The Cay

by Theodore Taylor

  My hands were tired from pulling the vines, and I just wanted to sit and think. I didn’t want to work. I said, “Timothy, I’m blind. I can’t see to work.”

  I heard him cutting something with his sharp knife. He replied softly, “D’han’ is not blin’.”

  Didn’t the old man understand? To work, aside from pulling up vines or drawing something in the sand, you must be able to see.

  Stubbornly, he said, “Young bahss, we need sleepin’ mats. You can make d’mats.”

  I looked over in his direction. “You do it,” I said.

  He sighed back, saying, “D’best matmaker in Charlotte Amalie, downg in Frenchtown, b’total blin’.”

  “But he’s a man, and he has to do that to make a living.”

  “B’true,” Timothy said quietly.

  But in a few minutes, he placed several lengths of palm fiber across my lap. He really was a black mule. “D’palm mat is veree easy. Jus’ ovah an’ under …”

  Becoming angry with him, I said, “I tell you, I can’t see.”

  He paid no attention to me. “Take dis’ han’ hol’ d’palm like dis; den ovah an’ under, like d’mahn in Frenchtown; den more palm.”

  I could feel him standing there watching me as I tried to reeve the lengths, but I knew they weren’t fitting together. He said, “Like dis, I tell you,” and reached down to guide my hand. “Ovah an’ under …”

  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, 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’gettin’ back to wark, my own self.”

  I sat down again.

  He began to sing that “fungee and feesh” song in a low voice, and I could picture him sitting on the sand in front of the hut; that tangled gray hair, the ugly black face with the thick lips, those great horny hands winding the strands of vine.

  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.

  CHAPTER

  Ten

  DURING OUR SEVENTH NIGHT on the island, it rained. It was one of those tropical storms that comes up swiftly without warning. We were asleep on the palm mats that I’d made, but it awakened us immediately. The rain sounded like bullets hitting on the dried palm frond roof. We ran out into it, shouting and letting the fresh water hit our bodies. It was cool and felt good.

  Timothy yelled that his catchment was working. He had taken more boards from the top of the raft and had made a large trough that would catch the rain. He’d picked up bamboo lengths on the beach and had fitted them together into a short pipe to funnel the rain water into our ten-gallon keg.

  It rained for almost two hours, and Timothy was quite angry with himself for not making a second catchment because the keg was soon filled and overflowing.

  We stayed out in the cool rain for twenty or thirty minutes and then went back inside. The roof leaked badly but we didn’t mind. We got on our mats and opened our mouths to the sweet, fresh water. Stew Cat was huddled in a miserable ball over in a corner, Timothy said, not enjoying it at all.

  I liked the rain because it was something I could hear and feel; not something I must see. It peppered in bursts against the frond roof, and I could hear the drips as it leaked through. The squall wind was in the tops of the palms and I could imagine how they looked in the night sky, thrashing against each other high over our little cay.

  I wanted it to rain all night.

  We talked for a long time when the rain began to slack off. Timothy asked me about my mother and father. I told him all about them and about how we lived in Scharloo, getting very lonesome and homesick while I was telling him. He kept saying, “Ah, dat be true?”

  Then Timothy told me what he could remember from his own childhood. It wasn’t at all like mine. He’d never gone to school, and was working on a fishing boat by the time he was ten. It almost seemed the only fun he had was once a year at carnival when he’d put frangipani leaves around his ankles and dress up in a donkey hide to parade around with mocki jumbis, the spirit chasers, while the old ladies of Charlotte Amalie danced the bambola around them.

  He chuckled. “I drink plenty rhum dose tree days of carnival.”

  I could picture him in his donkey skin, wheeling around to the music of the steel bands. They had them in Willemstad too.

  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’feesh 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.

  Long after he’d begun to snore in the dripping hut, I thought about it. Suddenly, I wished my father and mother could see us there 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 white nor black.

  In the morning, the air was crisp and the cay smelled fresh and clean. Timothy cooked a small fish, a pompano, that he’d speared at dawn down on the reef. Neither of us had felt so good or so clean since we had been aboard the Hato. And without discussing it, we both thought this might be the day an aircraft would swing up into the Devil’s Mouth, if that’s where we were.

  The pompano, broiled over the low fire, tasted good. Of course, we were eating little but what came from the sea. Fish, langosta, mussels, or the eggs from sea urchins, those small, black round sea animals with sharp spines that attach themselves to the reefs.

  Timothy had tried to make a stew from seaweed but it tasted bitter. Then he’d tried to boil some new sea-grape roots but they made us ill. The only thing that ever worked for him was sea-grape leaves, boiled first in sea water and then cooked in fresh water.

  But above us, forty feet from the ground, Timothy said, was a feast. Big, fat green coconuts. When we’d landed, there were a few dried ones on the ground, but the meat in them was not very tasty. In a fresher one, there was still some milk, but it was rancid.

  At least once a day, especially when we were around the hut, Timothy would say, “ ’Tis outrageous dem coconut hang up in d’sky when we could use d’milk an’ meat.” Or he’d say, “Timothy, my own self, long ago could climb d’palm veree easy.” Or hinting, and I guess looking up at them, “Phill-eep, I do believe you b’gettin’ outrageous strong ’ere on d’islan’.”

  He made a point of saying that if he were only fifty again, he could climb the tree and slice them off with his knife. But at seventy-odd, he did not think he could make it to the top.

  That morning over breakfast, Timothy said, looking to the tops of the palms, I’m sure, “A lil’ milk from d’coconut would b’good now, eh, Phill-eep?”

  As yet, I didn’t have the courage to climb
the palms. “Yes, it would,” I said.

  Timothy cleared his throat, sighed deeply, and put the coconuts out of his mind. But I knew he’d try me again.

  He said, “Dem devilin’ coconuts aside, your mutthur would never be knowin’ you now.”

  I asked why.

  “You are veree brown an’ veree lean,” he said.

  I tried to imagine how I looked. I knew my shirt and pants were in tatters. My hair felt ropy. There was no way to comb it. I wondered how my eyes looked and asked Timothy about that.

  “Dey look widout cease,” he said. “Dey stare, Phill-eep.”

  “Do they bother you?”

  Timothy laughed. “Not me. Eeevery day I tink what rare good luck I ’ave dat you be ’ere wid my own self on dis outrageous, hombug islan’.”

  I thought awhile and then asked him, “How long was it before that friend of yours, that friend in the Barbados, could see again?”

  Timothy replied vaguely, “Oh, many mont’, I do recall.”

  “But you told me on the raft it was only three days.”

  “Did I say dat?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well,” Timothy said, “ ’twas a long time ago. But ’e got ’is sight back, to be true.” He paused a moment, then said, “Now, I tell you, we got much wark to do today.”

  I noticed more and more that Timothy always changed the subject when we began to talk about my eyes. He would make any kind of an excuse.

  “What work?” I asked.

  “Now, lemme see,” he said. “For one ting, we mus’ make another catchment … an’ we mus’ go to d’reef for food … an’ …”

  I waited.

  Timothy finally exploded. “Now, dat is a lot o’ wark, Phill-eep, to be true.”

  CHAPTER

  Eleven

  TIMOTHY HAD FASHIONED A CANE for me, and I was now using it to feel my way around the island. I fell down often, but unless I fell into sea grape, it did not hurt. Even then, I only got a few scratches.

  Slowly, I was beginning to know the island. By myself, keeping my feet in the damp sand, which meant I was near the water, I walked the whole way around it. Timothy was very proud of me.

  From walking over it, feeling it, and listening to it, I think I knew what our cay looked like. As Timothy said, it was shaped like a melon, or a turtle, sloped up from the sea to our ridge where the palms flapped all day and night in the light trade wind.

  The beach, I now believed, was about forty yards wide in most places, stretching all the way around the island. On one end, to the east, was a low coral reef that extended several hundred yards, awash in many places.

  I know it was to the east because one morning I was down there with Timothy when the sun came up, and I could feel the warmth on my face from that direction.

  The sea grape, a few feet tall at the edge of the beach, and higher farther back, grew along the slopes of the hill on all sides. There was also some other brush that did not feel like sea grape, but Timothy did not know the name of it.

  To the south, the beach sloped gradually out into the water. On the north side, it was different. There were submerged coral reefs and great shelves. The water became deep very abruptly. Timothy warned against going into the water here because the sharks could swim close to shore.

  Timothy said that the water all around the cay was clear and that he could see many beautiful fish. There was brain coral and organ-pipe coral that the parrot fish 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.

  Because the rain the night before had made us hopeful, I think both of us did our chores with one ear to the sky, listening for the sound of engines. But all day we heard nothing but familiar sounds, the surf, the wind, and the cries of sea birds.

  That night after dinner, Timothy grumbled, “No aircraft! D’islan’ mus’ ’ave a jumbi.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Timothy,” I said.

  “D’evil spirit harass an’ meliss us,” he said darkly. “An’ we do not ’ave a chicken or grains o’ corn to chase ’im.”

  I said, “Timothy, you can’t really believe in that.”

  My father had told me about “obediah,” or “voodoo,” in the West Indies. It had come over from Africa, of course. Haiti was the worst of all for it, but there was some practice on all the islands. It was mixed up with religion and witch doctors.

  I knew he was looking at Stew Cat when he said, “Mebbe dat outrageous cat is d’jumbi.”

  “He’s just an old cat, Timothy,” I protested.

  Recalling everything that had happened, Timothy said, “He came board d’raff, an’ we got separated from all else; den d’young bahss’ eyes got dark, gibbin’ us exceedin’ trouble; den we float up dis hombuggin’ Debil’s Mout’ …”

  Angrily, I said, “Timothy, Stew Cat is not a jumbi. You let him alone.”

  The old man was silent, and I was suddenly worried for Stew Cat’s safety. Timothy stayed by me all night but in the morning, when I awakened, he was gone and so was Stew Cat.

  I crawled out of the hut and began to call for Stew. Then I called for Timothy. There was no answer. I went down the hill and headed up the beach toward the reef. Voodoo was silly, I knew, but it was also frightening. I couldn’t understand why Timothy thought Stew Cat was the jumbi.

  I decided to circle the island to find them. Using my cane to feel the way, to touch driftwood or coral ledges the night tide might have uncovered, I moved along the damp sand, calling out now and then.

  When I reached the north side, Timothy answered, “Marnin’, Phill-eep.”

  I asked him where he’d been.

  He laughed. “Dere is lil’ place to go ’ere. I ’ave been ’ere on dis beach.”

  “Where is Stew Cat?”

  Timothy was silent.

  I asked again.

  “B’gettin’ his own self a lizzard, mebbe, mebbe,” he answered, but there was something conniving in his voice.

  All the while, I could hear a scraping noise and, occasionally, a ring of metal. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Cuttin’ on an ol’ piece o’ wood,” he replied.

  Why would he be down on north beach this early cutting wood? I knew we had plenty for the campfire and the signal fire.

  “And you haven’t seen Stew Cat?”

  “Not a ’air,” he said.

  I wanted to see what he had in his hands, but I didn’t have the courage to walk up and touch it. I said, “Timothy, I’m very hungry.”

  I felt his hand on my wrist. He said, “We’ll go to d’hut.”

  He fixed breakfast, we ate, and then without a word, he slipped away.

  Usually, he kept his hunting knife in the tin box that had stored our biscuits. Also in that box were the dry matches we had left, a few pieces of stale chocolate, and small things that Timothy had salvaged from the beach or the raft.

  I felt a few nails, the hinges that had been on the raft’s trap door, some short lengths of rope, a piece of cork, several small tin cans, and a small roll of something that felt like leather. Nothing was missing except the knife, and I knew he’d taken it to north beach with him.

  As best I could, I searched around the hut area for Stew Cat, thinking maybe Timothy had tied him up somewhere. Yet I was certain he’d be meowing if he was within hearing distance.

  I was positive that Timothy was back on north beach cutting on that piece of wood but something told me not to go down there. So I sat by the hut wondering what to do. It was no good trying to convince him that jumbi did not exist, nor
was there any way to find Stew Cat if Timothy had hidden him.

  The morning hours passed slowly. Once, I went down to east beach to sit near the signal fire, hoping to hear the drone of an aircraft. Several times, over the stir of the wind, I thought I heard a faint meow, but I couldn’t locate the direction.

  Maybe all that had happened was beginning to work on the old man’s mind. Maybe I was stranded on a tiny, forgotten island in the Caribbean with a madman. If he harmed Stew Cat because of some silly jumbi thing, I knew he might also harm me.

  I thought about getting back on the raft and letting it drift to sea again. I was certain that there were enough boards still on top to sit and sleep on. If I could get the water keg down the hill, and the last pieces of chocolate out of the box, I’d be all right for a few days.

  I got up and went down to the water, feeling my way toward the reef. I knew that if I kept going that way, I’d touch or fall over the length of life-line rope that tethered the raft. Timothy had driven a heavy piece of driftwood into the sand so that the raft would not go out to sea with the tide.

  I walked slowly and carefully, expecting at any moment to feel the rope with my cane, or have it hit against my ankles. I went all the way to the beginning of the reef without finding it. Then I reversed my course, and walked in the other direction. Finally, I stumbled over the heavy piece of wood that Timothy had driven into the sand.

  I felt around 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 stinger tail. I’d done that once or twice at Westpunt. The skate is kin to the deadly sea ray, but this one was as shocked as I was and swam off to deep water.