Mr. Davis and Tom

Behind Gus and Charlotte’s house was a small one room building, rather like a storage shed. It was probably no more than 10 X 15 feet. It had a door at one end and two windows on at least one wall. I never went inside because that’s where Mr. Wilber Davis lived.

Gus and Charlotte at their front door.

Mr. Davis had been an artist. He wound up living at Trunk Bay, caretaking the place when the Boulons were not in residence. Grammy took his art work to Puerto Rico and sold it for him in gift shops and art galleries. He was really quite good. He mostly did etchings on tiles. We still have a few of his pieces.

Mom said he was cantankerous even back in the 1930’s. By the time he was living in the shed he had become a reclusive hermit who snarled at people. What he did in that shed all day is anyone’s guess. He didn’t do art. Perhaps he read. Perhaps he sat in a chair and mumbled to himself about how badly life had treated him. Perhaps he slept.

Whatever he did or didn’t do, one thing is certain; for me at eight or nine years old, Mr. Davis was a scary and mysterious person.

Charlotte fed him every day. If I was visiting it was understood I was not to show my face. Even Gus kept to other parts of the house. I’m sure she fed him three times a day, but it’s the late-afternoon/evening meals I remember best.

Off the kitchen there was a long covered porch or veranda. It was about 6 or 7 feet wide and ran the length of the house. By the kitchen door was a small round table and a single chair. Charlotte would set the table and have a plate of food in place. Then, in her thin high voice, she’d call him.

“Yoo-hoo! Wilber!  Dinner!” She was the only one to call him by his first name.

A minute or so later Mr. Davis would appear out of the depths of his self-imposed exile. He was a large, imposing figure and always wore the same thing, no matter the time of year or the weather: dark trousers, dark long-sleeved shirt and often an ancient knee-length over-coat that was probably made of wool. Sometimes he wore a battered fedora. He’d walk the 30 or so feet to the back porch, eat, get up and return to his dark den.

Charlotte was the only one who spoke to him. Did he want more? Would he like a glass of water? A cup of coffee perhaps? He would reply with a simple gruff, yes or no.

When Charlotte called Mr. Davis for dinner, she also called a wild tomcat. She had several regular tame cats, but she fed the wild cat separately. She’d put out a dish of food in the same place every evening and in her high thin voice she’d call,

“Yoo-hoo! Tom. Yoo-hoo! Dinner, Tom!”

Out of the tangle of catch’n’keep and wild tamarind that grew behind the house would come slinking a great huge battle-scarred orange tomcat. Part of one ear was nearly chewed off. He fur was scraggly and lumpy with cuts and scabs and scars. He’d come slinking in, wary of anything different or any movement that was not part of his frame of reference.

He’d come slinking in, eat his bowl of food, then slink back into the bush.

Mr. Davis and Tom ate their meals together in hostile, untrusting silence.

Mr. Davis ate without looking around; as if angry he might see something he liked which would then necessitate an acknowledgement.

Tom crouched in tense expectation that he might have to bolt at any moment. After each gulp of food his head swiveled from side to side, taking in his surrounding, making sure nothing had changed.

They were the same kind of creature, Mr. Davis and Tom. Life had dealt them blows which had caused them to retreat into isolation. They were wild; Mr. Davis having chosen it and Tom because he had been born to it.

Yet between them they had Charlotte, whose’ sweet face, quiet voice and non-judgmental manner, brought the two together each evening.

Was it because the wounds they suffered and the scars they bore were momentarily soothed by her ministrations? The moments were not enough to civilize the misanthropic old man or tame the wild old tomcat, but they were enough to keep them coming back and to develop a routine.

Daily they came to the borderland of civilization, a neutral zone on the back porch. They could have come inside the house any time and been welcomed, but the porch was as close to the smell of humanity as either of them cared to get.

As a little girl I caught occasional glimpses of the old wild man and the old wild cat as they made their journeys to the edge of that reality in which they could not endure to live. Frightening as they were I dared to take peeks at them, hoping they would notice me and see me as harmless and thus allowing me to befriend them. I was equally terrified that if they did see me they would run away and never come back.

I walked a thin brittle line. Common sense, instinct or some part of my unconscious knew not to intrude and kept me from causing a break in the fragile connection Charlotte had with them.

In that time with Charlotte, perhaps a memory was made which lingered like a salve, easing some of the pain. Perhaps it was the lingering trace of that memory which kept them coming back. Her calm, quiet, unhurried, patient demeanor taught me that even the most damaged or wild of creatures can be coaxed out of the darkness and into the light, even if only for a moment.