Timothy of the Cay

  The hallucinations never came at the same time of day and I could not program them, couldn't order my mind to see something, then have it appear.

  I think it was on the afternoon of the fourteenth day after the operation that I saw Timothy. He was standing in the water up to his knees, and I was certain he was at the south beach of our cay, though I'd never seen it, of course. He wasn't saying anything, just smiling at me.

  I knew on that day that my curtain of darkness would soon roll back.

  It happened in the early morning two days later. I awakened to an orange light in the room. The nurses had never drawn the blinds; there had been no need for that. The orange light filled the room and the walls were indeed green. I looked around, my heart thudding. I can see, I said to myself. I can see ...

  Just to test myself, I looked at the glass of water on the bedside table, then touched it. It was no Anton's Syndrome glass, no hallucination glass. It was real, full of water.

  I jumped out of bed and went to the window and looked out. It was dawn over New York City. I saw skyline and streets and buildings and people and cars and trucks.

  I whirled around and ran down the hall, shouting, "I can see! Timothy, I can see! I can see."

  One of the night nurses grabbed me and said, "Yes, yes, yes ... please hush..." and got me back to my room, where I sat by the window, just looking out, as the orange light of sunrise turned to yellow. I was seeing daylight for the first time since April.

  The nurses called my mother and Dr. Pohl, and about a half hour later he rushed into the room, wearing a sweat shirt, his hair mussed. There were tears in the eyes of that rough, gruff man. I saw them, glistening like morning dew. He hugged me, murmuring, "Thank God, oh, thank God..."

  24. The Hato

  MARCH 1942—Timothy was trying to hold his temper in the King's Wharf office of Archibald and Sehade, Shipping Agents, St. Thomas, V.I. Archibald, a fat baldheaded bukra, sweating behind a big mahogany desk in his shirtsleeves, said, "Papa, why dontcha go back home an' sit in your rockin' chair on the front porch. You're too old to go to sea..."

  "Ah only sold mah schooner two year ago," Timothy replied. "Ah sailed 'er till the day Ah sold 'er..."

  "What's that got to do with today?"

  "Yuh put up a poster on de wharf oskin' experienced men to go to sea 'cause o' de wahr..."

  It was a War Shipping Administration poster, printed by the government: Merchant Seamen, The Allies Need You. Small print instructed local applicants to contact Archibald and Sehade, agents for the WSA.

  "Ah bin to sea more'n fifty year," Timothy said, stubbornly.

  "You look it," said Archibald, shuffling papers on his desk. Timothy's crinkly hair had turned white.

  "Ah'm not oskin' to be a coptin..."

  Archibald laughed. "I'm glad of that."

  "Ah'll sign on as an AB." An able-bodied seaman.

  In the oilskin packet in Timothy's hand were Coast Guard papers certifying him as both an able-bodied seaman and a master of sailing vessels up to five hundred tons.

  Archibald sighed. "Papa, fightin' a war is a young man's game. You'd get in the way."

  "Sirrah, don' call me Papa. My name is Timothy. Ah want to do mah part."

  Archibald sighed again. "All right, Timothy. I might send you to a ship but I guarantee you the master'll refuse to sign you on. He'll tell you to go home an' sit in your rocker."

  Timothy didn't reply, just stayed firmly in his chair across from Archibald, straw hat on his knee, papers resting on the other one.

  "Show me watcha got," said Archibald.

  Timothy carefully extracted both his master's license and the AB papers and passed them over to the agent.

  Archibald frowned. "What's this 'unknown' for your date of birth? You don't know when you were born?"

  "No, sir."

  Archibald shook his head. "What do you think?"

  "Oh, Ah'm sixty."

  Archibald was writing on a slip of paper. "I should add ten to that."

  Timothy remained silent. He remembered Wobert Avril telling him to say he was sixteen when he shipped out on the Gertrude Theismann a half century ago. Now he'd claimed he was younger than he really was.

  "Timothy Gumbs, that your right name?"

  "Yes, sirrah."

  Just before he got his own schooner, Charlie Bottle had taught him how to spell "Timothy Gumbs." Up to that time, he'd signed everything official with an X. But in his own mind, he was still just "Timothy," no last name.

  "Okay, I'm sending you to a trampship called the Hato. She's tied up at the West Indian docks..."

  Timothy knew the Hato. He'd seen her many times. She "tramped" around between Miami, Havana, Porto Rico, St. Thomas, Curaçao, and Panama, carrying whatever cargoes she could pick up. She was old and small, and that was fine. She looked clean, the sign of a good master.

  "The captain told us yesterday he was short an AB."

  Timothy nodded.

  Archibald continued. "If he won't take you, don't bother me again. Go back to your front porch. If he does take you, you don't need to worry about getting hit with a torpedo. No German U-boat would waste one on a ship that small." He returned the papers.

  "Ah thank yuh," Timothy said, rising. He went out into sunlight filtered by a rain shower.

  He hadn't really been happy the last two years, since selling the Hannah Gumbs. He now thought he'd made a mistake by retiring. He missed going to sea. Playing dominoes with other old sailors up by the Market Place, listening to all the chatter, walking the waterfront, wasn't much of a substitute for weighing anchor and raising the sails, putting Flamingo Point to the stern. He wasn't ready for the rocking chair and didn't have a front porch. He lived in a boardinghouse on Torve Strade. At times he was quite lonely. At sea he'd never been lonely.

  From the waterfront he could see the neat Hato, with a black hull and a white midships structure, tied up to the West Indies docks across St. Thomas harbor. He began the long walk on the curved road that flanked the harbor, hoping that the master of the Hato would be an elderly gentleman and appreciate the skills of a seasoned mariner.

  An hour later, he stood opposite the little ship, studying her. She was working cargo, loading it, and even in that messy situation she remained tidy. He saw no rust on her, no streaks of oil, no frayed lines or tattered flags. For a trampship she'd had loving care. He nodded in satisfaction.

  The Hato, registered out of Curaçao, owned by her Dutch captain, was 205 feet in length, 32 feet in width; 498 gross tons. Steel hulled, diesel powered. She'd been built in Hellevoltsluis, Holland, in 1921.

  But Timothy had to agree with Archibald. Only a very hungry U-boat commander would attack her. She was like a minnow compared to the huge tankers that sailed in and out of Curaçao.

  Timothy wished himself good luck and walked up her gangway.

  Next morning, he helped heave in the stern lines as the Hato got underway for Curaçao, where she would load more cargo, then sail on to Panama.

  25. The Audaz Adventurero

  EARLY APRIL 1943—My father chartered the Audaz Adventurero, a sleek twenty-four-foot sloop, in Cristobal, and we stocked it with enough food and water for ten days, then set sail northwest across Clark Basin, the calm seas off Panama and Costa Rica.

  A light breeze shoved us along at about four knots, the sloop behaving nicely. She handled well, my father said, and if the winds were favorable we'd arrive in the area where I thought the Devil's Mouth was located in about four days.

  Excitement mounting hourly, I studied the chart laid out on the deck of the small cockpit well. En route, we'd pass the inhabited San Andres Island, the uninhabited Albuquerque and Bolivar cays, and other tiny islands, some dotted with palm trees. The sailing direction book describing them was by my knees.

  My father was at the tiller, steering. The air was warm and the blue sea glistened. Far to the west, rolls of white clouds hung over Costa Rica's mountains.

  Looking down at the chart, I said, "I wis
h we had time to visit all of them."

  "So do I," he answered, eyes searching from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He was worried about those uncharted coral reefs lurking just beneath the surface—the same worry that Captain Murry and Timothy had mentioned.

  Earlier, I'd stood on the bow at lookout when we'd gone near some white-water reefs.

  Cayo del Este sits on a coral bank about 24 miles northeast of Cayos de Albuquerque. The narrow island is about five hundred yards long and only four feet high. Cayo Bolivar is 1.25 miles west of del Este, and Cayo Arena 1.25 miles northwest of del Este. Fishermen's huts stood on these cays. Sailing directions said that a shipwreck was on Sudeste Reef, 3.25 miles northwest of Cayo Bolivar light. I wanted to see it. Maybe on another trip?

  It would be fun, I thought, to spend a few days on each one. Exploring. Swimming. Fishing. Lying in the warm sand and looking up at the sky, daydreaming. Thinking about the shipwreck secrets of the tropic isles.

  We were in Timothy territory. The farther northwest we sailed, the more I thought of him.

  On this beautiful day, and actually for a long time now, I wished I could take back some of the things I'd said to him during the time on the raft and the first weeks on the cay. I'd called him ugly and stupid, laughed at him because he couldn't spell.

  "He was probably the wisest man I'll ever know," I said, almost to myself.

  "Who?" my father asked, glancing down at me, frowning.

  "Timothy."

  He nodded. "Wisdom comes in a lot of varieties."

  Ashamed of myself, I hadn't told either of my parents how snotty and selfish I'd been with Timothy during the first days we were together. I'd told them about writing HELP in the sand with a stick because he couldn't spell it. Oh, I felt superior to him that day.

  "A lot of people on this earth can't read or spell but that doesn't make them stupid," my father said. "You said he'd never gone to school."

  "He hadn't."

  "Can you imagine how embarrassed he was?"

  I could now. An eleven-year-old kid telling him how to spell. He'd pretended to know, I remembered.

  "I know people with college degrees who aren't wise. Being intelligent and being wise are two different things."

  Thinking back, I believe I began to think of Timothy as wise the day he wove a rope of vines that would stretch from our hut down to the beach and fire pile. The vine rope was for me to make my way back and forth. I never would have thought of it.

  Thinking back, I saw that scarcely a day went by that Timothy did not use his wisdom and experience so that I could survive.

  I put the chart back inside the cabin, which had two bunks, a small galley with a kerosene stove, and storage spaces; then I went forward with the binoculars.

  Having been blind, I no longer took sight for granted. Before I became blind, eyesight was as natural as breathing. Now I realized just how precious it was. Even though my vision was 80 percent of normal, with glasses, everything seemed sharper, the colors brighter, than before. From the time I opened my eyes in the morning until I closed them at night, I appreciated everything I saw.

  "Green turtle off the starboard bow," I yelled back to my father. I'd focused in on a big loggerhead.

  The Audaz Adventurero's wake boiled on northwest.

  26. Torpedoed

  APRIL 6, 1942—At about 2:20 A.M., in the darkest part of the night, with clouds covering the stars, the port lookout on the bridge of the long-range Nazi U-boat said, "Ziel vorn"—Target ahead—and read off the degrees. He'd seen diesel sparks in the blackness.

  Instantly, four high-powered binoculars were focused on the dim outlines of a ship.

  "She's not too big," said the watch officer, ordering speed decreased. Then he summoned the commanding officer from his bunk below.

  In a few minutes the young Kapitänleutnant came up through the conning tower in his shorts and took a look, agreeing that the target was not as large as he would have liked. But his patrol had already been very successful. He'd killed ten Allied ships, the last one a big tanker seven hours ago.

  Low on fuel and food, he was headed home to the U-boat's base in Nazi-occupied Lorient, France, and had two greased torpedoes left in the bow tubes. Scanning the outlines of the ship, he decided to save one for the future and use one for this unexpected target. He sent the boat to battle condition. Ringing bells rudely awakened those who were asleep below. Half-naked men ran to their stations throughout the slim hull.

  The First Officer always fired the torpedoes when the U-boat was surfaced, as it was now, and he was on the bridge within three minutes, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

  The Kapitänleutnant said, "We take what we can get," almost apologizing for the size of the target. "Just use one. We can come in closer." The night would hide the submarine. Many of the Allied ships were still unarmed.

  The U-boat began to maneuver to get into proper firing position.

  ***

  At two o'clock Timothy had been relieved of bridge duties to go astern and spend the rest of the watch on the Hato's fantail, on lookout. He'd steered for an hour, then stood bridge lookout for another hour.

  He went by the galley to fix a cup of hot coffee and take it out on the stern. Because of wartime conditions and the U-boat menace, the captain had ordered nighttime lookouts fore and aft.

  Timothy didn't mind the graveyard watch from twelve to four because he didn't sleep all that much, anyway. Old age, again. He spent the time slowly pacing, watching the stars when the sky was clear, watching the flying fish spring out of the sea and glide away on the ship's passage.

  The little ship was blacked out and everyone aboard was asleep, except those on watch. Timothy hadn't counted the passengers but thought there were seven or eight aboard. The Hato would discharge most of them in Panama. He'd heard several would go on to Miami, the ship's next port of call.

  Timothy was glad to be back at sea, even if he wasn't on a sailing ship. The diesel engines in this one pounded, and the exhaust, swooping down from her stack, stank. But he felt the sea under his feet and by moving forward a few feet he could avoid the exhaust smell. It was good to be a sailor again.

  Though it had been fourteen years since the Hettie Redd rolled over and came apart in the wild seas between Antigua and Nevis, seldom a week had gone by that he hadn't thought of Jennifer Rankin and the other passengers who'd drowned out there.

  There'd been a British board of inquiry at Antigua, the members concluding that Captain Timothy Gumbs had not been advised that a hurricane was approaching. No warning had been issued by the port authorities. Therefore, he was not responsible for the sinking of the Hettie Redd. The hurricane was a weather condition over which Captain Gumbs had no control.

  But Timothy clearly knew he shouldn't have sailed that day. The glassy look of the sea, the heat, the smell of the air, the gathering clouds, all told him he shouldn't sail. He'd gambled and lost.

  On nights such as this one, he thought of beautiful Jennifer Rankin, grieved for those who had died, and asked to be forgiven.

  ***

  The U-boat's First Officer shouted that the forward starboard torpedo tube was ready, bow cap off. It was wet, and the torpedo needed only the impulse from the bridge to be unleashed.

  "Bridge control," said the First.

  The attack sight, the target bearing transmitter, was on, the Hato in the center of the crosswires, aimed just aft of the midship house.

  "Lined up," said the First.

  The Kapitänleutnant nodded. Everything was going well. He knew that within a few seconds the attack table would be connected with the gyrocompass and the attack sight. After that, it was almost automatic. So long as the crosswires of the attack sight held the target, the apparatus would do its job.

  The torpedo was set at a running depth of twelve feet, to tear out the target's bottom. Speed of thirty knots.

  "Stand by for surface fire. Fire at five hundred meters..."

  The order was acknowledged from belo
w. "Tube One ready..."

  The Kapitänleutnant said, "Fire when ready..."

  The First Officer intoned, "Ready, on, on, on..." Finally, he said, "FIRE!"

  The firing button was pushed, the torpedo motor started, and two seconds later the "eel" was on its way toward the Hato.

  The Kapitänleutnant looked at his stopwatch and counted aloud. An orange ball lit the dark sea, followed by a boom.

  "Perfekt," he said.

  ***

  Timothy was thrown to the deck by the explosion that drove the Hato sideways, and even before he could stagger up, the oil drums on the afterdeck were exploding, lighting the night with fire. A wall of it raged between where he was and the bridge. He heard yells and screams, and the agony of shearing steel.

  He hesitated a moment, trying to think how he could get around the wall of fire and help those people midships. He knew they'd try to launch a lifeboat. But the flames grew hotter and higher. Abandon ship was all he could do.

  The starboard stern life raft, sitting on a wooden incline, poised to drop into the sea, had already been launched by the impact of the torpedo. In the red light that surrounded the ship he saw it about fifty feet off the stern, and he climbed up on the after rail, diving down.

  Surfacing, he swam toward the raft.

  27. The Cay

  Our first stop, Isla de Providencia (13° 21' north latitude, 81° 22' longitude west), together with Isla Santa Catalina, rose silently as we approached, shaped like a sweet potato about ten miles long and three wide, taking in several cays, one of which was palm covered. Low mountains were on both islands.

  Under a hot noon sun we soon anchored in Catalina Harbor, where the water was so clear you could see crabs crawling on the white-sand bottom. Bright-colored fish swam by. Nearby were a half dozen sea-worn turtle schooners. No one aboard them.

  Looking around, my father said, "I don't believe this. We have to be at the edge of the world." I felt the same.

  We'd gone to a strange place that few people knew of, a place so remote that its owner, Colombia, cared little about its existence. Neither did any other nation. It was just a tiny blue shape on a nautical chart. Two flashing lights marked it.