On the return trip to Island Harbor, they motor close to shore to avoid the larger waves that charge past the sheer rock wall that is the north edge of Anguilla. The cliff hangs above them, occasionally blocking the sun. Webb darts from one boat rail to the other checking clearance between the hull and the rock slides that littered the shore. He seems to know the location of each submerged hazard before it comes into view.
The boat bangs into the waves and the headwind blows the spray from over the bow chilling them. There is plenty of time to get to the ferry for his return trip to Saint Martin, so Webb meanders at half throttle on one of the two outboard engines. No one is waiting for either of them. No hugs of relief that they are safely home; no eager faces to listen attentively to their boasting. With a boney, liver-splotched hand, Legion grasps the top of the windscreen, feeling old and faded, an empty husk to be whisked away by a gust of wind.
Legion eases out of his seat beside Webb and opens the cooler. He levers the tops off two bottles of Ting with the opener on the cooler side and pours half the contents overboard before mixing in the vodka.
“Do you have kids?” Legion asks as he nudges Webb with a bottle.
Webb jerks around, a mischievous smile emerging under the smear of zinc oxide salve on his lips and cheeks. Legion thinks he is not the first client to ask this question when fishing got slow. Webb hesitates as if deciding which story to tell.
≈≈≈
“Yes, I have a son. He lives in England. His mother was a nurse here on the island. She enticed me to her condo one day and forced me. She was a big woman; got on top and forced me.” There is an injured frown when he turns his face away and then he jerks back with a devious grin to see if Legion believed it. They rock in their seats overcome with infectious laughter.
“The part about her forcing me is not true, but the son and her being a nurse is true. She called me after going back to England and told me she was pregnant. Said she was not in love and would not consider moving back. But she wanted the baby and wanted to know if it was all right. There would be no obligations, no further contact. She didn't want anything but to have the baby. She would have an abortion if I said no.”
For a moment, Webb freezes in thought, his eyes narrow as if trying to see something in the distance behind Legion’s shoulder. “He must be sixteen now. He knows he’s my son. She told him everything. He came to stay with me one summer when he was seven. I introduced him to his cousins and we fished every day. But the next summer she said he didn't want to come back. I haven’t heard from either of them since.”
An unusually large wave lifts the boat and heaves it towards the rocky shore. Webb battles the steering wheel as the boat darts and bucks defiantly in the surge. After the wave passes under, it explodes like thunder against the rocks just a few feet away sending spray back at them.
Webb continues as if nothing has happened. “It is better the way it worked out. I do not have a fatherly instinct. And I could never make him love the island. He was embarrassed by me, I think.”
Webb steers behind a coral outcrop and pulls the motor to idle in front of a small pristine beach butted against the rock wall. “You can only get to this beach by water or by climbing down the face of the cliff.” He motions to a steep trail cutting diagonally down the slope. A rope hangs beside the trail to assist climbers.
“This is where he was conceived, I think.”
The shudder of the boat ceases when Webb cuts the motor. They drift at ease on the flat water darkened by the shadow of the cliff. After churning in the open sea all day, the stillness feels peculiar, unnatural.
“What about you? Do you have kids?” Webb asks.
“I have one son also. He’s grown now, or at least he thinks he is. We’re not close. I guess when his mother left me, he and I were divorced also. I was not a good father.”
“The father thing is a mystery to me,” Webb says.
Legion continues, “I wanted to be a father. I was the softball coach, the scout leader…tried to do the right things. But the bottom line is, we never liked each other. If he didn’t look like me, I’d swear he belonged to somebody else. Everything I did or thought was irksome to him. As he got older, he mimicked his mother’s attitude toward me. I wasn’t a good husband either.”
“But you are a good fisherman and you are learning to appreciate the races. You do not seem like such a bad guy to me.”
“These things aren’t important.”
“Of course they are important. Who says they are not important? They are important to me. They are important to you. Let the sons live their own lives. They will do so anyway.”
“Let’s talk about fishing or the races…anything else. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“So we will not talk about it. The sun will come up tomorrow if we do or if we don’t. At the end of the day, we either caught fish or we did not. You can regret not catching fish if you want. This old ocean does not care one way or the other.”
Webb starts the motor and maneuvers to the opening of the cove.
Legion tries to blank his mind to all but the pastel granite, limestone, and coral rocks littered beside the beach.
“Why did she call?” Webb yells over the noise of the motor reverberating off the cliff face.
“What?”
“She could have had the baby and I would never have known about it. So why did she call?”
“Do you wish you didn’t know?”
Webb turns to him, his lips twisted in a grimace, his eyes dark for the first time. “Why did I have to decide if he lived?”
Webb guns the boat back into the ocean at full throttle, deliberately crashing through waves as if to punish them. Legion holds to his seat, catching his breath between the poundings. “Stop it. You’ll break her spine.”
And then it is over. Webb eases the throttle. The sudden squall has been ridden out. He stares ahead, jaw clenched, quiet.
They continue at a leisurely pace up the coast of Anguilla while they drink. Webb points and names every landmark and relates stories of the presidents and Arab princes who had stayed in the palatial villas atop the cliffs. As he brags on his island, his wispy smile is of a man who continues to be mesmerized every day by the woman he loves.
Neither of them checks the time until the mouth of Island Harbor comes into view. It is already too late to reach the ferry port before the last trip of the day. If Legion had been sober, he would have been mad. But this is the Islands, where time does not hold the same significance for measuring the day as it does elsewhere. Webb bypasses the harbor entrance and continues to the passage between Scrub Island and the eastern tip of Anguilla.
“We will make Orient Bay before dark,” he says.
On the way, they hatch a plot to save the world by blowing up the United Nations building. They will fill the boat with explosives and extra gas and explode the boat in the harbor in front of the skyscraper. They are working through the details when the vodka runs out. They conclude neither of them cares enough for the fate of the world to justify such a long trip.
≈≈≈
“Somebody would probably start a war with Anguilla,” Webb ponders, “drop a bomb or something. It might be fun, but I do not want my island blown away.”
When they coast onto the sand of Orient Beach, Legion can’t manage to crawl over the gunwales. Webb throws out an anchor to keep the boat from washing aground and they sleep on the deck.
≈≈≈