INSIDE THE PRISON was warm. Adrian sat facing a grizzled man through a cracked plastic screen. The old man looked a vision of Adrian himself, in a good few years. The one difference were the eyes. The old man’s had seen plenty.
“Hey, son,” his father said, flashing yellow teeth. “You good?”
“I just here, Dads.”
“You ain’t had work today?”
“Nah, I get today and tomorrow off.”
The smile faded. “How you mother is?”
“She miss you bad,” Adrian lied.
His father sighed, tried another smile. “How you woman, Sheila, and my grandson? Tell me—he driving yet?”
Adrian tried a smile of his own. “Soon, Dads. Sheila did telling me the other day she could feel he kicking like he looking for the gas pedal.”
“You think of a name yet?”
“Nuff. Yours in the running, too.”
“Not…so sure you mother going like that.”
Adrian glanced away, back. “They treating you good in there?”
His father shrugged. “I still alive. Could be worse.” He leaned closer to the plastic between them, hunched his shoulders conspiratorially. “How my outside woman doing?”
His father had had an old fishing boat he’d christened Wet BBW. When he was a boy, Adrian had asked him what it meant, and he’d told Adrian to ask his mother. She’d given him a flogging he still couldn’t understand the reason for.
“The boat good,” Adrian said. “I does take she out when I can. I catch some barracuda last weekend. You eat some when I send that lunch day before.”
Yes, it did taste too sweet.” His father glanced either side of him. “You find any pearls yet?” His eyes glittered beneath his creased brows.
“There ain’t got nuh pearls out there, Dads.”
“One day, maybe.”
Adrian chuckled. His father had been telling him about pearls out in the ocean since the first fishing trip they’d gone on years ago. It was a fantasy, a joke they shared.
“You looking tired, though. You ain’t sleeping?”
“Had a few long nights at work. No biggie. Gotta do wah need doing.”
“Yes, gotta take care of you business.” His father nodded. “You remember the time I drag you to that cricket match down St Catherine’s? You did small so—” He raised a hand about a foot off the counter behind the glass partition. “And you didn’t want to go at all, at all, at all. But from the time we get there, you and this girl eyes make four and wunna did running ’bout the place whole day. It did the self-same Sheila, didn’t it? Wunna did have a ball, but I did keeping my eyes pon wunna. I make sure you had things to eat, and had a good time. And from them on couldn’t keep you from no cricket match.”
“Yeah, Dads, I remember.”
“You mother never tell you them things, right? She always make me out to be the worst thing in the world.”
“Dads. Come on. Let we not—”
“Yes, you right. Wah happen happen. But see—you turn out all right. A good education, a good woman, a bright future. You raise up good.”
Adrian nodded, thankful his father didn’t say: I raise you up good. Then that would have been awkward.
“Boy, you got money in you pocket?”
“I got enough, Dads,” Adrian lied.
“Good. Remember, I did tell you that when you got a woman, you gotta take care of she. Can’t be break all the time like I did.”
“Yeah, Dads. I ain’t forget.”
His father fell silent for a moment, looked down at his gnarled hands on the counter. He wiped at his eyes.
“You going come and look for you old man tomorrow?”
“I going try. But when I coming, I going bring Sheila. She bake some banana bread and want you to try some.”
His father’s face brightened. “I going look forward to it. Keep safe out there, hear? And find them pearls.”
“There ain’t got nuh pearls, Dads.”
#
Scarred by the waves and grinding against the pier, Wet BBW bathed in the dying light. A few men gathered around other ships, reeling in nets and rope, cleaning decks, cussing. Many shouted Adrian as he passed. He shouted them back. A few were older than even his father, still out here plying the only trade they knew. These days the flying fish and sea-eggs were almost entirely gone, but there were still other fish, and things fish-like, to be caught.
Adrian was always restless after visiting his father. They were so alike, or so all his father’s friends (and his mother) took every opportunity to tell him. For years, Adrian thought he was only one or two bad decisions behind his father. All signs pointed to it, didn’t they? When Adrian’s father was his age, he, too, had been mostly broke, working part-time and with a kid on the way. And had a father who was more a name than a presence. Adrian wondered if one day his own son would be visiting him in a prison.
A couple hours on the evening sea usually went a long way to settling his head.
Salt breeze cut through his clothes to add more rust to his bones. Adrian pulled up his collar and rubbed his hands as he scanned the horizon. Christ, the ocean was huge. On the news he’d seen scientists say the earth had grown warmer, and the sea, cravicious, gnawed at the continents and consumed entire islands whole. Barbados’ turn going come one day, his father had told him one afternoon years ago. So best learn how to sail a ship before it happen.
He started up Wet BBW’s engine, and the lights of the pier soon became stars just above the horizon.
After killing the engine, Adrian grabbed the cast net from the hold. The net was older than he was, more accustomed to coarse hands and muscled shoulders, but now he was all it had. He checked the weights before heading back on deck. Standing on the bow he took a breath, balancing against the swaying, the breeze, the throb of his heart.
Adrian threw out the net.
He sat with his back against the bulwark, listening to the water lap against the creaking wood.
“I should be home with my girl,” Adrian said. “But I out here with you.” He patted the deck. “Cheating with a wet BBW.”
He pulled a bottle of One-Eyed Man from the cooler close at hand and took a swig. The taste of it mingled with the sea’s scent brought a memory before his eyes: his father—a younger man—rum bottle in hand, cussing stink and laughing as three men and a boy-shaped Adrian grappled with the day’s catch. A smile touched at Adrian’s lips but a yawn carried it away.
The almost full moon dipped toward the horizon. Adrian blinked, wiped sleep-crust from his eyes. “Shit.” He must have dozed off. The empty rum bottle in his lap rolled off to crack against the deck. Most of it had spilled onto his shirt and pants—God, he smelled like Foursquare. His head throbbed like the speakers in a Route 65 minibus.
He stood, yawned and pulled the net back up, his muscles burning. Gorged, the net burst from the surface, and as he wrestled it onto the deck he found his prize! A body-sized mass of seaweed. He sighed as he untangled the net.
Something flashed in the moonlight. Some sense of self-preservation gripped him through the alcohol, and Adrian sprang backward as something very sharp missed him by an umph. The net was cut, spilling seaweed and a body onto the deck.
The body stood, hunched, its skin glistening with scales, exactly like a human’s shouldn’t.
“Rasshole!” Adrian yelled.
That must have pissed it off, for it came at him as though he’d told it about its mother.
Adrian dived for the rum bottle, and when he came up the body was upon him. It swung things sharp—either two hands topped with claws or ten little daggers like a ninja—and almost disembowelled Adrian. It stank of seaweed and rot. Adrian slog swept the rum bottle toward its head.
The glass shattered against it, and a moan that sounded like it was wheezed through the drowned lungs of a black-belly sheep came from its mouth.
Adrian shrank back, holding the bottle’s broken neck out.
The body retreated, turned and threw itself over the side. There was a splash. Silence, but for the waves and the thudding of Adrian’s heart.
Adrian crept like a snail to the side, peeped over. Nothing. He went back to the net. Something else had spilled out onto the deck. Wrapped in fronds of pap-soft seaweed was a see-through plastic bag filled with what looked like balls. Adrian held the bag up. No, they weren’t balls, but pearls.
Dozens and dozens of pearls.
Adrian made a small slice with the broken bottle, tweezered a pearl out. He squeezed it, and realized these weren’t pearls, either. He sliced along the edge of the pearl, and its plastic skin parted. He rubbed a finger against the white substance beneath, then touched it against his tongue.
“Rasshole,” Adrian whispered.
#
He pulled his apartment keys from his pants pocket. Christ knew what time it was, but the night was deep beyond the ghostly LED streetlights. He spent longer than he should have getting the door opened—his arms were quaking. His backpack felt like it was getting heavier by the millisecond. He stepped into the kitchen. The room still smelled of bread and bananas and vanilla essence. He closed back the door.
“Yuh play yuh sneaking in?” Sheila hissed.
Adrian turned to her as she flicked on the kitchen light. Besides an angry face, she wore next kin to nothing. Her navel protruded like an accusing finger from her swollen belly.
“Where you did?” She took a dramatic intake of breath. “You did out drinking pon the block again?”
“I didn’t out nowhere drinking,” Adrian replied.
She came up to him, pulling at his shirt. “Yuh got rum all over yuh shirt!”
“Girl, I tired.”
“From wah? You did chasing that stupid, big-bubby girl they got ’bout there!”
“Wah girl you talking ’bout?”
“There got more than one?”
Adrian stupsed and brushed past her.
“I did calling, calling, calling, and you wouldn’t even pick up the phone.”
“The battery did dead, nuh?”
“There ain’t had nuh charger where part you was?”
“I did out fishing. I didn’t thinking ’bout no phone.”
“You didn’t thinking at all!” She looked him up and down. “So where them is?”
“Where wah is?”
“See! You lying to me. You now look at me and tell me you did went fishing, but you come in here with two long hands—”
“Well, that should tell you I ain’t catch nuh fish, right?”
“You should catch my hand ’longside you face!”
“Touch me, girl, and you ain’t going like wah going happen next.”
“You would hit me? You would hit me?”
If it’d been his father in his shoes, he would have.
Instead, he shrugged his backpack off onto the kitchen table and brought out the bag of pearls.
“Wah…the hell them is?” Sheila said.
“Rent, gas, groceries, things for the baby,” Adrian replied.
Sheila drew close and picked up a pearl. “These is dope?” she whispered.
“I done tell you wah them is.”
“Answer me, Adrian! These is dope?”
Adrian went to the fridge, pulled a half-empty bottle of Coca-Cola. He took a sip then rested it on the table.
Sheila’s eyes widened as they went from the bottle of coke to the pearls.
“Who give you these?” she hissed.
“Nobody ain’t give me nothing.”
“Them just fall in you lap?”
“Look.” Adrian took a breath, rubbed his forehead. “Tonight, I bring up a whole host of seaweed in the net. When I went to untangle um, some kinda sea creature attack me. Um did look like a fish with man hands and legs. I fight he off, and when I check, them pearls did wrap up in the net.”
Sheila burst out laughing, perhaps unable to contain her disbelief. “You gone off or wah?”
Adrian packed the pearls back up, downed the last of the Coca-Cola.
“Wah you plan to do with them?” she asked.
“Make you a necklace out of them. Wah you think I going do?”
“Adrian. If you try to sell these things, the police going lock you stupid ass up, quick so.”
Adrian gripped the back of a kitchen chair and stared at her. “We barely making it, Sheila. It ain’t going be nuh easier when we son born. You wanna spend you whole life in this two-by-four place? You want we to end up like we parents?”
Sheila crossed her arms. She’d come up in a house with about ten other family members. Dropped out of school to work. Every little bit of money going back to provide for the family that expanded as her sisters got pregnant. Her parents, like his, lived month to desperate month. She and Adrian had moved out together, but so far history looked to be rhyming.
“At least them living. You try this, and some badman going wanna come and shoot up the frigging place,” she said.
He went to her, stepped his fingers up her belly and gently squeezed her arms.
“It going be fine, Sheila.”
“Throw them back out in the sea. Do wah I tell you, nuh?”
“It going be fine.”
#
Adrian barely slept that night. The memory of the creature from the net roused him every hour. He woke before Sheila did. He watched the curves of her form as morning light coloured the room. There lay the two most important people in his life. He had to do all he blessed-well could for them, right?
He slipped out of bed and into the front-room. He dug into a box of his old belongings in the corner. Them’s all you want from you mother place? Sheila had asked him after they’d moved in. It’d been all he’d cared to bring. The birthday cards his little brother had handmade for him every year. A blue tie for that one interview he’d had last year. The dog-eared Bible his mother had demanded he read to keep him from becoming his father. From right at the bottom, wrapped in a pair of moth-nibbled boxers, he lifted out his gun.
Adrian checked it. Eleven bullets and one in the chamber.
He put on his clothes, took his backpack and headed out.
He found Chad by the supermarket, his foot propped up on a rain-stained wall. Chad was holding a folder of Blu-rays in his hands and muttering to a youngish woman over the spliff between his lips. He handed her three discs, took four bills and two silver dollars, watched her backside with a smirk as she walked away.
“Chad, how things, man?” Adrian said as he parked his bicycle by the wall.
“Wait, Adds, that’s you? Big man, you real scarce! Wah you doing these days?”
“Just here struggling.”
“Man, we all in the same rasshole boat. You want movies, man? Three for ten. I got all the latest ones right here. Good quality and thing.”
“Nah. I…wanna talk to you ’bout something else. Some business.”
Chad shut his folder and stepped closer. “Wah sorta business?”
Adrian produced a pearl from his pants pocket, flashed it at Chad before replacing it.
Chad took a sharp intake of breath, let it out slow.
“Where the man get that from?”
“How much it worth?”
“How much the man got?”
“Tell me how much this one worth.”
“I ain’t really see it proper. I would had to hold it, make sure it ain’t just flour you got. I—”
“Guess, and assume I being real with you.”
Chad chewed dried flesh from his bottom lip. “’Bout ten Grantleys, max. Maybe.”
There’d been thirty-one pearls in the net. Adrian hoped his face showed nothing of his complete awe. This was money people worked their entire lives and still would never see.
“You going just stand there and doan say nothing?” Chad said.
“I thinking.”
“Big man, I could move these for you, easy. That’s why you shout me, right? Wah there got to think ’bout?”
“Maybe I want to shop ’round a bit.”
A belly-laugh seemed to catch Chad unawares. He shook his head, and the grin was gone in an instant. “You funny as rasshole, hear?”
Adrian glanced at the vehicles parked. Somebody had dropped a Nissan truck across two parking spaces. Lord, he would look like a boss in something like that. His mother told him once that money turned people into something both rich and strange but that wasn’t going to happen here. He had a plan.
“Say I got a few more. How soon you could get the money to me?” Adrian said.
“Again, how much you got?”
“Fifteen.”
Chad scratched his beard. “This evening self.”
Adrian’s cell rang. Like steelpan and drum and penny whistle bacchanal in his jeans.
“You phone ringing, big man,” Chad said.
He ignored it.
“Doan worry ’bout that. This evening, then. Meet me by the docks.”
Chad nodded, smiled, turned sharply to a young woman walking past. “My sexy friend? You want movies? You look sweet enough, Lawd! Just for you, I got a deal. Three for ten! Come see wah I got.”
#
On his way from the supermarket, Adrian’s phone rang again. This time he pulled over and answered.
“Why you ain’t answering the phone?” Sheila asked.
“I ain’t hear it the first time.”
“Where part you is?”
“I had to pass by the supermarket.”
“Where…them tings is? You left them here?”
“I got them with me.”
“You dumping them in the sea?”
“I heading to the boat all now.”
“I tell you stop lying to me, Adrian!”
“And I tell you stop confusing me.”
Adrian moved to disconnect the call but paused. Sheila’s breaths came through the earpiece. Short, trembling.
“It going be fine,” Adrian whispered, as though they were sharing secrets.
“Doan do no foolishness, hear? It ain’t worth it. We good how we is!” Sheila whispered back.
“Yeah, we good.”
#
Wet BBW swayed beneath Adrian’s feet. His back itched against the gun he pushed there between his belt. There was rain on the horizon. The dark clouds had snuffed out more light than he would’ve liked. The old fishermen were gone. A scruffy dog sniffed between the beached boats, looked up at him, went back to his business.
Chad pulled up in an off-white Corolla. Adrian watched him get out, slinging a bag over one shoulder. He raised his hand, and Chad saw him and flashed a smile.
“Boy, I hate out here,” Chad said as he stepped onto the pier. He turned to the sea. “My brother and me did swimming out this side when we did still in school. Used to be out here all the time. One day, a current take hold of we—Cawblemuh!—I ain’t know how we ain’t drown. The sea nah see me since.”
“Be in the sea long enough, and one day it going try to take you ’way,” Adrian said. “My old man tell me so. First time I come ’pon this boat.”
Chad nodded. “I guess he didn’t wrong.” He motioned to the sky. “I now jar them clouds, yuh. You’s a country man—you can’t see that rain coming here?”
“It going be here just now.”
Chad pulled himself up over the side and glanced around the boat, as though the shadows held more than just memories. He appeared to lose his balance for a moment—not accustomed to the sea.
“Let we get this done.” Chad dug through his bag and brought up a dropper containing a see-through liquid and a cellphone tethered via a USB cable to a small, circular device that looked like a bottle cap.
Adrian rested his own bag by Chad’s feet, opened it, took out the plastic bag containing fifteen of the pearls.
Chad passed his fingers through them, a breath whistling through his lips. Taking a pearl, he sliced open its plastic skin. He squirted a drop of the liquid onto the pearl’s side, then attached the bottle cap over it. He sat on his haunches and stared at the phone’s glowing screen. Adrian joined him.
A scatter graph appeared onscreen, each point glittering high on both axes.
“Jesus Christ,” Chad whispered. He repeated his ritual on another pearl. The graph remained largely the same. “Lawd.”
“There got a problem?” Adrian asked.
“Nah, things bless. These is some real pure shit, B. Wah part you get these?”
“I pick them from my breadfruit tree. You want them or not?”
“Yeah, man. You ain’t gotta get on so. Got the money right here.” He stuffed both hands into his pants pockets, brought out a wallet in one and a pistol in the other.
Adrian jerked. His hand twitched toward his back.
“Big man, don’t you dare reach for that gun you got.” Chad rubbed his forehead like he was talking to a bad-behaved schoolboy. “Tell me again where part you get these.”
“In the sea.”
“I hope you got more details than that, else you going be making coral down there just now.”
“I did out fishing. When I bring up the net, these was in it.”
“The fella I does work for—he got a place just up the coast there so. Day before yesterday, somebody break in and carry ’way thirty-one of these. They never catch the body. So where part the rest? Who you sell them to?”
The salt breeze cut through Adrian’s flesh to chill his blood.
“I ain’t break in no man rasshole place.”
“But here you is trying to sell off the man things. Either way is stealing. And he hate thieves.”
“Just go ’long with them, nuh? Stop pointing that thing at me. I ain’t got no gun.”
Thunder growled in the distance.
Chad stood. He motioned his gun toward the back of the boat. “Walk there so.”
Adrian took a step back. Could he jump the railing and hit the waves before Chad pulled the trigger?
Rain drifted into his face as he continued toward the rail with Chad’s gun following his every movement.
“You wanna know where the rest is? Put ’way the gun and I going tell you,” Adrian said.
More thunder. The rain became like ice in the strengthening wind.
Chad’s eyes narrowed. His movements were unsure, as though at any moment the bobbing deck would throw him down.
“You think I’s a idi—” A wave surged against Wet BBW, and Chad lost his balance.
Adrian moved back to grab the rail to keep his feet, but Chad must have thought he was reaching for his gun. Chad’s finger squeezed the trigger.
Pain detonated in Adrian’s right shoulder. He grabbed his shoulder and dropped to the deck bawling.
All his life swept before his vision quick so. In-between the scenes, he saw Chad lining up another shot.
Adrian could barely feel his heartbeat, it was going so fast. He had to move! He reached for his gun. Chad’s eyes grew wide. Adrian’s fingers closed around the grip. Waves flung the boat against the pier. Chad swung to Adrian’s right. Adrian threw himself to the left. The gunshot nearly deafened him.
Chad had missed.
Before Adrian could thank Christ for his luck, he realized that Chad wasn’t looking at him any longer—hadn’t been looking at him, not even when he fired.
The creature from last night crouched on the rails a few steps from where Adrian lay.
Its scales glistened yellow and green in the light cast by the cabin lamp. Rain and saltwater poured down its limbs. He couldn’t make out its face, but there was a wash of white where he expected a mouth should be. A mask? A huge grin of fangs?
Through the roar of the rain and waves, Adrian could make out the sound of its breathing. Each one deep as though it was drawing air from the sea’s bottom to release it full of phlegm into the open air.
Lightning flashed as Chad squeezed off another shot. It pinged off the creature’s shoulder.
The creature jumped, clearing the feet between it and Chad before Adrian could think the words Jack Sprat. It swung both hands at Chad’s face. Ten red lines scored open his skin. Chad screamed, dropped his gun and grabbed his face. Bending over Chad, the creature raised an arm in a wide arc, swung down. Chad’s legs spasmed, went still.
“Rass—!” Adrian gasped.
The creature twisted toward him with the ease of a ring-jointed cat.
Adrian tried to raise his gun but the creature was on him, giving him a belly-searcher with its knee. All Adrian’s breath burst through his lips. The creature’s fingers gripped his throat, tightened.
It brought its face closer, and Adrian saw that it had only empty sockets where eyes should be.
“Where?” Its voice was so soft Adrian wondered if he’d actually heard it.
“The—the plastic bag—right—right there so!” Adrian rasped. “The—the rest down in the hold. Go ’long with them! Take everything!”
“Every…thing?”
Its grip tightened so much Adrian thought his throat must have burst. The creature let him go, and he sagged limbless to the deck. The pain and rain blurred his vision. The creature bent over the plastic bag by Chad’s still form, disappeared into the hold, returned.
The creature crouched on its haunches, opened the plastic bag. It brought out the pearls cradled in its cupped hands and stared at them as though counting each one. With a sound like a mother’s relieved sniff that her children didn’t hurt up themselves too bad after some nonsense they had gotten themselves involved with, it pressed the pearls against its stomach, chest and sides. The pearls sank into its skin.
Its eyes fell on Adrian.
Adrian tried to reach for his gun, but he could barely think, far less move. He gone through the eddoes. Here some sea monster was going to kill him, on his dad’s boat. But when tomorrow came and people found his and Chad’s bodies, they would say how them did always know he did in drugs, and how some bad-john kill the both of them. His mother’s worst predictions had come true after all. Sheila would have to handle things by sheself. His son would raise up without a proper man in the house. Well, at least the family tradition would continue.
He just wished he could have at least seen his son take his first breath.
Adrian closed his eyes.
“Adrian! Adrian!”
He was roused by panicked shaking.
Sheila’s face sharpened into his vision. Night still covered the waves. A drizzle fell. Sheila looked so soaked even her bone marrow must have been wet. Who send she out here this time of night?
“Shei—la….”
“Oh my God!” Blood bathed her hands. She had a rag pressed against his shoulder.
Somehow she’d dragged him into the cabin. But where was Chad? Where was the creature from the sea? There was no one and nothing but he and Sheila. Where Chad was, all Adrian could see was his bag.
“Who shoot you?” Sheila was asking. “It did because of them things, innit? You get rid of them? Somebody after you? We gotta run now? We gotta get ’pon a plane tomorrow?”
Adrian raised a trembling hand to cradle her cheek.
“They gone,” he whispered. “They gone.”
#
Inside the prison was warm. Adrian sat facing a grizzled man across a small wooden table. The old man was still a vision of Adrian himself in a good few years. But their eyes looked the same.
“This bread taste real good, Sheila. Wah loss!” his dad said, sitting back and patting his belly. The container of half loaf of banana bread was empty but for a few crumbs. “All I need now is rolling!”
“You just saying that ’cause they doan feed you nothing proper in here,” Sheila said. But she smiled anyway.
His dad looked at him. “Wah happen to you shoulder?”
“I fall off a ladder and near buss my ass,” Adrian said.
From the corner of his eye, Adrian could see Sheila glaring at him.
“Boy, I tell you be careful. Wah you doing ’pon top a ladder?”
“I went to fix a lightbulb. Couldn’t’a send Sheila to do it, right?”
“She might’a had better balance than you!” His dad chuckled. His eyes glittered. “So, how my outside woman doing?”
“She good. Just a little beat up from that weather we had day before.”
His dad leaned closer. “You find any pearls?”
Sheila’s eyebrows shot up. But Adrian leaned back and smiled.
“There ain’t got nuh pearls, Dads.”
