Gone to Drift

by Diana McCaulay

  But the sea revealed nothing that day, nor the next, nor the day after that. We traveled aimlessly, always in sight of the other canoe with Ben and Robert in it, and I thought we should have a better plan. Our search was limited by fuel but was guided by nothing. My father looked old for the first time.

  Those days were cloudless and the sea as unyielding as metal. I thought my eyes would go blind with staring into a hurtful glare, at a sweeping horizon that held nothing at all. We saw other fishing boats at sea, and each time we saw them in the distance, our spirits would lift for a short time and then would sink as we identified the boat and its occupants.

  I found myself looking for the dolphins. The sea seemed empty of life; now, I doubt my memory, but I remember no man o’war bird diving from the sky, no leaping ray, no swirl of jack schooling beneath the surface. But the dolphins did not come and I knew the sea was a grave.

  Luke went to drift in his boat and now I am lost at sea on a small piece of land, a rock in the sea. My brother must have been certain we, his family, would look for him. I think now about my own eyes and the eyes of my father and my brothers and all the eyes of the Treasure Beach villagers, turned to the sea, searching for Luke, and I wonder whose eyes are looking for me now.

  21

  All the sailors were on board the Surrey getting ready for the journey back to Port Royal and the Cagway base and there was an air of anticipation. Lloyd heard them talking. They longed to be on the mainland, back to city life. Men of the sea they might be but they were not fishers and they were glad their week on a tiny island in the middle of the Caribbean sea was over. The Surrey’s engines finally started and the anchor was brought up.

  Lloyd realized how weary he was. He was hungry again; and thirsty. He wondered if Captain Blake would let him sleep in one of the bunks. He felt sure he would no longer be seasick below deck. “Move from there, bwoy!” a sailor shouted at him. He got up and stood, facing the setting sun. The wake of the Surrey streamed away behind them and Middle Cay grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared.

  Captain Blake sent Lloyd into his cabin below. Foster gave him several blankets and Lloyd piled them on the floor. He was drunk with the need to sleep. He had refilled his water bottle and eaten another bully beef sandwich. The Surrey wallowed and surged over the waves and Lloyd waited to feel seasick, but his stomach was steady. Foster had given him a bucket and warned him to use it. Lloyd felt proud that the bucket would be empty in the morning. He wedged himself between the captain’s desk and the hull and climbed into the nest of blankets. For a moment, he wished for darkness because the lights in the cabin were still on. Then his eyes closed and he was asleep.

  “Wake up, bwoy,” someone said, shaking his shoulder. Lloyd opened his eyes. Foster stood in the cabin, holding a mug of mint tea. “We almost in,” he said. “Time to get up. Here.” He handed Lloyd the mug of tea. “You lucky, bwoy. The captain like you. Maybe you don’t end up in the lockup, where all like you belong.” Lloyd heard footsteps on the deck and the shouts of the sailors—they must be near to Port Royal.

  It was still dark outside. Lloyd had wanted to see the sun rise, to take a last look across the sea for Gramps before they entered the familiar waters of the Port Royal Cays and Kingston Harbour, but he sensed in the calming of the sea that they would soon be at berth. He turned to face the bow and saw the lights of Kingston. They were very close.

  Cagway base was brightly lit and a single sailor stood on the dock to receive the Surrey into port. Lloyd realized no one was watching him. He took a last drink from the hot tea and poured the rest of it overboard. He set the mug in the circle made by a coil of rope. As the gap between the ship and the dock narrowed, Lloyd took his chance. He jumped onto the dock and ran away into the night. He heard a sailor call out—“Hey!”—but then he heard the slapping sound of ropes cast and fallen, curses from the Surrey and the engines racing as the ship docked. He dodged around a small low structure built almost in the sea and headed for the low dock he remembered. He was unsteady as he ran—the land seemed to rise and fall—and the wet sand gave way under his feet.

  Behind the dock, he slipped into the sea without hesitation. It was cold and he gasped. There would be no dry clothes at the end of this swim, but soon the sun would be up and he would be in Port Royal and then he would be making his way home to Bournemouth and his mother. She would be angry, but he was ready to face her.

  He felt as if he had been at sea for months. His bag weighed him down and his swim was slow. Wednesday morning. His grandfather had been missing for just under a week. He wondered where Dwight was. He hoped he could find him—they would laugh together over his beatbox performance. He walked out of the sea onto the Port Royal fishing beach just as the sun came up.

  As the search for Luke went on, the pace of ordinary life in the four fishing villages slowed and almost halted. The talk about what could have happened to Luke and Donovan ended like a dripping standpipe, finally fixed. There was nothing more to be said. The counting of the days stopped too—at first, there was discussion of how long a man could survive at sea without water, without food, and there were stories of men long forgotten, except that they had gone to drift. These two men were fishers, it was pointed out. They had their gear. Luke and Donovan would be able to catch fish and turtles and even seabirds. They would not starve. Then the older fishers would warn about the emptiness of the deep sea, how difficult it was to catch fish when the seafloor was too far beneath the surface.

  Everyone knew the limitation was water—that without water there were only a few days of life left to a man trapped in an open canoe. And everyone saw the high white sky over Treasure Beach that held not a single rain cloud. When the fifth day passed, talk about food and water ceased. Slowly the groups of people who waited for the return of my brother and the man called Donovan dispersed, but although it was not easy to see, the villagers still waited behind closed doors.

  By the sixth day after Luke went to drift I was tired of the aimless search. I had never found the sea to be a lifeless place, but in the search for my brother it held a blankness that made me want to leave Great Bay. To occupy the blazing hours I thought about what it would be like to live in the middle of the island, perhaps in Mandeville, at the top of a hill with the sea only an idea, a story, a blue blur at the end of vision. Maybe Jasmine would leave with me and we could make our lives in a gentler place of green, a place with cool nights and flowers around a small house. But I could never see what I might do in such a place.

  Today is my sixth day on Portland Rock and I am thinking of the sixth day of the search for my brother. I am on a rock, he was in a boat. Water Bird is lost. I am sick of the taste of sea snails and whelks. I want a full bottle of Red Stripe beer or Stone’s Ginger Wine. I want a plate full of curry goat and rice. I want the sight of other people, the softness of a bed, the shelter of a roof.

  22

  Lloyd lay on his bed, alone at home, his arms behind his head. He had dried his clothes on the beach near the fort before returning home. He had washed from the bucket in the yard and eaten half of a stale bun found at the back of the food cupboard. He longed for chicken and rice, maybe even some breadfruit, a big plate of cooked food swimming in gravy. He wished again for a cell phone—he could call Dwight, tell him he was back, boast of his adventures.

  His body felt used up as if the sea had sucked something from him. He thought of the black sea eggs pot fishers used as bait, handling them in gloved hands, putting them in the pots along with orange peel and coconut, punching them open with a spear before the pot was lowered into the sea. They had yellow yolks, like the eggs of chickens, which drifted through the water in faint trails, attracting fish to swim into the pot and become trapped there. Gramps said sea eggs were important because they ate the weeds on the reef.

  Once, snorkeling on the reef at Lime Cay, Lloyd had seen a starfish chase a sea egg in the slowest of slow motion, eventually crawling over the spines of the sea egg, holding it fast against t
he floor of the sea to crush and eat it. An egg that moved, an egg that ate, an egg with defenses that could still be beaten. Gramps had told him how the black sea eggs had all died off one time, for reasons no one knew. Lost at sea he might be, but Lloyd was sure his grandfather still lived. The boy closed his eyes and he slept.

  He woke when he heard the front door open. His mother was back. “Lloydie?” she called. Her voice was calm. And then he realized the flaw in his story—he had returned from his fictional fishing trip as crew with neither fish nor money. He pretended to be asleep. He sensed his mother standing in the doorway but she did not call his name again. He heard the clanking of pots and the rustling of plastic bags. She had brought home supper. Joy and hunger rose in his chest. He was home, he was out of danger. His mother was a safe harbor; they had been together for a long time, from his birth. She had shared all his hours, all his days and nights, waking and sleeping. She was always home at night. Their house was a steady, safe place, the opposite of being at sea. His mother made it safe for him, safe for them both. He hoped she had brought home chicken and rice. He heard the crackle of something frying and he was starving.

  He got up from his bed and put on an old T-shirt. He went into the small living room, filled with the smell of meat cooking, to his mother, her back turned to him, the ties of her apron around her neck and waist, her head lowered to her task. He saw for the first time that the tight curls of hair around her face and neck were gray. Perhaps he owed her the truth.

  She turned when she heard him come into the room. “How the catch?” she said. “What you go with that old fool Popeye for? After him don’t know nuttn ’bout fishin. Bet you don’t bring home not even one so-so grunt.”

  And Lloyd nodded. The easiest lies were the ones never spoken. He waited for the next question, as to whether gentle Popeye, so named for his height and thinness and his white beard, had paid him, but the question never came. He saw tension in his mother’s shoulders as she cooked. It was dark outside—the day of his return had come and gone.

  He put their two plastic place mats and their two plates and their two forks on the rickety table and then he sat in silence, waiting for the food his mother cooked to be ready. He would eat, he would sleep for a few more hours, and then he would go back to his place on the wall at the Gray Pond beach and watch for his grandfather.

  On the seventh day of the search, I said good-bye to Luke in my mind. Lewis and I were near the place where we had seen the dolphins and as I always did, I looked for them, but they did not come. It was very still—the sea was held suspended without motion. Ahead was the reef where we often set our pots, and not even there could we see the surge or break of waves. Luke is dead, I thought, and it seemed a small thing, no bigger than the death of any fish we threw into the bottom of our canoe. My brother was not exempt from death; nor was I. I wanted to find his body because I would only then be released from this pointless search, this understanding that life itself was indifferent to any particular life. That day, it was my hand on the tiller while Lewis stood in the bow, staring at the unnatural sheen of the sea through east and west, north and south. I turned Silver for home.

  Where you going? Lewis said, when he realized what I was doing.

  Me done, I said. Done, finish.

  He argued, but I did not speak again. When we neared Great Bay I cut the engine, and at the point where I knew the seafloor was sandy and shallow I vaulted into the water and swam away from the canoe, my eyes burning in the salt water.

  23

  “Where the bwoy is, you wut’less son?” Vernon Saunders yelled. The front door slammed. Lloyd had gone to bed, intending to sleep for a few hours only, but still tired from his trip to Middle Cay he had not woken to go to the seawall. He sat up, wishing his window was bigger and he could escape. His father was drunk, of course.

  “Ssst!” his mother hissed. “Stop you noise! You want everybody hear you damn foolishness? What you going on with?”

  “Me no care who want listen. Where him is? LLOYD! Find you backside in here!”

  Lloyd got out of bed. His father was free with his fists and his belt, but this was nothing remarkable—most of Lloyd’s friends were regularly beaten by mothers and fathers and visiting men; there was almost a pride in it, in being able to take it. But there was something more in his father’s voice that worried Lloyd. He pulled on his clothes.

  The shower curtain was torn aside and his father stood in the doorway. Lloyd was trapped—he should have walked out himself into the outer room, perhaps he would have been able to dodge his father’s blows and get through the front door. If Vernon was really drunk, avoiding him would have been easy. But now he filled the doorway and there was no easy escape.

  “Where you tell you mother you go Monday night, bwoy?” he shouted, his face close to Lloyd’s, his hands balled up into fists.

  “What wrong with you, Vern?” his mother said. “Him did a little crewin for Popeye, that’s all. Come outside. Leave the bwoy alone.”

  “That’s what you think! Crew for Popeye? Is a damn lie! You know where you good-good son was Monday night? Him was on the Coast Guard boat! Him stowaway on the Coast Guard boat to Pedro. You lucky him not in jail!”

  “Lloydie?” his mother said. “Is true?”

  How had his father found out? Lloyd wondered. He stared at the floor.

  “Lloydie?” his mother said again, her voice sharper now. Lloyd backed away from his father and reached for the dangling switch to the one lightbulb in his room. He turned it on and his father blinked in the sudden light. Lloyd took his chance and squeezed past his father and out of his bedroom. The front door was shut. His mother caught his arm.

  “Hear me dyin trial!” his mother said. “You stowaway on the Coast Guard boat? What you do that for?”

  “Me went to look for Gramps,” he said. And then a righteous anger filled his chest. He dragged his arm away. “Nobody care! You don’t care! Gramps lost at sea and nobody lookin for him. So yes, is true; me go on the Coast Guard boat. And me talk to the fishers on Pedro, but nobody tell me nuttn. Until me see Slowly. Him tell me Gramps have sumpn to do with them foreign people what catch dolphins. Me hear you talkin about it at nighttime. You think me is a fool? Me think Gramps is dead over some foolishness to do with dolphins!”

  The loss and fear Lloyd had carried for a week broke like a wave on the sharpest of reefs and he began to cry. He was a twelve-year-old boy. He was not a man. The person he loved most in the world was lost at sea. The days had surged past and with each dawn the chances of finding Gramps alive grew smaller.

  “Slowly?” sneered his father. “Bare foolishness! That man don’t even have half a mind.” He staggered a little.

  Lloyd wiped his eyes. It was hopeless. He would never know his grandfather’s fate. Perhaps one day the wreckage of his boat would be found, maybe a splintered plank of wood with Water Bird written on it would wash up on the coast. He would never know. There would never be a grave anywhere, perhaps not even a funeral or a nine night. Maybe he would live the rest of his life waiting for Water Bird to round the point at Palisadoes until the span of a human life was finally over. How long would wondering last, how slowly could hope die?

  “How old Gramps is?” Lloyd said to his silent parents. They stood apart from each other, but there was something united in the way they looked at him.

  “How old you father is?” his mother said to his father, and there was relief in her voice. This was a question they could answer.

  “The old fool? Must be sixty-seven, sixty-eight by now.”

  Lloyd thought of Pastor Errol’s sermons about the three score and ten years of life a person was given, according to the Bible, but he knew many people who lived into their eighties and nineties. Even many fishers—despite the life of sun and sea and hardship, they lived and worked until they were very old and sometimes their bodies outlived their minds, and they became like Slowly, talking and dancing to no one. It would be at least twenty years before he could be
sure Gramps was not on an island somewhere, not on a lonely beach, not run off with a woman, not migrated to do farm work. Twenty years before Lloyd would know for sure Gramps was dead.

  The anger had left the room. Vernon staggered and the smell of rum rolled off him. Lloyd wished his mother would put her arms around him but she was not that kind of woman. He thought then of Jules and the way she had whispered to the Lime Cay dolphin and the story that it had been put on an airplane and taken to another island. He thought of mad Slowly and his dolphin dance. No. He would not give up. Gramps had seen something he should not have seen and someone knew what had happened to him.

  “Who is Black Crab?” he said to his mother.

  She grabbed his arm again and her nails bit into his skin. “Now you listen me, pickney,” she hissed. “You forget you ever hear that name, you hear me? Some things not good to talk. Pickney must stay outta big people business!”

  “Tell me what happen to Gramps,” he pleaded.

  “Nuttn don’t happen to him,” shouted his father. “You hear me? NUTTN!”

  The day after I abandoned the search for my brother I climbed the limestone rocks behind the villages alone. The weather was turning—there was a low bank of cloud at the horizon and as I watched, the cloud changed from the white of wood smoke to the purple of a storm. It was too late for Luke. I had not gone home the night before because I did not want to see my mother or father. I had found the long abandoned hull of Birdie, covered in a tangle of beach rose vines and bird droppings, and I had crawled inside.

  In the morning, my mouth was foul and my stomach empty. I had no water. This was how Luke would have felt on that first day when he first confronted the dead engine or the loss of the expected sight of land, before he knew his life was almost over. What would it be like to count the time you had left with certainty, to know however bad you felt on the first morning, you would only feel worse on the next and worse still on the day after that? To try to hold on to hope, to let yourself feel it in tiny amounts, like scarce sips of water? My brother was dead at seventeen and rage made me short of breath. Rage at our father for taking us to sea; at Donovan—it must have been his fault because the Saunders men had always been safe at sea; at God himself for not raising his all-powerful hand to save my brother; at myself for failing to find him, for losing hope and turning away.