Who you Foah?

One thing that he could not stand is a homeless man who asks you for money. It really got on his nerves to see a grown man getting as low as to ask a stranger for money; to become a beggar. He made it a rule never to give money to them. To make sure they saw that he despised them and wanted them to crawl back in that hole they came out of and seal it up good and tight and starve to death.

He sat at his desk thinking about that thing down in the street having the nerve to follow him right up to the office begging for some money for his mother’s operation, and that he was a veteran, and he had an ailment that kept him from working.

He sat and looked out at the city scape and thought of the holiday he was about to have to an island in the Caribbean with crystal clear water and palm trees and forgetting what was down in the street.

'Who you foah, boy?'

I tried to figure out what that meant looking into his old, slightly blind eyes. The sun was hot. I could hear the palm trees whispering in unison with the wavelets slushing.

'You, boy. Who you for?'

'You mean, am I a nationalist?'

'Hunh? Yo fam'ly, yo fam'ly. Who yo fam'ly? You ain’t from here, for sure that.’

'Naw. No, I'm from San Francisco.'

'Frisco? I been ta Frisco aboard the SS New York outa Subic Bay back in 19 and 42 it was.'

I must have been frowning and blinking.

'Neber mind, you go down to da beach they, and look up Cap'n Miles.' He turned back to humming something religious sounding and splicing an eye splice in a dirty three-strand line. I was not there to him any longer and I did not understand why I should look up Captain Miles, but thought, why not?

I asked a couple of the fishermen who were playing dominoes on a couple of wooden crates, and sat on old plastic arm chairs in the sand, for Captain Miles. They both pointed with thumbs toward one of the many makeshift shacks on the beach, then slapped their ivories on the board.

Mosquitoes had become a norm for my strolls about Turtle Cay so when they stopped attacking my somehow uncovered parts I noticed immediately and stopped. A soft sea breeze was at a constant where I stood and that seemed to take their searching energies away from me.

A fisherman sat on a plastic chair leaning against a small board shack in the shade of its roof overhang. He was studying me with a smirk or slight smile. I nodded to him and he turned his stare to the sea. For some reason I took his looking away as an invitation and trudged through the soft white sand over to him.

'You know Captain Miles?' I queried.

He looked up at me, squinting.

'Why you wants Cap'n Miles?'

'I don't know really. I was sort of directed to him by an old fisherman sitting down there by that old building.'

'That ain't a fisherman. That's Cap'n Cyril. He is a mariner. He's sailed everywhere and has come home to die.'

My mouth was open, looking back at the building hiding the old man.

'Sit down. There's a chair inside the doorway.'

His English lost the Cay syntax, kindling my curiosity. I pulled the broken arm plastic chair out placing it at an angle to his so I could look at him and the sea at the same time.

He spoke to the sea, looking at me with glances.

'Time longer den rope, boy. Years back, I don't know how many now since only the moon and tides have been my watch and calendar, I worked in Los Angeles as a civil rights lawyer. I also had a corporate consulting business to support my civil rights passions. It drove me under and I had a little breakdown.

'My wife and I went to some analysts and eventually broke up. She's a good woman. I was just not ready to stay doing all I had pulled on myself.'

He looked over at me for a pause. 'It was never ending, you see. Like an undertaker, there was never going to be an ending to civil rights so I was working toward nothing. That was my confusion, my dilemma, and my confusion, my dilemma was persistent.

'I decided to take a holiday and followed my finger on a map to here, Turtle Cay.'

He laughed, then chuckled, then smiled broadly with lidded eyes through the wrinkles on his forehead.

'Fate pulls the line. I arrived in my confused state and looked around. It was silent here. I was in a suit... in this heat I was in a suit. I changed into a flowered shirt quick enough but the mosquitoes got my bare arms. I finally used one of my good suit shirts then and it was better. But, well, I was drinking a lot ya see. Well, I lost my back pack. I used a little back pack to run around with like that one you've got. I got drunk for I don't know how many days and lost my credit cards, passport, wallet, money, some important papers and sat there on the beach on the other side of the island with an empty clarin bottle. Clarin is a cheap Haitian rum. I even somehow lost my watch.

'The hotel tried to help but the phone lines were not good and it took a lot of time to get communications through. The fax at Cable and Wireless was the only secure link and I got some money eventually but before it arrived some of the guys I had been drinking with took me fishing so I had something to eat. They shared their grub and drink but I had to do something too, so I fished and found a direction for my life.

'By the time the money was cleared and my temporary passport arrived I was making a living on Cap'n Ervin's boat fishinin' conch and lobster and red snapper. I didn't need the transferred money and didn't give a shit about the passport. I just stayed here fishinin'.

'In time Cap'n Ervin died, bless his soul, and left me his boat. I live here at his place and at a couple of other places around here and up in Principal too, and I fish.'

I was nodding to the story. 'You found your way.'

'Oh yeah.' He looked deeply into my eyes. 'I told you that whole story. Strange. I never told it to anybody. You've got something that pulls stories out of people. I can see that now. You ought to start up a newspaper or magazine or something like that and live here and record stories. There are a lot of stories here ya know.'

I did.

Oh yeah, he wasn't Cap'n Miles.