Nassau Tour guide
Nassau is one of those cities that stays with you always, like Paris, if you were ever fortunate enough to live there. A story from long ago, when a new resident still could be mistaken for a tourist, and enjoy it.
Colorless shapeless hat and suit coat, baggy pants, run-over crepe-soled shoes — a dusky shadow at midday amid the brightly attired tourists beneath the bright island sun on Market Wharf — Brennan McCurdy, self-introduced, materialized spectrally at the elbow of a sunglasses and straw-basket bedecked stroller who paused to take a snapshot of one of the conch boats.
“Dat a fine ex-om-ple of Andros Eye-lun bote-buildin’,” he announced.
The tourist had at least heard of Andros Island, so he nodded.
McCurdy’s wide, spatulate fingers scratched reflectively at sparse white whiskers sprouting across his anthracite jowls like a ghost lawn on a coal seam. “Dey’s foah botes interday,” he confided in the melodic lilt of a native Bahamian.
After a moment’s mental translation, the tourist glanced at the long line of fishing dinghies, bobbing gunn’l to gunn’l along the wharf across from the famous Nassau Straw Market, as customers dickered with the boatmen for fresh seafood.
“Only four?”
“I doan mean dem conk bote,” McCurdy said with a dismissive wave. “I men dem big bote from Mi-yammy.” He nodded toward the white-and-blue cruise ships looming over the low buildings on the government wharf.
“Oh.”
But the polite rejoinder was submerged in the sudden tidal surge of McCurdy’s analysis of island economic policy: “Widdout de tu-erist, dese islands ’uld be plum ded. We’d orter make t’ing bedduh foah duh tu’erist.” Quickly tacked on at the end of this: “Has you bin in Nassau long, Suh?” Perhaps to indicate there still was a kind of dialogue in progress.
The tourist suspected that whether his answer was two days or two months, McCurdy’s response would have been the same:
“How does y’like ‘er?”
“I like Nassau fine. You’ve got a pretty place here.”
“Why thank you, Suh! I likes ‘er fine mysef.” Then, like a skilled interrogator probing for deeper meaning: “You like d’conk?”
“I’ve tried cracked conch and like it.”
“Does you have duh conk, Suh, where you come from?”
“Not really. You see an occasional shell on the beach after a storm is all.”
“Ahhh!” A sage nod of the grizzled head indicated perfect rapport. “Lissen to what I tel’y’now, cause I tellin’ truth. I fish duh conk way down ago. We go outta Nassau forty, forty-five, mebbe fifty mile to get ‘im. I hook ‘im up, d’conk, long pole, so-o-o” — one gnarled dark hand guiding the long pole of memory above the piles of conch shells littering the harbor bottom beneath Market Wharf, washed smooth and pale by the transparent waters — “wid a glass bucket dat ack like uh magnuh-fier. Like you useter lookit duh heb’ums.”
“You were a conch fisherman?”
“Way down ago, yessuh. Ainit whut I tellin’ yuh, ainit? Den I tellin’ duh truth! But I ain’t nevuh gonna gotoseanomo’.”
The tourist was beginning to fall under the spell of the musical lilt of the Bahamian story-telling rhythm, as hypnotic as the brogue of a story-teller from that other emerald island suggested by McCurdy’s name.
“Why aren’t you going to sea anymore,” he asked, knowing his place in the dialogue now. “Aren’t you a fisherman?”
“Nosuh! I wuz, but I ain’t now. I only bin off this eye-lund wunce since, and dat was all the way down 1927 when I takuh bote, go uh long, long way — long way — off. To uh eye-lund name Watlin’. Yuh’d call it Selbedore.”
“San Salvador, where Columbus supposedly landed?”
“De same! Dat’s de wun. I wuk de rodes dere. Dey was buildin’ rodes dere, doe dere wasn’t but wun truck on de whol’ eye-lund. Dat wun we was usin’ to build duh rodes. Some comin’ back from dere tell me dey got rodes all ovuh dere now. All the way roun’ from what you call Ridin’ Rock to Sugarloaf, den to duh creek and on roun’. Some say dat. But I ain’t seen it. When I was dere, dey was jus’ wun truck.” He paused to think on that.
“But when did you stop being a fisherman then?” the tourist asked helplessly.
“Oh — dat wuz way down ago, out on the conk groun’, y’see. I wuz younger den, and wen I wuz fishin’ d’conk, de sail boom come uhroun’ and get me — zwish!” Two horny palms grazed each other with a rasping swipe. “An’ down I went.”
“Over the side?”
“Oh, nonono. I too ol’ a han’ fo’ dat! I drop down in d’bote, but wen I come up, you know what?”
“What?”
“Oh — you know what!”
“I couldn’t guess in a million years.”
“Well — I’se been struck blin’! Thas what!” He stared out to sea sadly. “An’ I been blin’ evuh since. An’ I ain’t never goin’ on dat sea no mo’. Not evuh! Nossuh! Dat sea dun trick me wid dat boom an’ I ain’t nevuh gonna give it no ‘nother try.”
A lot of things crossed the tourist’s mind at that moment, the strongest being that he had just been played for a fool by this sharp-eyed old scalawag. Blind since before 1927, then building roads on San Salvador, and today naming the island of origin of the very boat the tourist had been photographing? He stifled a sarcastic remark and turned to go.
But McCurdy was somehow in front of him without seeming to move, talking again, nimbly sidestepping his tale of tragedy at sea.
“You know what, Suh? My mudder, God bless her soul, she still alive. She getting’ on now — I’se got seventy-six years my own self. But she still spry. You bettuh believe what I tell you, ’cause I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’ but the truth.” He started counting on his fingers. “I’se got nine chil’run myself. And fo-uh dat die young, doan count dem, dat still leave nine. An’ eighteen gran’,” he continued with matter-of-fact pride. “Some of dem doin’ quite well but I’se still got uh couple little wuns at duh house. De ol’ lady and dey gran’,” he added, referring now to his mother again, “look to ’em while I guides gennamens like yo’sef down the harbor.”
“You’re a harbor guide now?”
“Yessuh, my t’ird occupation” — counting on his fingers again — “fishin’ d’conk, rode-buildin’, now guidin’ gennamens. I puts all the money I gets to buy dem chil’run bread.” He paused again. “An’ mebbe two cigarettes uh day fouh me. Jes’ two, doe. Ol’ man gotta have some comfort, doan-he?
Money? This was a new twist to the conversation begun so innocently.
Between his personal tales, it was true, Brennan McCurdy had slipped in a few asides: that Paradise Island, where the casino was now, was once called Hog Island, and over there was where the conch fishermen were required to dump discarded shells now by order of the government. Because the conch shells paving the harbor had piled so high that boats were grounding on them at low tide.
He had described in succulent detail how to prepare conch for eating, and waxed ecstatic over fresh-caught grouper. And he had inquired anxiously into whether Nassau was meeting his exacting standards for hospitality to tourists, modestly admitting his own hand in the matter if it had.
“Money?” the tourist said now.
“Jes’ whutevuh y’kin spare, youh pocket change’ll do, Suh. A bit o’ somethin’ to get some bread fouh dem fine chil’run what’s dependin’ on me…”
“And a couple of smokes to comfort an old man.”
“Yassuh.” He cast his eyes down modestly.
“Well…how’s two dollars American sound?”
Brennan McCurdy hid his shock well enough to allow that would be jes’ fine, Suh, jes’ fine — and even recovered enough to hesitate as he slid the folding money into his pocket, squinting at the green George Washingtons as if trying to turn them into Honest Abes.
It happened that they had paused for this transaction just above where another of those Abaco-built dinghies was moored to the wharf. Two plum-black salesmen in the boat were dickering with a knot of customers above them. One screwed up his face with unfeigned amazement at what he considered a penny-pinching offer.
“Man, dis de conk!” he dismissed the unworthy proffer.
The tourist, with thoughts of fresh seafood simmering in his head from the tales of Brennan McCurdy, said longingly, “I wish that I knew when these guys are gypping me. I wish I could buy some of that without them jacking the price way up because I’m a dumb tourist.”
McCurdy had been in the very act of dematerializing from his side to reappear at the elbows of a young honeymoon couple strolling along in their own little world. Now he reincorporated briefly.
“Dey tries to sell y’by size an’ not weight,” he confided. “Doan let ’em sell you no big shell. Feel if it’s heavy. Dat one he fixin’ up right dere — dat should go roughly ‘bout fifty cent. Lighter brudders go ‘bout terty-five, forty cent. He woan sell fer dat, g’won down next bote, nex’ man’ll sell you.”
He offered a horny handshake, and a final “thank you, Suh, thank you — for duh chil’run. Hopes you enjoys your stay, Suh — truly hopes you do.”
Then he latched onto the honeymoon couple without missing a beat, already into his spiel, awfully spry for someone bent by 76 years, threading the throng awfully accurately for a blind man walking.
The secret of his youthful vigor was doubtless a lifetime diet of duh conk. The miracle of his restored sight was probably marvelous to relate, and nothing but the truth, and maybe even worth that Abraham Lincoln it would probably have cost to hear it.
The tourist was sorry he never got to hear the rest of the tale.
