Timothy of the Cay (11 page)

"Mind if I sit here?" She sounded young.

"Fine."

"A lot of people, especially in this town, have wondered about being stranded on a tropical island. I'm almost envious."

"It was different," I said.

"I read that there was an old Negro with you. And a cat."

"Yes. Timothy died on the cay but my cat's in Curaçao."

"How long have you lived down there?"

"Two years, including the time on the cay."

"Some people have all the luck." Then she paused before saying, "Phillip, I'm going to do my very best to make you comfortable and keep you comfortable tomorrow. Mind if I ask you some questions? I've already talked to your parents."

"Ask whatever you want."

"Dr. Pohl said you had a tonsillectomy several years ago. Did you have any problems?"

"No, I just hated it when they put that mask over my face. The ether stinks. "

"Yes, it does. I plan to have the nurse give you a sedative very early in the morning so that you'll be almost asleep when they wheel you out. Did you have any aftereffects?"

"I was sick to my stomach when I woke up. My throat hurt. They wouldn't let me have any water. Just an ice cube to suck on. "

"That was because of surgery on your throat. This time you can have all the water you can hold."

I nodded, then asked her about something that had been worrying me for almost a week, ever since the morning in Dr. Pohl's office. "Will I feel it or hear it when they start to drill?"

"I guarantee you won't. That's my job. You won't feel a thing," she said.

"How about when I wake up?"

"I'll be honest with you, Phillip. You won't feel very good. You'll feel very tired and weak. The back of your head will hurt."

"Do you think I'll be able to see?"

"Oh, I hope so," she said. "Dr. Pohl is one of the finest surgeons in the world. He works miracles."

I said, "I hope so, too."

She reached over and took my hand, squeezed it, then I heard her getting up. The chair squeaked on the linoleum floor. "The nurse will give you a sleeping pill at nine o'clock so you'll get a good night's rest, and I'll see you at six
A.M.
"

She said, "Sleep well," and then her heels squeaked as she went away. I could always tell when someone was coming in and out by their heel squeaks. Her perfume lingered.

"Well, look at you," said the nurse when she came in at nine o'clock with the sleeping pill. "I like the shape of your head. No bumps."

"Do I look funny?" I asked, rubbing my palm back over my totally bald head.

"You look different. I tell any patient who has to be shaved that the hair starts growing back within two hours. It does. By the end of the week you'll feel stubble."

"Is that true?"

"Absolutely! Now, take this pill...." She put it into my left hand, giving me a glass for the right one.

I swallowed the pill.

She fluffed my pillow and said, from habit, "Lights out."

I didn't argue.

Then she took my hand and held it a moment. "I go off at midnight, but I want to tell you not to worry. If there is one patient in this hospital who'll get the 'A' treatment, it's you. I'll be back on duty at four tomorrow afternoon."

She leaned over and kissed my forehead.

"G'night," she said, and squeaked away.

The hospital noises, softer now, floated in again. I remember thinking about that first hour of being blind. I was on the raft, of course, so frightened that I could hardly breathe. If your sight fades slowly, then I think you are finally prepared when all light is lost. When it is sudden, you panic.

Timothy held me tight during that first hour, I remembered. Real tight.

APRIL
1890
—Trace of a smile around his lips, eyes warm with memory, Timothy stood on the dew-wet deck of the SS
Bartolina
in the early-morning coolness as St. Thomas arose in the distance. The faint green dome of Crown Mountain welcomed him home. He'd been looking forward to this moment for four years.

After going to Rio, then to New York, on to France, then back to New York—a voyage of seven months—the
Gertrude Theismann
had made five more coffee runs to Rio and another to England, never coming near the Leeward Islands. He'd finally "jumped her," left without permission, a month ago.

As Tante Hannah would say, "De crab nebbah forget 'e hole."

Tante Hannah.
Mr. Tanner, the chief mate of the
Theismann,
had been kind enough to write two short notes for Timothy to mail to Back o' All, telling her he was alive; that he thought of her constantly; that he missed her and loved her. There was no way of knowing whether or not she'd received them.

Main thing now, he was headed home at last, a "workaway" sailor, exchanging work with the
Bartolina's
deck crew for passage from New York to St. Thomas. This was often done when a sailor had little or no money.

He'd changed. He knew he'd changed, in his body and in his head. After leaving the island as a boy, he was returning as a man of eighteen, more than six feet in height, body heavily muscled from days and nights of heaving on lines and grappling with sails, fair weather or storm.

He'd learned much aboard the
Theismann,
even from the Bajan. But now he swore that never again would he leave his own sea, the summery Caribbean, his gentle islands and cays. The two trips across the Atlantic had taught him about gales and snow and ice. From now on, he'd sail where palm trees grew and trade winds caressed, where the sky and the ocean stayed blue most of the time. He still didn't like shoes.

"Dere 'tis, my islan'," he said to a
bukra
sailor standing nearby him.

The early sun was lighting up Crown Mountain.

"I bin homesick foh
four
year. Feel de wahrm win'..." He tilted his head toward Crown Mountain, his smile increasing until it was as brilliant as the sun.

"Who are you going home to?" the sailor asked.

"My Tante Hannah, de womahn who raise me."

"No girlfriends?" the sailor asked.

Timothy laughed. "None dat I know of." Girls hadn't been on his mind four years back. Going to sea had been about the only thing in his head. Maybe girls would enter his life now.

"You plan to stay ashore?"

He'd thought about that a lot. He thought he'd stay with Tante Hannah for a while, take up where he'd left off: go fishing with Wobert Avril, spend some time with Charlie Bottle, then find a job on an interisland schooner. Go down the Leewards and the Windwards.

First, though, was Tante Hannah. "Ah tink Ah'll be sittin' ashore foh a while."

Hidden under his mattress in crew's quarters were gifts for her from Rio, France, and England. In a leather sack tied to his waist were twenty-six gold dollars. Six would go to her; twenty would go to the Bank of Denmark, toward his own schooner. That dream was as much alive as it had been when he was twelve.

"Evah bin downg here?" Timothy asked, shifting his look to the sailor.

"No."

"Ah, go to Magen's Bay, jump into de wahrm wattah, den sit 'neath a coconut palm. Dat's whot I plan to do..."

Get his feet and bottom into warm sand again.

***

Thick black smoke coiled up from the stack of the
Bartolina,
the first steamship Timothy had ever boarded. Though it was steadier and sometimes faster than the
Theismann,
Timothy missed the quietness and cleanliness of the bark. The coal-burner's engine thudded and the iron hull shook. Another reason to return to sailing.

Breakfast call sounded an hour out of St. Thomas, Crown Mountain growing closer with each turn of the propeller. Then the bo'sun, a
bukra
this time, kinder than the Bajan, issued orders to prepare the ship for entry to port.

Timothy's pulse quickened. It seemed even more than four years since he left the island.

Salt Cay and West Cay were in sight as the
Bartolina
steered southeast to round the tip of St. Thomas. Soon she'd round Turtledove Cay and Saba Island, then steer east until time to swing north and steam up the channel into the harbor.

Twenty minutes later he saw the powder magazine and gun batteries on the tip of Hassel Island. In the distance, on St. Thomas's shore, were Fort Christian and King's Wharf, where he'd spent those hours watching sailors and ships.

His excitement mounted as the ship put Flamingo Point, on Water Island, abeam. Now the route was a few hundred yards east of Hassel, and there was the
Glory
waiting off the port bow to help her into the West India Company berth in the harbor itself.

***

Within minutes after the
Bartolina
was tied up, Timothy trudged along the dirt road that circled the harbor, going westward along the waterfront toward Crown Bay. Slung across his back, a canvas bag that he'd sewed together on the
Theismann
held his few possessions. In his right hand, wrapped in oilcloth, were Tante Hannah's gifts—a dress and a red parasol from France, a hat from Rio, a bracelet from England. He couldn't wait to see her face as she looked at them, then tried on the hat.

They would talk for days, he thought, because Tante Hannah had never left St. Thomas in all her life—not even to go to St. John or St. Croix. She knew no other island, and now he could tell her what was beyond the horizon and what had happened to him there.

He hurried his steps as he came closer to Back o' All and broke into a trot to go up the hill. Very little had changed on the waterfront and along the row of warehouses. Some of the same down-island schooners were in port but he didn't stop to say hello. He'd come back later.

Finally, he reached the top of the hill, expecting to see Tante Hannah out by the iron wash kettle, see
bukra
clothes on the line. He planned to sweep her off her feet, hug her, kiss her, tell her how much he'd missed her.

He slowed and then stopped. There was no kettle in the yard of her shack, no Tante Hannah stirring it, no clothes on the line. Someone was sitting on the doorstep, a woman—but she wasn't Tante Hannah. He'd never seen the woman before. Then he heard a baby crying, the sound coming from inside the shack. A baby in Tante Hannah's house?

Suddenly uneasiness turned to alarm as he stood there, staring at the thin-faced woman. She stared back. He took a few more steps, then asked, "Whe' be Hannah Gumbs?"

"Her lamp done went out." The young woman's eyes were remote.

"Don' fool wit' me," Timothy said angrily. Tante Hannah was strong and healthy.

"Her oil gone," said the woman, who looked to be in her twenties.

Timothy found it hard to breathe. "When?"

"Two year ago. Who yuh be?"

"Her son." Yes, he was her son, as much as there was a son anywhere on earth.

"Two year ago," the woman repeated.

"I don' believe yuh."

The woman shrugged. "She gone. We lib here..."

No one owned property in Back o' All. When someone died, it was fair game unless a relative moved in quickly. Quickly meant within hours.

Timothy turned his back and walked slowly toward Mama Geeches's, his feet leaden, pain crushing him from inside. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

It wasn't possible. Tante Hannah had never been sick.

A smell of incense drifted out of Mama Geeches's shack. She always lit it with candles, twenty or thirty of them burning even in daylight. Mama Geeches, when she wasn't on her feet, stayed atop an old hospital bed. Her customers sat beside it on a stool.

Dropping his sea bag, Timothy looked in. She was fully dressed but dozing, no matter that it was ten o'clock in the morning. Steeling himself in the doorway against the truth, he said sharply, "Mama Geeches, wake up."

Her eyes fluttered open and she squinted. "Who be yuh?"

"Timothy. Tante Hannah's son. Wher' be she?"

"Otha side she gone."

The other side. Timothy had never liked the word but had to know. "Dead?"

Mama Geeches nodded.

"How?"

"Heart done gib out. She jus' dropped in de yard doin' wash foh de
bukra...
"

Timothy nodded and picked up the sea bag to walk slowly away from Back o' All.

The same strong smell of sewer and cooking over open fires was in the air. The shantytown looked even poorer after four years.

He went to the very edge of it, then sat down and sobbed.

***

Charlie Bottle said, "She buried on Estate Alborg, near her mama and papa..."

Charlie said he made her pineboard coffin himself and then used his hay cart to transport her from Back o' All to the estate. Because she was a weedwoman, almost everyone in shantytown turned out for the procession in their finest. The procession was a quartermile long, he said.

"Ah kept her 'ead pointed wes'."

That meant her feet were toward the donkey's tail as it drew the cart. Head to the east invited Loupgarau and Soucayant and the
jumbis
to walk beside the procession.

Timothy nodded. He was still in shock. He'd done a terrible thing. He'd stayed away too long. He'd thought Tante Hannah would never die.

"Yuh lookin' good," said Charlie Bottle. "Yuh growed up."

Timothy nodded, then said to Charlie Bottle that he'd see him later. He gave Charlie the gifts he'd bought for Tante Hannah, saying, "Fo' yuh womahn."

He wanted to go to Estate Alborg and pay his respects.

On the way he picked some red hibiscus, Tante Hannah's favorite flower, and placed them on her grave, staying by it for more than an hour.

Then he returned to Charlie Bottle's and asked about Wobert Avril. He thought he'd like to go fishing with Wobert in the morning, clear his mind.

"He done gone otha side, too," said Charlie.

Timothy's four years away from home had been costly.

He stayed the night with Charlie and then in the morning went down to King's Wharf to find work on an interisland schooner and pursue his dream of having his own boat.

A voice, awakening me, said, "I have a pill for you."