Timothy of the Cay Read online

  Yes, looking at him now, she knew she'd raised him strong and well; and now, sadly, it was time to let him go. She'd miss him as if he'd come from her own loins, but it was time. Time for him to be as proud and independent as she was.

  He hurried off to tell everyone in Back o' All that he was going to be a cabin boy aboard the Amager. By nightfall, he'd located his two best adult friends, Charlie Bottle and Wobert Avril. They lived down island. He excitedly told them he was going to sea, at last.

  5. The Raft

  The Hato's two sturdy rafts, one located on each stern quarter, were slotted wooden frameworks of boards about two inches thick, built over four empty but sealed oil drums. The slots let any water that splashed aboard fall back into the sea. Ours was the starboard raft, off the right side of the ship.

  It was about four feet deep, I remember, and in the middle was a trapdoor so you could get to the galvanized tin box of supplies that was suspended between the drums. Also down there were two kegs, each holding five gallons of fresh water. Carefully doled out, the water could last four people a few weeks in high heat. Two people and a cat could share it for a month.

  The box held emergency food such as hardtack, saltless biscuits almost as hard as rock; squares of chocolate wrapped in tinfoil; a signaling mirror and flares; a first-aid kit; fishing tackle; a kerosene lantern; and a box of sulfur matches in waterproof waxed paper.

  I saw the trapdoor, the water kegs, and the tin box before I became blind.

  The rafts were not made for comfort. They were made for survival.

  ***

  I don't remember being hit on the head by the piece of timber that eventually caused my blindness. The first thing I knew I awakened on the raft with a stranger asking me, "Young bahss, how yuh feelin'?" For a moment I didn't recognize him as the old man I'd seen chipping paint the previous afternoon.

  It was daylight by then, and a big black-and-gray cat sat nearby on the boards, licking his haunches.

  The Hato was gone. So was my mother. I saw nothing but empty ocean everywhere I looked. The water was calm and blue. The sun glittered. The air was warm. The raft barely moved.

  That first sight of the man I soon knew as Timothy was like waking from a nightmare and finding out it was true. In the moment before I realized he was from the Hato I thought maybe I was still in the ship's cabin, having a bad dream. No torpedo had hit us; no fire had roared. I hadn't even been in the lifeboat. But when he spoke, asking me how I felt, I knew it was no dream. There was no escape from him.

  Just his face, let alone his size, frightened me. I immediately thought the deep, curved scar on his cheek was from a knife. My mother had said that West Indians were a violent people. His mouth was wide and his lips thick. Either scarred hand could have spanned a banjo—could have easily snapped me in two. But his voice was musical, West Indian—gentle, like a warm breeze in palm fronds; his smile was wide and toothy.

  I remember weeping and throwing up.

  On the third morning I awakened and thought it was still night. Puzzled, Timothy said, "'Tis day."

  I put my hand in front of my face and could not see it. I remember screaming.

  I was blind.

  6. Shoes

  OCTOBER 1884—Donkeys brayed and cocks crowed when Timothy awakened at first light beside Tante Hannah on their shared plantain-leaf bedding. The only other sound, besides Tante Hannah's soft snoring, was the zee-e-e-e-swees-te of the banana quit. The ani, a long-tailed crow, wasn't awake yet, wasn't flying over the village with its shrill weu-ik, weu-ik. Wake up! Wake up!

  Soon, human voices would float in from the outside as others in Back o' All awoke.

  Tante Hannah rolled over.

  A patchwork cloth hung between their sleeping space and the rest of the dirt-floored hut, which was always fragrant with the musky bundles of weeds. The cloth was raised during the day hours but at night formed the bedroom that Tante Hannah demanded.

  She groaned and yawned and said, "G'marnin'."

  Soon, there was a pungent smell of wood smoke and frying fish in Back o' All, helping to stifle the strong, ever-present odor of open sewage.

  Water had to be lugged up the hill in buckets filled from a common well, then dumped into wooden barrels. After Timothy brushed his teeth with a soapvine chewstick, lugging water was his first chore of the day. Timothy had been carrying it since he was four or five. Wooden catchment troughs helped keep the barrels full during the rainy months, May to November.

  Timothy never complained about down-and-out Back o' All, living in the hut, carrying water, or stirring the wash pot, squashing the kakaroachee. He knew no other life. Both Tante Hannah's parents had come from the Slave Coast of Africa. Compared to what they'd gone through—chained, starved, branded, robbed of every freedom—life was pleasant in Back o' All.

  Aside from hurricanes and the sting of scorpions or centipedes or the marley gumbeys, the black wasps, and poison that might drip on him from the machined trees if he stood beneath them in rain, there was no danger. No poisonous snakes existed. Even the bats that glided around the tamarind trees in the evening were friendly.

  When ship arrivals were slack, Timothy roamed the beaches and mountains. From Crown Mountain he could see neighboring islands and cays. Even Porto Rico, to the west, was sometimes seen on clear days. Neighbors St. Croix and St. John loomed on the horizon. He longed to go beyond them.

  Sometimes he played stickball or marbles with other Back o' All boys. One afternoon a week he went with Tante Hannah to gather herbs. Sometimes with Charlie Bottle, who owned four cows and seven goats, to gather fodder on Thatch Cay and bring it back in a rowboat. One morning a week he'd go with Wobert Avril to net sprat or other fingerlings for bait, then bottom fish, with a hook and sinker.

  But he was always drawn back to the waterfront. Time to time, he looked at the men off the down-island boats, wondering if one of them could be called papa. That was useless, of course, but Timothy firmly believed that the father he never knew, and would likely never know, had been a sailor. He'd be one, too.

  ***

  He hadn't been below decks on a ship, let alone inside a master's cabin, and he couldn't believe the luxury in which the captain of the Amager lived. A round carpet was on the teak deck of the bedroom. He'd never seen such finery.

  Dark woods and brass fixtures shone. The other boy had done a good job.

  Nyborg, the stumpy, fair-haired mate, stood by the captain's double bed. "Let me see your hands, boy."

  They were clean, scrubbed twice before he left Back o' All.

  "Practice making the bed. He likes the corners exactly this way, you understand? Look down here, I say."

  Timothy was looking at the whole bed, not just the corners.

  A heavy hand slapped the back of his head.

  "Yes, sirrah."

  Then Nyborg led him into the room next door, a place for nautical charts and instruments. Timothy was wide-eyed.

  "Scrub this deck every other day but touch nothing in here."

  On the opposite side of the chart room was the captain's bathroom. Timothy had seen a sink and toilet before but never a bathtub. Wealth he'd never dreamed of.

  "Scrub these spotless."

  "Yes, sirrah," he breathed. He'd make them gleam.

  Then Nyborg led him to the mate's quarters, where Nyborg himself lived, at the forward end of the after house. The instructions were the same for this smaller cabin, which lacked a tub and toilet.

  After taking care of the captain and mate, Timothy was to help the cook. Do whatever he asked. Peel vegetables. Scrub pots.

  Timothy believed he could do all these things. He would even enjoy them.

  Nyborg ended the tour by showing him where he'd live—a narrow berth just off the galley in the forward house. His final words this first morning were, "I catch you stealing anything, I'll throw you overboard."

  "Yes, sirrah." He'd yet to steal anything. Ever. Tante Hannah would have whopped him good.

  His heartbea
ts slackened as the mate walked out of the galley. It wasn't so much what Nyborg said. It was the way he said it. It was the way the blue eyes went into Timothy's and out the back of his head. It was the way Nyborg held his hands. They looked as if they could form fists any second. Smash faces.

  The cook was Porto Rican, Timothy guessed. He was standing by the stove. He waited until the mate was well out of range, then said, "Muy malo."

  Timothy did not understand Spanish but the tone of the cook's voice, what his dark eyes were saying, and the gesture of his hands, were a clear warning: Watch out.

  He nodded a thank-you and went aft to begin practice on making the master's bed, with the just-so corners.

  On Wednesday, the day before the Amager was to sail, Tante Hannah took four kroner out of the hiding place in the shack and walked down the hill with Timothy.

  "Ah'll pay yuh bock, Tante Hannah," he said, nodding his head as a promise.

  "'Tis a gift," she said, smiling as they trudged along.

  They finally turned in at Lilliendahl's, on Kronprindsen's Gade, and Hannah said, grandly, "Mah son needs shoes."

  The clerk said, knowingly, "First pair ever?"

  Hannah shrugged, deciding not to admit that outright.

  The clerk measured Timothy's left foot and made a remark about the large size. Timothy was large for his age. Then he lifted a pair off the shelf and brought them over.

  "Cowhide, made in København," the clerk said. They were brown, made in Copenhagen.

  To Timothy they appeared to be made of gold, in heaven. Though he'd never told Tante Hannah he would like shoes, he'd thought about them. Bukra boys had shoes, though they didn't wear them all the time.

  The right one slid on and the clerk said, "Stand up and walk around."

  Timothy smiled at Tante Hannah and she nodded.

  The shoe pinched but he thought that was what any shoe would do. He walked around, grinning at Tante Hannah. His first shoe!

  "Let's try the left one," the clerk said, and Timothy sat down again.

  In a moment he walked in a circle around Tante Hannah with both shoes on. His wide grin was enough reward for her this day.

  She paid and they left Lilliendahl's.

  Halfway up the hill, Timothy stopped, grin gone. "Mah feet hurt, Tante Hannah," he admitted. They were already blistered. Dismay was on his face.

  She laughed and sat down by the path. "Gib 'em to me."

  He sat down beside her as she worked them back and forth. "De feet say tek it easy. Dey don' know shoes."

  In a few minutes they resumed the journey, Timothy barefoot again. But a short distance from Back o' All he put on the shoes so he could parade through the shantytown for everyone to see.

  ***

  Timothy did not sleep well, thinking about boarding the Amager at dawn, knowing it would be months before he saw Tante Hannah and Back o' All again. Though he felt a hollowness about that, he smiled in the darkness about going to sea, at long last, on this day—the fore, main, and mizzen sails bellied out over his head. (He knew the names of the sails from watching and asking on the wharf.) Soon, he'd feel the rush of ocean beneath the Amager's keel.

  But he'd also fix the island and Tante Hannah in his mind and think of them often. He'd gone many places with her when she foraged for her weeds and he knew the island's beauty. There was color everywhere, the reds of the flame and frangipani trees, the yellows of the pudding pipe tree. Hibiscus were everywhere, in a half dozen colors. The perfume of flowers was constantly in the clean air. There was the warm water around the island, blue on the surface, clear beneath, washing white over the reefs. There were the powdery white sands of the beaches. He would hold them inside until he returned.

  Before the first donkey bray and cockcrow, even before the first ribbons of canary yellow light from the east came over Grass Cay and Thatch Cay and Mariendahl, he poked Tante Hannah in the ribs and said, "'Tis time to wake up."

  She nodded and shook off her sleepiness, then went to the other side of the curtain to take off her nightdress and replace it with a blouse and skirt.

  Outside, Timothy lifted the heavy kettle off the charcoal pile and pushed aside the night's feathery ashes, uncovering a few pieces that still glowed. It was the last time he'd ever perform this chore. After adding new charcoal he filled a pot with water and placed it over the coals. Tante Hannah would soon make bush tea. The tea and a few pieces of cassava bread spread with her orange marmalade would be their breakfast.

  Last night Hannah had told Timothy he should wear his new store-bought pants and shirt going aboard the ship; he should dress nicely for the captain and mate, place his few personal belongings in a yam bag. So he went about doing that while the water boiled. He planned to wear his shoes and make sure the mate saw them.

  Soon, saying little to each other, they started down the hill. With the low clouds' dimness he could not see the harbor. All of St. Thomas was shadowy, save a few early cooking fires.

  As they reached the far-west end of the waterfront, even before the wharf began, Timothy stopped to put his shoes on. He'd daubed his blistered heels with Tante Hannah's salve and knew he could endure the pain until such time as he boarded the ship.

  Tante Hannah finally spoke again. "Ah pray de good Lawd to keep yuh safe. Yuh do de same."

  Timothy nodded but his attention was ahead, east along the wharf, toward the Amager. Though she was the fifth ship down, he should be able to see her tall masts in the gray light. But they didn't seem to be there.

  He quickened his pace, ignoring the pain. Had she sailed? His ribs grew tight, his breath shortened. He began to run.

  "Ah cain't see 'er!" he yelled frantically at Tante Hannah over his shoulder. There was panic in his yell. She struggled to keep up with him.

  Finally, he reached the Amager's berth. He couldn't believe it was empty. Panting, he looked south and saw the ship's white hull and masts standing out to sea between Hassel Island and Rupert Rock. Streaks of dawn illuminated her. The only steam tug in the harbor, the Glory, had her under tow, and Timothy knew her sails were being hoisted.

  He was stunned. They'd gone without him! He should have come earlier. Tante Hannah puffed up beside him.

  "Dere she is," he said, his voice high-pitched and helpless. "Dey left me..."

  "Mebbe 'nudder boat cain cotch 'er," said Tante Hannah, breathing hard.

  A voice behind them said, "'Tis no use."

  They turned.

  The owner of the sloop tied up ahead of the Amager, a captain Timothy knew, said quietly, "Dey hired a bukra boy last night..."

  The yam bag dropped by Timothy's feet, and his body became board stiff. His eyes were tightly closed, but not tightly enough to stop tears from leaking down.

  He heard Tante Hannah say, "Anudder time dere will be." But her words did little to heal the ache inside Timothy. He felt empty, demolished.

  A white boy had his job. Had he not made the captain's bed the right way? Was the brass not polished bright enough? Did the tub not shine?

  Tante Hannah said, "Timothy, we be goin' home now."

  He took another look at the Amager before her stern disappeared around the bulge of the island near Cowell's Point, and he nodded.

  Then he bent to remove the shoes and tuck them under his arm. Tante Hannah told him to walk tall and straighten his shoulders.

  7. Curaçao

  Never having flown before, I wanted to watch the drifting, fluffy clouds, see the Caribbean below us. Perhaps a ship or a schooner would be cutting a white wake in the blue waters down there. Instead, I listened to the noisy twin engines, felt the vibrations of the fuselage, now and then a sickening bump.

  Back in civilization, I was realizing more and more each day just how precious sight was. To look out any window was now useless. To look into a mirror was now useless. Even to look down at my hands or feet was useless. The darkness held me prisoner.

  Over the engine's drone, my mother talked on and on about things that had happened the la
st six months. She'd done that, almost nonstop, since the moment she'd entered the hospital room in Panama. She felt guilty, my father said later.

  "Oh, Phillip, I meant to tell you..."

  Several hours later, I stepped down off the DC-3 ladder, holding Stew, Father guiding me.

  Desert heat, so different from the cay, or the moist air of Panama, bounced off the runway. Whenever the brisk northeast wind stopped for a few hours, the heavy smell of oil from the refinery at Emmastad settled over the island and people held their noses. Willemstad didn't smell bad; it stank. This day I didn't mind the acrid odor. You're home, safely home, it said.

  In the hospital, I'd had mixed feelings, several times, about even coming home without being able to see. How could I sail our small boat in the Schottegat, the inner harbor? Or fish off the beach at Avila? Go to the schooner wharf by myself? Just explore around the countryside, the way I'd done before the Hato and the cay?

  I asked, "Has anything changed?" Dumb question. Things changed every hour.

  "More ships every week. Four days ago a convoy came in with twenty-one tankers. The Allies want us to double aviation gas production," my father said.

  Among the things I'd asked about on the destroyer were submarine attacks. The German U-boats were still out there. Not as many as in late winter and early spring, but ships were still being sunk.

  My father's hand was loosely on my elbow as we walked to a taxi after clearing immigration and customs.

  Timothy had done that for me, guided me, the first few weeks, until I learned how to use a stick and find my own way over the sands.

  "The streets are crowded with sailors from everywhere. You'll hear five or six different languages," my mother said.

  I started to say I'd have liked to go over to busy Breedestraat and see the sailors. Then I reminded myself, See them? How could I? Sometimes even I forgot I was blind.

  I'd been to our main shopping area a thousand times. My favorite shop was the Pinto and Vinck Ten Cent Store, but I also liked the Yellow House and Liverpool Drygoods of Arnold Valencia. In the doorway of the Ten Cent Store was a poster of a pretty girl: Ik Gerbruik Pepsodent Tandpasta (I Use Pepsodent Toothpaste), with another message at her feet: U Ook? (You Too?). Dutch words. I wondered if it was still there.