lies in Gregory Town, where Petagay serves fruit smoothies to surfers, pumpkin soup to locals like rocker Lenny Kravitz, and jerk chicken wraps to blow-ins such as Robert De Niro.
The Lizard offers wireless Internet, and I’d warned Petagay (who shares a heaping helping of that islanders’ antiauthoritarian streak) that Colt might stop by to get online. “If he does, I’ll make him a panini,” she said.
ELEUTHERA IS A GANGLY, 110-mile-long island shaped like a marlin’s skeleton picked clean by sharks. Its bill, severed at Current Cut, points toward Nassau, thirty miles away. The island is so narrow that you can stand on its limestone spine in many spots and see both the indigo Atlantic and the aquamarine waters of the shallow Great Bahama Bank.
Gregory Town served as the pineapple capital back when Eleuthera exported boatloads of the sweet fruit. The village is now the island’s laid-back surf city during the winter swell season when board riders fill up the guesthouses, spend long days on the break at Surfer’s Beach, and then gather at Elvina’s for twice-weekly music sessions where anyone can walk in and just jam. South of Gregory, Eleuthera is all about quaint towns like Tarpum Bay and Governor’s Harbour, weekly fish fries and sociable bars, world-class bonefishing, and beach after beach of precious pink and white sand. There was a lot of Eleuthera for Colt to roam, but the highest concentration of boats was up in the north and it made sense he’d still be near the top of the island.
I climbed into Petagay’s truck and we drove straight out to Preacher’s Cave, a nine-mile run from the airport. It seemed too obvious that Colt might be sheltering in the cave where he came ashore, but there’d been a lot of obvious going on lately. It fit the Eleutheran Adventurers’ deliverance story and the Huck Finn archetype, and using the cave wouldn’t be a bad idea as long as he’d already gathered a cache of food and water. There’d be the chance of a tourist stopping by during daylight, but Colt could hide in the surrounding woods and move back in at night. The way Preacher’s entrance faces the open ocean, he’d even be able to build a fire inside to cook and keep bugs away without worrying someone might see the glow.
After leaving the paved highway, we bounced down a sandy, rutted track carved through dense coppice. There wasn’t another soul on the road. The last quarter mile was a narrow, winding path leading into what Bahamians call the backabush. Rainwater filled every pothole and gully. Tropical rule of thumb says that rain one day brings a bloom of biters in three. According to Petagay, they’d had occasional drenching showers all week, which meant the mozzies and nippers would be insatiable. I wondered if Colt had picked up bug juice somewhere along the way.
We parked in a deserted little clearing just as the sun was setting. As we started walking up the sand trail toward the cave, I suddenly thought of something. “Do you have your keys?” I asked Petagay. She looked at me like I was a little crazy, but I convinced her to lock the truck and bring the key while I grabbed my backpack, which held all my gear and notes. It was too easy—and fitting to the story—to imagine us coming out of the cave and finding the truck gone.
Petagay got her Nancy Drew on, checking out footprints. One set leading to the cave was especially large. I noticed a hum that grew louder as we walked. At first I thought it was the sound of waves, but that didn’t make any sense since we were heading away from the shore. By the time we could feel the cave’s cool exhale, the noise had swelled to the buzz of an electrical power station. I stopped and looked at Petagay.
“Bees,” she said.
A huge hive grew on the upper lip of the cave’s mouth. Hundreds of bees swarmed about twenty feet above us, their drone magnified and emanating from the entrance as a single ominous note. The twilight penetrated only a few feet past the cave opening, where two rocks poked like fangs from the ground. Beyond that, a patch of luminous sand pooled beneath a natural skylight. Beyond that was black.
Petagay pulled a small flashlight out of her shorts and clicked it on. We stood together at the edge of the darkness, our eyes intently following her light’s sickly yellow glow as it seeped across the rock walls. The weak beam reached only a short distance, so I slowly moved ahead while Petagay held the light above my shoulder to show the way.
Bats that cling upside down inside pockmarks in the cave ceiling were just beginning to stir. We’d gone about sixty feet, past several ancient Lucayan graves, when Petagay’s flashlight died. Ruh-roh.
“Colt?” I called out into the blackness. “Don’t shoot… ” No answer.
Bees, bats, Lucayan and Puritan spirits, yes, but there was none of that Coltish energy inside Preacher’s Cave.
I dug out a headlamp and its cold-blue LEDs blasted any remaining chills out of the cave. Petagay went back to the entrance looking for signs anyone had built a fire. I took the light and searched all the way to the back of the cave, where I found a small opening that looked like it might be a passageway. I got down on all fours and crawled inside. It didn’t go far before it turned vertical like a chimney. I shined my light up. The cave had saved one last tingle: a giant spider sprawled across its web a foot above my head. I thought of young Colton befriending the spider in his Camano backyard. He could have put a leash on this one and walked it.
Petagay found some wood burned to charcoal, but it looked more than a couple days old. We left the cave and walked through the lush seagrapes that enveloped a dune. Over the rise, the trail led to one of the island’s most beautiful reveals: a long coral-sand beach bordering baby blanket–blue water. We slipped out of our shoes and the sand felt silky cool underfoot. The light was failing rapidly as it does in the tropics once the sun sets, but I could still make out the color change that marked the Devil’s Backbone where Colt had grounded the Sea Ray. He’d misjudged the tide. There hadn’t been enough water atop the coral to get the boat across without wrecking its running gear so badly that it would eventually have to be towed all the way to Fort Lauderdale for repairs.
Like the Eluetheran Adventurers, though, Colt had managed to wade ashore. Of course the colonists didn’t have to worry about keeping their laptops and iPods out of the salt water.
We walked back inland, losing the hint of cool ocean breeze and wading back into the humidity. Mosquitoes found us and the sudden screaming trills of cicadas tore through the still air. We had the SUV as a refuge, but Colt left Preacher’s on foot. He’d presumably Google Earthed the island and knew he could follow the roads to the North Eleuthera Airport and the pockets of civilization where he could forage for food. His only other options were to stick to the coast and slog along the edge of a mangrove swamp or to try to pick his way through the backabush.
The forest here is a labyrinth of ram’s horn, thatch palm, wild dilly, granny bush, and gumbo limbo— nicknamed the “tourist tree” because its peeling bark mimics sunburned skin. Within this confusion of green, brown, and gray sprout shrubs valued by bush medicine practitioners, local alchemists who muddle and mash the leaves of explicitly named plants like “strong back” and “stiff cock” to make therapeutic potions. Radiant tiger lily blooms perch amid the dusty scrub like exotic birds, providing the only splashes of color. If Colt wanted to scout the area by climbing a tree, the tallest were leafy evergreens of the genus
We climbed back in the truck. On the road, a car coming the opposite way suddenly zigzagged and then stopped in our lane, its driver hanging out the window shining a flashlight along the shoulder.
“Land crab season,” said Petagay. During the summer, these beefy crustaceans climb out of their deep burrows in the sandy forest floor and scuttle en masse to meet and mate in the sea. The next person we saw was a successful hunter pedaling his bike home with a huge crab on the handlebars. With its arms spread wide and claws held high, the crab looked like a roller-coaster rider enjoying a downhill rush. Its amusement would end with a couple days in a pen being fed coconut to purge its system and sweeten its meat before a short visit to a hot kettle.
Petagay suggested we check the area’s Haitian settlement, so we bumped along a sad excuse for a dirt road that wound through the bush. A large number of refugees have settled illegally in the Bahamas, many squatting in tin shacks or simple concrete-block homes.
A stereo balanced on the sill of a screenless window poured music into a brown grass yard where five children danced in the dusky light. They waved. Everyone we saw waved. We passed six guys carrying a refrigerator along the road, laughing and joking in Creole. We stopped to ask if they’d seen Colt, but they spoke very little English. We whittled our question down to “Tall white boy?” which got the point across, but they said no.
Next we drove to Jean’s Bay dock, where taxi boats connect North Eleuthera with the island of Spanish Wells, a white-Bahamian enclave that’s home to the best commercial lobster fishermen in the country. They don’t allow alcohol sales on Spanish Wells, so the spot where its residents step ashore on Eleuthera is dominated by a
