SHORTLISTED
SAMARA BABOOLAL
“How much we bring in to sell today?”
The words slipped through Mrs. Caridad’s lips in a whisper. Her husband crept into the bed, his skin smelling of salt and twilight.
“One”, Mr. Caridad whispered back. “Ah zangee.”
He held his breath, awaiting his wife’s reply. He traced the outline of her skinny body in the dark with his eyes.
“I cud buy ting for bread tomorrow. Bake it to las d’ week. We could get ah few more sales by Sunday easy, if d’ boys manage to bring in somethin’ good,” she replied.
“It een sell for d’ full price.”
There was a moment of hesitation, and the soft sound of breathing filled the room. Mr. Caridad held his breath once again, waiting for his wife’s response. The silence lingered.
“What yuh mean?” Mrs. Caridad finally responded.
“I discount it for Mr. James. His wife not well.”
“Zangee already worth nothin’.”
“He said it could jus’ be ah bligh, and how when he make back d’ difference he goh give meh back. I tell he doh bother and just take d’ thing.”
“I wish I had ah better catch for him anyway,” Mr Caridad continued, filling in the gaps of his wife’s quiet.
Mrs. Caridad let the silence which followed her husband’s words slip and slide over her skin. She focused on the fragrant white flowers of the night-blooming cereus by their window. Tropical moonlight spilled onto the sheets.
“Dat is all d’ boys managing to pull in?” The words slipped out from her throat in a strained whisper.
“All we findin’ is mangrove oysters, if we lucky. Otherwise jus’ mud.”
“Dey find any free pieces of sea yet?”
“Not yet. Bobo and Jarvais searchin’ till mornin, but patrols thick even in dis late hour.”
“I hear dey looking to pick up anyone suspected of going out to fi-”
“-I is ah ole man,” he interrupted. “Dem not goin to do me nuttin’.”
“And anyway,” he said, his tone fierce. “I still have meh boat. Dem een take it from me yet.”
As he spoke now, Mr. Caridad reached his hand towards his wife. His warm brown hands were sun-worn and smelt perpetually of sea. His fingernails were worn to the stubs, and at the top of each gnarled fingertip were crowns of callouses from grasping at nets and pulling in lines of sharp, thin nylon. Each groove of his skin was pronounced, as if it held within it a map of every ocean wave, every cove, every species of fish that glittered under the expansive blanket of blue Caribbean waters.
Mrs. Caridad turned her brown body to her side. She turned away from Mr. Caridad only because she wished to melt away into the night’s sleep, and to gently end the conversation at hand. She wanted the nighttime to remain romantic and safe. She felt his rugged hand on her waist, and she held it firmly in place.
As the nighttime sighed, Mr. and Mrs. Caridad drifted into the same dream.
They lay face down on the ocean, floating along its silky surface, naked, and draped in moonlight’s velvety glow. The water was red, and it was white, and it was blue, all at the same time. Schools of silver-scaled fish, sparkling like jewels, swam eagerly into the open hands of the couple. Each fish multiplied, over and over, until the red-white-blue ocean was nothing but silver flesh and scale.
With the intrusiveness of a thunderclap, the sun began to force itself from behind the moon, and each ray of light scarred the glittering wide-silver sea until it was replaced with emerald-green waters. Mr. and Mrs. Caridad no longer had their aged fleshy bodies. Instead of able limbs and soft sapodilla skin they found white scales, spines along their crowns, and spiky blue tails. As all the fish vanished under the sun’s blades of heat, Mr. and Mrs. Caridad were the only creatures which remained in the sickly green waters, now expansive and barren.
Except they could not swim, they could no longer float as they had before.
They flapped their lunate tails and began to sink, deeper and deeper down into the green ocean. Sargassum formed dancing shadows past them as they sank and sank. No longer human, but neither something of the sea, the couple were now two scaled creatures, small and slippery, hitting the ocean floor with a hard thud.
***
The next morning, Mrs. Caridad was rattled by her vivid dream. She could still taste fishy brininess in her mouth and feel the firm seabed under her back. Mr. Caridad could too, and he smiled at the memory. He missed the taste of the ocean, and he felt spiteful towards those who drove him to grovel at muddy mangrove banks.
The dawn’s light cast a reddish glow over the kitchen as the sun peeked over the mountains. Outside, the night’s cactus blossoms were no longer white. Each bloom lay on the dirt, their luminous petals now crumbled and brown. In the kitchen, ropes lay strewn across chairs and walls, with stringy moss weaved into the fibres.
Mr. Caridad laid a cloth across the dining table and began to wrap with it various fillet knives and a cutlass; marred, bumpy, and corroded by salty sea air. He rubbed his thumb against the edge of them, furrowed his brow, and began to whet each blade. He moved precisely, more like a learned dancer than a machine, as he pulled the stone across the rusty metal. He felt as if he were playing an instrument, and he hummed as he worked.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Caridad brewed a pot of coffee, and her hands fidgeted. As she stared at the coffee pot, each wrinkle became pronounced and each sunspot dimpled. She watched her husband pack his knives and pull on his sun-bleached overalls and found herself spinning towards him, her back to the steaming coffee.
“Lewwe wait til’ night come,” she pleaded.
“Where dis’ comin’ from?”
“It been months. Patrols only getting bigger now, and all dey leaving we is barren puddles to muck in like pig.”
“Dey patrolling d’ nighttime, too.” As Mr. Caridad spoke, the coffee pot rumbled.
“What if someting…happens?”
“D’ village starving.”
“We cud farm.”
The coffee pot’s steam began to intensify, clouding the atmosphere above their heads.
Mrs. Caridad’s hands were used to gutting catches of the ocean. She could scale a great fish in one fell swoop. She felt clumsier when working with fruits of the earth, and she knew this. But she was willing to slice off whatever flesh on her body did not fit, until she was the perfect shape, malleable like clay. She accepted that her husband was less willing to mutilate himself. He was a dogmatic man, and on his neck were gills that could not be removed.
“My hands never learn how to till Earth!” Exclaimed Mr. Caridad, lifting his hands to the heavens and closing his eyes, as if soliloquizing. “If I dip my hands into soil, when it expectin’ d’ briny wetness of d’ sea she self, dem might as well have kill meh dead anyway.”
Smoke sputtered and spilled into the air, and the coffee dregs hissed before dying out. Mrs. Caridad spun her body to remove the charring pot from the lick of the stove’s flame. She let out a sigh, and Mr. Caridad caressed her back. The blackness of smoke intruded into the space, and the smell of burnt coffee intertwined itself into the air and lingered.
Placing a soft kiss on her shoulder, he whispered to her.
“I goh bring yuh ah great big marlin tonight. Dat boat itchin to feel d’ velvety ocean beneath she, and I feelin’ to do someting bad.”
***
Mr. Caridad made his way through curtains of tangling vines. The forest tickled his face, as if to seduce him into embracing its leafy palace. He stuck his tongue out, and the salt that adorned the sea breeze fell into his mouth like a kiss.
The crashing of sea waves echoed through the corridor of brush in a low rumble. If he did not know any better, Mr. Caridad would have sworn it was the sound of an earthquake — a deep groan from below, pouring out into a roar. He followed the sound, careful not to carve a path out too obvious, for fear that patrols would find evidence of his traversing.
The mossy carpet along the rainforest floor began to fade into clay which crunched under Mr. Caridad’s feet. Alongside him was now a small river cliff decorated with boulders, lichen, and sediment. The creature living between the rocks was a slithering body of dark water, inching its way toward the nearby sea, patiently journeying to reunite its murky waters with the fantastical blue.
Mr. Caridad followed the river until he came upon a discreet shallow bank. Anchored into the sand was a wooden structure hidden under a fortress of leaves. The blue paint peaked out from under the greenery and the hull was stained with red silt. He smiled. His grandfather had built the pirogue out of a great eucalyptus tree that lived on a hill. Each memory of rainbow coloured bark remained in the wood, each microscopic grain in each wooden plank wearing its orange-yellow-blue-red hues, proudly.
The vessel was fit for the sea and the sea alone.
How on earth could he turn to much else? He swam out of his mother’s womb and into a tide pool under the moon, he tasted that first, not the air. His small hands gripped the necks of groupers, like Hercules gripping the necks of serpents in the cradle. His blood was salty and rusty and red on land but purple under the water. And when he mastered the art of taming the sea, and all her fruits, he showed the little baby boys of the village to do the same.
How on earth could he turn to much else?
Mr. Caridad was fit for the sea and the sea alone.
He pushed his boat out onto the white sand beach. Abandoned shacks and decaying nets littered the coast. No longer did anyone dare to relish the playful toss and turn of the abundant ocean.
Abundant?
Sargassum lay heaped in mounds, pushed and pulled by the breaking waves. The stench of rot was pungent. The water, once brilliant and blue, was now sickly green; dyed with streaks of brown seaweed, forming little islands riding on the current. Brittle skeletons of coral lay, awaiting burial.
The usual barks of pot hounds and the hiss of flies which trailed after them was replaced with silence. Missing were the children kicking sand into the air and into eyes, the screams and laughs as the water chased feet. Only the almond trees dared to make a sound, moaning against the tides, each fruit plummeting down to the earth with a stifled thud.
The mountains closed in around the bay in a green tsunami, engulfing the leftover sky. Behind the mountains, Mr. Caridad saw black smog, which trailed into the wind and swirled like the rampaging hurricane undulating against Jupiter’s red skin. Here, Mr. Caridad knew a machine was raging in the distance, competing with the turbulent ocean, revving and clawing and chewing and ripping its way through her lovely skin, leaving a chasm behind.
From a distance he heard the whistle of a Great Kiskadee, and mimicked the call back. It echoed slightly and the foliage behind him rustled. Out appeared three young men. The first was lanky and dark with honey brown eyes. He held lines of nylon and nets weaved by hand. Behind him followed two more, slightly stouter with muscles protruding from each arm. Their hands held empty crab traps, dripping fluorescent moss.
“Jarvais, yuh see patrols on dis piece of sea?” Mr. Caridad asked, his voice lowered.
“Not in dis thick fog. Look how dutty d’ sky lookin,” Jarvais, a stout boy with strong shoulders, pointed out to the pulsating smog.
“Tink ah patrol cud see we if we stay within d’ bay?” asked the other young man, Blackie. He wore a navy shirt and overalls, making him appear like a lagoon come alive. His eyes glistened grey, and his skin was warm-brown.
“Meh wife pregnant. I happy tuh take d’ risk,” Bobo told the group. He looked old and young all at once.
The skin under his brown eyes was puffed and bruised. His eyelids drooped, as if they had never known sleep. He was tall, and his muscular build was fighting a battle against protruding collarbones and an empty stomach. He was the youngest, at nineteen, and his deep cocoa skin, sun-kissed since birth, stood out like velvet against his white vest.
“I promise my wife ah great marlin. I goin’ and nuttin stoppin’ me. Wha dem goh do meh?” Mr. Caridad declared to the group, a playful smile creeping across his face.
“I promise mine ah whale,” Bobo laughed as he flung his shoulders upwards. “But I tink she goh settle for ah marlin.”
Mr. Caridad always felt jarred when he heard Bobo speak like a man. He saw himself in him, a dreamy portrait of his previous youth. Bobo’s connection to the sea, like Mr. Caridad’s, could not be stifled, and the recent months had brought out a fiery insurrection in him that was bubbling over now. While Mr. Caridad admired the young man’s refusal to apostatize from the nets, as others in the village did, he still saw him as the young babbling child, gleefully chasing fish by his ankles. However, his fire was easily spread, and Mr. Caridad would follow Bobo out to any piece of sea, the same way Bobo trusted Mr. Caridad’s ideologies, like a faith.
The four men began to scoop mud from the nearby tributary bank. They painted the red-brown paste onto their skin, like war paint adorned before the hunt. They smeared the mud over the wooden planks of Mr. Caridad’s boat, concealing its bright blue colour. The anticipation of coalescing with the piece of sea before them filled the men with serenity, and as they pushed the pirogue into the water, it was as if they existed as hurricane eyes, trailing destruction with the calmness of still, warm air.
***
The waves lapped. Cloudy. Brown and green. Sargassum encircled the pirogue and danced. The stench of rot and haze persisted.
But Mr. Caridad felt safe within the womb of his fishing boat, once a eucalyptus tree with colourful bark peeling, enticing the eye of his grandfather all those years ago. In this boat he felt cradled and held snug against the ebb and sway of the brackish water. The nylon line rested in the grooves of his skin. The breeze pushed itself into the pores of Mr. Caridad, Blackie, Jarvais, and Bobo.
“How long it been since we out in d’ water like dis, Mr. Caridad?” Bobo reminisced.
“Is almost how it used tuh be…” Blackie reflected, dreamily staring at his nylon line.
The boys seemed hypnotised by the briny sea. The waves lapped.
And lapped. It was quiet.
“I wish it cud be how it was back den,” Jarvais whispered. He was rubbing the nylon line over and over, and it opened a small slit in the skin of his thumb. He rubbed the line, as if he didn’t notice the stinging wound, and the red blood began to drip down the thin translucent plastic.
Mr. Caridad stared at his silent fishing line. It didn’t budge, and the briny waves lapped.
“How it was…” he said, his tone flat. “How it was…”
Though silent, Mr. Caridad flung his thoughts into the sea, he let the frustration spill out from beneath his honeyed soul.
Back den back den back den. Back den. Turn it and toss it in yuh mind like d’ tumbling of rocks under ocean waves. D’ same way yuh cyah pull d’ dead out from d’ ground; dirt is cement and so is d’ past. What is done is anchored. So back den, back tuh how it was, recite it like ah prayer if yuh mus’. I will recite it like ah prayer warding off ah curse. And wait for d’ silence tuh follow, wait for d’ waves to baptise meh and wait and wait. May it bring you and me and us and dem d’ same comfort as recollection of d’ rosary does do when yuh feel d’ skin at d’ back of yuh neck prickle at midnight in d’ dark. I tried ‘pretend’ and dat doh do nothing to unstick d’ “back den” bonded behind we backs.
He spoke out loud now.
“I wake up one day, and d’ day smell jus’ like any other. D’ morning spill in d’ same as always. D’ birds was singing d’ same song. I reach for meh net jus d’ same as any day. I een even tink to watch down so and see how dey chop meh hand off clean wit’ the d’ sudden blade of ah gavel. I een even see d’ blood trail behind meh until my line pull up empty and d’ sea around meh was red. Was it d’ same for you, too?”
I een even see d’ blood trail behind meh.
Before the boys could respond, Mr. Caridad was interrupted by a slight pulling on his line. It was the first time in what seemed like forever since he had felt the tremor of a fish. The pull was half-hearted and flaccid, as if the creature on the other end was something already dying. Or doomed to die, and resigned to accept its fate. The waves lapped, weakly.
The creature lacked the ferocity of the beasts and adversaries that Mr. Caridad had battled with his whole life. The same creatures that sliced his hands open with their defiance against his reeling in of their bodies. Their defiance to be removed from the sea.
Now something else wiggled, absent of ferocity and vigour. It was as if whatever lurked under the brown waters, with Mr. Caridad’s rusty hook deep in its mouth, knew the peril which lurked on the horizon, and knew it had to play their little game in secret. It left the pomp in the past; it left it to the back den.
Mr. Caridad was tired of the game now, and began to pull the pathetic little creature up on the line. Perhaps it was a marlin, he thought. He sniggered at his own ignorance.
Mr. Caridad pulled. The waves lapped.
The boys were silent; the ocean was silent. They sat on the pirogue under the unrelenting sun stabbing through the thick, black smog. Stabbing into their skin, which bled out salt as if they were all just creatures of the sea, too. Briny and twisted. Defiant against the hook and sinker that tugged them all out of the waters.
Mr. Caridad pulled the limp thing out of the water, as the boys watched. The fish was a malformed bass, large but weak. Its spiky red crown was splintered. Its tail was misshapen and decorated with tumorous lumps. Mr. Caridad almost laughed aloud as the line dropped from his hands. The fish sank and sank, disappearing from view; a lame thing with the nylon line still in its mouth. It flopped its tail, raising a cloud of sand, and despite its perfunctory effort, remained laying on the seabed.
The sun scalded and singed. The green-brown water, once blue and sparkling like the Hope Diamond, blended into the overhanging mountains of jungle like a blur. They could barely see one another through the stifling smog and the stagnant ocean and the crashing mountains around them. They could barely see the advancing shadow, a machined beast cloaked in the charcoal-coloured air.
The pathetic brown waves lap —
A deafening boom rippled through the tepid heat. The mountains sheltering the bay, and the four men, and the pirogue carved from a eucalyptus tree, shook. The birds scattered. The patrol boat was now unobscured, growing larger as it approached, like an inky tsunami hungry to eat up the small wood pirogue.
Mr. Caridad, Blackie, and Jarvais slammed their bodies onto the floor of the boat, hands guarding their heads. A silent collective horror ran through the men, like shards of thread weaving their terror and grief into one big knot, as Bobo remained sitting upright. His white vest blossomed like a red hibiscus. His fishing line was still in his hand. He rubbed his thumb over the thin transparent nylon, and slumped over into the sea.
In the piece of sea now — the piece where the limp creature tugged and teased Mr. Caridad’s fishing line, where Mr. Caridad’s pirogue felt the water against its boards for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime — Bobo’s blood bloomed bright red on his white vest, as he floated face down in the briny water. The sea, green and streaked with brown just moments ago, was blue again, bright and sparkling, as if Bobo’s red blood had turned the ocean back into an expanse of glittering sapphires. The ocean was now red, white, and blue, all at once.
The waves became choppy, and the manufactured menace continued to speed toward them. Mr. Caridad helped the two boys, trembling in fear with salty tears streaming down their faces, jump into the deep sea. He prayed that they would remain hidden from the patrol’s gunmetal long enough to make it to shore. He followed the boys, and his beating heart and heavy chest weighed him down in the water, as if he was a rusty anchor, no longer human. He swam desperately to the shore, deep under the blanket of glistening sea.
Mr. Caridad flung himself onto the sand, rotten sargassum hitting his face. Jarvais and Blackie crawled onto the beach and began to wail, unleashing into the bay a bloodcurdling noise.
Mr. Caridad watched in the distant water, his little boat. The patrol boat, paramount and crafted from fibreglass and aluminium, glinting under the sun’s unrelenting flame, made its way toward Mr. Caridad’s pirogue, propelled by a furious motor blade which tore up the sea into a spray. The boat’s passengers poked Bobo’s corpse with a pole, silently and with clinical indifference, and threw a strange liquid onto both his body and Mr. Caridad’s pirogue.
A bright light flickered and was tossed onto the vessel. The eucalyptus tree seemed to be reminded of the bright colours it once wore pridefully, once upon a time when it stood strong, rooted in the earth, back den, waiting on a hill for Mr. Caridad’s grandfather to make it a creature of the sea. In the blaze now, it erupted into a fire of blue, and red, and green, and orange, and blue, and red, and white.
Mr. Caridad watched the colours shoot up from the sea, dying down into a hot orange flame. He watched, and found himself laughing hysterically. He laughed and laughed, until his back hit the sand and his eyes looked up to the smoky black sky.
