The Cay: Chapters 14–19

One very hot morning in July, we were down on north beach where Timothy had found a patch of calico scallops not too far offshore.

The sand on it felt coarser to my feet.

Timothy explained, “D’nawth is alles d'bleak beach on any islan’,” but he couldn’t say why.

It b’tell us a veree bad starm is comin’, Phill-eep. A tempis’.

However, there had been, distinctly, a crack like a rifle or pistol shot.

Next he took the remaining rope that we had and tied it securely around the same sturdy tree.

We could hear the surf beginning to crash as the wind drove waves before it and Timothy ducked back inside to stand in the opening of the hut, his big body stretched so that he could hang onto the overhead frame, keeping the hut erect as long as possible.

When the water receded, it would tug at us, and Timothy’s strength would fight against it.

He replied hoarsely, “I b’damp, but all right.”

We sat down on the ground beside it, still being pelted with rain, to wait for the eye to pass.

It was strange and eerie in the eye of the hurricane.

Almost within seconds, the full fury of the storm hit the cay once more.

Then another giant wave struck us. I lost consciousness then.

Timothy had been cut to ribbons by the wind, which drove the rain and tiny grains of sand before it. It had flayed his back and his legs until there were very few places that weren’t cut.

Feeling it everywhere under my feet I knew that the cay was littered with debris.

I piled all the palm fronds, frayed by the wind, in one place; sticks of wet driftwood in another.

They were one more part of the legacy Timothy had left me.

I accomplished a lot in three days, even putting a new edge on Timothy’s knife by honing it on coral.

Without Timothy’s eyes, I was finding that in my world, everything had to be very precise; an exact place for everything.

On the fifth day after the storm, I began to scour the island to find out what had been cast up.

It was exciting, and I knew it would take days or weeks to accomplish.

I found several large cans and used one of them to start the “time” can again, dropping five pebbles into it so that the reckoning would begin again from the night of the storm.

I found a piece of canvas, and tried to think of ways to make pants from it, but I had no needle or thread.

I heard Stew Cat snarling and felt him leap up on my back, his claws digging into my flesh.

He was growling, low and muted.

Terrified, I put my feet against the rocks to pull away. The pain was severe.

I'm sure I screamed as I broke water, flailing toward the edge of the hole.

Pain shooting up my entire arm, I lay panting on the edge of the pool and gingerly began to feel my wrist.

Only the occasional bleat of the gull gave me a picture of that bird, for I had heard and seen them many times around the sea wall in Willemstad.

I spit on the stick until I heard a sizzle. Then I knew there was enough fire or charring on it to light off the base of fried palm fronds beneath the signal fire.

Thinking any moment the plane would dive and I would hear the roar of its engines across the cay at low altitude, I stood with Stew Cat a few feet from the sloshing surf.

But I knew that the wood floating up on the beach consisted mostly of branches or stumps that had been in the water for weeks or months.

I took a deep breath and struck the next to last match. I heard it flare and ran my left hand over the top of it. There was heat. It was burning.

I could smell exhaust fumes.

The engine was now idling, and someone was coming toward me.

I don’t remember everything that happened in the next few hours but very soon I was helped up the gangway of a destroyer.

On deck I was asked so many questions all at once that one man barked, “Stop badgering him. Give him food, medical care, and get him into a bunk."

A voice answered meekly, "Yes, sir, Cap’n.”

The captain told someone to get a priority radio message off to the naval commander at Willemstad and then asked, "How did you get on that little island?"

There was still disbelief in his voice when he said he’d checked all the charts and publications on the bridge; our cay was so small that the charts wouldn’t even dignify it with a name.