The Cay Read Online Free Page B

picked up, blowing fine chill spray across the raft. Then the stars came out.
    We stayed in the middle of the raft, side by side, as it drifted aimlessly over the sea. Stew Cat rubbed his back against the bottoms of my feet and thencurled up down there. I was glad because he was warm.
    I was thinking that it was very strange for me, a boy from Virginia, to be lying beside this giant Negro out on the ocean. And I guess maybe Timothy was thinking the same thing.
    Once, our bodies touched. We both drew back, but I drew back faster. In Virginia, I knew they’d always lived in their sections of town, and us in ours. A few times, I’d gone down through the shacks of colored town with my father. They sold spicy crabs in one shack, I remember.
    I saw them mostly in the summer, down by the river, fishing or swimming naked, but I didn’t really know any of them. And in Willemstad, I didn’t know them very well either. Henrik van Boven did, though, and he was much easier with them.
    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 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’islan’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.
    He shook his head. “I ’ave no recollection o’ anythin’ ’cept dese islan’s. ’Tis pure outrageous, but I do not remember anythin’ ’about a place called Afre-ca.”
    I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not. He looked pure African. I said, “What about your mother?”
    Now, there was deep laughter in his voice. “ ’Tis even more outrageous I do not remember a fatha or my mut-thur. I was raise by a woman call Hannah Gumbs.…”
    “Then you are an orphan,” I said.
    “I guess, young bahss, I guess.” He was chuckling to himself, rich and deep.
    I looked over toward him, but again, he was just a shadowy shape, a large mound. “How old are you, Timothy?” I asked.
    “Dat fact is also veree mysterious. Lil’ more dan sixty, ’cause d’muscle in my legs b’speakin’ to me, complain all d’time. But to be true, I do not know exact.”
    I was amazed that any man shouldn’t know his own age. I was almost certain now that Timothy had indeed come from Africa, but I didn’t tell him that. I said, “I’m almost twelve.” I wanted him to know I was almost twelve so that he would stop treating me as though I were half that age.
    “Dat is a veree important age,” Timothy agreed. “Now, you mus’ get some natural sleep. Tomorrow might be a veree long day, an’ we ’ave much to do.”
    I laughed. There we were on that bucking raft with nothing to do except watch for schooners or aircraft. “What do we have to do?” I asked.
    His eyes groped through the darkness for mine. He came up on his elbows. “Stay alive, young bahss, dat’s what we ’ave to do.”
    Soon, it became very cold and I began shivering. Part of it was coldness, but there was also fear. If the raft tipped over, sharks would slash at us, I knew.
    My head was aching violently again. During the day, the pain had been dull, but now it was shooting along both sides of my head. Once, sometime during the early night I felt his horny hand on my forehead. Then he shifted my body, placing it on the other side of him.
    He murmured, “Young bahss, d’wind ’as shift. You’ll be warmer on dis side.”
    I was still shivering, and soon he gathered me against him, and Stew Cat came back to be a warm ball against my feet. I could now