Just my luck, said my drunken cousin. Just when they’re sending the big boat. He’d invited himself to the breakfast table. His face was scratched and scabbed. Through the windshield again, asked my dad. My cousin nodded. But this time, he said, I wrapped her around a mahogany. Probably cracked the radiator. Well, that’s a shame, said my dad. You’re going to kill yourself one of these days, said my mother from the kitchen. She’s religious and so can say these things. Last time I saw the big boat was the time that mainland circus came, said my cousin as he took a bite of breadfruit. The circus! my younger brother cried. His left eye is bigger than his right and opens wide like a stone. It’s not the circus, said my dad. They swore they’d never return. Maybe they’re coming back for that fortuneteller, my mother said. I don’t like her and that rag-picking clown living on the north end of the island like that. They wouldn’t need to send the big boat just for them, my dad said. Then, to himself, why the big boat? For all you see that fortuneteller, my mother said, you should know.

After breakfast, I went off to the fortuneteller with the coffee grounds I’d been saving. I’d been saving the grounds from the past couple of supply ships, skimming a little off the cans we’d get trading teak dolls and antique stamps. Originally I’d been saving the grounds to see if she could tell me when I was going to start bleeding. Things would get better then. My mother had said that the breaking in would stop once I was a full woman bleeding each month. But I’d decided the bleeding would start when it started. Getting to the fortuneteller’s lean-to, I called to her. Hello hag! I’ve brought you some coffee. Nobody sees her, everyone says. My uncle brings her kerosene like everyone else on the island, but he claims never to have seen her. I said, Hello hag, I’ve brought you some coffee and a question. I said, I want to know why the big boat is coming. There was silence. The silence continued so I said, The future, hag, everything coming brings the future. I said, Hag, I’m not leaving this coffee if that’s your only answer. The silence continued and so I left.

On the path back another one of my cousins appeared and pinned me to a tree. I’m going to break you in, he said panting. I lied and said I’d started bleeding. No you haven’t, he said. Yes I have, I said, two months now. Aww, man, he said. When are you due to bleed again? he asked still holding me to the tree. I don’t know, could be soon, I lied again as a drop of sweat ran off his nose onto my shoulder. The rag-picking clown shuffled by. His sack looked heavy. My cousin cursed. He let my arms go and scrambled back into the mangrove tangle.

Back at the house my dad was anxious. Where have you been? he asked. Just walking the paths, I said. Looking for a little fun, he said with a smirk. I shuddered each time he asked me that. I’d stopped answering. I left him with his hot root water, climbing into the loft. From the pigeon window I gazed out to the wharf. There was a shadow on the horizon and it filled my stomach with anticipation. The last ship due to us from the mainland had had to turn back: storms that season snapped the jetty and scattered the beach with it. That was six months ago. Six months of tangy breadfruit and coconut and my uncle’s walleyes. I heard my drunken cousin slam open the door below me and curse about his truck. He said, I see that ship on the horizon and all I can think is how much they’re going to need someone to move cargo through the island. And how am I going to fix the truck when I got no money from moving the cargo I was going to move with the truck? My dad said something to him, but I couldn’t make it out.

My dad must have spoken to the fortuneteller because when the big boat moored in the bay, my dad was gone. The first man down the gangplank announced himself as the warden. He wanted to speak with my dad, or anyone else who considered himself to be the big man on the island. My uncles looked at one another and then at their bare feet in the sand. The warden wore mirror glasses. He turned to a man who had sulked up beside him. Set up the cell, he said to the man, and my office. One of my uncles, the one who fished off the island’s south side and managed the wharf, asked if he could be of assistance. The warden stood there with his thumbs in his beltloops. My uncle repeated himself. No, the warden said, Everything is under control now.

My drunken cousin came to the house to complain that no one from the big ship had asked for a truck. They’re just dragging the stuff up on pallets, he said to my mother since my dad wasn’t around. Just dragging it up like in the time of the pharaoh, he said. He sat and sucked at a fried breadfruit slice. My mother looked concerned. But she just said, Absalom your truck is still wrapped around that mahogany tree so I don’t see how it would have been any better had they asked you. Then my drunken cousin asked her what she thought the warden was about. The rag-picking clown came to our doorway and knocked in his polite manner on the frame. My mother rose and apologised, saying we had no fraying rags at the moment. The clown bowed, placing his hand across the top of his bald head. It was a large hand, and it fell across the ridge of his head like a toupee. The clown remained. My mother said again, We have no rags to give. The clown drummed his head with his hand. My cousin, sitting, said, You better get moving, clown. The clown continued to drum. The drumming continued until my drunken cousin rose. My mother, placing a hand on my cousin’s forearm, asked the clown what it was he wanted. The clown’s pants tubbed out around his stick of a body. From the pocket he pulled a scrap of paper and a charcoal stick. He scribbled, then held the paper aloft. ‘Coffee’ is what it read. This was too much for my cousin, who struck the clown squarely between the hoary-haired nipples. The dark moments of the clown’s face make-up went darker as he collapsed.

We all expected my drunken cousin to end up in the cell. The men from the big boat had assembled it quickly in the common green the houses faced. It stood eight-foot-square and cold to the touch in daytime. Beside it, the men from the boat had assembled a shanty where the warden sat cleaning various objects and looking over sheets of paper. There was some question whether the warden had known about the clown in the first place. But my uncle thought it better that my drunken cousin lie low in the sea cave. Under the guise of night fishing, my uncle deposited my cousin in the sea cave along with breadfruit. My uncle said he told my drunken cousin he’d be back as soon as it was clear the warden wasn’t looking into the clown matter.

The warden came by the house asking after my dad. My mother asked him to remove his glasses. He did, and his pin-eyes darted from one corner of our house to another. His clean smell curled in through the open door. He said, Ma’am, I’m to talk to your husband. She shrugged. He’s not here. Ok, the warden said, Well, when he shows up, say I want to talk to him. Are you going to put him in the cell? my mother asked. Is he on the island? the warden asked in return. I have to assume so, said my mother. Well, said the warden, returning the mirror glasses to his eyes, that’s enough.

Walking among the houses I came upon one of my uncles striking a young cousin of mine with a razor strop. My uncle turned to me and said, It’s better he learn from me than end up in that cell. What did he do? I asked. He was lying in wait, said my uncle, Probably to break in one of his young cousins. That’s the kind of behaviour the warden isn’t going to stand for. My cousin’s eyes were shot through with shame. He had broken me in once I think, down in the gully where they found the meteorite. I’d bleed soon anyway so it didn’t much matter. I went along and my uncle resumed with the razor strop.

I was sent to check some of the far coves for my dad. Scrambling down the rocks I came upon two of my older cousins in the cove. They were puzzling over a mess of copper tubing. What’s that? I asked. Looking up annoyed, one replied, It’s the still. Yeah, the other one said, we had to move it before the warden came to confiscate it. They went back to fiddling with the tubing, trying to work the joints together. One turned to the other: You wanna break her in? The other shook his head. It’s not worth it, he said. I don’t want to end up in that cell. How would he find out? the first one asked. The second one shook his head again. She’d tell, and then she’d tell where the still is and we’d be doubly fucked. The first nodded and held up a curly-cue of tubing. This I remember being important, he said.

Back at the house my aunt was speaking with my mother. I think we should go to the warden about it, my aunt said. My mother said, Sally, you know what my husband would say about bringing in an outsider. I know, my aunt said, but I’ve lived with it long enough. I mean, I can understand the young boys crouching in the mangroves. But a grown man? It’s the way things were done here, my mother said. Yeah, said my aunt, were is right. Look, Sally, my mother said, I’ll speak to your husband. Just leave the warden out of this. My aunt nodded. Don’t tell him I was going to go to the warden, she said. Of course not, my mother said, pouring more hot water into my aunt’s mug.

I was sent to the warden’s shanty to ask if he’d found my dad yet. He was busy polishing a metal instrument, whistling as he did so. The warden shrugged: It’s an island, after all. He placed the instrument on the cloth laid across his desk, picking up an adjacent one. It was a hot day and his brow was beaded with sweat. I put my hand on the wall of the cell. It felt cool. I asked the warden if I might have a lie down inside the cell, which I imagined was cool all around. Sure, he said, reaching back and pushing open the iron bars behind him. You’ll let me out in an hour? I asked. Sure, he said.

It was still hot that evening so I went down to the beach for a swim. At the beach two of my uncles were standing over the body of my drunken cousin. My drunken cousin was always flushed, but as he lay in front of my two uncles his skin was glassy as a walleye. Drowned himself one of my uncles said to me, as I looked on in my underwear. Hardly seems worth it, over that clown, the other said to no one in particular. After a bit of silence, the first uncle turned to the second and said, I have some mind to move to the mainland. Really? the other one said, It strikes me as no better than here. Yeah, said the first uncle, No better than here. What would you do there? The first uncle shrugged, Probably fish same as here. After a further silence the first uncle added, You’re probably right. I’m going to die here just like the rest of us. I watched from the shallows as the uncles went to the boathouse and returned with a roll of burlap. Wrapping the body of the drunken cousin, they slung him between themselves and set up the switchbacks toward the houses.

I decided the next day to revisit the fortuneteller. I gathered my coffee grounds and went along the footpath to the north end of the island. I was afraid I had too many questions for the amount of coffee. Especially since I seemed to already owe her coffee for her last prediction. At least according to the clown. What the clown did with all those rags I guess I’ll never know. My dad used to say that the clown was making paper from them. That the clown on his rounds took notes on the rag paper. That the notes went to the fortuneteller, so the fortuneteller always knew what was happening on the island. That was my dad’s theory, but he went to the fortuneteller first before going to the clinic, just like everyone else on the island.

I arrived in front of the palm fronds and called, Hag, I have coffee here and I want answers. A breeze moved through the fronds. I called again, Hello hag, there are things I need to know. I know I offered you this coffee before, but hag, even I know that things arrive and bring the future. So hag, I say, maybe it was a bad question. But now I say, I have a good question. I want to know what’s going to happen with my dad, and the rest of the island. The breeze continued soft through the fronds. Then they rustled harder, but I felt no wind pass among the mangal. The fronds broke and the khakied warden was there buttoning his pants, his other hand extended through the fronds. He said through his mirrored sunglasses: Little girl, everything is going to be fine. Now take that coffee back to your mother.