Uncle Clarence

We moved to St. Croix the summer after I turned eight. Driving from the airport to our new house, I could hardly contain the excitement. Our own house right on the beach! With palm trees and banana trees and everything!


The car crunched into the short, gravel driveway of our new house after the forty-five minute drive from the airport. We flung open the car doors and all six of us kids piled out, eager to discover our new home. No matter how many times we had made our mom and dad describe it to us, the real thing looked nothing like the house I’d imagined. Bougainvillea bushes with papery-thin fuscia, peach, white, red and purple blossoms hugged the front of the house, which sparkled a brilliant white against the blue sky and the turquoise sea.


Inside, a vaulted ceiling gave the house a light, airy feeling. A large kitchen opened into a larger living room and dining room. Several sets of sliding glass doors opened from both of these rooms onto a screened-in terrace running the entire length of the house, and overlooking the ocean.


Oh, how I loved that house! The long terrace’s terrazzo floor turned out to be the greatest slip’n’slide any kid could ever want. In stocking feet, we would take turns getting a good running start and then sliding as fast and as far as we could, comparing marks to see who took the prize. Who needed video games?!


The vacant lot to the west of our house became our land of exploration. Tall grass waved over our heads in rainy seasons, hiding a labyrinth of trails we’d created. One led back to the far corner where we had a clubhouse under the spreading branches of a tamarind tree.


Our rocky front yard sloped down to the beach where we had our own private reef. I loved to wade out, don a mask and spend endless hours swimming back and forth watching the fish: sergeant majors, wrasses, butterfly fish and the occasional puffer.


One day I noticed a pile of clamshell halves at the base of the coral wall. Diving down to the shallow ocean floor, I grabbed a handful of shells and brought them to the surface, pushing my mask up off my face to rest on top of my head.


Turning the shells over and over in my hand, I wondered who had put them there in a pile, and why. Then I noticed each had a small, perfectly round hole drilled in its side. Now I was really puzzled. Why would anyone drill holes in the shells and then put them all in a pile at our reef? Letting them fall from my hand, I watched them spin and pirouette downward through the clear water to settle on the sandy ocean floor again with little “poof splashes” of sand. I pulled my mask back on, and continued on my wondering exploration, careful to steer clear of the spiny black sea urchins.


Before I realized it, I’d wandered much farther from shore than I had planned. Turning back, I headed toward shore, turning my head this way and that, wanting to see all there was to see.


Suddenly off to my right appeared a barracuda, about three feet long, swimming along side me. His long lower jaw jutted out displaying a row of sharp teeth. But I knew not to be frightened of him. He was merely curious about the new creature that had ventured into his domain.


I saw him again the next time I went out, and we became buddies after a while. Every time I donned my mask, he miraculously appeared by my side, as though he’d been waiting for me -- always just at arm’s length away. I often wondered how he knew how far I could reach and managed to stay just beyond my fingertips. But he just seemed to know. If I reach toward him he seemed to smile back at me, as though to say, “You know better than that. I am here, but you may not touch.”


I soon discovered that the pile of clamshells had not been placed there by any two-legged creature at all. They had been discarded by the octopus who lived in the hole in the reef just above the abandoned shells. He had brought the live clams back to his home, bored a hole in them to paralyze them and had them for dinner!


But oddly enough, one of my most thrilling discoveries was a crudely built pea green sloop that sailed by the first day we were there. As I stood at the water’s edge, a sailboat slipped by, its heavy canvas sail rustling in the stiff ocean breeze. 

As it sailed close to our beach, it came about into the wind, and I saw a single sailor on board; a grizzled old man whose black face was agelessly wrinkled. He saw me standing there and waved a callused hand and called out, “Halloooo there, young miss!”


When I looked around to see who he was calling to, I heard his rich laughter. By the time I realized he meant me and turned back, he had sailed around the point and disappeared. I turned and ran back up the path to the house calling out in breathless excitement.


“I saw the neatest thing! It’s here. Right here in St. Croix! I saw the “beautiful pea green boat!” For as a very young child, I had loved the poem “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear. Whenever my mother read it to us, I would chant along, enraptured by the rhythm of it as well as the pictures it created in my head.


“The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to seaIn a beautiful pea green boat…”


And now I had seen the pea green boat! Okay, I knew it wasn’t the pea green boat. But I allowed myself a little creativity. It looked exactly like I’d pictured it for years!


Everyone came running when they heard me yelling as I ran up the path. But, of course, by the time I got there, the only thing out on the water was tiny whitecaps.


I soon realized that the “beautiful pea green boat” was to be a regular in the bay out in front of us, tacking its way upwind between the shore and the barrier reef a hundred and fifty yards off shore. It didn’t take me long to become curious enough to scurry up the hill to the east of our house and find out where the “beautiful pea green boat” was headed. Amazingly enough, it came from the next cove over!


At school he next day, I asked Debbie Skov (whose father was a local fisherman) if she knew the man who sailed the boat. I found out everyone called him Uncle Clarence, though it was not clear to me exactly whose uncle he was. Uncle Clarence had a smile that split his wrinkled ol’ black face from ear to ear. And his yellowed eyes crinkled every time he smiled. I loved it when he would sail close enough to shore to call and wave to me before coming about and sailing back out toward the barrier reef. Oh how I wished he was my Uncle Clarence!


I began to look forward to his boat sailing by our cove. I would sit on the rocky bluff

above the reef and watch him sail by, dreaming of all the places I could sail to if I had a “beautiful pea green boat” of my own.


Those were magical days. Summer afternoons, I would swim with “my” barracuda and try to catch a glimpse of the shy octopus friend who left me shells every day. And after dinner each night, when the dishes were all cleared, we kids would gather ‘round the dining room table as my mom would read to us the book of the week.


Whether it was The Hobbit, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Swiss Family Robinson, or any number of other books, we would all sit around, from sixteen-year-old Chris on down to six-year-old George, and share in the magic of my mother’s story-telling.


Sometimes, if the vocabulary went too far over my head, I would find myself staring up at the lights above and daydreaming about my “beautiful pea green boat” and the places it would take me, carried along on the melodic sound of my mother’s voice. Or I would stare up at the orange- and turquoise- and yellow-globed lights hanging above the dining room table in the airy vaulted ceiling, and smile at the colors and thank my lucky stars we had moved to this wonderful house.


One day we were between books. We’d finished the previous book the night before, and had not been to the library to get a new one yet. So that night after dinner we turned off the beautifully colored lights over the table, and had to settle for tv in the living room instead of a story. We soon lost interest and wandered off to bed.


The next day, there was a knock at our front door. “I’ll get it!” I shouted, running to the door. We had not had a single guest knock at our door since we’d arrived, and I was very curious to see who was there.

“Uncle CLARENCE!” I squealed as I opened the door.


“Well, young miss! It seems yo’ know my name, but I ‘ave not as yet learned yors…”


Just then my mother came up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “May I help you?” she asked politely, looking over my head at the stranger.


“It’s him, mom! It’s HIM! The man who sails the ‘beautiful pea green boat’!”


Uncle Clarence looked confused, but smiled and accepted my mom’s invitation to come in and have a glass of lemonade.


“I come to see if yo’ is al’right,” he said, his melodic Calypso baritone voice echoing in singsong rhythm in the lofty room and dancing between my colorful globed lights overhead.


Now it was my mother’s turn to look confused. What an odd thing for a total stranger to say…


“Um…” she began, not sure what to say next.


Noting our confusion, he chuckled and then began again. “I am sorry, miss,” he laughed. “I mus’ explain m’self. ‘Tis your light,” he said, raising his eyes to the colored ceiling lights above the table. “I d’in see de light shinin’ last night, and I was worried. I tell m’self I mus’ come and see if yo’ is al’right.”


My mom and I looked at each other, still not comprehending.

He looked up into the vaulted ceiling at the globed lights above and sighed. “I t’ink I need to explain…” he said. “Can we sit?”


“Oh, I am sorry. Please, come and sit and tell us what brings you here.”


“Firs’ I mus’ introduce myself’,” he said. “My name is Clarence. Clarence Blackwood. They call me Uncle Clarence. I have a fishin’ boat over in de nex’ cove. I been out checkin’ my traps ou’side the barrier reef an’ gettin’ back afta dark. But I neva haf’ to worry, because I have yo’ light to bring me home.


“If I line up the bouy light on de break in de reef with yo’ blue and orange lights, I know I can make it safe t’rough de trecherous reef. Yo’ light is my “light on de hill,” like in de Bible. Well, las’ night I did not see yo’ light, and I tell m’self, Clarnece, somet’ing is wrong. I do not see de light on de hill. I mus’ find out what is wrong. So here I am to fin’ wha’ happen to yo’ light...”


Amazingly, sitting in a circle around our family table, sharing family time, we had also unwittingly been letting our light shine to others alone and tossed at sea!


From that day on, we kept our dining room lights burning up until bedtime, whether anyone was in the dining room or not. What a lesson – the realization that our light had been shining unbeknownst to us. And what a reminder to live our lives in such a way that they might be a light to others who might be observing us without our knowing.

That night, we prayed for Uncle Clarence and all those in life who were looking for a light on the hill to lead their way home.


And from that night on, we always left the dining room lights on, whether we had a story to read or not.

Liz Carson Rosas
6 May 2009

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."
Matthew 5:14-16