Timothy of the Cay (2 page)

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.

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-water 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.

They drew him past Kronprindsen's Gade, the beginning of Main Street; drew him past the old warehouses where pirates once stored their loot; drew him past the singing coal women. He'd sit on a bollard and daydream—listening, watching.

Truly wondrous things happened on that waterfront. Three times each year the "ice ship," a four-masted bark, would arrive from New England with its cargo of blocked ice cut from far northern lakes. Timothy loved to put his cheek against the sawdust-encased blocks, feel coldness he'd never known existed. The same ship carried barrels of rum north to a place called Boston. Once, a barrel being hoisted aboard dropped and busted. Then even the sea gulls got drunk.

He knew by now to get permission to board any ship. Once, he'd been kicked in his backside for boarding without asking.

The husky sailor standing at the rail of the
Amager,
bare to his belly button, wanted to know what Timothy's business was.

"Cobbin boy I be oskin' to be."

The sailor, an island man, grunted a "you'll be sorry" laugh, then said, "See de mate, 'e'll be bock soon."

Timothy promptly took up station between the two low deck houses and waited, dry mouthed and jittery, already tempted to leap down to the wharf and forget about his wild dreams. He forced himself to stand still.

Twenty minutes later, a chunky, squat
bukra,
blond haired and blue eyed, wearing a soiled white cap, returned to the
Amager
and looked at the boy standing between the mainmast and the mizzen; he listened briefly to the sailor, then walked over.

"What's your name?" He spoke English with a Danish accent and puffed a short cigar.

The official island language was English, in schools and otherwise. Light-skinned children were encouraged to go to school. Light-skinned girls needed to be educated, for domestic work in the mansions.

"Timothy, sirrah." Fright made his mouth flour dry.

"Last name!"

"I 'ave but one name, sirrah."

"How old?"

"Twelve, sirrah. I tink."

"You think?"

Hannah Gumbs had estimated his age. She didn't know for certain. Only his unknown mother knew.

"Yes, sirrah."

"You want to go to sea?"

"Yes, sirrah." Though he stood soldier stiff, his knees felt like sponges.

"Open your mouth." The mate came closer, blowing out strong smoke.

Timothy opened wide. He knew that slaves—like Tante Hannah, who'd been emancipated forty-one years before, in the Virgin Islands—had had to do that. Show their gums. Now he had to do it, too. He knew he did not have gum rot or other diseases. No sores.

"Bend your head, bend it."

The mate took one blunt fingernail to separate the hairs and examined Timothy's scalp. He was looking for lice.

"Spread your toes, nigra boy," the mate ordered.

Timothy bent down and opened his toes, feeling a humiliating surge of anger. But he dearly wanted the job. The mate was looking for chiggers now, he knew.

Taking a backward step to examine Timothy's whole body, the mate said, "You look strong enough to scrub a deck."

"Yes, sirrah."

"Have you ever been to school?"

"No, sirrah." With skin as black as a sea urchin, he wasn't exactly welcome.

"Can you read or write?"

"No, sirrah."

"Can you count?"

"Yes, sirrah." Timothy half lied. He could count to ten. Tante Hannah had taught him.

"All right, Timothy. Four
kroner
a month and keep. Do you have a shirt and shoes?"

Four Danish dollars a month, a fortune.

"I asked you if you had a shirt and shoes!" the mate thundered.

"I 'ave a shirt, sirrah."

"Get a pair of shoes. We're going to New York. Your feet'll freeze. I don't need frozen feet on this ship."

"Yes, sirrah."

The tobacco-smelling mate walked away and Timothy twirled around, permitting himself a wide smile, then leapt off the
Amager.
He began to run the second his feet hit stone; threaded and dodged through the light rain west toward "Back o' All," the poorest section of Charlotte Amalie, a squatter village.

Among the collection of one-room wooden shacks in Back o' All, where the coal carriers lived, was the one belonging to Hannah Gumbs. Feet flying in rhythm with his joy, Timothy hadn't known such excitement in however many years he'd been on earth.

Shoes? He'd never worn shoes in his life. The soles of his feet were tough as a leopard shark's back. But, yes, he'd find a way to get shoes. Nothing would stop him. Nothing would "harl" cold water on his soaring spirit at this moment.

He trotted along the inner edge of the harbor for a quarter mile, then turned sharply inland and began running up a low hill.

St. Thomas was a series of ridges and hills, some of them steep. Crown Mountain was fifteen hundred feet up. Some streets were no more than stone steps upward. Most of the rich people lived in the high hills, not the lowlands, wary of the hurricanes that visited occasionally. Everyone prayed that the island be spared at the beginning of the "tempis" season and prayed again in thanks at the end if it was bypassed.

Timothy ran on.

From the iron-railed bed in the Canal Zone's naval hospital I asked my mother, "Do you remember the old sailor we saw on deck the second day out, chipping paint?"

Timothy had been the oldest, biggest, and blackest of the SS
Hato
crew. Six-feet-two or -three when he stood up on our raft. His shoulders and arms were massive, heavily muscled from years of hard work. He hadn't shrunk very much from old age.

"No, I don't remember him."

I looked in my mother's direction. Without thinking, I'd been turning my head toward any sound for months. A bird, an aircraft, footsteps, a voice. Her voice. Sounds had become very important to me.

A hint of her favorite French perfume drifted over from where she sat by the right edge of my bed. I remembered the delicate odor. Smells had also become very important.

My mother was a slender lady with pale blue eyes and pale skin. The last time I'd seen her, just a twisting glimpse in a fiery red glow, we both had been spilling out of the lifeboat into the dark water after the torpedo hit the
Hato.

"He was barefoot and wore a straw hat."

I wondered what she was wearing this day.

"That's his knife." I motioned to the bedside table and reached over, groping for it.

"I don't think I saw him," she said.

Not far away a ship's horn bleated. A tugboat answered. Merchantmen and warships moved through the canal night and day. Fighting was occurring throughout the world, from Europe to the far Pacific. The once peaceful Caribbean was a war zone.

"I think I saw him just before you sailed," my father said. "I wondered why a man that old was still going to sea. He looked like he was sixty-five or seventy..."

I turned toward his voice. Though he wasn't smoking in that antiseptic room, a faint apple-flavored tobacco aroma came from the foot of the bed. There was also a touch of his bay-rum shaving lotion in the air. Reassuring smells.

The last time I'd seen my father had been the previous April. Tall and lonely, he stood on the seawall of Fort Amsterdam, at Curaçao's harbor entrance. He was waving good-bye as the
Hato
put to sea. I had hated my mother at that moment for taking me away from him. But now he sounded as if no days had passed between us. Gentle of voice, always; slow and measured. He was a Virginian. My mother was from New Jersey.

"I think he was closer to seventy than sixty-five," I said, "but I'm not sure. " There was a lifetime of things I didn't know about Timothy.

"Did he ever tell you why he was out there at that age?"

"The war. There was a shortage of experienced sailors, so he volunteered. You can't believe how much he knew about the Caribbean. "

He knew the birds, the fish, the storms, the cays.

"You were lucky," my father said. "Very lucky."

That's what I'd been telling everyone.

We became silent for a moment. Had someone else been on the raft instead I might not have made it to that hospital bed.

My mother, whose dark hair always shone like glass, had sounded different from the moment she walked into the room. Subdued. Not a hint of the past's usual scolding in her voice. By tone she wasn't, for now, the taut, tense woman I'd always known.

They'd flown to Panama after the navy had told them, two days before, that I was alive and well. But blind. I'd fly back to Curaçao with them tomorrow. I really didn't need to be on that bed, but the nurses had ordered me to park there with Stew Cat and to stay out of the hallway.

My once long and tangled hair, turned straw blond (I was told) from the tropic sun, had been neatly cut. The nurses said I looked handsome and kidded me about going aboard the destroyer with no clothes on. They said I had a good tan all over and could get all the girls I wanted, including them. They flirted with me even though I was years younger. I'd had a birthday on the cay, without cake or candles. But I felt older than twelve now, much older.