Timothy of the Cay (7 page)

"Timothy said that under the skin we're all the same."

"I'm not interested in what Timothy had to say about this subject."

That ended the conversation.

OCTOBER
1884
—In early morning, still thinking about what Tante Hannah had said the night before about slavery, Timothy was fishing in Wobert Avril's rowboat. They were anchored near the coral reefs off Galosh Point, hand-lining for grouper at about thirty-five feet. Also down there were snapper, jack, mackerel, barracuda, and bonito. But fat grouper was what they were after.

Later, when the sun was fully out, they'd be able to see the fan-covered reefs and the fish.

Though he was sometimes foggy headed after a night with Demon Rum, old Wobert knew more about fish and birds and the sea than any man alive. Timothy was sure of it. He knew the winds and the stars and the reefs. He knew the islands and cays all the way south to Trinidad and Tobago, west to the Morants and Providencia. Timothy wanted his knowledge.

Tante Hannah had told Timothy, "Lissen to de ol' mahn, all de ol' mahn, iffen dey wise. Den yuh be wise."

Timothy thought of Wobert as his grandfather. He looked like a grandfather and talked like a grandfather. He often said, "Riddle me dis, or riddle me dat..."

Wobert told the best stories about fish and
jumbis,
the evil spirits. Timothy both believed them and didn't believe them at the same time. Once, Wobert told him about catching a "barra" that was seven feet long. Timothy didn't think that any barracuda could be seven feet long. Four feet, maybe even five. Never seven.

Wobert showed him the palm of his right hand where the line had cut an inch deep until the barra broke it. And one morning about ten o'clock, Wobert said, breathlessly, "Look downg, look downg!" Timothy looked down and there was a seven-foot barracuda swimming slowly by them, one big eye cocked at the boat.

Wobert's best story about
jumbis
was the one where Mama Geeches battled a
jumbi
under the stairwell of Hotel 1829. She was the "obeah" lady who lived in Back o' All and cast spells. The smoke
jumbi
was threatening to burn the hotel down until Mama Geeches, who was less than four feet tall, fought it and killed it with ground up butterflies. Her throat and private parts had gotten scratched. Wobert had seen her throat scratches but not the others.

Until he'd gotten a knee busted in a storm off Barbuda, Wobert had sailed the Caribbean and offshore Atlantic for forty-four years. "Fo'ty-foe," he reminded everybody. Now his right knee was about as stiff and useless as a gravestone. He walked peg legged, like his right one was wooden. He could no longer get around a sailing-ship deck.

Timothy liked to sail into the harbor when they had a good catch, Wobert blowing his conch shell,
A-ooouuuu, a-ooouuuu
, to announce they had fish for sale.

Timothy wanted to talk about being a slave, but Wobert had just accidentally hooked a goatfish in the gill and was taking great care in getting it off the hook, using a cloth to protect his hands from the sharp fins.

"Nevah eat dis feesh. Don' eben let 'im stick yuh."

Timothy had heard Wobert say that every time he'd hooked an unwanted goatfish. Wobert had an old man's habit of repeating himself. As he was expected to do, Timothy asked, "Why not?"

"Pozen. 'E meks whot yuh call 'gut-rot.' Dere's a Sponish word for it,
ciga
-somethin', dat means de same. Mek yuh veree sick."

Then Timothy knew that Wobert, who had a wizened face like a dark brown nutmeg, and crinkled gray hair, would tell him, once again, that goatfish could be poison off St. Thomas but good to eat off Guadalupe. Wobert had an idea that goatfish nibbled sour coral on some reefs, not on others.

Timothy listened him out, then said the
Amager
had sailed without him.

Wobert, looking sharply from under his straw hat's brim, said, "I heerd so. Mebbe yuh better off stayin' here. Doin' land wark. Lookit whot the sea did to me." He slapped the busted leg. Though he was sixty-odd, his eyes were those of a young eagle, sharp as knife tips.

Timothy shook his head to disagree, then said he'd keep trying and changed the subject. "Yuh eber a slave, Wobert?"

Clouds were drifting in and the sun had come up, dropping yellow patches over the waters east of Galosh Point. A vagrant easterly breeze notched the blue surface, rippling it, causing tiny waves to slap against the boat's port side with a hollow sound.

Wobert's sound was a half chuckle. He said, "Oh, yass; oh, yass..." Strange, like Tante Hannah, he'd never talked about it before, as if it was something to be ashamed of. He had been twenty the year of Emancipation, he said; it was the same year he'd gone to sea.

Timothy jerked on his line and soon landed a three-pound grouper that drummed the boat's bottom with its tail. Unhooked, it still flapped as Timothy angled the stringer cord through the gills and out of the mouth, then tossed it back overboard.

"Why yuh ast?"

Timothy said Tante Hannah had said how it was with her.

Wobert said, "We all de same. Me an' her jus' got lucky we didn't 'ave to mek the trip across. We born in Saint Thomas."

Timothy said he wanted to know how it was with Wobert when he was a boy. Wobert laughed again. "Dey made me tend chickens when ah was five. Ah had
caca
'tween my toes till I was twelve."

Caca
was chicken dung, Timothy knew.

"Den day put me in de feels, holing. We dug holes 'bout four feet square, an' nine inches deep, wid heavy hoes. By noon, mah arms ached. But Ah'd git a kick in mah behin' if Ah slowed up. Next we forked manure into de holes, den planted cane cuttins..."

"Yuh do dat ebry day?"

"Only at plantin' time. Res' o' de time de chillun weeded till de cane was cut. Den de fires begun in de boilin' house, to make molasses..."

"Yuh warked all de time?" Timothy asked.

"Sunup to sundown 'cept on Sunday. In boilin' time, de mahn warked ebry day."

Wobert talked about how it was to be a slave almost until noon, when they sailed back toward shore. The last thing he said about it was, "Yuh lucky, bein' born after Freedom Day."

That was true, Timothy realized.

Wobert added, "One ting I larned when I was a chicken boy—black hens lay white eggs," then he cackled and cackled, slapping his useless leg. "Riddle me dat."

Timothy wasn't sure what he meant. He'd ask Tante Hannah later.

He trudged to Back o' All with two fat groupers. One to give away, one to cook.

***

A layer of floating whitish wood smoke made a roof over Back o' All just before sunset and trapped the rich food smells that came from the open fires outside the huts.

Tante Hannah was almost ready to take the boiling
maufé
sauce—diced pork, tomatoes, and onions, and cooked flaked grouper—from the embers and pour it over
fungi,
cornmeal shaped into balls. She stirred in some of her own handpicked bay leaves and ginger, then took a sniff. Nodding, she went back into the hut and brought out two plates.

The fair dawn weather had continued into the twilight, the trade wind picking up a cool edge in late afternoon. The heat of the charcoal would feel good once they sat down to eat.

Soon, Tante Hannah served the simple meal, saying a blessing over it before they took their first bites.

While they were eating, Mama Geeches came over uninvited and sat down by Tante Hannah. The birdlike, tiny woman, always dressed in lavender and wearing silver rings on her baby-sized fingers, was paid to chase
jumbis.
She was also paid to bring good luck.

It was said that Loupgarau, the man-spirit who took off his clothes and flew by night in a ball of fire, sucking blood from his victims, played with Mama Geeches just after she was born. He introduced her to the world of spirits, including Soucayant, the female Loupgarau.

Mama Geeches lived two huts down. She stared moodily into the fire. She shook her head when Tante Hannah offered her some
maufé
and
fungi.

Timothy had always been afraid of her, tiny though she was. He was afraid of her old-country spells and magic. There were many stories about Mama Geeches. She was neither young nor old, neither living nor dead. Even
bukras
came down from their mansions in the hills to visit Mama Geeches for one reason or another.

Finally, looking over at Timothy with sleepy dark eyes that were barely visible in the crimson glow, she said, "Pay me two
kroner
an' Ah'll sink de
Amager.
" Her voice was that of a little girl.

Was there anyone on the whole island who didn't know he'd been left behind? Mama Geeches seemed to hear everything that went on. The
Amager
was likely two hundred miles along her northerly course to New York.
Sink her?

Tante Hannah bristled at the thought. "We'll do no such ting."

Mama Geeches, still looking intently at Timothy, said, "Pay me two
kroner
an' Ah'll git yuh a good ship."

Frowning, Tante Hannah said, carefully and uneasily, "'E'll git 'is own ship when 'tis time."

Mama Geeches slowly rotated her head toward Tante Hannah to threaten, "An' it'll be a goat-mout' ship." A bad-luck ship.

Retreating, Tante Hannah said she couldn't afford two
kroner
, having just spent her savings on shoes and pants.

Mama Geeches rose and moved off into the shadows, soundless as a mongoose, for which Timothy was grateful. He let out a long
whew,
relieved.

Another such breath came from Tante Hannah.

As Mama Geeches moved beyond what they thought was hearing range, Tante Hannah said, bravely, "Don' fret, yuh know she just a silly obeah womahn." But the tense look on her face said something else. It said that she was as afraid of the miniature
jumbi
-chaser as he was. Always had been, always would be.

Like
bamboola
drums, Mama Geeches got into everybody's head and gullet with her words. Because they were mysterious words, powerful words, everybody listened.

Within his memory, Tante Hannah had paid Mama Geeches to rid their yard and hut of visiting
jumbis
several times. Once, Mama Geeches sat on the doorstep holding a chicken in her lap, talking to the chicken until it fell asleep. She sat there all night and at daybreak the chicken awakened and the
jumbi,
circling the hut like a rope of fog, departed.

Another time a
jumbi
got into Tante Hannah's left foot through a spider-bite hole and wouldn't leave. The foot swelled up like a big red banana. Weeds wouldn't cure it but Mama Geeches did. She went to the graveyard and got some dust, then added ground up chalk and pieces of snakeroot. Tante Hannah soaked her foot all night in the nearly boiling cure water, and by morning the
jumbi
swelling had gone.

So Timothy, too, believed in Mama Geeches's obeah, and that night on the plantain leaves he decided to start saving
øre
until he had two
kroner
, to make sure he wouldn't get a goat-mout' ship when he finally went to sea.

Dr. Lars Pohl's hand was firm when it shook mine, and his voice was deep and strong, even gruff. His shaving lotion smelled crisp. He soon asked the same questions that Dr. Boomstra had asked, taking notes, I think, but he wasn't as much interested in what happened on the island. He was more concerned about the headaches I'd had.

Later, my parents described him as square faced and gray haired, a large man with bushy eyebrows and a big nose. His cheeks were red. He was Danish. They said he had powerful hands with long fingers. Along with his diplomas, my father said, there were autographed pictures on his office walls. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, baseball stars of that time, among them.

He shone a light into my eyes, asking what I could see. Nothing. He felt the back of my head.

"Will I always be blind?" Instantly, I didn't want him to answer that question.

He paused, likely studying my face, then said, "To tell you the truth, Phillip, I can't say. There's a possibility that what has happened can't be reversed. In fact, there are a variety of possibilities here..." He paused again.

A variety of possibilities?
Doctor talk. I said, "But—"

"Let me finish! I've studied your X rays but cannot judge from them just how much damage has been done..."

My father had arrived in the morning, and now I felt his hand on my shoulder. He squeezed it to remind me that he was there.

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"Another procedure, and I'll get to that. But first let me try to explain, as simply as possible, what I
think,
just
think,
happened to you, Phillip. I believe that whatever struck you in the back of the head caused internal bleeding in the area of the occipital lobes..."

I frowned.
What were those?

"The function of the occipital lobes is to receive sensory information from the optic nerves, the eye nerves, and process it. They are the center of the brain for vision. Your eyes are only cameras. I think you have an AV malformation, an artery-vein malformation..."

My frown must have deepened.

"I'm showing pictures in a medical book to your parents and will also explain them to you.... Here are the normal blood vessels in Plate Eighty-four, like little bending hoses. Now we see them damaged in Plate Eighty-five. They look like clusters of grapes. With stalks. A vessel bleeds and stops and clots. Pressure builds up and another starts to bleed, and it clots. Another does the same thing—seeps and clots. I think these clots, these grape clusters, are causing your problem."

He paused to let it all sink in.

"What can you do to fix them?" I asked.

"Every one of the damaged multiple little vessels would have to be cauterized and then repaired with a metal clip or stitch to stop the bleeding. Each one would have to be identified. A very delicate operation, working up against the brain."