The Cay

Then an army officer climbed out of a truck and told us all to leave the Queen Emma bridge. He was very stern. He growled, “Don’t you all know they could shoot a torpedo up here and kill you all?”

I looked out toward the sea again. It was blue and peaceful, and a good breeze churned it up, making lines of whitecaps. White clouds drifted slowly over it. But I couldn’t see the usual parade of ships coming toward the harbor; the stubby ones or the massive ones with the flags of many nations that steamed slowly up the bay to Schottegat to load gas and oil.

The sea was empty; there was not even a sail on it. We suddenly became frightened and ran home to the Scharloo section where I lived.

Finally she said, “You’ll be safe if you do what we tell you to do. Don’t leave the yard again today.”

She seemed very nervous. But then she was often nervous. My mother was always afraid I’d fall off the sea wall, or tumble out of a tree, or cut myself with a pocketknife. Henrik’s mother wasn’t that way. She laughed a lot and said, “Boys, boys, boys.”

It was very different in Virginia, where my father had been in charge of building a new refinery on the banks of the Elizabeth River. We’d lived in a small white house on an acre of land with many trees. My mother often talked about the house and the trees; about the change of season and the friends she had there. She said it was nice and safe in Virginia.

My father would answer quietly, “There’s no place nice and safe right now.”

I remembered the summers with lightning bugs and honeysuckle smells; the cold winters when the field would be all brown and would crackle under my feet. I didn’t remember too much else. I was only nine when we’d moved to the Caribbean.

I saw a huge, very old Negro sitting on a raft near me. He was ugly. His nose was flat and his face was broad; his head was a mass of wiry gray hair. For a moment, I could not figure out where I was or who he was. Then I remembered him working with the deck gang of the Hato.

[…]

The Negro said, “You ’ad a mos’ terrible crack on d’ead, bahss […] an’ I harl you board dis raff.”

[…] His face couldn’t have been blacker, or his teeth whiter. They made an alabaster trench in his mouth, and his pink-purple lips peeled back over them like the meat of a conch shell. He had a big welt, like a scar, on his left cheek. I knew he was West Indian. I had seen many of them in Willemstad, but he was the biggest one I’d ever seen.

I then watched as he used his powerful arms and hands to rip up boards from the outside edges of the raft. He pounded them back together on cleats, forming two triangles; then he hammed the bases into slots between the raft boards. He stripped off his shirt and his pants, then demanded mine. I didn’t know what had happened to my leather jacket or my sweater. But soon, we had a flimsy shelter from the burning sun.

Crawling under it to sprawl beside me, he said, “We ’ave rare good luck, young bahss. D’wattah kag did not bus’ when d’raff was launch, an’ we ’ave a few biscuit, some choclade, an’ d’matches in d’tin is dry. So we ’ave rare good luck.” He grinned at me then.

I asked, “Timothy, where is your home?”

“St. Thomas,” he said. “Charlotte Amalie, on St. Thomas.” He added, “’Tis a Virgin Islan’.”

“Then you are an American,” I said. I remembered from school that we had bought the Virgins from Denmark.

He laughed. “I suppose, young bahss. I nevar gave it much thought. I sail all d’isaln’s, as well as Venezuela, Colombo, Panama….I jus’ nevar gave it much thought I was American.”

I said, “Your parents were African, Timothy?”

He laughed, low and soft. “Young bahss, you want me to say I true come from Afre-ca?”

“You say what you want.” It was just that Timothy looked very much like the men I’d seen in jungle pictures. Flat nose and heavy lips.

“Tell me what’s out there, Timothy,” I said. It was very important to know that now. I wanted to know everything that was out there.

He laughed. “Jus’ miles o’ blue wattah, miles o’ blue wattah.”

“Nothing else?”

He realized what I meant. “Oh, to be sure, young bahss, I see a feesh jump way fo’ward. Dat mean large feesh chase ’im. Den a while back, a turtle pass us port side, but too far to reach ’im back….”

His eyes were becoming mine. “What’s in the sky, Timothy?”

“In d’sky?” He searched it. “No clouds, young bahss, jus’ blue like ’twas yestiddy. But now an’ den, I see a petrel. While ago, a booby…”

I laughed for the first time all day. It was a funny name for a bird. “A booby?”

“Do the schooners usually come close by here?” I asked.

Again, very gravely, Timothy said, “D’mahn who feeshes follows d’feesh. Sartainly, d’feesh be ’ere. I be seen’ wid my own self eyes.”

I kept feeling that Timothy was holding something back from me. It was the tone of his voice. I’d heard my father talk that way a few times. Once, when he didn’t want to tell me that my grandfather was about to die; another time was when a car ran over my dog in Virginia.

Of course, both times had happened when I was younger. Now, my father was always honest with me, I thought, because he said that in the end that was better. I wished Timothy would be honest with me.

Again he did not answer directly. I was beginning to learn that he had a way of being honest while still being dishonest. He said, “D’place I am tinking of is call Debil’s Mout’. ’Tis a U-shaped ting, wit dese sharp coral banks on either side, runnin’ maybe forty, fifty mile….”

He let that sink in. It sounded bad. But then he said, “I do hope, young bahss, dat I am outrageous mistaken.”

“If we are in the Devil’s Mouth, how can we be rescued?” I asked angrily. It was his fault we were there.

“D’fire pile! When aircraft fly above, dey will see d’smoke an’ fire!”

“But they might just think it is a native fisherman. No one else would come here!”

I could picture him nodding, thinking about that. Finally, he said, “True, but we cannot fret ’bout it, can we? We’ll make camp an’ see what ’happens.”

“Now,” he said, “I mus’ go downg to d’reef an’ fetch langosta. We’ll ros’ it, to be true.”

I became frightened again the minute he said it. I didn’t want to be left alone, and I was afraid something might happen to him. “Take me with you, Timothy,” I pleaded.

“Not on d’reef,” he answered firmly. “I ’ave not been dere before. If ’tis safe, tomorrow I will take you.” With that, he went down the hill without saying another word. My mother was right, I thought. They had their place and we had ours. He did not really like me, or he would have taken me along. He was different.

Soon, he came to stand over me. “Now, young bahss,” he said. He seemed to be waiting.

“Yes?”

There was a silence until Timothy broke it with anguish. “Wid d’rock, say ‘help’.”

I looked in his direction and suddenly understood that Timothy could not spell. He was just too stubborn, or too proud, to admit it.

I nodded and began feeling around the sand for a stick.

He asked, “What you reachin’ for?”

“A stick to make lines with.”

He placed one in my hands, and I carefully lettered H-E-L-P on the sand while he stood above me, watching. He kept murmuring “Ah-huh, ah-huh,” as if making sure I was spelling it correctly.

I tried again but it didn’t work. I stood up, threw the palm fibers at him, and screamed, “You ugly black man! I won’t do it! You’re stupid and you can’t even spell.”

Timothy’s heavy hand struck my face sharply.

Stunned, I touched my face where he’d hit me. Then I turned away from where I thought he was. My cheek stung, but I wouldn’t let him see me with tears in my eyes.

I heard him saying very gently, “B’getting’ back to my wark, my own self.”

The rope, I thought. It wasn’t for him. It was for me.

After a while, I said, “Timothy…”

He did not answer but walked over to me, pressing more palm fronds into my hands. He murmured, “’Tis veree easy, ovah an’ under…” Then he went back to singing about fungee and feesh.

Something happened to me that day on the cay. I’m not quite sure what it was even now, but I had begun to change.

I said to Timothy, “I want to be your friend.”

He said softly, “Young bahss, you ’ave always been my friend.”

I said, “Can you call me Phillip instead of young boss?”

“Phill-eep,” he said warmly.

Because it had been on my mind I told him that my mother didn’t like black people and asked him why.

He answered slowly, “I don’ like some white people my own self, but ’twould be outrageous if I didn’ like any o’ dem.”

Wanting to hear it from Timothy, I asked him why there were different colors of skin, white and black, brown and red, and he laughed back, “Why b’fees different color, or flower b’different color? I true don’ know, Phill-eep, but I true tink beneath d’skin is all d’same.”

Herr Jonckheer had said something like that in school but it did not mean quite as much as when Timothy said it.

[…] Suddenly, I wished my father and mother could see us here together on the little island.

I moved close to Timothy’s big body before I went to sleep. I remember smiling in the darkness. He felt neither black nor white.

Timothy said that the water all around the cay was clear and that he could see many beautiful fish. Ther was brain coral and organ-pipe coral that the parrotfish would nibble

From what I could feel and hear, our cay seemed a lovely island and I wished that I could see it. I planned to walk around it at least once a day, following the vine rope from the ridge to the beach, then setting out along the sand.

I was starting to be less dependent on the vine rope, and sometimes it seemed to me that Timothy was trying hard to make me independent of him. I thought I knew why, but I did not talk to him about it. I did not want to think about the possibility of Timothy dying and leaving me alone on the cay.

I felt along it, but the rope was no longer tied to it. He’d cut the raft loose! Panic swept over me. But taking my bearing from the stake, I decided to go out into the water hoping to find the raft.

A few feet offshore, I got another bad scare. I put my foot down and something moved. In fact the whole bottom seemed to move. I lost my balance and fell headfirst into the water. I came up sputtering, and realized I’d stepped on a skate, that diamond-shaped fish with a singer tail. I’d done that once or twice at Westpunt.

Timothy, standing below to catch me if I fell, called up softly, “Phill-eep, ’Tis no shame to ease your own self back downg to d’san.”

Slowly I began to back down along the trunk. The bark was rough against my hands and feet, but what I felt most was Timothy’s disappointment. I couldn’t have been more than a few feet off the ground when I took a deep breath and said to myself, If you fall, you’ll fall in sand.

Then I started climbing again.

Timothy called up to be, “You ’ave forgot d’knife.”

I knew that if I stopped now, I’d never climb it. I didn’t answer him but kept my hands and feet moving steadily. Then I heard him shout, “You b’getting to d’top.” Palm fronds brushed my head. I grasped the base of one to pull myself up. Timothy let out a roar of joy.

It was almost as if Id’ graduated from the survival course that Timothy had been putting me through since we had landed on the cay.

It rained that night, a very soft rain. Not even enough to drip through the palm frond roof. Timothy breathed softly beside me. I had now been with him every moment of the day and night for two months, but I had not seen him. I remembered that ugly welted face. But now, in my memory, it did not seem ugly at all. It seemed only kind and strong.

I asked, “Timothy, are you still black?”

His laughter filled the hut.

Timothy spent a lot of time down at the raft, stripping off anything usable and carrying it back up the hill. He said we might never see it again, or else it might wash up the hill so that it would be impossible to launch.

Timothy was not purposely trying to frighten me about the violence of the storm; he was just being honest. He he had good reason to be frightened himself.

“In ’28 I be on d’Hettie Redd sout’ o’ Antigua when d’tempis’ hit. D’wind was outrageous, an’ d’ol schooner break up like chips fallin’ ’fore d’ax. I wash ashore from d’sea, so wild no mahn believe it. No odder mahn from from d’Hettie Redd live ’ceptin’ me.”

I must have worked for half an hour before I had him free from the trunk. He fell backwards into the wet sand, and lay there moaning. I knew there was very little I could do for him except to sit by him in the light rain, holding his hand. In my world of darkness, I had learned that holding a hand could be like medicine.

[…]

I touched his back. It felt warm and sticky. […]

Timothy had been cut to ribbons by the wind, which drove the rain and tiny grains of sand before it. It had flayed his back and his legs until there were very few places that weren’t cut. He was bleeding, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I found his hard, horny hand again, wrapped mine around it, and lay down beside him.

I went to sleep too.

At first I was angry with Timothy. I said to Stew cat, “Why did he leave us here alone?” Then as I dug, I had other thoughts.

With his great back to the storm, taking its full punishment, he had made it possible for me to live. […]

I also think that had I been able to see, I might not have been able to accept it at all. But strangely, the darkness separated me from everything else. It was as if my blindness was protecting me from my fear.

There was so much to do that I hardly knew where to start. Get a campfire going, pile new wood for a signal fire, make another rain catchment for the water keg, weave a mat of palm fibers to sleep on. Then make a shelter of some kind, fish the hold on the reef, inspect the palm trees to see if any coconuts were left—I didn’t think any could be up there—and search the whole island to discover what the storm had deposited. […]

I accomplished a lot in three days, even putting a new edge on Timothy’s knife by honing it on coral. I jabbed it into the palm nearest my new shelter, so that I would always know where it was if I needed it. Without Timothy’s eyes, I was finding that in my world, everything had to be very precise: an exact place for everything.

Holding the sharpened stick in my right hand, I slipped into the warm water, treading for a moment, waiting to see if anything came up. Then I ducked my head underwater, swam down a few feet, and came up again. I was certain that nothing was in the hole aside from the usual small fish I yanked out each morning.

After a few minutes, I had my courage up and dived to the bottom, holding the sharp stick in my left hand now, and using my right hand to feel the coral and rocks. Coming up now and then for air, I slowly felt my way around the bottom of the small pool, touching sea fans that waved back and forth, feeling the organ-pipe coral and the bigger chunks of brain coral.

I began to think of all the things on the island. Green palm fronds might send off dark smoke, but until they were dried, they were too tough to tear off the trees. The vines on north beach might bake dark smoke, but the leaves on them were very small.

The sea grape! I snapped some off, feeling it between my fingers. Yes, there was oil in it. I got up and went over to the fire, tossing a piece in. In a moment, I heard it popping the way hot grease pops when it is dropped into water.

I knew how to do it now.

In early April, I returned to Willemstad with my mother and we took up life where it had been left off the pervious April. After I’d been officially reported lost at sea, she’d gone back to Curaçao to be with my father. She had changed in many ways. She had no thoughts of leaving the islands now.

I saw Henrik van Boven occasionally, but it wasn’t the same as when we’d played the Dutch or the British. He seemed very young.