Timothy of the Cay Read Online Free PDF Page B

engines, felt the vibrations of the fuselage, now and then a sickening bump.
    Back in civilization, I was realizing more and more each day just how precious sight was. To look out any window was now useless. To look into a mirror was now useless. Even to look down at my hands or feet was useless. The darkness held me prisoner.
    Over the engine's drone, my mother talked on and on about things that had happened the last six months. She'd done that, almost nonstop, since the moment she'd entered the hospital room in Panama. She felt guilty, my father said later.
    "Oh, Phillip, I meant to tell you..."
    Several hours later, I stepped down off the DC-3 ladder, holding Stew, Father guiding me.
    Desert heat, so different from the cay, or the moist air of Panama, bounced off the runway. Whenever the brisk northeast wind stopped for a few hours, the heavy smell of oil from the refinery at Emmastad settled over the island and people held their noses. Willemstad didn't smell bad; it stank. This day I didn't mind the acrid odor.
You're home, safely home,
it said.
    In the hospital, I'd had mixed feelings, several times, about even coming home without being able to see. How could I sail our small boat in the Schottegat, the inner harbor? Or fish off the beach at Avila? Go to the schooner wharf by myself? Just explore around the countryside, the way I'd done before the
Hato
and the cay?
    I asked, "Has anything changed?" Dumb question. Things changed every hour.
    "More ships every week. Four days ago a convoy came in with twenty-one tankers. The Allies want us to double aviation gas production," my father said.
    Among the things I'd asked about on the destroyer were submarine attacks. The German U-boats were still out there. Not as many as in late winter and early spring, but ships were still being sunk.
    My father's hand was loosely on my elbow as we walked to a taxi after clearing immigration and customs.
    Timothy had done that for me, guided me, the first few weeks, until I learned how to use a stick and find my own way over the sands.
    "The streets are crowded with sailors from everywhere. You'll hear five or six different languages," my mother said.
    I started to say I'd have liked to go over to busy Breedestraat and see the sailors. Then I reminded myself,
See them?
How could I? Sometimes even
I
forgot I was blind.
    I'd been to our main shopping area a thousand times. My favorite shop was the Pinto and Vinck Ten Cent Store, but I also liked the Yellow House and Liverpool Drygoods of Arnold Valencia. In the doorway of the Ten Cent Store was a poster of a pretty girl:
Ik Gerbruik Pepsodent Tandpasta
(I Use Pepsodent Toothpaste), with another message at her feet:
U Ook?
(You Too?). Dutch words. I wondered if it was still there.
    Someone would have to guide me over the Queen Wilhelmina drawbridge, which spanned the Waaigat inlet, then into the streets. Finding my way would take time.
    On the cay, I'd wondered which was worse: to be born blind or to have your sight suddenly taken away. I'd quickly decided that being born blind was the worst. Never to see a bird, the sky, the sun or moon. Even for a while.
    The drive to Scharloo, the district in which we lived near the ship channel that extended to the refinery, usually took about twenty minutes. Curaçao is only thirty-eight miles long and nine wide at the widest, between Jan Thiel Bay and Playa Canao. I well remembered how that cross-island road looked the last time I'd seen it. Here and there those strange
divi-divi
trees, their branches shaped by the wind. All kinds of cactus,
machineel
trees, and manzanilla bushes along the road.
    Most people think that every Caribbean island has lots of coconut palms, jungle plants, and wide, white-sand beaches. Our island was rocky, a desert type with cactus everywhere. Any palms we had were shipped in from South America. Our beaches were small, their sand coarse. There wasn't much rainfall, and tankers brought in fresh water as ballast.
    "How be yuh