Bomba

I have to cheat this week. This is a story I wrote for a college class my senior year, in 1981. The teacher liked it so much she had it published. And I found out 15 years later that she was still using it as an example of what she expected for the assignment when a former student also had her as a teacher!


It is a fictional piece, though there was indeed a real Bomba. And his experience with cars and manner of death are real. But some characteristics attributed to him in the story were drawn from my relationship with Llewlyn, another memorable figure from my childhood.




I hope you enjoy it...

Bomba

He looked at home on the waterfront. He belonged. Anywhere else, his threadbare, faded blue denim cut-offs would have looked ragged, and the grizzled stubble of his jaw sloppy. But among the coarse nets on the sandy beach, he was the king of all fishermen. Practically a god. He was well known not just on St. Croix, but on the other Virgin Islands too.

His dark, gnarled hands looked massive and awkward in contrast to the intricately carved ivory handle of the fishing knife he held. Anyone watching those hands at work would realize that they were anything but awkward.

When he cleaned fish, he handled them deftly, his hands making clean movements and wasting no motion. Yet you could feel a gentleness in his work. Those big, calloused hands of Bomba’s could work miracles. I saw them mend a bird’s broken wing as easily an as thoroughly as they cleaned a fish or spliced a rope.

I often heard him say, “I kin feel de storm comin’. I kin feel it in me bones…” But he never complained about his arthritis. Not while he was mending a net or opening a coconut for me to nibble on while we sat together on the beach weighing the philosophical questions in life.

Although Bomba had no family and few possessions, he had more than most people did. He was his own man, and being “of de ol’ worl’”, he never owed anyone anything. He didn’t believe in credit. He always earned his way. He commanded respect and no one ever tried to sway him from his ideas. He knew what he believed, and no amount of teasing or cajoling or reasoning could make him change his mind.

He smiled often, showing a mouthful of yellowed teeth – a contagious sort of smile. With great pride, he used to declare, “Dem is me own teeth, chile. De se’f same ones I was bo’n wid!” Only then did I notice the fine lines crisscrossing his face and the deep crow’s feet at the corner of his dark brown eyes. Bomba wasn’t old. He was ageless.

“Bomba…?” I suddenly felt timid, and shuffled my feet in the warm sand.

“What’s on yo’ mind, li’l miss?” He didn’t look up from the piece of driftwood he had been whittling.

“….um… How old are you, Bomba?”

Laying his wood carving at his feet, he stared intently at the back of his broad hands. He sat silent for so long that I thought he hadn’t heard me. Then, very slowly, he said, “Chile, I don’ rightly know… I was born afore dey sol’ dis ol’ island to de ’mericans. I know dat fo’ sure. I was already a young man by den.”

I had never known anyone before who didn’t know how old he was. I mean, I knew I was ten. And Daddy was fifty-two… And, well all the people I knew could tell you how old they were.

With a little help from my memory of island history, I used a stick to work the equation in the cool, damp sand. If he was already a teenager by the time the Danish sold the Virgin Islands to the 
Americans in 1917, then he must have been born sometime around the turn of the century!

He had picked up his whittling again and was quietly working away. I looked at him a long time out of the corner of my eye, knowing it would be rude to stare. Could ol’ Bomba be in his seventies?! He was so…. so nimble. No one I’d ever known could shinny up a palm tree the way he could.

A sailor from birth, Bomba skippered the Tryst, a long, sleek trimaran. Having no crew, he manned the boat himself, catering to the sunburned tourists who lay on the pontoons or lounged in the cockpit. And he always entertained them with marvelously tall fish tales.

Returning from a charter, he would set the tiller as he sailed ‘round Teddy’s point and into our mile-wide bay. He would run to the bow and give a long, deep blast on his conch shell horn.

This not only pleased the tourists, but also brought me running out onto our balcony at home. I would wave my hands excitedly and return his call on my smaller, higher-pitched horn. Then, if all my chores were done, I’d run down the path to the beach to meet him.

When he’d moored the Tryst at her spot off shore, Bomba would help his passengers down into his long, battered rowboat. With long, strong strokes, he would pull the boat toward shore. His wide, muscled shoulders made each smooth motion seem effortless.


Bomba never owned a motorboat. Oh, it wasn’t that he couldn’t afford one. Once a close friend left him a cherished outboard motor in his will. He couldn’t bring himself to sell it, so he kept it in the corner of his living room, clamped onto a sawhorse he’d made especially for the motor. A tribute to his old friend.

“I jus’ don’ trust dem t’ings,” he would say. “Dey jus’ ain’ natural. Dat is what the good Laud gave us our bodies fo’!”

Bomba was like that. He never had any use for motors. If he wanted to go into town for something, he either sailed or set out walking early in the morning to make the seven-mile trip into Christiansted. If he wanted to overhaul the Tryst, he did all the sanding and drilling by hand.

Some people called him old-fashioned. And others called him just plain stubborn – but they always said it with a fond smile. He had been around for a long time, and just preferred things “like dey was in de good ol’ days.” I asked him one day why he’d never ridden in a car.

“Chile,” he assumed his most impressive no-nonsense tone, “Dem t’ings is ebil. Dey jes ain’ natural. If I ride in one ob dem cars, it would be de end ob me. How yo’ t’ink ol’ Bomba come to be as ol’ as he is, eh? Yo’ won’ never catch me dead in one ob dem ol’ cars! Never!”

I wanted to tell him I’d been in a hundred cars and never had any bad luck because of it. Had it been anyone other than Bomba I’d have been tempted to laugh at him or even tease him a little. But I knew better than to argue with Bomba over something like that. The finality in his voice proclaimed the matter closed, and I wouldn’t think of sassing Bomba.

Besides, he was very serious. He really believed that a car would be the end of him, and no islander’s superstition should ever be taken lightly.


Sometimes on afternoons when he didn’t have a charter, Bomba would let some of us kids go fishing with him out on The Point. He made it quite clear from the beginning, though, that “any chile ob Bobma’s” did their own fishing, including baiting the hook. And I didn’t squirm or squeal either, for Bomba meant business. Although he was gentle, he wasn’t soft.

One time he even invited some of us on the Tryst to go fishing. On that day, we sailed up to the deserted East End, trawling along the way. We kids had brought along our own poles and a variety of beautiful lures we had ‘borrowed’ from my dad’s precious collection in his immaculately-kept tackle box.

Bomba just looked at those beautiful lures and snorted. With laughter in his voice, he said, “Yo’ ain’ gonna catch anyt’ing wid dem modren t’ings! Dese is ol’ fashion fish we be catchin!”

His prejudice against ‘dem modren t’ings’ included everything from cars which he swore would be the end of him to our fancy lures, which he guaranteed us would never catch anything but seaweed.

And maybe Bomba had something there. 

None of us kids caught a single fish that day. 

But Bomba landed a three-foot ‘cuda and two or three other fish.

It seems as though a lifetime has passed since I lived in the islands, fishing with Bomba or sitting in the shade of the palm trees eating fresh coconut and talking as though time were forever. My daydreams still carry me back to those warm, sunny beaches and the salty tang of the trade winds which were a living part of the tall understanding man that I adored.


Maybe, just maybe Bomba knew more than people sometimes gave him credit for. Maybe there was something to his old superstition.


“I feel de storm a comin’ in me bones,” he said again one day when scarcely a single cloud floated in the azure sky. Since storms could come up quickly in the islands, he decided to walk into town for supplies before the storm broke.

All afternoon the sun beat down on the narrow, winding road, heating it until the tar oozed to the surface, leaving sticky black patches. In mid-afternoon, the clouds blew in quickly.

But Bomba had almost reached home by the time the first big raindrops splattered against the hot pavement. His shirt stuck to his back in the heat of the day. 

But first one huge raindrop, then another and another came down, splattering first on his face and then his shoulders.

Then the skies opened up and the downpour quickly cooled him off. He raised his hands in joy, reveling in the cool, sweet rainwater. He laughed and twirled around, welcoming the deluge.

The downpour that quickly soaked him to the core washed across the overheated road, cooling the hot patches of tar, turning them into treacherous slicks.

Through the muffling rain came the sound of a car as it rounded the bend in the winding road. The tourist had no idea that the corner was too sharp, and the road so slick…


==============================

I’m told that half the island turned out for the funeral service. And for Bomba’s sake, there was no hearse. Dozens of Bomba’s friends took turns as they carried the casket the two miles from the church to the cemetery.

Everyone knew that Bomba would never set foot in a car.








Liz Carson Rosas
31 July 2009