Gone to Drift

by Diana McCaulay

  An intercom squawked. “Arriving at Middle Cay, sir,” said a hollow voice.

  “Thank you.” Captain Blake stood. “Well, you went through a lot to get here, youngster. I’ll say that for you. Leave me now. I will deal with you later. Foster! Take him below. Stay with him.”

  “Please, Captain, let me stay on deck. Me don’t . . . me want to see.”

  The captain looked at him. “Underneath the dinghy, eh? Foster, he can stay on deck but don’t let him out of your sight. After we anchor, I’ll decide what to do with him.”

  “Aye aye, sah!” Foster said and saluted.

  They went onto the deck and into bright sunshine. Lloyd squinted. Sailors stood around the ship at their posts and the Surrey’s engines raced. He sat on one edge of the dinghy he had hidden under while the Surrey made several attempts to anchor, the engines racing, sailors shouting orders. Lloyd heard the rattle of the anchor chain and wondered if he would be able to get his bag. Finally, the sailor on the forward deck shouted that the anchor held and the engines shut down. For a moment, there was silence and an air of relief on the Surrey. Then the voices of the sailors started as they made ready to disembark. Lloyd could see Middle Cay in the distance—probably the water was too shallow for the big ship to anchor closer to the cay.

  The sailors gathered on the stern deck. They carried duffel bags and their faces were glum—it did not seem they wanted to spend a week on Middle Cay, exchanging places with the previous week’s shift. Lloyd wondered where on the Cay they stayed after the Surrey left them. Wherever it was, he was sure there would be no fresh water from a tap.

  He saw two fishing canoes heading their way, leaping over the waves. One of the canoes came alongside where there was a ladder. Sailors jumped into the canoe. Orders were shouted, lines were cast and caught. Lloyd saw it was a tricky operation—the two boats, one large, one small, rode the waves at different rates and waves pushed and pulled the canoe against the hull of the Surrey, the gap widening and closing. The sailors made a line and began passing stores and bags down to the canoe. They worked quickly and the air was filled with curses.

  Lloyd had to leave the Surrey. Foster was nearby but watching the activity on deck. Could he simply jump onto the next canoe? The sun beat down and even so early in the morning, he began to sweat. The heat was good—he had been cold for so many hours. He loved the smell of the sea breeze and he felt he was in a place he knew well, in the open air on a boat that rode the waves. He was still thirsty. He needed his bag.

  He left his place on the dinghy and headed to the gunwale. “Don’t even think about it, bwoy,” said the captain.

  Lloyd turned and saw him descending the ladder from the bridge. “Me was just going to look for my bag,” he said.

  “Where you left it?”

  “Me threw it down where the anchor rope go. Me was going to hide in there, but it too deep.”

  “My God. You would have died in there.” Captain Blake shook his head. “Okay. Follow me. Foster!” They went to the bow of the Surrey. Two sailors stood on deck and saluted as the captain walked onto the forward deck. Lloyd saw the hatch was open.

  “This boy’s bag is in the anchor well,” Captain Blake said. “Any chance you could get it out, Foster?”

  “Aye aye, sah!” Foster eased himself into the hatchway—it was a tight fit. One of the other sailors peered into the well. “See it there!” he said. “In a plastic bag. No, the other side.”

  Foster handed the bag to the other sailor and climbed out of the anchor hold. The few moments he had spent in confinement below had beaded his forehead with sweat. Lloyd shivered. He could have died there. Captain Blake handed the bag to him. It was squashed, but intact and fairly dry. Lloyd sat on the deck and searched inside for the bullas. He found them in their wrapping, reduced to crumbs. He pulled out the water bottle and took a long drink. It made him thirstier. His spare clothes in the bag were dry. “Can I change, sah?” he said to Captain Blake.

  “Take him below, Foster,” said the captain. “Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  That first night when we all knew Luke had gone to drift we ate boiled pepper shrimp with our fingers. My father’s shrimp, my mother’s cook pot. She spread newspaper over the kitchen table and the seven of us huddled around it—a table that once held us all easily as boys was now too crowded. No one spoke. We shelled the shrimp with tiny ticking sounds. The pepper they had been cooked in burned our fingers, but our mother did not warn us about touching our eyes. The food stuck in our throats, but our mother said it was not to be wasted. I have never been able to stand the taste of shrimp since.

  We began our wait. At first, it was all of Great Bay that waited, in groups of men and women, gathered on the beach, in bars and cook sheds and grocery shops and under trees. Then the waiting spread to other fishing villages—to Calabash Bay and Billy’s Bay and Frenchman’s. The men talked in low voices about where Donovan and Luke could have gone. Everyone agreed the weather was fair and the problem must be engine trouble. The women hardly spoke. When night fell, kerosene lamps were lit and those who had electricity turned it on. As the moon rose, the groups of people thinned but never completely disappeared. The Treasure Beach communities always kept their vigil for anyone gone to drift.

  I stayed with my father at Sheldon’s Bar. He hardly seemed to notice my presence. He had told my brothers that when the light of day came we would all go to sea to look for Luke. No one would go alone—we would travel in pairs and we would stay in plain sight of one another. I did not say anything, but I thought this to be a poor plan for finding a small canoe, lost at sea.

  19

  Lloyd sat on the stern of the Surrey, legs overboard, staring at Middle Cay. He had eaten all the bulla crumbs and drank half the bottle of water. He had gone to the bathroom—the head—three times. His headache had gone. He was glad to be back in his own clothes. How would he get onto the cay to ask his questions? It was too far to swim. He could not face the thought of coming this far, surviving that pounding night and not being allowed off the ship.

  The Surrey was quiet except for the noise of the generator. The sun was well up. The captain was on the bridge with one other sailor. Lloyd climbed up the ladder. “Captain,” he said.

  “What you want, bwoy?”

  “Please, sah. Please let me go onto Middle Cay. Please let me talk to the fishers.”

  Captain Blake made a sound of irritation. Lloyd waited. He looked around, liking the high vantage point. He could see two other islands and many fishing canoes at sea. There was also a big commercial fishing vessel anchored much farther offshore than the Surrey. “Conch fishers,” said the captain, following his gaze. Lloyd wondered if it would have been better to seek passage with the conch fishers. He had heard they used young boys to dive for the conch, breathing air through a long hose to a machine that sat on the surface of the sea. Perhaps they would have given him a job and he would not have to beg to be allowed on Middle Cay.

  “You go to sea with your granddaddy?” said Captain Blake.

  “Yes, sah. From me a baby.”

  “You close to him, then?”

  Lloyd knew he did not have the right words for his relationship with Gramps. “Yes, sah,” he agreed.

  “So tell me what happened to him.”

  “Nuttn more to tell. Him don’t fish at Pedro, but him go last Sunday. Him call us on Tuesday, say he comin back on Thursday. But him don’t come back. Him not answerin the phone.”

  “You talk to fishers at Port Royal and Gray Pond and Rocky Point?”

  “Yes, sah. Not Rocky Point. Too far. The fishers at Gray Pond beach say to ask the Coast Guard.” Me tell you this already, he wanted to say. He remembered the way Captain Blake had reacted to the suggestion that the Coast Guard would search only for important people.

  “Well, youngster, you have guts, I’ll say that for you. And it’s good you love your granddaddy. Come. I will get you onto Middle Cay and we see what we see. Don’t hold out too much hope
though. I checked. Commander Peterson did tell the Middle Cay detail to ask around. Your granddaddy was here, but he left on Thursday and nobody out here seen him since.”

  Lloyd let the words pass over him like the bursting spray on his long journey. “Thank you, sah,” was all he said in response. You don’t know everything, he thought.

  Squall after squall came to Portland Rock last night and I was happy to exchange sleep for water. I stripped off all my clothes and lay naked under the sky on the life jacket. At dawn I was cleansed but when I tried to stand, I fell. In the dark I had not been able to fill the plastic bottle. My right leg aches and aches. The whelks are finished and the gulls are very loud this morning. I imagine they are disappointed I have not yet died. It is good to lie washed under the open sky. I listen for the sound of a boat and I don’t know what to hope for because if it is the wrong boat, I am finished.

  20

  Lloyd and Foster walked the narrow alleys between the dwellings on Middle Cay. Most of the shacks were empty and Lloyd realized this was another obstacle—the fishers were already at sea. Perhaps by the time they returned to the cay the Surrey would have weighed anchor and be heading back to Port Royal. Maybe the captain would let him stay on Middle Cay. He could return to the mainland with any fisher. He knew his mother would worry more with each passing night, but he could get a message to her. Maybe the captain himself would call her.

  He was surprised to see women on Middle Cay. Two very young women wearing wigs and skimpy clothing sat on an old boat engine outside one of the shacks. A much older woman squatted over a basin, cleaning fish. Fish scales clung to her forearms. Some of the shacks were actually shops with shelves lined with tins of Vienna sausages and bully beef and mackerel, bags of flour, sodas, beer, rum, even clothes. Some shacks contained several rooms, others were just a single room enclosed in plywood and zinc. A man slept in a slung hammock in one of the houses, the door open to catch the sea breeze. Lloyd saw barrels containing water and some shacks had rusty gutters for collecting rainwater.

  He saw a generator outside one of the bigger dwellings. There were two small but substantial buildings on the island, one rectangular and the other looking like a huge can, half buried in the sand. The sailors were gathered around the rectangular building—the Middle Cay Coast Guard base, Lloyd figured. The other building was locked. There was a large area of smoking garbage off to one side and seabirds circled in the sky, making their loud calls. A woman walked out of one of the shacks and threw fish guts onto the beach. The birds descended on it, shrieking and pecking.

  “Where you want to start, bwoy?” snapped Foster, clearly annoyed by the duty he had been assigned. Lloyd looked around. The women avoided his eyes. They were probably afraid of the sailors and unlikely to talk freely in their presence. “Sah?” he said. “You can wait somewhere for me? Me can’t run from the Cay. Them not going talk to me if you standin right there.”

  Foster kissed his teeth. “Awright, bwoy,” he said. “See that building over there? The base. Me wait for you there. One hour. That’s it. Then we going back to the Surrey. If me have to search for you, me personally lock you in a cabin until we back at Cagway. You get me?”

  “Yes, sah.”

  “And don’t go that side.” The sailor pointed past the burning garbage to one end of the cay where there were three damaged concrete structures. “Middle Cay bathroom is the beach. Captain, he don’t want any mess on the Surrey.”

  Lloyd nodded and set off. Middle Cay was like every fishing beach he had ever visited—old boats pulled up out of the reach of all but the highest seas, piles of nets, fish pots, rusting gear. Strong smells of salt and fish. There were hundreds of birds, including a type he had never seen, pure white with the amber eyes of a goat behind a mask—those birds held the ground near the garbage, despite the heat and smoke.

  It took him less than an hour to speak to everyone he saw on Middle Cay. One woman with the best stocked shop remembered Maas Conrad. Her name was Miss Alice, and she said she had lived near Gray Pond one time. Yes, Maas Conrad had been at Pedro, he had bought a fried fish from her and a bottle of Stone’s Ginger Wine, and they had chatted about the old days when fish were plentiful in Kingston Harbour. “The elders, them always talk about that,” she said to Lloyd, although it was clear she was too young to remember those days.

  “Was he okay?” said Lloyd. “Not sick or anything?”

  “Him not sick. Him soon come back, man.”

  The few fishers on Middle Cay told the same story. Yes, they had seen Maas Conrad, they knew about his catch, which had been reasonable, they had shared a drink with him, he had watched TV at night over at Miss Leona’s bar, until the generator went off, and when they woke on Thursday morning Maas Conrad had gone. They did not know if his phone had stopped working; he had not said so. He had sold some of his catch to the men who plied packer boats back and forth to the mainland. They assumed he had fished early on the morning of his departure and had left for Port Royal or Rocky Point right after. The weather was not the calmest, but there were no storms. Unless his engine had failed, they were all sure he would turn up.

  Lloyd had no watch, but he knew his hour was almost up. He was near tears—all for nothing, he thought, all this way for nothing. He walked away from the shacks and onto the beach, looking for a secluded place where he could sit for a minute and stare out to sea. He found a slice of shade beside a wrecked fishing canoe and sat on a rock. The waves came in and out, foaming at his feet.

  “But see yah now, is Lloydie! What you doing out here alone?” Lloyd turned to see Slowly, the fisher who had been lost at sea and ate seaweed to survive.

  “Wha’ppen, Slowly?” he said. “What you doin out here?”

  Lloyd saw the canoe was just a shell and there was some kind of bedding laid out near the bow. Slowly must have been asleep in the canoe, his head under the bow cap for the little shade it offered. Did he now live there, in an old canoe, open to sun and rain? His clothes were rags and his skin was crusted with salt and fish scales and sweat. His eyes shone with a mad light.

  “What me doing out here? Staying close to God, Lloydie. This is where him go come to take us up. Him go come in the night and me is ready. Mine eyes have seen the GLORY of the coming of the LORD . . .” Slowly leapt out of the canoe and, turning in a circle, stretched his arms out. Then he belted out the rest of the hymn, marching in place on the sand. Poor Slowly, Lloyd thought. Him turn madman. It was time to go to the Coast Guard base for the journey back to the mainland. He stood up. “Awright, Slowly. Me gone. You take care.”

  “Wait!” Slowly said. “Wait wait wait wait wait. El mal en la tierra. God has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. Them got him, Lloydie. The foreign man got him. The sins of the father got him, carried down from generation to generation. El mal en la tierra. You have drinks money for me? A smalls?” His last request was made in a normal voice.

  Lloyd shook his head. “Sorry, man, don’t have any money with me.”

  “Is awright man. Likkle Lloydie. What a way you grow big! You far from home out here. Bwoy, be fearful of the sea, for it contain the leviathan! You hear me, yout’?”

  “Me hear you, Slowly. Me gone though.” Lloyd turned and walked toward the Coast Guard base. He fought his tears. Behind him he heard Slowly start on another hymn. At the door to the base, Lloyd looked back across the sand. Slowly was playing imaginary drums. Suddenly he stopped. He pointed at Lloyd. And then he began a strange movement with his arms, almost like the shape of waves, a kind of dance. “Watch me, Lloydie!” he shouted from the beach. “Me know the truth! Black Crab know the truth! Find the dolphin catchers. Go talk to Maas Roxton. Find a rock in the sea.” He continued his weird dance in the sun.

  Lloyd ran back to him. “What you saying, Slowly? Beg you talk sense. Black Crab is a man?”

  Slowly widened his eyes and again rattled off a string of Spanish phrases.

  “Talk English,” Lloyd pleaded, holding Slowly’s arm.
“And talk slow. Everything is cool, Slowly. Just cool.”

  “Yout’! Find youself over here!” It was Foster shouting at him from the Coast Guard base. His time on Middle Cay was over. Lloyd tugged at Slowly’s arm and held the man’s gaze. “Slowly, me is begging you, who is Black Crab and what him have to do with Gramps?”

  “Forget Black Crab. The evil thrive like the green bay tree and evil is abroad in the land. Abroad in the land, me say. Talk to him friend, Maas Conrad friend. You know him? Maas Roxton. Him live at Rocky Point. Go to him, Lloydie. Go to him fast-fast.”

  Lloyd heard steps behind him and Foster grabbed his arm. “Me hear you, Slowly,” he said, as Foster dragged him away. “Bless up.”

  “You waste you time talking to a madman, bwoy,” sneered the sailor. “You fool-fool just like him.”

  At the entrance to the base, Lloyd looked back again. Slowly was still doing his strange dance on the beach. And Lloyd remembered Gramps’s dolphin stories and his descriptions of how they moved through the water, up and down at the surface. Slowly’s dance was a dolphin dance. Definitely, his grandfather’s disappearance had something to do with dolphins. Lloyd felt a bubble of hope in his chest. He knew Maas Roxton, his grandfather’s best friend. He should have thought of going to see him first. And he had another name, a name his parents knew—Black Crab.

  Lloyd joined the sailors going back to the mainland, anxious for the return journey to be over.

  Lewis and I went together to look for Luke. My second oldest brother was twenty by then, a big man. He lived in Junction in the hills with a woman our mother disliked because her hair was not processed and stuck out from her head. Our mother did not think this was decent. I wondered if Lewis missed living close to the sea. As we left the beach in the glow of dawn I hoped he remembered how to navigate. And then I realized that I had learned all there was to learn about being at sea, all that could be taught man to man, and if Lewis lost his way I could take us both home.