The last image I had of my daddy was a face in which anger turned to blank disbelief, though somehow I felt the anger was still there underneath, anger that he had been cheated of what he wanted. I think all his life he had done whatever he wanted. These days, I try to think of the smiling photograph instead of the angry man.
They never found the three bodies, only the wreckage of part of the cigarette boat, washed up two weeks later. My daddy had no family left on Lucaya except a few cousins, and the other two men were from Nassau, so it was in Nassau that there was a memorial service for the three of them. The Sapphire Island Frenchmen paid for it. We flew over to Nassau with Grand and Grammie, and Mam bought us both new clothes, because she said it was very important for us to be at the service.
The big church was very crowded, and I remember a hymn about those in peril on the sea, and a long sermon by a clergyman with a beautiful booming voice, not only about my daddy and his friends but about all people who suffer from natural disasters. The hurricane hadn’t hit Nassau as badly as the out-islands, but people had been hurt there just the same.
Mr. Pierre Gasperi was at the memorial service, but Grand kept away from him.
The best thing about being in Nassau was that we spent a whole week with Mam. She said that come Christmas she would be back in Lucaya for a whole week too. It wouldn’t be truthful to say that we miss my daddy; the missing was all done years ago. But it would have been better to know he was alive, even if he was long gone and far away.
The damage done by the hurricane on Lucaya was much worse in some places than in others. Long Pond Cay was the worst damaged of all. Grand said it was probably hit by a small tornado spawned inside the hurricane. The government decided that the cay was after all a very unsuitable place for development, and so they withdrew all the permissions for Sapphire Island Resort, and the developers had to go and find themselves another island somewhere else.
After that, the government did the best thing of all, and turned Long Pond Cay into part of the Bahamas National Park, in the protection of the National Trust. That meant nobody could do anything to the island, ever again. It would belong to the people of the Bahamas—and to the sea.
I went out to the porch one night before bed, when Grand was sitting out there with the only drink he ever took, a rum-and-water nightcap. We were living in the house again, though the repairs still weren’t finished. Grammie was doing the ironing in the living room, and she had some soft guitar music playing on the radio; you could just hear it out here. Grand had a very peaceful expression on his face. He was sitting back looking at the sky, which was all stars tonight because the moon wasn’t up yet.
“See your favorite, Trey,” he said. He pointed. “The great hunter. Son of Neptune.”
My eyes hadn’t quite had time to get used to being in the almost-dark, but I could see the three stars of the belt, and the brighter stars beyond.
“Orion,” I said.
It was a kind of ritual by now, for both Lou and me—though of course Lou couldn’t say the names. But Lou wasn’t there, he was in bed, so Grand could just point at the first bright star, and have me name it. Then the second, and the third.
“Rigel,” I said. “Bellatrix. Betelgeuse.”
Grand patted my arm, and took a sip of his drink.
I was looking up at Orion. I said, without really thinking about it, “Children of Gaia.”
“Gaia?” said Grand. “Where you read about her?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I looked down at his face, turned up to me in interest, the bright eyes over the grey beard.
“I don’t know,” I said carefully. “Uh—what is Gaia?”
“An idea people have,” Grand said. He settled back, looking up at the sky again. “An idea that all life on this planet, every living thing, is part of one organism. And she regulate conditions so that life go on. That’s Gaia. Big Momma. Whatever one species do to damage things, Gaia will put it right, even if it mean wiping that species out.”
I said, “Including us?”
“Including us,” said Grand.
“You believe it?”
“I don’t know,” Grand said. “I’d like to.”
His eyes shifted away from me, and back to Orion.
Reckless now, I said, “What about Pangaia, Grand? What’s Pangaia?”
“Never heard of it,” Grand said. Then he paused, considering. “Pangaia? Sure you don’t mean Pangaea? That the great big huge landmass about two hundred million years ago, the one big piece of land in the sea. After that it broke up, turned into all the continents, and the islands. Even the little Bahamas, in the end.” The bright eyes looked up at me. “You been readin’ some interesting stuff, Trey.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I been readin’.”
So then, one fine day, Lou and I took out the dinghy and went out to Long Pond Cay, to see how it was coming along.
This is me, Trey, remember. I’m a writer. I’m twelve years old. This is my book, the story of what happened to Lou and me.
We went out toward Long Pond, pottering along, under a blue sky, over the chalky-blue shallows. The channels and the shoals were still changing, after the hurricane, but we were beginning to get to know them. We could see the long white beach, rebuilding itself, healing the scars. One tall ragged casuarina was waving gently, among the babies starting to grow alongside it.
Overhead, there came that high little piping call: peeeu, peeeu . . .
It was the osprey, coasting sideways on a current of air, curving down to cross our path. The undersides of its wonderful broad wings were turquoise-white in the light reflected from the shallow sea. It swooped low over us. You could see its cruel curved little beak, and hear its plaintive loving call.
Lou looked across at me from the bow of the boat and smiled, his teeth very white in that round little dark face.
“That our fish hawk, Trey,” he said. “He telling us what happened.”
His voice was soft, soft but strong, like a hummingbird wing, like spider-silk.