets, past the jelly coconut men, the dry goods vendors, and the pan chicken cooks—you could buy anything in downtown Kingston—clothes, shoes, food, drugs, guns. He searched the narrow lanes between the wider streets and found a pile of cardboard and he went through it looking for Styrofoam. He was glad to be out of the sun. He found several plastic bags and the kind of bubbly plastic wrap that was used for packing; he remembered how he and Dwight had scared their teachers by popping the bubbles in the same kind of wrap at the back of their classroom. Even a small noise could make a teacher spin around in a Kingston primary school, fearing gunshots.

  He wished Dwight was coming with him. This day and night would be an adventure then, a prank, like the time they rowed Maas Braham’s dinghy around the point at Gray Pond beach and hid it behind some sea grape trees. He found a long roll of twine—part of it plastered with dog doo-doo. He unrolled the twine and used his pocket knife to cut away the dirtiest part. He could now tie up his plastic bag and maybe his clothes would be kept dry. He did not find anything that would float. By noon, he was longing to drink from his store of water but he resisted. His hands were filthy and, like his grandfather wherever he was, he knew he would have to use his supplies slowly.

  He found a standpipe but it was dry. He bought suck-suck and a boiled corn from a vendor and he walked toward the waterfront. He sat in the shade of a coconut tree and ate his lunch, taking care not to touch the corn with his dirty hands. He thought again about climbing onto the Surrey and his hopefulness left him. It would never work. It was too much for a boy, small for his age, a boy who did downgrow, according to his mother. He threw the suck-suck plastic bag into the Harbour and immediately heard his grandfather’s voice in his mind: Turtle going think that a jellyfish.

  There was a parking lot nearby. He watched the security guard at the entrance and the comings and goings of drivers and vehicles. There was a group of men skylarking on a small mound of uncut grass at the edge of the parking lot farthest away from the entrance. He saw the security guard watching them, his attention divided between motorists and the men. Then one of Kingston’s many homeless men ran across the two-lane road right in front of an oncoming car. The car’s brakes screeched and the noise pulled everyone’s gaze, including the guard’s. The homeless man was safe on the median strip, but he began a loud cursing.

  As Lloyd watched, he saw one of the men on the grassy mound take a long metal strip from the grass, jump down into the parking lot, fit the strip into the window of the nearest car and, in a few seconds, open the door. He took something out of the car—Lloyd could not see what—shut the car door and went back to his bredren. Lloyd knew the guard had not seen what had happened and later, when the loss of the car owner’s property was reported, he would swear it could not have taken place on his shift. That’s what I need, he realized. Something to make the sailors look away while I climb the rope. He would have to find Dwight.

  It was Luke who saw them first. My father was tinkering with the engine, there was a sputtering noise he did not like. Look, Luke said, and pointed. I saw a splashing in the water near the reef but it was too far away to see what was causing it—it could have been any school of large fish. Dolphins, my father said, looking up from the outboard.

  We went slowly over to the reef, my father taking Silver through the rocks and coral heads. When we were still some distance away, he cut the engine and tilted it forward over the stern so the propeller was no longer in the sea. That way we could cross over the reef wherever there was two feet of water without grounding the boat. We glided. And then right beside us, clear against the sandy seafloor, I saw the gray shape of what I took to be a shark. Shark, I said. And then the gray shape came to the surface with the same sound I made after I dived down for a conch and held my breath too long. Dolphin, said my father. Not shark. Dolphin go up and down at the surface, shark swim straight. I saw the dolphin’s dorsal fin go up and down and then it dived and then they were all around us.

  Now, I am not sure what enchanted me. Yes, they were big, bigger than most animals we were used to seeing. Yes, they had smiling faces and bright eyes. But I think it was the way they seemed to be playing in the sea that caused me to remain staring down into the water long after they had gone, hoping they would return.

  Pass the oar, my father said. Not yet, I wanted to say, but I remained silent. There was work to be done. He had just been humoring me on my first trip as a fisher. He pushed us off the reef and when we were in deeper water he started the engine and we began to pull my father’s fish pots. Whenever we rested, I stared at the place where the dolphins had made their splashing and wished there was some way of marking it, so I could be sure I could find it again.

  I left one swallow of water in the plastic bottle last night and this morning it is gone. I don’t know if I left the top open a little and it leaked out or if I imagined the tiny amount of water. I stare out to sea and I think I see rain clouds. I sit and watch them, willing them to me. My head wound is better but one of the cuts on my right leg hurts. It is getting harder and harder to stand.

  10

  Lloyd found Dwight at Victoria Pier casting a line into Kingston Harbour, a bucket on the beach for his catch. “Yow, bredren,” he called out to his friend.

  “Wha’ppen Lloydie? How come you not sellin uptown?”

  “Need to
do sumpn. Want you help.”

  “What you want?”

  “Come over here and me tell you.”

  Dwight reeled in his line and splashed through the shallow water to where Lloyd stood on the beach. “Whoy! Why you smell so, bredren?”

  “Just dog doo-doo on this twine me find. Me soon wash it off.”

  “What you want?”

  “Gramps still don’t come home. Me want hide on the Coast Guard boat, go out to Pedro with them, see if me can find him.”

  “What!? You turn fool, bredren? Them nah going let you on that boat!”

  “Listen me. Me going climb the anchor rope. Or the stern ladder. Me need you to do sumpn so them all look at you while me is doin it.”

  “But see here now. Lloydie, you not thinkin straight. Can’t work, trust me. Can’t work.”

  “Dwight. You comin or you not? Me gettin on a bus and me going to Port Royal and me going wait for night, and then me is going to climb that rope and get on the boat. If them catch me, them catch me. Me going to try.”

  “Whoy,” Dwight said again. Then he smiled. “Well, is you them going throw inna jail. What you want me do?”

  The rain clouds come. The weather always changes if you wait long enough. I crawl out from under the shade of the blue tarpaulin and the rain washes salt and blood from my skin. I drink. The hollows in the rocks around me fill with fresh water. Perhaps I now have a store of water for days. I forget the cuts in my back from the rocks and the pain in my right leg. I abandon my rationing and eat dozens of sea snails. There are only five whelks left. I open my mouth to the sky, rain fills my body and I feel strength fill my arms. I crack the biggest remaining whelk easily—I have learned the best place to hit their tough shells. I make a funnel of the tarpaulin and fill the plastic bottle, wishing I had another container. I taste the water in one of the rock pools but it is brackish. I realize the rocks hold millennia of salt from the sea and they cannot be washed clean.

  Five days I have been on this rock. With water I can survive five more. I stand and turn a slow circle, searching for the horizon but it is hidden behind sheets of rain. Then the whole world seems to turn and I fall to my knees.

  It rains for hours and hours and I mourn the wasted water that falls into the sea. When the rain stops, my skin dries quickly and I watch the sun sink into a bank of cloud. That night I have no dreams.

  11

  The boys sat right at the back of the bus and Lloyd stared out of the window. Where could they wait until dark? Port Royal was a small town and they would be recognized if they went to the fishing beach. Then Lloyd remembered a ruined fort he had seen from Lime Cay; he had never been there on land, but it was close to Port Royal. They would try to find it.

  The bus turned onto the new road of the Palisadoes strip with the huge stones piled up by Chinese engineers to make a seawall. He saw the sea was rough. It was going to be an uncomfortable journey to Pedro.

  The boys got off the bus at the Morgan’s Harbour Hotel and walked back in the direction they had come. Lloyd hoped the fort was not far; it was hard to tell distances from the sea. The sun beat down on his head and heat rose off the surface of the road. His bag had seemed light in the morning, but now the water bottle was heavy. He was dirty and tired and he had not yet boarded the Surrey.

  The entrance to the fort was right on the main road. The site had recently been bushed and there was no one there. Lloyd led the way onto the beach—Lime Cay was straight ahead, swimming distance, if the currents were right. Although the sand was gray and hot, there was a strong breeze off the sea and it cooled the sweat on his skin. This was the place to wait looking out to Lime Cay where the uptowners went on weekends. Perhaps there would even be a pipe somewhere where he could wash the twine and his hands and face.

  “It nice here,” said Dwight, and Lloyd realized it was true. The coast curved into a shallow bay and the sea was calmer just in front of them. The beach was covered with rocks of all sizes and shapes and colors, most smooth, and where the waves broke, the stones made a clacking noise as the sea rushed in and out. There was a line of garbage at the edge of the sea, plastic bottles and old shoes and discarded fishing gear and various kinds of wood. Behind them the sand dunes were covered with sea grape and macca bushes and different kinds of cactus.

  Lloyd knew the pretty sea had a secret. Whenever Gramps came in from fishing, he would take Water Bird so close to the same strip of land on which they stood that Lloyd often thought they would run aground. “Bottom drop off steep-steep,” Gramps had said in explanation. “Man always drown here.” If the boys waded into the sea, within a few steps they would be out of their depth and caught in a tearing current heading for Wreck Reef and the Hellshire coast.

  “So what now?” Dwight said.

  “Make us look for a place to wait and a pipe. Want clean this twine—them will smell me before them see me.”

  “No pipe out here, man. Nobody is here. Wash it in the sea.”

  “Sea too clean. Come. Make us look around.”

  The boys walked away from the beach and followed a short marl track into the fort. It was built around a courtyard—some of the walls were brick, others were a kind of crumbling concrete. There was an enormous spray-painted drawing of a gun on one of the concrete walls with the slogan, “Tek sleep and mark death!” The slogan was underlined with dripping red paint to look like blood.

  Lloyd saw a small building under a straggly coconut tree. It was almost in the middle of the courtyard, and it looked like the shelters used by security guards all over the city. It had a new zinc roof and a modern door, which was closed. They walked over to it and saw a standpipe right nearby. Probably this was a place where a security guard was sent to look after the fort for the government people. Lloyd knew Port Royal was a very old place, once a rich, wicked town that had been sent to the bottom of the sea in a great earthquake.

  Lloyd knelt in the shade and turned on the pipe. There was a good chance it would not work. But fresh water gushed out and he groaned. He cupped his hands and washed them over and over, wiping them on a patch of long grass, and then washing them again and again, scraping under his nails, until he could no longer smell doo-doo. Then he drank, and splashed water on his head and face. He sat with his back against the building and closed his eyes. He realized he would have to wash his hands all over again after he had dealt with the twine, but they had all afternoon.

  “You tired, Lloydie?” said Dwight.

  “Yeah man.”

  “You have food?”

  “Only some bulla. Have to keep it for in the night.”

  “Watch me now. You stay here. Me going wash the twine in the sea. Don’t make sense do it under the pipe; take too long. Then me going into Port Royal, find sumpn to eat, look around. Maybe swim round the point and look at the boat. See how far it is.”

  Lloyd heard the concern in his friend’s voice and he wanted to cry. He kept his eyes closed. Tears always brought laughter and teasing. “Look for a piece of Styrofoam,” he said to Dwight.

  “What kinda Styrofoam?”

  “Any kind. Not a lunch box. Biggish. Want float my bag over to the boat. Me tie the bag to the string. If me get up on deck, then me pull up the bag.”

  “You smart! Okay. No problem.”

  “You a star, man,” Lloyd said, and his voice was thick.

  “Soon come,” Dwight said. “Me bring you some food. And the Styrofoam.”

  I remember that by the time Luke went to Pedro that first time, he and I had abandoned Birdie. By then we were crew for other fishers. By then I went to school only occasionally and sometimes Miss Carlton came to our front door to speak to my mother about this.

  The days while Luke was gone were long. It was hurricane season, late September, which caused my mother to keep the radio on day and night. But there were no storms that month, in fact, I remember it as a calm September with a clear liquid daylong light. Is this a trick of memory? I do not know. But I do remember being annoyed at the good wea
ther; all the more reason I could have gone with Luke, for the risk was low. I was bored. The inshore waters of Great Bay were now too small.

  While Luke was gone, Sheldon’s Bar got a small black and white TV. By then, some places in Treasure Beach had electricity. The TV programs started at six in the evening, but even in the day we asked Sheldon to turn it on so we could look at the striped test screen in awe, laughing when it flickered. We were amazed by the talking people and moving images in a box. People reading the news. Cartoons. I loved Mr. Magoo and Road Runner. Beep-beep, the boys said when they saw each other in the lanes. Sheldon’s business thrived and he became a big man in Great Bay. He bought a fishing boat.

  Luke returned. Like my brothers before him, his eyes were flat and tired, his skin salt encrusted. He slept. He ate. He shrugged when I asked him how it was. Your time soon come, he said.

  We got television while you were gone, I said.

  12

  Lloyd woke. His shirt was soaked with sweat and his neck hurt. He had fallen asleep against the building—his sleepless nights had finally caught up with him. Where was his backpack? Had it been stolen? He saw it was right beside him. The shadow of the coconut tree was longer and the afternoon was ending. He must have slept for at least two hours. Where was Dwight?

  He stood up, feeling cramped and sluggish. He washed his face and hands again and the fresh water was a gift. He picked up his bag and walked over to the beach. It was cooler but the breeze still blew and the sea was up. If he managed to climb onto the Surrey, if he found a hiding place and remained hidden for the long hours to the Pedro Bank, would he get seasick?