I saw Henrik van Boven occasionally, but it wasn’t the same as when we’d played the Dutch or the British. He seemed very young. So I spent a lot of time along St. Anna Bay, and at the Ruyterkade market talking to the black people. I liked the sound of their voices. Some of them had known old Timothy from Charlotte Amalie. I felt close to them.
At war’s end, we moved away from Scharloo and Curaçao. My father’s work was finished.
Since then, I’ve spent many hours looking at charts of the Caribbean. I’ve found Roncador, Rosalind, Quito Sueño, and Serranilla Banks; I’ve found Beacon Cay and North Cay, and the islands of Providencia and San Andrés. I’ve also found the Devil’s Mouth.
Someday, I’ll charter a schooner out of Panama and explore the Devil’s Mouth. I hope to find the lonely little island where Timothy is buried.
Maybe I won’t know it by sight, but when I go ashore and close my eyes, I’ll know this was our own cay. I’ll walk along east beach and out to the reef. I’ll go up the hill to the row of palm trees and stand by his grave.
I’ll say, “Dis b’dat outrageous cay, eh, Timothy?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THEODORE TAYLOR was born in North Carolina and began writing at the age of thirteen as a cub reporter for the Portsmouth, Virginia, Evening Star. He left home at seventeen to join the Washington Daily News as a copy boy, worked his way toward New York City, and became an NBC sportswriter at the age of nineteen. Since then he has been a manager of prizefighters, a merchant seaman, a naval officer, a magazine writer, a movie publicist and production assistant, and a documentary filmmaker. He has written many books for adults and children, including The Cay, which won many literary awards, including the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was made into a movie. Mr. Taylor lives in Laguna Beach, California.
Helen adored her beautiful golden Labrador from the first moment he was placed in her arms, a squirming fat sausage of creamy yellow fur. As her best friend, Friar Tuck waited daily for Helen to come home from school and play. He guarded her through the long, scary hours of the dark night. Twice he even saved her life.
Now it’s Helen’s turn. No one can say exactly when Tuck began to go blind. Probably the light began to fail for him long before the alarming day when he raced after some cats and crashed through the screen door, apparently never seeing it. But from that day on, Tuck’s trouble—and how to cope with it—is the focus of Helen’s life. Together they fight the chain that ties him down and threatens to break his spirit, until Helen comes up with a solution so new, so daring, there’s no way it can fail.
Available now from Yearling Books
The Cay Page 9