Timothy of the Cay Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Appreciation

  Epigraph

  1. USS Sedgewick

  2. Looking for Work

  3. Panama

  4. Back o'All

  5. The Raft

  6. Shoes

  7. Curaçao

  8. Being a Slave

  9. The Clinic

  10. New York City

  11. Obeah

  12. Dr. Pohl

  13. The Decision

  14. Bark Gertrude Theismann

  15. The Devil's Mouth

  16. The Squall

  17. My Bald Head

  18. Home

  19. The Operating Room

  20. Captain

  21. Awakening

  22. Jennifer

  23. Trees

  24. The Hato

  25. The Audaz Adventurero

  26. Torpedoed

  27. The Cay

  Reader Chat Page

  Copyright © 1993 by Theodore Taylor

  Reader's guide copyright © 2007 by Harcourt, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work

  should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed

  to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  First Harcourt paperback edition 2007

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition

  as follows:

  Taylor, Theodore, 1921–

  Timothy of the cay/Theodore Taylor.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The cay.

  Summary: Having survived being blinded and shipwrecked on

  a tiny Caribbean island with the old black man, Timothy, twelve-

  year-old white Phillip is rescued and hopes to regain his sight with

  an operation. Alternate chapters follow the life of Timothy from his

  days as a young cabin boy.

  [1. Caribbean Area—Fiction. 2. Shipwrecks—Fiction. 3. Survival—

  Fiction. 4. Blacks—Caribbean Area—Fiction. 5. Blind—Fiction.

  6. Physically handicapped—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.T2186Ti 1993

  [Fic]—dc20 93-7898

  ISBN 978-0-15-288358-4

  ISBN 978-0-15-206320-7 pb

  Designed by Trina Stahl

  Text set in Stempel Garamond

  MV 10 9 8 7 6 5

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Caitlin Carroll—

  wonderful, beautiful, scalawag granddaughter

  Appreciation

  My sincere thanks to ophthalmologist Dr. Roger Ohanesian of Laguna Beach, California, and to neurosurgeon Dr. Dennis Malkasian of Newport Beach, California, for their information on medical matters beyond my comprehension.

  THEODORE TAYLOR

  Laguna Beach, California

  June 1993

  CAY. A low sandy islet. But also extended to include large, higher islands with appreciable vegetation, e.g., Protestant Cay, Lovango Cay, Marina Cay, etc. CAY from Spanish lucayo; Arawakan cair:island. Sometimes spelled and pronounced KEY.

  —A DICTIONARY OF VIRGIN ISLANDS

  ENGLISH CREOLE

  1. USS Sedgewick

  AUGUST 1942—The navy's Caribbean command received a priority dispatch from the USS Sedgewick :

  RESCUED 12-YEAR-OLD BOY PHILLIP ENRIGHT AND HIS CAT FROM UNCHARTED CAY X SURVIVORS OF SS HATO TORPEDOED APRIL THIS YEAR X BOY AND CAT SEEM TO BE IN GOOD CONDITION X PROCEEDING CRISTOBAL X

  The destroyer sped on toward Panama. She hummed and quivered along, pitching gently over the smooth sea, temporarily secured from hunting German U-boats.

  ***

  Down in sick bay, the ship's hospital, I sat on a cold metal stool while the doctor checked me out. Took my USS Sedgewick temperature, looked in my mouth and ears, took my blood pressure.

  I told him I felt fine.

  With Stew under my arm, I'd been brought aboard from the rescue boat naked as a plucked pigeon, holding Timothy's wooden-handled knife as my only possession from our time on the island.

  Lieutenant Robert Heath, the doctor, couldn't believe I'd survived, alone and blind, for almost two months on that remote patch of sand up in the Devil's Mouth.

  "Timothy prepared me to live alone," I said. I owed my life to him.

  "Who was Timothy?" Dr. Heath asked.

  A cold disk was on my chest. He was listening to my heart. Stew Cat purred in my lap.

  "An old black man from the island of Saint Thomas."

  But he was much more than that. He was my guardian angel, then as well as now, protecting me from danger and mistakes. Though he was dead, he still talked to me in my darkness.

  During that terrible moment, only yesterday, when the navy plane flew across the island and then went away, the sound dying like a bee buzz, Timothy looked down on me and said, "Don' warry, Phill-eep, dey'll be bock." I heard him distinctly.

  "From Saint Thomas, eh?"

  I looked in the direction of Dr. Heath's voice. He sounded young. "Yes. Timothy got me out of the water after our ship was sunk. A few minutes before, this tomcat had crawled aboard our raft. Just crawled up there like he owned it. Timothy didn't invite him."

  I had to laugh about that, Timothy sometimes saying, "dis turrible cot."

  "How long were you on the cay?"

  "From sometime in April until today." Five months, I thought. I'd been told this was August 22, 1942, still a time of war. According to my own "time-can," into which I dropped a pebble or piece of shell each day, I'd been alone on the cay for forty-seven days.

  "What happened to Timothy?"

  "He died after a hurricane hit us. He used his whole body to protect me. Wind and flying debris tore him up. Killed him."

  "What a shame," Dr. Heath said sympathetically.

  Yes, it was.

  "What did you eat all that time?" Dr. Heath asked, adding, "Lie back."

  "Oh, fish and langosta, coconuts, sea-grape leaves..."

  He made a huhmp sound, then laughed. "Not a bad diet at that."

  Then he tapped around my stomach, telling me to cough. "You were blind before the ship was torpedoed?"

  "No. I got hit on the head when we were abandoning it and lost my sight a few days later, on the raft."

  He made that huhmp sound once more.

  "Will I ever see again?" I asked.

  "You'll have to talk to an eye doctor, but there's always a chance. You might need an operation." He paused, then said, "Phillip, I'm curious about something, really puzzled..."

  "About what?"

  "How did you manage for two months without that old man? How did you get food? You couldn't see."

  "He'd made fishing poles for me. Strapped them to a palm tree before the hurricane hit. He'd planned for me to be alone. Planned everything. And I knew that whole island like I knew my house in Curaçao. After I buried him I put our hut back together and started a fire."

  "Remarkable," said Dr. Heath. "Really remarkable..."

  I had just been doing what Timothy had taught me.

  "Now, sit up again. I'm going to tap your knees with a mallet to test your reflexes. Have you had that done before?"

  "Yes."

  I wondered h
ow the doctor looked. How big was he, how old?

  I'd been doing that all day, trying to imagine faces, starting with the two sailors who rescued me. I knew how Timothy looked, having seen him for two days before my sight failed. But now I had no way of telling age or looks except by voice.

  The doctor tapped between my knee joints, then said, "Well, that's it. You're as healthy as anyone on this ship, a lot healthier than some. Remarkable."

  "I was lucky," I admitted.

  "Now, I've ordered a bland diet for you to begin with..."

  I'd already had a milkshake.

  "...since your stomach probably won't be ready for hamburgers or steak..."

  Oh yes, it is, I thought. Yes, it is! If I never have another fish it will be too soon.

  "...for a few days. So instead, things like rice and mashed potatoes and soup..."

  "Can I have gravy?" Could I have every single thing that I'd missed on the cay? Everything. Macaroni and cheese. Hot dogs. Hamburgers. Ice cream. Candy.

  He chuckled. "Yes, you can have gravy. Anything else?"

  "Candy." That was something I'd really missed.

  "Sure, what kind?"

  "Hershey almond, Baby Ruth..."

  "I'll have the ship's store guy come in."

  "And will you feed my cat?"

  "He's already been fed. Milk and rice. He was hungry. Anything else?"

  I shook my head. "No, thank you."

  "Glad to have you aboard," he said, and departed.

  I think all the officers on that destroyer walked into sick bay that afternoon, and half the ship's crew, just to look at Stew Cat and me.

  Lieutenant Commander Nathaniel Murry, USN, commanding officer of the Sedgeivick, came in first. He said, "You're one lucky boy. Do you know how far we were off the beaten ship track?"

  "No, sir."

  "I got a report from Naval Intelligence that a Nazi U-boat was refueling from a Nicaraguan ship back up in here. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come near these lousy waters. They're beautiful but treacherous as a lit fuse. Coral reefs all over the place. They'll take your bottom out like it was cut with scissors."

  "Where are we?" I asked.

  "About a hundred seventy miles off the Nicaraguan and Honduran coasts, in waters called the Nicaraguan Rise. I came in as far as the Serranilla and Serrana banks..."

  Timothy had mentioned those dangerous reefs.

  "...then headed east again. But turned back to get you. If that Catalina from Coco Solo hadn't spotted your smoke, I'd a been long gone..."

  The Catalina was a twin-engine flying boat, I knew.

  "Thanks for turning back."

  "My pleasure."

  He'd already sent a message to my parents in Curaçao, saying I'd been rescued. My father worked in the Dutch refinery on that island, off the coast of Venezuela. He was a petroleum engineer.

  Carruthers and Gomez, the two sailors who'd brought the small rescue boat into the cay, had told him what they'd seen: my fire pile, the hut, my fishing poles.

  "Where are we headed?" I asked.

  "Cristobal, at the Panama Canal entrance. We'll hand you over to the naval hospital, get some fuel, fresh vegetables, milk, and eggs, and head out to sea again."

  He went back to the bridge.

  After the food tray was brought in, I spent the rest of the afternoon talking to the hospital corpsmen. They had dozens of questions. It was kind of fun being a celebrity.

  ***

  On the cay, I usually knew when it was daylight because of the sun's warmth and when it was night because of the coolness. And, of course, your body tells you when to sleep. Aboard ship, I was too excited to go to sleep immediately after the announcement was made that the "smoking lamp" was out. Time to bed down, except for the duty watches. The corpsman assigned to me, who would also sleep in sick bay in case I needed anything, asked me if it was okay to turn out the light. I had to laugh.

  Then he caught himself. "Oh, I forgot you can't see."

  "That's okay." He wouldn't be the last to forget my blindness.

  Quiet settled over the ship. Cool air blew down on me. The engines whined. The whole hull quivered at top speed. The corpsman said that when we were going twenty-five knots no torpedo could hit us.

  I remember that night as being strange, one of many strange days and nights to come. I remember the feel of the bed and the clean sheets; the sounds and smells of the ship, knowing someone other than Timothy was just a few feet away. All of it strange. Most of all, I guess it was the knowledge that I wouldn't be alone anymore; that I wouldn't die on that forgotten, nameless cay, become a skeleton for someone to find someday.

  There had been times when I almost gave up. At those times I "talked" to Timothy and he "answered" back. Who else was there to talk to, except Stew Cat? At first, I was lonely and frightened, but I'd always feel better after talking to Timothy. I'd imagine what he'd say to me and even imitate his voice. Imagination is a very powerful thing when you're alone and blind.

  I finally went to sleep but awakened after a while, panicking on hearing the turbines' high-pitched whir. For a moment I didn't realize I was no longer on the soft sand floor of the hut, wrapped in deep silence.

  Even Stew Cat was uneasy that night. He slept by my shoulder, snuggled against me.

  I was awake for a long time, just thinking. Oddly enough, one of the things I thought about, in addition to seeing my parents, was returning to the tiny island that I'd just left.

  If ... If ... If I could get my sight back I'd try to put my feet on our cay and see it for the first time.

  I had a picture in my mind of how it looked: a small "hombug" hump of white sand, palm trees sticking up from it, set in a horseshoe of coral, blue water lapping gently around it.

  That's what Timothy saw from above, in heaven where he now lived: sun-spanked white water curling over the reef when the sea was running.

  I'd felt it, tasted it, smelled it, heard it. I'd seen it through Timothy's eyes. Now I wanted to see it through my own.

  2. Looking for Work

  OCTOBER 1884—Tall schooner and bark masts, shorter raked sloop masts, and steamship smokestacks rose into the sodden island skies over St. Thomas Harbor as cries of "Buy mah feesh," and "Hey ba-nana, hey ba-nana," collided in the hot, humid air. Baskets of bunker coal, balancing on the heads of singing women, were going aboard steamers to feed fireboxes and boilers.

  As Timothy moved through this noisy bustle, looking for work, other cargoes—in boxes and crates—were being loaded or unloaded. Bluggoe—a thick, fat plantain—and breadfruit and mangoes and pawpaw and bags of sweet yams came ashore from the down-island sloops, single-masters.

  Clad only in pants made from a flour sack, his bare feet splashing over the smooth blocks of wharf stone, Timothy added his own voice. He shouted to bosses on the cluttered decks, offering his services this early morning. His earnest face and sinewy upper body, color of the bunker coal, glistened from raindrops.

  "Sirrah, I wark hard, I do..."

  Sometimes he made a few øre, a few Danish pennies, hand-carrying packages too fragile for wheelbarrows or pushcarts. But he was never satisfied with the handful of coins he took home to Hannah Gumbs, his foster mother.

  He knew he was big enough, strong enough, even at age twelve, to lift some of the wooden crates that came out of the holds, or to push a loaded barrow into the long, low warehouses that faced the docks like huge piano keys. So far, none of the stevedore foremen, all as black as he was, had done more than scoff at him. The "bahsses" told him to come back when he grew up. Instead, his anger mounted each day.

  The busy Danish port, located where the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea met, lay in the track of vessels bound for South America from Europe, Africa, and the Atlantic states. The winds and tides led favorably to St. Thomas. Throw a bottle into the ocean off Senegal's Dakar and it would likely float to the Caribbean islands.

  Steamers and ships under sail arrived daily. They moved slowly into the circular deep-wat
er harbor, once a volcanic crater, now under the guns of two ancient forts.

  Timothy stepped over the thick lines that secured the ships to land, careful not to get in the way of sweating men. They were guiding barrows down heavy planking.

  He had passed four ships and now approached a big, trim white four-master that had just arrived. She flew the flag of Denmark and was called the Amager, out of Copenhagen.

  She hadn't begun to work cargo as yet, but he stopped midships of her as two sailors bore a stretcher ashore. On it was a youth who appeared to be no older than himself. His left leg was laced between boards bound with twine.

  Timothy thought he'd seen him before, a local boy, and he ran up to him, asking what had happened.

  "De laig done broke," the victim said. His face was gray with pain. "I fell downg de laddah. Dey takin' me to de doctah."

  He spoke in musical slave dialect, as did Timothy, though neither had ever been slaves.

  Interested, Timothy walked alongside the stretcher bearers. "Yuh wark on dat ship?"

  "Cobbin boy I be."

  "Uh-huh," said Timothy, having a sudden idea. Cabin boy! That was where to start. "Yuh be goin' bock to 'er?"

  "Dey paid me off. Cain't wark for six mont', mebbe, de mate said."

  Timothy wished him good luck and wheeled around.

  Heading back for the Amager, he thought about what a lowly cabin boy did—took care of the captain's and mate's rooms, did their laundry, served their meals, jumped at their most ridiculous wishes. But that was better than stirring Hannah Gumbs's wash kettle. What could he learn from stirring hot water over bukra clothes, white people's clothes?

  Best of all, even if he was temporary, as a cabin boy he could sail the seas.

  Timothy wanted, some outrageous day, to own his own interisland schooner or sloop, be called "Coptin," and sail the Antilles chain to Barbados, or beyond, with freight and passengers. To get to be called "Coptin," the only school was the sea. That much he knew.

  He'd visited the waterfront regularly since he was six or seven, perching on a bollard, the big iron mushroom over which mooring lines were looped, to watch whatever went on. When he had time off from helping Tante Hannah do her work for the rich folks who lived up in the hills, he usually came to the harbor. Already, he knew quite a lot about the ships and the men who sailed them.