Away with the Fishes (9 page)

The mocking sun, which took its sweet time setting that night, shrugged off the cloud donned a few moments before and beamed into Quick’s crestfallen face. Still Quick didn’t cry. He would figure something out. He was smart and he was fast. If he just kept his eyes on the men, he would find a way to slip past them, like a furtive gust of wind. Closer and closer he positioned himself, never abandoning the cover of the woods that lined the shore. He listened and watched as they sniffed leaves, picked up shells, made notes, and collected samples placed gingerly into a sack. He watched for what seemed like hours (though in truth it was but a quarter of a one), and as he watched, his heart sank with the sun, its descent as long and as labored.

Tears were all that Quick had left. It was getting dark (not dark enough for him to sneak past the pirates) and soon they would embark and row away from him forever. The sun snickered, the first tear tried to fall, and the moon, bless her, the moon rolled up her sleeves. She beamed so brightly of a sudden that the beach turned silvery white. Every leaf of every tree glowed. The men
started. In awe, they turned from the coastline toward the woods, to pick the fruits that sparkled more beautifully by night than they had by day. The moonlight so illuminated the scene that Quick feared discovery as the men approached. Like a bullet, he shot up an almond tree, more uncertain than ever of his future. If the sun wasn’t laughing at him, the moon was betraying him. What a funny island, this!

Quick clung to a branch and waited. Perhaps if they dawdled long enough, the cloud that had blocked out the sun would block out the moon. Then in the dark he could trail them to the boat and slip inside it, he told himself, not ever believing he’d manage it. He knocked his fist against his head to stimulate some idea. He knocked it so hard that the branch on which he lay grappled swung and pitched and knocked a branch of the manchineel tree next to it, sending a wave of silvery green fruits cascading to the ground. The men rushed over, intrigued by the noise, and the captain, first to reach the attractive apple-like spheres, stretched out his hand, picked one up, and lifted it to his mouth.

“Noooo!” With a ferocious shout and a leap out into the air, Quick threw himself from the almond tree, limbs flailing, and aimed his body for the captain’s head. “Doooooon’t!”

In an instant he had landed spot on-target, his legs wrapped around the neck of the stunned and supine captain, his gangly arms entangled in the captain’s hair. For a moment nobody moved or said a word. You can imagine their surprise, attacked by a wriggling, roaring projectile from out of nowhere for picking up an apple. When they finally did collect themselves (all but the captain, whose head remained pinned by Quick’s midsection), the oldest pirate freed his cutlass from its sheath and held it ready; the tall, bony man bent forward, arms outstretched and hands wide open
in defense; and the hairy man scribbled so fast he dropped his pencil.

Quick sat on the captain’s neck, rather stunned himself, until the pencil knocked him on the head and snapped him out of it. He climbed off the captain and apologized, his voice dry and brittle with fear. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t want you to eat it.” He pointed to the apple that had fallen from the captain’s hand.

“Why in God’s name not?” the captain asked, rolling onto his side and easing his shaken body upright. “Are they yours?”

“No, not mine. They’re bad. You’ll be sick if you eat it.”

“Bit green, they are, but not for an ache this belly can’t handle.” He was sitting now, the captain, his legs out in front of him, and he rubbed his head. Quick didn’t make a sound. He could only think that now he would never get back on the ship. Worse than that, he was trapped on Oh, with its pineapples and its corn and perhaps not a single rat at all. He hadn’t spotted one the whole day.

While Quick fretted, the hairy man (it turned out his name was Enoch) flipped through his leather book.

“Captain! I believe the boy’s right, sir. Look!” He showed the captain a sketch. “The manchineel, sir. Common in these parts. The sap in that fruit would have blistered your insides and killed you.”

“Fat lot of good those books of yours do us! I could have poisoned myself if the boy hadn’t come along! What’s your name, son?”

“Quick, sir.”

“Quick? What kind of a name is that?”

“Don’t know, sir. I never had a real name.”

“What do you mean you never had a real name? Where are your parents?”

Quick explained that he had lost his parents even before he found them. He explained about the village and the rats, about his island and his itchy feet, about the broken ankle and his stowing away. He confessed to stealing candles, admitted to eavesdropping, and pleaded to re-join the other pirates on board the ship.

The men looked from the boy to the captain to each other as Quick told his incredible tale.

“Your name’s more believable by the minute,” the captain remarked. He rubbed Quick’s head and explained to him that his men weren’t pirates or on a pirate ship. They were merchants and scientists and they were on an expedition, he said. He explained what an expedition was and asked Quick again if he was sure he had no parents.

“I’m sure.” And in the darkness that had finally fallen, he hung his head and cried.

I should tell you that this particular captain, one Thomson Bowles, had set out on the expedition in question to run away from a ghost. Two ghosts, as a matter of fact. Captain Thomson had lost a wife and son to childbirth and everywhere he turned on land, any land, he saw the pair of them, mother and baby, cooing and cuddling. The vast sea and a creaking vessel (sturdy, but creaking) were the only things bleak enough not to call his departed family to mind. On the dry land of Oh, however, in the moonlight, they had shown themselves to him again. They splashed in the surf and softened his lonely heart to Quick’s desperate tears.

The captain adopted the boy right then and there, on the beach, and christened him Dagmore. “In a land I once visited,” he said,
“this name means ‘long life.’ For this day on Oh, this day on which you saved my life, Dagmore will be your name forevermore.”

Thus, with a word—a name—one life ended and a new one began. Quick thought it was the best name he had ever heard. Dagmore. He was even beginning to like the sound of Oh, with its corn and its pineapples. Oh. Yes, it was a beautiful name when you thought about it. Almost as beautiful as his own.

But Oh was not Dagmore’s immediate destiny. Other, bigger, islands awaited, and so he left her, a sailor if not a pirate. His brilliant future, which was only just beginning, would see him schooled not only in weather and navigation, but in science, philosophy, and music. It would take him far and wide and back again, like one of the capricious piano sonatas that Dagmore would learn to master—renouncing its motif and taking it up again, a gentle refrain between
sforzandos
and
appassionatos
.

13

T
he Fuller house lay shadowed in the newly fallen dusk, its small front yard a mosaic of heavy greys and tired purples, bordered in shaded buttercup. Overhead the sky hung confused, belonging neither to night or day, hints of both sun and moon at its edges. The air was thick with the scent of cooking callaloo and sweet potato, with the perfume of rosebush, and the smell of cooling earth. Across the verandah, two kitchen windows curtained in worn, flimsy cotton took turns revealing May’s rapt and delicate figure as she tidied and hummed, willing her cheerfulness into the air that the evening breeze spread throughout the house. In her brother’s nearby bedroom, Madison’s soft, regular breaths soothed away his stress and strain, then joined her muffled song.

May knew that when Madison awoke, so too would his worries, and she hoped, early though it was, that he was in bed for the night. In the light of the morning, after a hearty breakfast of bacon and porridge and homemade bread with mango jam, things would look brighter indeed. May even suspected that by morning Rena would be back, begging everyone’s forgiveness for having walked off so far and so foolishly.

May was dead wrong, of course, but hardly the first islander to be fooled by the prospect of the island’s morning sun.

Officers Arnold Tullsey and Joshua Smart made their way across the yard and onto the verandah, where they called out to May in the kitchen.

“Good evening!”

“Good evening.” May opened the screen door and leaned outside, scrutinizing the officers in their uniforms. “Can I help?”

“We’d like to speak to Madison Fuller, please,” Joshua said.

“He’s asleep.” May sensed trouble. Had something happened to Rena?

“Could you wake him for us? Please,” Arnold added, following Joshua’s lead.

“This isn’t about Rena, is it? What’s happened to her?” May asked Arnold.

“Can we come in?” Arnold asked May.

May showed the officers into the sitting room. She was as frightened to hear what they had to say as she was anxious to know the reason for their visit. Had they found Rena? Was she harmed? Had they come to deliver bad news? It broke her heart to think how Madison would suffer.

“Please, you must tell me what’s going on,” she begged. “Is Rena all right? Where is she?”

“That’s exactly what we’re here to find out,” Joshua told her.

“What do you mean?” May wrung her hands. “Madison looked and looked, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. You haven’t found her either?”

Arnold and Joshua exchanged a look that made May shiver. She had sensed trouble, for sure, but of the wrong kind. The officers weren’t here to tell her brother about Rena, they were here to accuse him!

“I think you better wake your brother up now, miss.”

“You don’t think he had anything to do with Rena’s disappearance?” she protested. “He’s out of his head with worry. He drove all over the island today.”

The officers weren’t interested in what May had to say. They had set the sights of their investigation on Madison and were loath to veer or detour, lest they lose track of the truth.

With difficulty, May finally woke her brother from his deep and desperate sleep, and he confronted the policemen in his home.

“What’s going on?” Madison rubbed his still-tired eyes.

“You tell us, young man. We’re trying to find Rena Baker,” Officer Tullsey said.

At the mention of Rena, Madison suddenly awoke. “So am I! Have you got any leads?”

“As a matter of fact we do.” Officer Joshua Smart proceeded to lay out the case for fisherman Madison Fuller: “We are inclined to believe that the missing female victim of the hit-and-run that took place on the Thyme shortcut, and your girlfriend, Miss Rena Baker, are one and the same.”

“What? That’s crazy. Rena never rode a bicycle in her life,” Madison objected.

Officer Smart continued. “We are also inclined to believe that you were the last person to see Miss Baker alive.”

“Alive?” Madison and May exclaimed in chorus.

“Are you suggesting that Rena is...dead?” Madison struggled to say the word aloud.

“Would you care to tell us your whereabouts on the night in question?” Officer Tullsey chimed in.

“What night would that be?” Madison asked.

“Night before last. The night of the hit-and-run.”

“I...I...I don’t know,” Madison stammered. “Here, I guess. Sleeping.” He scratched his head.

“Can you attest to this, miss?” Officer Smart looked at May.

“Yes. I was here too.”

“Were you also asleep?” Officer Smart asked her.

“Yes.”

“If you were asleep yourself, then you didn’t actually
see
your brother asleep in his room,” Officer Tullsey countered.

“No. But I know he was here.”

“Just a minute!” Madison jumped up from the sitting room sofa. “What is this? Some sort of trial? What are you driving at?” He moved close up to the officers, who were seated next to each other in matching armchairs, and stared down into their faces.

Officer Smart stood up. “I’ll tell you what I’m driving at. Did you happen to see an ad in the
Morning Crier
a few days ago? An ad for a lady? An ad for a lady with a bike?”

“Yeah, what of it?”