Doolittle had loved seagulls since before time. To the horror of his parents, he would stuff his pockets with bits of salt fish and seek them out among the seaweed and driftwood of the cove. After years of patient waiting and daily coaxing, they began to follow him wherever he went, a thick cloud of feathery gray and white birds in graceful flight, yellow beaked and glassy eyed, a cloud of noise in free formation.
Doolittle would sit cross legged in the damp sand and call to them. They came in droves, landing nearer and nearer until he could reach out and touch them, laughing at their flapping, frenzied antics, and offering them his fish bits. They snatched at his fingers and his collar and his boots but never drew blood and though loud and peckish with each other, they were almost dainty with him, almost gentle. Gradually, he was able to stroke their smooth feathered backs and run his fingers along their wings while they ate. Slowly he became one with them and was accepted and befriended with no sign of fear on their part, no hesitation at his approach. He ran along the beach with his arms outstretched and they made a path for him, barring his way only as he neared the treeline or the treacherous rock formations, then they descended in a protective wave, swooping, diving and cawing in warning. He listened and changed direction quickly, his laughter blending with their calls, his footsteps mixing with the sound of their wings.
Offshore, fishermen in passing boats watched and shook their heads in bewilderment and admiration - it was hard to separate the boy on the beach from the cloud of birds around him - harder still to keep in mind that the birds could see and the boy could not.
Having been born blind, Doolittle took his lack of sight for granted and didn't give it much thought. He learned through his other senses, through hearing, touching, and most of all through sensing. People give off waves, he told my grandmother, like heat from a stove. I feel them. He could tell moods through silence as well as voices, could discern falsehoods from truth by tones and sensed rather than heard emotions. Island folk were generous with him, teaching him things that he could not see - how hair could be silky and fine or coarse and rough, how skin could be tanned and leathery or smooth and unlined. He recognized people by their smells - pipe tobacco, shampoo, rum or baking flour -
he learned how to tell one fish from another, how to navigate by sound and wind, how to run his hands through a dog's coat to determine the breed. And he learned to associate colors with temperature, hot for reds and oranges, ice for blues and grays. He could never articulate how he saw these things in his mind but we knew that he did. He had perfect pitch, an uncanny gift for mimicry and whether counting footsteps to ascertain distance or following the birds to the edge of a cliff, he always seemed to know where he was and how far he could go. He was fearless with curiosity and perpetually on the move to explore, investigate and push against limits. He would not be tamed down or confined, would not retreat, would not be defined his blindness or driven into a box.
Hearing of his antics on the beach with the birds, Doolittle's granddaddy, Daniel, pronounced in no uncertain terms, The boy has to be taught to swim. This declaration was met with fierce resistance by all except Doolittle, the general feeling being that the ocean would simply take who it wanted, when it wanted and learning to swim was no real protection, but Old Daniel stood his ground. Sweet Jaysus, he growled at the opposition, This is an island and the boy be blind. Don't take much figurin' to know what needs to be done. So for several mornings in July, Daniel and Doolittle and one of the summer people met at the cove and into the icy water they went. Doolittle learned to swim above and below the water, to breaststroke and dog paddle and lay on his back and not sink. Daniel was well pleased and his mind was put to rest. Leastways, he told John Sullivan, if Davey Jones takes a mind to have the boy, he'll have to fight for 'im.
Davey Jones got his chance a few years later when Doolittle, hearing the sound of an injured gull off the cove's rocky coast, shed his boots and headed toward the cries. He swam just as he had been taught, breathing regularly and stroking firmly into the waves with no panic and no thought of giving in. He swam back, following the sounds of the seagulls above him, the injured bird passive and secured to his shirt. Compassion and friendship took him out and the tide and the gulls brought him back in. Davey Jones had been denied the boy and the gull and sightlessness had conquered the sea.
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