Tell No-One About This

by Jacob Ross

  The boy means it. He knows that now – and who could say he would not have done the same?

  ‘Okay,’ he grunts – scrambling up the slope. ‘If you got any problem, shout.’

  Mantos does not hear the boy’s reply.

  He does not wait for it.

  DELIVERANCE

  For Esau

  Neither doctors nor the sap of herbs could cure him. Despite his daily dips in the sea and the layers of liniment he used to seal the wound below his ankle, he stank. The smell was as offensive to him as it was to the people who shunned him. He’d ignored the tiny abrasion made by the tip of his harpoon a year ago, expecting the sea to heal it, but salt and sun had not worked their miracle.

  The sore had sapped his strength and made an old man of him. But last night’s dream had revealed to him that the dolphin, the white one with the eyes like flames in her head, could heal him. Not only did she promise him a cure, she offered him a cleansing.

  The other dolphins had not appeared with her in the dream and that made sense. Only the albino could cure the flesh of a foot gone bad. Only she could make him whole again.

  These days, Skido was the only person prepared to listen to him talk about the dolphins. He never seemed to tire of hearing about the dream. Well, not until a couple of weeks ago.

  ‘I see her, Missa Skid. White like god mek cloud. As if she was tellin me where to come to meet her so she kin cure this foot o mine.’

  ‘Meet her where, Osun?’

  ‘Past Dog Reef, Sir. Past…’

  ‘Past Dog Reef is De Gate, Sonny, and De Gate is hell.’

  ‘I know. Past all that. Even past Gull Island.’

  ‘Past all that you find nothing. Only water and wind and storm. What de hell is de matter with you, anyway? Like that bad-foot make you crazy, o something?’ The old man leaned very close to his face. ‘Is like you trying to say something so – so, so fucken heavy, you kin only talk ‘bout it in parables.’

  ‘You can’t call something nothing, Sir. Becos water, wind and storm is something. If that is where she want to tek me to cure me, then is there I gotta go.’

  ‘You go searchin for any kind o white dolphin – especially white dolphin! Cross dat bad ocean water north o here, you never come back. Y’hear me? You die.’

  ‘No I can’t, becos she tell me…’

  ‘You die, Osun! Nobody never go north o here, this time o year. And you know s’well as de rest of us dat is two weeks since the radio been predictin storm. You even think o trying, dat sea swallow you up and spit your little magga-bone arse out on some bird-shit island where nobody can’t find you. S’only a dream! God never mek no dolphin white all over, not de kind o white you talk to me about. Dolphin is de colour o deep-water. I see blue ones, black ones, brown ones, even grey ones. But nobody never see no white dolphin dat shine like you say it shine, ‘ceptin in de mind. Dat’s not no dolphin, Sonny – dat’s de devil calling you.’

  ‘S’more dan dat, Sir.’

  Skido had pushed himself off the sand, dusted the seat of his pants and walked off to the northern end of the bay. The old fella had avoided him since.

  From the cot where he lay, Osun listened to the humming, buzzing voices in the room next door. They came in snatches – the high nasal tones of his niece and the chesty bass of her companion. These days they talked as if he were not there. He tried to blank his mind, but could not prevent his heart from thumping at their words, which came in fragments through the shaky, half-rotten walls of the house.

  Edmund Hill. The Red House. Easier. The gov’ment…

  She’d never talked like that before.

  There was an edge of uncertainty in the woman’s voice, a querulous seeking for assurance.

  ‘Nothin to shame for, eh? Not as bad as before. Better now, not so?’

  Osun allowed the words to sink into the deep pool that he imagined was his mind. Sometimes his body was a sea-snake on the floor of the ocean; in moments of depression he was all the old and sodden things the sea threw up on the beach.

  A burden. That was what she said he was.

  She had become more fretful since the man arrived. Lost her temper easily these days. Now his niece was too ready to remind of the effort it took to maintain him. Still, she looked happier than he could remember. But it was a happiness she reserved only for herself and the tall, sober-faced young man who had taken an instant dislike to him.

  He lay quiet, but felt the tightening in his gut that used to flow through him just before he stepped into his boat and headed for the horizon. He was not going to rot his life away in a mad house or in a pauper’s home on Edmund Hill. Everybody knew about the Red House: the stink, the decay, the dying and the dead. He would not allow Nesthia, or rather her new man, to force this on him.

  He shifted his weight on the small bed, ignoring Nesthia’s and whatever-his-name’s noisy commotion. They go on like that, he thought sourly, they would get more than the child they were trying for.

  He wriggled his toes, studied them. They were long and bony but still strong. The old muscles were weaker, but still there. His bones stood out against his skin now. It had to be tonight. All he had been waiting for was the moon.

  A large spider hung from the ceiling on a thread so fine it seemed to be afloat on an ocean of air.

  It had gone quiet in the room next door. Osun rolled off the bed. He’d already decided on the boat he was going to take. He had watched Chadoo prepare it for the trip out every morning at five o’clock exactly; watched him lay the heavy harpoon along the belly of the craft, the steel of its barbed end pointing towards the stern. Chadoo would lay the long oars beside the weapon before entering the craft. With tripping heart, Osun would watch Chadoo and his son fit the long white mast from which the single sail of pure black canvas would spread out against the early sky.

  It had taken Chadoo three years to build that boat. Might have taken another man six months, but Chadoo was born with shortened forearms and hands turned out like flippers. No-one believed that he could do it. The little man had taught himself to hold a hammer with the crook of his arm and wield it. Even so, Osun thought, he might have finished his boat in a year, or at the most eighteen months, but this was the work of a man too obsessed with his own imperfection to build an ordinary craft. Three years later, when he stepped back to look at his work, Chadoo had fashioned something after the image and likeness of his own inside-self. The most perfect boat on earth. It was large enough for deep-sea fishing, but smaller than the twenty-footers in the bay; it was made to the measure of Chadoo’s own stunted body, and balanced to perfection.

  The craft was painted blue-grey, white and yellow, the colours of sky and clouds and sun and deep-water fish. Lean like a barracuda, it was easily the sleekest boat anyone had ever seen.

  Osun felt he understood why Chadoo scrubbed its sides each evening after a hard day’s work, patted the nodding prow and addressed it by the name he had given it as soon as it was finished. There was, for anyone who cared to see it, an understanding between Deliverance and her maker.

  Lord ha’ Mercy, what a name for a boat!

  Evenings, Chadoo never brought her up on the sand. With a long, heavy rope he’d ring-bolted against the sternpost, he would tether the craft to the trunk of the largest sea grape tree on the beach.

  He had forced himself to eat well, swallowing his pride and going down to the beach to beg for a handful of sprat or the odd fish head that he’d roasted on the sand or in his niece’s coal-pot. If there was no offering of fish, he spent all evening combing the rocks on the southern end of the bay for whelks.

  There was a small parcel of jack-fish and red snappers that he had salted, dried and then baked, hidden deep in the sand between the roots of the grape tree nearest their house.

  Now he felt ready.

  Half past six.

  The sun was already a rusting coin at the back of the sky. The last of the buses from St. George’s were screaming through the village, heading for the north
ernmost towns, Victoria and Sauteurs.

  The boats were coming in, engines throbbing through the evening silence. He had once been part of the line of boats that pleated the water every evening, stretching all the way back towards the thundering edge of Dog Reef.

  Recently, it had felt better not pottering about the nets, head bent under the humiliating scrutiny of hardier, healthier men; not fighting his own body as he added his feebleness to the hauling up of boats from the water’s edge to the shelter of the grape trees. He had done this only because he needed the poor reward of fish, thanklessly given.

  Chadoo walked past him, grunted a greeting. Osun nodded, his eyes on the gulls over the water. It made a fella want to weep just watching them plunge, beak first, into the water and then rise hard and fast as they shook the sea and sunlight off their wings.

  Night rolled in quickly. Night and the tide.

  ‘Osun!’

  He ignored his niece’s voice; he was watching red crabs hanging tensely over the gaping mouths of their holes.

  ‘Ooo-sun!’

  He did not answer.

  ‘Osun!’

  ‘Yaaar!’

  ‘I callin you. You don’t hear me callin you? How much time I mus stand up here callin you for food?’

  ‘Awwright!’ Despite himself his mouth watered. He looked up at the foothills, glimpsed the cold white eye of the moon just above the peaks of the Belvidere.

  Night had fallen about him like a stone.

  It must have been past midnight. Both feet drawn up, eyes wide, he concentrated on the quiet. Osun flicked his tongue across his lips, edged off the bed, careful not to hurt his foot.

  He began to move the moment he heard the rustle of bed clothes and the heavy roll of bodies in the other room.

  The bolt slid easily under his hand. The door grated; he froze, waited for the drawn-out sob-sighs of his niece, then stepped out into the night.

  The moon hung full and low and heavy above the bay. And stars, numberless, Lordy! stretching beyond vision.

  A low breeze tugged at his shirt. He glanced at the sleeping houses. He untethered Chadoo’s boat, lifted the anchor and pushed the craft a few yards further out.

  He had forgotten the food. Wouldn’t survive without it. Kneedeep in water, he ignored the pain in his ankle and pushed himself back towards the shore.

  He closed his ears against the racket he feared he was making, his hands quick and crablike in the sand beneath the tree. A grunt and he was hopping back towards the boat, terrified because where his room had been dark a while ago, there was now the flickering light of a lamp. He thought he heard the man’s deep grumble.

  He had not closed the door. The draught must have roused them.

  He’d managed to get the mast up by the time he heard the woman shout his name. Frantic, he tied the sail against the tall, smooth mapou pole. The black sheet of canvas opened with an impatient flapping protest.

  Osun thought he heard his name a second time, a man’s heavy cough, footsteps on the sand. The sail had found the slight nightbreeze. Cursing his feebleness, he guided the craft past the sleeping boats. A few hundred yards further out, the breeze picked up and the hull of the boat began its sibilant gossiping with the waves – a sound that never ceased to thrill him.

  For a moment he lost his sense of himself and where he was. The gliding craft, the fluorescence of the water left him with a sensation of slipping away on light.

  Osun turned his face up to the moon and grinned.

  On the shore, the erratic flames of bottle torches bloomed in doorways. He didn’t think they could see him. A black sail against a night sky was as good as not being there at all. Who would expect him to go out to sea at this time and in the heart of the hurricane season?

  Already the boat was bucking like a thing alive.

  Past Dog Reef, the sea was a frenzy of rolling water. His father had told him once that the sea had just one purpose: to reclaim the land and, long before Judgement Day, it would have its way.

  Come morning, they would come after him with those new boats – those ugly, noisy things with big engines. Tonight, there was not a man who would leave the warmth of his woman for the open sea. Only Chadoo’s oldest son, perhaps – the reckless one – but the little man would not allow him.

  Already he was feeling the heavier tug of water as he rounded Short Horn.

  Come morning, the whole island would be alerted. Afraid for him; marvel at his courage. His name would be on the radio, his picture in the papers. His real name, his long, full and proper name – Osunyin Ignatius Ezekiel Frazier – was going to be in people’s mouths. The boats in the village would leave by first light. The police might join the search. He sent a glistening arc of spittle across the water.

  The craft leaned hard right, shuddering with the force of a colder, harder wind that pounded his exposed chest. Osun threw his weight the other way and Deliverance steadied herself, the sail pregnant to the point of bursting.

  Boiler Reef came up, a thunderous, frothing succession of breakers.

  Too close! Girl, you taking me too close!

  Boiler Reef was where the island made its last stand against the sea. Osun closed his eyes against the storm of spray, the better to feel the craft and struggle with it around the enormous suck and surge of waves.

  Too fucken welly close.

  He was soaked and slightly shaken when they emerged past the reef. Now all there was before him was the open ocean and tomorrow.

  Tomorrow? What the hell he mean by that? Then it suddenly made sense. Even if they caught him, brought him back and dumped him soaked and gulping on the beach, they – all ov em – would still be part of what he’d left behind. Tomorrow was wherever Deliverance was taking him.

  Morning was first a feeling: the slight shift of wind in the sail, the changing tug of tide and the nature of the light down the edges of the sky. The wind had a sharper, fresher smell. A vague urgency had settled in his head. He had not slept properly for several nights. Perhaps he’d find some quiet water further on, let the boat drift and just, well – allow himself to doze a bit. Osun closed his eyes.

  It was not until the craft juddered and yawed between two receding waves that he remembered The Gate. He threw all his weight against the tiller. The terrible concussive boom of breakers two hundred feet away hurt his eardrums and vibrated the craft. Deliverance slipped sideways down a mountain of a wave, her sails gone limp. An oar slipped and struck his foot. Osun screamed as he fought to right Deliverance on the long fall down. The craft was straining against the murderous drag, her mast so low, it was almost touching the water.

  Another boat would have capsized and perished there with him in the clutch of a ripping headwind, where the currents of two oceans clashed. He’d heard stories of bigger vessels which went that way, ships spat up on some distant shore – Venezuela or some other country far beyond. But Chadoo’s craft, running on its side, keel turned up almost to the sky, began the long and terrifying climb with him.

  He thanked the boat. In a fever of fear and gratitude he tightened his hands around the tiller and stared back breathless at the heaving walls of grey. Even at this distance, Deliverance was still tossing and shuddering.

  Some fool had named this hellhole Paradise. God!

  Ole Man Tigga was the one who had renamed it The Gate. Now, Osun understood why. When he’d grown too frail to hold an oar, the old fella had taken his craft out here and never returned.

  *

  Paradise, The Gate – whichever it was – had long haunted him in dreams. Below those waters lay something dark and unapproachable. No ordinary reef or rock could take that pounding. Whatever lay down there had a nightmare hold on him. He’d tried to kill the fear by coming alone to the very edge of this fretful water, willing the glass-green hills to freeze so that he could see what lay beneath.

  There’d been so many nights when his woman had to drive away the terror with her warmth, talking to him, rocking his wet head in her small hands.
Loving him.

  So hard to picture her now. Shuffling through the faces of the women in his life, rejecting them, shuffling again, barely conscious of the boat slipping up and down. Now there she was, her image sharp and clear before him, standing in his doorway, smiling that quiet, sweet-sad smile of hers. Clean and small like a bird.

  The wind blew the breath of morning in his face, and her name, made warm and soft with feeling, came drifting back to him.

  Lisa.

  Gull Island came up in a grey haze. The cold light of the early day and a hard, insistent breeze had dragged him out of his dreaming. Hunger tightened in his stomach. The dried fish and water tasted raw. He should occupy himself. The big harpoon lay at his feet. He measured it with his eyes. He might not need it. It was the big fishing line – the king line – that mattered. It was lying in thick coils in the bow. The giant hook – the hidden fang to this great snake – was buried somewhere in the centre.

  He wondered how Chadoo ever managed to use them, until he remembered that his son – the crazy one – worked the sea with him. Osun cursed his foot. Used to be a time when no man or woman on earth could run a line like him. Then, they called him King – King of the king line. He could haul anything out of the ocean: tunas, sharks, blue marlins that fought the hook like the gods they were. The great blue gods of salt and water that unfurled their fins like sails.

  Sometimes it saddened him to bring them in.

  The boat slid quietly into the small bay where heaps of rock edged down to the water. Through the morning haze, he saw the gulls wheeling in their thousands. The air vibrated with their cries.

  Osun found the small line under the seat. He wanted bait for the king line. A bit of dried fish stuck at the end of the small hook was enough to attract the small black fish that lived off the mud on the sea-floor close to land. He caught one and it was easy afterwards. The flesh of the freshly caught fish, stripped and impaled on the hook, caught him as many as he wanted.

  His anxiety had not left him. He kept glancing around at the rim of the sky. The Gate was way off in the distance, its roar faint on the wind. His heart began to race when he saw the boats. They were still distant; only the sun catching the sails made them visible. He used the oars to slip out of the bay, pausing to give Deliverance sail on the other side of the island.