Pauly was blind. Every day he sat on a plastic chair next to the dock at the two-stall boathouse on a calm oxbow in the Almirante River. He watched our panga. Lee called out to him when we arrived to take our panga out for the day, "Hey Pauly, its Gringo!" Pauly smiled, his teeth still blazing white in his old black face. "How you doing today?" Lee would ask and we would banter a bit about the weather and Pauly would unlock the door to the boathouse, walk barefoot down the clean wood planks, and grab a long stick to open up the outside doors so we could leave the safety of the boathouse for the still river and, possibly, the salty bay.
One day I saw Pauly riding his bicycle. (Yes, blind Pauly rode a bicycle. I have no idea how he did it!) He'd left his post for a jaunt across town—to gather supplies I might guess, perhaps rice and bananas, some chicken, and maybe a bottle of Coke. Lee hollered when he rode by, "Hey Pauly, its Gringo!"
Pauly smiled.
The day our sailboat—anchored out in the salty bay—was broken into, we told Pauly our story as he let us back in the boathouse. "Maybe they wanted to molest you," he offered. I like how they use the word molest here to mean bother. I felt like I'd been molested. We told Pauly the thief didn’t steal anything. He just broken into the boat and dragged things out of cupboards and left a mess. We told him that this was the third time our 37ft ketch had been broken into in almost as many days.
"Indians," some said.
"They trying to thief you," others said
But Pauly thought maybe it was something darker, something less innocent. Take my blanket and I will be upset that you violated my space, but I will remind myself that maybe you simply needed to be warm.
Take my fishing pole and I will be frustrated that I only got to use it once, but I will count myself lucky that, should I desire, I can by a new one and maybe you need it to feed your family.
But break into my sail-wearing home on the water and take nothing, and I will be afraid.
Maybe you are targeting my boat specifically. Maybe you are looking for something you can't find. Maybe my boat, bought in an old pirate town in the remote islands of the Caribbean, has a history I know nothing about. Maybe you are entangled in its story and are up to no good. And maybe I will be caught in the crossfire.
Pauly may not have been able to see with his watery red-rimmed, dark eyes. But I fear his second site was better than mine.
And I still don’t have the answer as to who broke in to my boat.
Or why.