Timothy of the Cay Read Free

girls needed to be educated, for domestic work in the mansions.
    "Timothy, sirrah." Fright made his mouth flour dry.
    "Last name!"
    "I 'ave but one name, sirrah."
    "How old?"
    "Twelve, sirrah. I tink."
    "You think?"
    Hannah Gumbs had estimated his age. She didn't know for certain. Only his unknown mother knew.
    "Yes, sirrah."
    "You want to go to sea?"
    "Yes, sirrah." Though he stood soldier stiff, his knees felt like sponges.
    "Open your mouth." The mate came closer, blowing out strong smoke.
    Timothy opened wide. He knew that slaves—like Tante Hannah, who'd been emancipated forty-one years before, in the Virgin Islands—had had to do that. Show their gums. Now he had to do it, too. He knew he did not have gum rot or other diseases. No sores.
    "Bend your head, bend it."
    The mate took one blunt fingernail to separate the hairs and examined Timothy's scalp. He was looking for lice.
    "Spread your toes, nigra boy," the mate ordered.
    Timothy bent down and opened his toes, feeling a humiliating surge of anger. But he dearly wanted the job. The mate was looking for chiggers now, he knew.
    Taking a backward step to examine Timothy's whole body, the mate said, "You look strong enough to scrub a deck."
    "Yes, sirrah."
    "Have you ever been to school?"
    "No, sirrah." With skin as black as a sea urchin, he wasn't exactly welcome.
    "Can you read or write?"
    "No, sirrah."
    "Can you count?"
    "Yes, sirrah." Timothy half lied. He could count to ten. Tante Hannah had taught him.
    "All right, Timothy. Four
kroner
a month and keep. Do you have a shirt and shoes?"
    Four Danish dollars a month, a fortune.
    "I asked you if you had a shirt and shoes!" the mate thundered.
    "I 'ave a shirt, sirrah."
    "Get a pair of shoes. We're going to New York. Your feet'll freeze. I don't need frozen feet on this ship."
    "Yes, sirrah."
    The tobacco-smelling mate walked away and Timothy twirled around, permitting himself a wide smile, then leapt off the
Amager.
He began to run the second his feet hit stone; threaded and dodged through the light rain west toward "Back o' All," the poorest section of Charlotte Amalie, a squatter village.
    Among the collection of one-room wooden shacks in Back o' All, where the coal carriers lived, was the one belonging to Hannah Gumbs. Feet flying in rhythm with his joy, Timothy hadn't known such excitement in however many years he'd been on earth.
    Shoes? He'd never worn shoes in his life. The soles of his feet were tough as a leopard shark's back. But, yes, he'd find a way to get shoes. Nothing would stop him. Nothing would "harl" cold water on his soaring spirit at this moment.
    He trotted along the inner edge of the harbor for a quarter mile, then turned sharply inland and began running up a low hill.
    St. Thomas was a series of ridges and hills, some of them steep. Crown Mountain was fifteen hundred feet up. Some streets were no more than stone steps upward. Most of the rich people lived in the high hills, not the lowlands, wary of the hurricanes that visited occasionally. Everyone prayed that the island be spared at the beginning of the "tempis" season and prayed again in thanks at the end if it was bypassed.
    Timothy ran on.

3. Panama
    From the iron-railed bed in the Canal Zone's naval hospital I asked my mother, "Do you remember the old sailor we saw on deck the second day out, chipping paint?"
    Timothy had been the oldest, biggest, and blackest of the SS
Hato
crew. Six-feet-two or -three when he stood up on our raft. His shoulders and arms were massive, heavily muscled from years of hard work. He hadn't shrunk very much from old age.
    "No, I don't remember him."
    I looked in my mother's direction. Without thinking, I'd been turning my head toward any sound for months. A bird, an aircraft, footsteps, a voice. Her voice. Sounds had become very important to me.
    A hint of her favorite French perfume drifted over from where she sat by the right edge of my bed. I remembered the delicate odor. Smells had also become very