-Melissa McKenzie

Story night, and the man and his son sat on the sand, bellies full, listening to the rolling waves and enjoying the heat from the crackling fire. Ezekiel loved the smell of salt in the air, and he wanted to pass on this love to his son. Hence, story night.

Education was good, but did it have to make you second guess your heritage? Your station? He had known his place from birth, but his son, having escaped the confines of the village on a scholarship to a prominent high school in town, was now planning to create his own future.

It deserved suck teeth. Imagine, him send di bwoy to school to learn book enough so that the big merchants couldn't steal from them anymore. After all, man mus' able to know figures and legal terms in dese changing times wid dese sharks. And dis is what happen.

The boy was fifteen and already his lips curled when the villagers were around. Ezekiel did not like this. A reluctant spirit did not do well at sea. The nets would remain empty and so would their pockets. Nor would he stand for the snide remarks about how him son have seed fi nutten.

'Son, mi eva tell yuh 'bout di day mi born?'

'No.'

'Well, is time enough yuh know.'

There was silence, but Ezekiel went on.

'Mi was di last pickney fi mi mada ...'

In fact, he had entered this world after four miscarriages, three girls and two stillbirths. His mother's womb had been looked on as a curse, and he, as its redemption. His birth had been bittersweet: the morning Ezekiel was born they found his father's body on the shore of Goat's Island, badly cut, black and blue. Five days at sea and a storm had overtaken them.

'After that, she still allowed you to be a fisherman?' Ezekiel's son spoke with muted bitterness.

'Yes. Not because you step in sh-t means yuh gwine stop walking, boy.' Ezekiel's voice was sharp and carried the weight of inherited resolve.

Ezekiel's mother had been proud, and she had decided that har one bwoy pickney would carry on. He had uncles who would help her with him. She had not endured the caustic comments of the village women for this to put a load around her feet. She would bury her husband, and her son would take over when he came of age.

Every morning without fail Ezekiel's mother carried him to the shore and gently placed his toes in the water. When his back became hard enough, they even played in it. This way he had become attached to the sea.

By five he was in bathing trunks, running along the shore - with one of his sisters posted at a distance - waving to the fishermen he could see. He often wondered what it felt like to be out there, casting the net, waiting, feeling the pull of the fish. When he asked his mother this, his mother said: 'Your time soon come.'

Meanwhile, Ezekiel accompanied her and his sisters to the market. There he took in the noise of the peddling of wares, the interplay of colours, and the satisfaction on faces that had made a good purchase. He wanted to be a part of that satisfaction. He became fascinated even with the way his mother scaled fish, dug out the insides and cleaned them in water for her customers: effortlessly, like a machine. He wanted to be out at sea knowing that he had helped to provide all this.

Gradually, after a long family meeting, he was introduced to the rudiments of fixing a net, where to cast it, what fish to take, which to reject. His eager young mind absorbed every word. In the evenings, he cleaned out his uncle's boats, mended torn nets, and listened to the men as they lamented a slow and fruitless day. This they did chewing and spitting tobacco. Ezekiel envied them. Listening to them, he wanted more and more to be at sea.

He was 10 when the day came. His mother sounded eager; his uncles and cousins slapped him on the back. No one mentioned the ghost they felt lingering in the air.

The moment he felt himself rocking at sea, the salt air stinging his face, he knew. This was the way it was supposed to be. It was in his bones.

The years passed. Ezekiel became a master fisherman. Took risks, amazed the villagers and his mother, assumed a new position in the people's thoughts. In time his sisters got married. His mother died a proud woman. And now here he, Ezekiel, was, with a son who wanted nothing to do with the sea. Where was his wife to knock some sense into him head?

'Pa, there are other things I love as much as you love the sea.'

Ezekiel sighed. There was that trait of stubbornness. His father had died for this, and he could not die knowing that his son wanted no part of it. The sea was their life.

'Son, dis is what's important.' Ezekiel picked up sand in his hand and let it flow through his fingers.

'No, papa, not to me.'

Ezekiel looked out into the darkness that was the shadowed sea and, for the first time, felt his age.