By Cyril Dabydeen
The waves surged towards Beachhead Point like a man in a hurry, the heave and roll of great billows rising to a crescendo against the fisherman’s cry above the undulating sea near crab-backed, mollusc-shelled Palmyra. Carl’s eyes skirted the misty chalk-white horizon at six in the morning, then he fixed his gaze on the limb of a courida tree floating down to the beach of habitation. Like a man facing his first baptism of water, he stood expectantly, poised in his small boat. A long-necked crane swooped down, and Carl’s involuntary movement caused his left foot to buckle and splay against the gunwale—as the boat made an almost self-propelled dive. Sprays whipped into his face.
Carl scrambled up, pulling with his hands, elbows, with his feet splayed out. Carl-Boy, came a bellow, be careful wid you’self so’s not to lick salt-water so early in the mawning! A stranger’s voice calling out to him; and see, the invisible man knew his name…and was coming to meet him from behind a cluster of acacia and rhododendron on the high ground, here where no other human voice was heard.
Ah, you nearly fall into de sea cause o’ that bird. Is de water itself pulling you, eh? the voice came again.
Carl concentrated on the words, like an omen, as water rose and seeped into his pants. He pretended not to look up at the haggard-looking man who drifted in closer. You early tryin’ to make a quick catch here before pickney-day born, in dat small boat o’ yours, eh? Is how many crabs you want to tek back to de village today?
Here at the edge of the world, the man appeared more like a visitation or a shadow of time; and how long had he been watching him? Carl pulled his boat onto the beach. The gaunt-looking figure came closer. Carl felt a potent sting, a mudcrab’s pincers jabbing into his flesh. Aaagggh! Boy, you be careful, the man said, his sprung rhythm intact. An’ is how much fish you really catch this mawning?
“Not much,” Carl snapped back at him, as he nursed his pain.
Like de fish gone under the sea-bed, huh? the man quaked, his mouth opening and closing like a large gill.
Carl pulled the boat further onto the beach, straining his muscles; and he was wary. He began to feel like an outsider here on this spot of ground, like a foreign place. Why yuh so silent now, Carl-boy? The man scratched his face, and a fleck of black blood formed a bulb at the tip of his nose. You got something fo’ me to eat?
The voice grated; and he could be someone from a lost continent, but was here now in this secluded spot. “What, eh?” Carl rasped, pulling his boat closer. No doubt the man expected him to heave hard, pull and grunt. Bubbles swirled, the sand and sea-water mixing with twigs and relics of twisted feather. Fish-bone, too, Carl focussed upon.
I been watching the sea an’ mist day-long, night-long, yeah!
Carl heaved in again, looking at the straggly face before him. “Who are yuh?” he scorched, catching a whiff of the man’s clothes spattered with cambium and black-sage; and the wide-looking eyes were bloodshot. Carl grew more circumspect. They call me Ram, same as you have a name, na? The man scratched his face harder and blood oozed.
Was his name like something made up? Carl handed him a piece of bread, as he mimicked the man’s harsh plea to himself. Thank ye, boy, came the reply; and was his name not…Ramirez, like something foreign?
You be kind to a stranger, the man hissed, sinking his teeth into the morsel of food.
Carl figured he must assert his will over this stranger, whoever he was, with the sea all around. The breakers rose to a squall as the man chewed, his jaw working like mandibles. “I have little food left today; the boat, it capsized, see,” Carl grumbled, pointing to the sea.
Ram twisted his mouth into a grotesque shape; and strips of cloth hung from his shoulders like a dhoti…real Indian garb. Right then Carl wanted to push the boat far away from the beach. But the man held him to one spot called Beachhead Point, almost like a no-name place. I mus’ eat, Carl-boy. See, you stay here wid me awhile, eh?
“How come you know my name?” Carl grated, reluctantly handing him more bread and cheese. Ram’s eyes glinted. Thank ye, Carl-boy. Maybe you go catch more fish, plenty-plenty shrimp an’ crab. Cascadoo right here too, eh? The word “cascadoo” hung in the air…like a nameless fish far from the mud-ground of the coastline.
Ah, Carl knew his catch was often scarce. Right then he thought of his Uncle Rawle who would heckle him about going out to the sea alone at an early hour in the morning. “Carl, you mustn’t fish alone to any ghostly spot,” Rawle had said with omen in the air.
Carl replayed more of Rawle’s words; and maybe Rawle knew something about this spot no one else knew from long ago and about when continents drifted closer… when the sea hurled and the waves squalled. And about a time when the Dutch, the Spanish, French, and the English came to these shores and left a solid mark behind…far more than the desolate sugar plantation at Palmyra.
Whiffs rose in the air as Carl inhaled, still thinking about Rawle regaling him with history always at his finger-tips.
Now Carl wanted to demand to know more from this strange man: like what he was doing here alone at Beachhead? And see, Rawle had talked about strange spirits, like the massacouraman on this Berbice coast; but this was often followed by Rawle`s laughter.
A shroud of early morning mist began creeping in. Carl eyed the stranger with his hair knotted like dreadlocks, and so unlike any other on the Palmyra Coast he was…no doubt someone come from a far southern coast, like what was perhaps named Madras. Carl blinked; and what if this man had visionary instincts like a sadhu or sanyasi who might have drifted in from Trinidad or Surinam, and was now just an outcast here at Beachhead Point. Could he be… really?
The sea’s breakers rose…and more mist drifted in. Carl kept thinking about this man’s name, and if he could also be, well…Malik, with a Black Power rage stored in his veins from long ago. Carl turned, looking around. Wha’ you thinkin’ now, Carl-boy? came the man’s grunt. Wha’ really? he echoed. Then, You take me out wid you for a ride out in de sea, nah?
A miasma of seaweed and iodine rose. Wasps circled in the air; and the sun started coming out. Once more Carl rubbed his eyes and looked at the rising billows.Then he lashed out, “Is wha’ you doing here alone?” The clouds above appeared immovable like sculpted pumice.
Kingfishers and seagulls squawked against the rising sea. Instinctively Ram waved his arms, then opened and closed his mouth, sucking in blobs of air.
“Who are you really?” Carl drilled.
Ram…or Ramirez appeared to blink. “You heard me?” Carl hissed. Ha-ha. Laughter stirred in the man’s throat. Carl wasn’t sure what strange providence dictated this man’s presence here now on this spot of ground, and what creed he followed. Uncle Rawle’s muttering about the past came back to Carl. And Ram yet seemed like someone who might have drifted in from the horizon.
Anxiety gripped Carl…and yes, he felt the man’s fingers on his throat…trying to throttle him. “Christ, lea-v-e me a-l-o-n-e!” Carl cried out voicelessly. Ha-ha! The man’s grip tightened. Ooaaaahh! Uncle Rawle and other villagers were far away; as Carl kept pleading, “Le-a-v-e me alone!”
You mus’ recognize me for who I am -if you think I’m not real, eh?
“You…are!” Carl gasped; and indeed this man expected him to bring scraps of food for him, like a ritual tied to the sea. “L-e-a-v-e me alone, p-l-e-a-s-e!”
Crabs scuttled in the air; and Carl didn’t want this man to be real anymore—and, maybe he was just imagining him. Odd, he thought of his own mixed-race origin with African and Arawak blood, mixed together…as Rawle had sometimes teased him about.
Right then Carl figured he and this man were one and the same, though he might have come from the faraway—a place with a river named the Ganges or the Brahmapu-tra…like an outcast of time. Carl’s heart beat faster. You tell me, Carl-boy, the man sang, as the sea again hurled.
Now would anyone believe this was occurring on the familiar Palmyra Coast when ships from the past had come close? Carl whirred. Now let the strange man laugh all he wanted. Ooooh! Aaaagh!
Carl heaved in again. Oh Gawd!
***
“You’re born with the sea in your veins, Carl, an’ maybe you’re driven to it,” Rawle said to him.
“But…?”
“You’re not like others in the village cause you’re only trying to make a living goin’ into the belly of the sea an’ imaginin’ you’re Ahab’s offspring,” Rawle drawled, making up things as he went along.
Carl started telling Rawle about the strange man at Beachhead Point. “Don’t be afraid, Carl, ’cause he might jus’ be someone lost out there” came Rawle’s reply. “Really lost I mean, some pretend coolie-man in dis part of the world, though he might also come from Venezuela, Trinidad or Surinam.”
“Oh?”
Rawle nodded in his sometimes sombre way, as his eyes swirled. Carl yet saw the strange man coming from the sage brush and rhododendron. Ah, he felt real fingers clutching his neck. Oh, Christ!
Rawle looked around doubtfully. “Boy, maybe you’re not able to understand things fully, twenty as you are.” He sucked in air, and added, “But I will go out wid you next time to face the waves, eh?”
“Tomorrow, maybe.”
Rawle was twenty-five years older than Carl; and, he knew the perils of the sea, including about the Atlantic Ocean that seemed like one large river with the Amazon and Orinoco aligned to the Zambezi. Ha-ha! The Ganges and the Yangtze were also one, indeed.
“Really, Uncle Rawle?” Carl asked with tremor in his voice. Then, “Maybe you will recognise him.”
“Recognize him d’you say, Carl?”
“Yes.”
“Boy, you say his name is Ram…something like dat? Maybe he’s not a fugitive, but one drifting in from de other side where the Indian Ocean.” Rawle rolled his eyes.
Carl imagined his Arawak past, though he might have sometimes doubted this…being who he really was.
Rawle added: “Or he might have come through the Middle Passage in a broken galley long ago, and left here to fend for himself.” Rawle’s suspicion and disbelief it was. Then, “Maybe this man has come from a pocket of the sea itself like fabled Poseidon.”
Water swirled everywhere. “Ahab too being with him, maybe, ha-ha,” Rawle laughed. “Or he’s an escapee from Dutch Guiana, if not from Devil’s Island and is now free of the hangman’s noose.”
Ram’s hands yet clawing his neck, Carl felt… as the fugitive’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. Was it due to the spliff the man might have been smoking? What if Beachhead Point was just a miracle spot that neither Columbus nor Walter Raleigh knew?
Carl’s mind hummed with more thoughts. Uncle Rawle looked at him benignly, asking. Really…what?
***
Carl and Rawle paddled along after fishing in what seemed like a dead sea in the new day. Fish being everywhere, but nowhere…as the hours drifted by. More crabs it would be, but not cascadura which was only on swampy coastal ground. Yet, like a miracle it would seem if a cascadoo popped into his boat here with the salt of the sea and fresh water combined.
Carl and Rawle had no other choice but to drift closer to Beachhead Point, as if compelled to. Seagulls skirted the air close to the equator. Caravels…slave-ships passing through time, ah; and who were men like Magellan and Vasco da Gama? Carl’s blood raced, as waves came crashing down.
Rawle cried, “Maybe you’re imagining too much, Carl; but soon we will see if dis man’s for real, eh?”
Now Carl didn’t want Uncle Rawle to see this man as a fugitive.
No-no! Rawle hummed something about their coming to land’s end as the morning mist spread out, and then he rubbed his eyes hard.
“You should stop goin’ out to the sea alone thinkin’ you’re slapping waves like a Viking of yore, eh. You belong to the village only, not somewhere far out at sea, Carl-boy.”
“Why you say dat, Uncle Rawle?”
“Oh, think of being in the hinterland to find out who you really are.” Who…I…am? “Cause you have real Arawak blood in yuh, right?”
Carl inhaled more sea-breeze, like his birthright. He listened to what else Rawle said…with the sea turning around in his mind. The boat glided along of its own accord now. Crabs’ pincers hung in the air, and more sprays whipped up. Then Carl let out an involuntary whoop…as the mist itself seemed to pull them closer to Beachhead Point.
Seagulls careened, one or two swooping down to the lip of the sea and ready to pluck out more fish. Rawle muttered that Carl shouldn’t be here at all. But where? “Sometimes hallucinations are real, boy,” he said.
A clump of bushes ahead that they looked at, then they started hauling the boat onto land. They surveyed the morning’s scarce catch…and forgot all about the mysterious stranger. Rawle said he liked the coastal-river fish best—hassar or cascadoo, which might just be a throwback to a time of the dinosaurs.
Carl instinctively looked around…seeing shapes and shadows in the changing light. Mist grew like a blanket around them. Tiny crabs crawled, pincers clawing the air it felt like. Rawle hummed, “He’s not real, Carl. You’re only making him up.” Then, “No Hindu-holy man’s goin’ to come here to watch over you an’ the sea.”
But what if the strange man was really a guardian…looking to see how many fish were being taken out from the ocean before daylight? Could this Ram or Ramirez be someone with an ancient spirit from the Vedas who knew about life coming out of the ocean as the god Vishnu figured? Or, could he be John the Baptist with the Sea of Galilee in his veins?
Carl’s head spun, as Rawle conjured up more images. “Mark my words, no man will leave the Brahmaputra to come here thinkin’ bout Babylon cause he’s no blasted Rastaman wid ganja in his veins,” added Rawle. Then, an afterthought: “Maybe it’s a massacouraman spirit here only, Carl.”
“What d’you mean?” Carl imagined the Amerindian water-spirit rumoured to be on the coast. He felt another tremor in his veins.
He and Rawle shoved the boat farther onto the beach. Rawle sang, “The sea is sometimes like religion, boy.”
“Religion d’you say?”
“Yeah, Carl… as I pray to God-Jehovah only.”
“You do, eh?”
Rawle stiffened. “We must be sure, see.”
“Sure ’bout wha’?”
“About dis man here…”
Rawle kept thinking and saying the man might also be from a lost tribe of Israel come from Ethiopia. He grinned, making up more stories. He added, “I gave up fishing a long time ago because of… it.”
“It?” Carl involuntarily raised his voice.
A derelict stump of dead tree rose before them. A desiccated bird, too. Ants started piling up to form a mound. “It’s really a strange place this, Carl. Maybe we shouldn’t be here at all,” said Rawle.
“But…where?”
Rawle noted a small yellowish-looking fish in the boat, one he hadn’t seen before, which might bring bad luck. A real Jonah.
Silence now…only broken by the sound of breakers. “You sure it’s this spot?” Rawle hissed.
Carl wanted to call out the man’s name… R-A-M!—like a halloo in time to bring the fugitive out into the open…as a way to free himself of the hand gripping his throat. Oooooh-aaaaah!
Rawle muttered, “I been thinking more an’ more, see.”
Carl’s throat kept tightening.
They hauled the boat away from the beach, dragging the cast’net, also. Then they began counting the day’s catch…and scarce fish they would indeed take to the market at Palmyra, like a blessing, if also to face the villagers’ wrath because the catch was so small. Caterwauling voices: East Indian, African and Chinese, in a new creole day like Babel itself…appearing before them. “Fisherman, you luck not good t’day? Ha-ha!” one villager would call out. “Yeah, is real Jonah out there!” cried another.
“Christ, the sea’s been good for so long, but no longer, Carl?” Rawle hissed. Then, “You t’ink he really out…there?”
“WHO?”
“You know who I’m asking bout, Carl.”
Clouds started coming down at an angle. Carl rubbed his eyes and felt scales dropped off. “Let’s hurry an’ leave here now, Uncle Rawle.”
“Must we…Carl?”
The one yellowish fish palpitating Carl looked at: a strange catfish, dying and living at the same time. Right then from high ground he appeared, Ram himself. More than a visitation, see. Rawle felt blinded by the sun’s rays.
“It’s him!” rasped Carl.
“Boy, who you say he is really?”
The man stumbled forward, coming closer. Don’t be afraid o’ me, he sang in a guttural voice.
Carl averted his eyes, and so did Rawle. Fish, birds, the vegetation, all in a mammoth hush as the man thumped his chest. Carl offered him food…with Uncle Rawle now as a silent witness. Ram bit into the fare, and muttered his thanks.
“Let’s go now, Carl,” Rawle said, looking at the strange man crossly. “The sea and mist, you understand, it makin’ things happen.”
“He’s real, Uncle Rawle!”
“Boy, he’s not,” Rawle whispered back.
The man made strange noises, like prayerful sounds coming from the sea itself. Oh, Lawd!
***
Carl and Rawle paddled hard as the man hailed from a distance of high ground. Just then a kingfisher swooped down, nearly hitting Carl and throwing him off balance in the boat. Rawle gripped the gunwale and cried, “Be careful!” But the bird came again.
Carl dodged left and right, then swung his paddle at the bird. And was the man at Beachhead Point encouraging the bird to attack them as the sea rose higher? Rawle hissed, “Carl-boy, the bird’s gone mad!”
Carl looked at Ram standing there in the distance, like a shadow of time; he also thought about what Rawle had said… that he mustn’t only believe in the sea, but in the hinterland too. Must he really? Carl’s hands went to his throat.
The boat moved faster…of its own accord, and before long they were returning to Palmyra Village pushed by a stronger current. Rawle looked around…for the mad bird’s continuing assault the closer they drew to the shore with a crowd of villagers suddenly appearing and hailing them, hoping the day’s catch was bountiful.
Rawle imagined being a sea-captain of yore; and did word get around of a special catch they were bringing in? Voices rose because of what everyone might be expecting…if now only crabs and cascadura, eh?
Carl unconsciously waved to the crowd; and he would tell no-one about the man at Beachhead Point, like a secret only he and Rawle shared…as the man might still be there on the horizon looking at them with blinkered eyes.
Carl made a sign of the cross…but, again thinking of his Arawak origin, and of the hinterland with tall trees like the greenheart and wallaba coming closer. Waves, too, coming closer. But he was indeed here on this coast with mangrove and courida—nowhere else.
Right then Carl saw him—the man calling himself Ram being in front of a motley group of villagers welcoming him back to shore…as the boat pulled in. Ram’s arms were outstretched, but also simultaneously clasped high above his head. Really…him?
Carl and Rawle looked at each other in disbelief.
A larger crowd appeared, miraculously. Carl turned to look at the scarce catch in the boat… and it was immediately like the biggest catch! Fish with shimmering scales coruscated in the sun. Carl rubbed his eyes hard; and Ram was indeed leading everyone and hailing Carl and Rawle, if only because of their biggest catch.
A higher wave suddenly rose, and Carl swore…as the ground spun under his feet. Rawle felt the same, though he laughed.
A bright expression was on the villagers’ faces, especially on the man in front, who wasn’t gaunt-looking anymore. Let the massacouraman or any other spirit such as Poseidon take note. Rawle mumbled to himself, and he patted Carl on the shoulder, as he also made a sign of the cross. He did!
Immediately a kingfisher swooped down to pluck at the yellow small fish in the boat. Jonah indeed! Ram and the others laughed, because of what was occurring in the sun’s bright rays.
Carl involuntarily looked into the horizon, thinking Beachhead Point was no longer real. Uncle Rawle nodded. And what if the man calling himself Ram…was like a deity—incredible but real? Carl focussed on the bones of the small fish that began to look like a cascadura before his hallucinatory eye. What a sight! He almost swooned as the sea and the hinterland came closer.
Rawle hummed something about stranger things happening; as Ram stood his ground in front of the crowd and smothered a laugh; he then turned and looked back at the villagers and maybe urged them to remember Palmyra, like God’s special place, if only from a long time back. His words incomprehensible, for a moment, but a name, well….like Highbury on his lips? What’s more to come?
Indeed a time when the sugar-plantation was all and people from India with long memories had been brought to these shores…maybe what Ram instinctively knew. Rawle hummed to himself, then patted Carl on the shoulder; and the one fish with bones they looked at steadfastly. The crowd came closer to observe the same small fish, ah.
Ram’s eyes brightened, as Carl looked at him and yet felt fingers tightening on his throat, but with a new sensation…almost like a caress, if because of his Arawak instinct. A strange or new reality now with villagers inexorably coming closer, almost like in a different landscape, Carl imagined—with a new sense of himself, and maybe as the man with the crowd next to him kept coming closer. Indeed being here, nowhere else—far more than a long-lost time, but with memory and sensation!
Cyril Dabydeen’s “Catchy Crab and Cascadura” was originally published in the Guyana Chronicle in the 1970 as “A Tide at Beachhead”. Dabydeen, Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus, won the Guyana Prize for Literature for best novel, Drums of My Flesh, in 2007. His writing has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.
