Callaloo

The man strides forward, his eyes on the sea. He favors his left leg and avoids the soft sand that would suck in his bare feet and slow him down. He looks up and tilts his head, as if he’s sniffing the air or listening for something. He swipes his forearm across his brow and scans the surface of the waves, from left to right and back. He seems oblivious of the setting sun’s golden shimmer from horizon to shore.

His body is like a stick of burnt cane, jointed at the knees and shoulders. There is no hair on his head; his beard is white. He wears brown cut-off pants and a sleeveless T-shirt, faded to off-white, with Save the Turtles printed across the back. He carries a homemade fishing rod and a blue bucket.

To his left, beyond the breaking waves, a dark rippling shape appears, like hundreds of leaves fluttering under water. In three swift paces, he’s there. He wades in up to his thighs and sweeps his line in an expert arc, almost careless. A moment later, he whips it out with a small, silver fish attached.

He turns to his right with a wide-open smile to the two children sitting well back on the beach, next to a pile of washed-up driftwood, away from the manchineel tree and its skin-blistering apples. He holds up the rod with the fish spinning and thrashing, its scales catching the sun’s dying rays. His other hand, palm forward, fingers splayed, warns the children to stay where they are. The sea has no back door.

The little girl claps her hands and wriggles her toes in the sand. She wears a yellow dress and has a white ribbon in her hair. The boy, in frayed khaki pants, is taller but just as bony. He punches the air with his fist, but the man is busy reloading bait.

Out goes the line and back it comes with another fish, and another, each looking larger than the one before. With a flick of his wrist, the man twists fish off the hook and tosses them into the bucket.

The boy covers the girl’s feet with handfuls of sand and pats them down, as if he’s building a pair of heavy boots. He decorates one and gives her broken bits of coral stone and seashell for the other, strands of seaweed to tie as laces. With a piece of driftwood, he draws a tight circle around her in the sand.

He crawls towards the bucket; it must be half full by now. His shadow traces a sundial line to the girl. She kicks off her sand-boots and crosses the circle.

The man looks up, over his left shoulder. A dark cloud looms over the manchineel tree. Back in goes his line. He jerks it up, over and over. Nothing. He adds more bait and flings it again, the small lead weight taking the hook deeper out. [End Page 630]

He looks to his right and lifts a hand to shade his eyes. The bright flash, caught in the sun’s last blink in the foam of a higher breaking wave, is like a yellow umbrella with black spokes. He turns sharply to where he’d left the children. He drops his rod and pushes towards the shore against the heavy undertow. His feet sink into the wet sand, his right leg buckles. He scrambles up and crashes back into the surf, his hands working like paddles now. He grabs one spoke-arm, and the other.

The man squats on the sand in the fading light. He folds her arms and her legs, draws her limp yellowness into his own rib cage, his dripping beard, his dread-knot shoulders. His mouth that blew breath into hers presses against her forehead, his fist that panic pounded her back has slowed to a mindless thump, thump as he rocks her body—as if he neither feels the rain lashing his back nor cares that the sea has claimed his fishing rod, too.

Like a salt-water trail...