May 2009 - Caribbean Compass

BOOK REVIEW BY BOB BERLINGHOF
Bewitched Doctor
Out-Island Doctor, by Evans W. Cottman, with Wyatt Blassingame, Media
Publishing, ©1963, reprinted in 1998. ISBN: 976-8170-17-4, paperback, 234 pages.
Out-Island Doctor is the autobiography of Evans Cottman, a mild mannered, teetotaling
high school science teacher who, as the story begins, lived with his parents
in Indiana. What is extraordinary about Evans is that he yearned for something different,
so he traveled to the Bahamas in the years preceding World War II and then
decided to live there after his 20 years of teaching would earn him a pension. The
story he tells is as enchanting today as the experience was to him back then, maybe
more so; Evans found the Bahamas “strange and wonderful,” and he never lost that
sense of amused bewilderment towards the locals and ex-pats he encountered.
Early on we meet Percy Cavill,
an impoverished Australian jackof-all-trades,
living alone, who
sails Evans to his remote island:
We anchored and waded
ashore carrying our supplies. A
path wound up through a maze
of scrubby bushes. At the top
was a clearing with a pathetic
little garden: some parched and
worm-eaten cabbages, tomatoes,
a few plants I didn’t recognize.
Beyond the garden was a small
yard littered with a fantastic collection
of odds and ends: broken
tree limbs and bits of firewood,
parts of an ancient automobile
motor, empty oil tins, a Dutch
oven; a net hung from a nearby
tree, a fish spear stuck upright in
the ground. Near this a hole had
been dug. It was evidently some
kind of garbage pit for it was half
filled by small, amazingly white,
polished bones.
Beyond this was his house. It
was (I measured it later) exactly
nine feet by twenty-one feet long.
The walls were of clapboard, the
roof thatched with palm fronds.
Cavill pushed the sagging door
open with his foot — and instantly
a large black hen rushed out
between his legs, followed by a saucy little Dominic rooster. “Come in,” Cavill said.
“Drop your gear anywhere.”
The inside was, if possible, more disorderly than the outside. The floor was of naked,
hard-packed coral earth, with empty boxes and tin pans and tools of various sorts
scattered everywhere. Against one wall was a table made of planks placed across two
upended boxes. On it were more pans, unwashed dishes, an ancient kerosene lantern,
and a lamp with a dirty chimney. Cavill’s bed was an ancient affair with a high iron
headboard, the straw mattress only partially covered by a crumpled blanket.
Underneath the bed was a hen’s nest. This was of straw, very carefully fashioned. It
was, I think, the neatest thing in the room.
Evans then meets Captain Rees, a retired British war hero, who sailed across the
Atlantic in his 29-foot yacht. Cavill and Evans are invited for dinner aboard and
happily accept:
The food was bully beef out of a can, but the service was something else again. The
Captain brought out a complete set of sterling silver, each piece bearing the Rees coat
of arms, and set to work polishing it. Meanwhile he talked, mixing a wild collection of
ancient British jokes with personal anecdotes about people he referred to only by their
first names. It was a long time before I realized he was talking about various members
of the British royal family.
Pioneers like Cavill and Rees inspire Evans, who becomes a pioneer, husband, and
father during the course of this book. In the early chapters he suffers from seasickness,
hunger, thirst, sand flies and mosquitoes thick enough to choke on, yet he still
returns to the Bahamas — he has become bewitched. Upon his parents’ death he
moves to Crooked Island with his local bride, Viola Sawyer. In order to supplement his
meager pension, he embarks on a career as an Unqualified Medical Practitioner. With
doctors non-existent on most islands, people adept at science were allowed to treat
patients with the blessing of the government — they even performed minor surgery.
Evans took his new vocation seriously enough to overcome chronic seasickness,
build a ketch, and sail himself to places where no white men had gone before. When
people saw the boat with the green cross the word went out from village to village,
“de doctuh come.” Usually someone would offer him a space ashore to sleep and
practice; if not, he would row his patients out to his boat for treatment.
Along the way he makes many friends and learns the local lingo: to “cascade”
(vomit), and “de trash” (thrush), among other gems. He recounts many wonderful
stories of his close encounters with both generous and sullen locals, nasty hurricanes,
and dirty fuel clogging his motor’s filters time and again. Then there was the
case of the woman who had beaten her husband so badly she wound up in jail. She
wanted to sue the government when she fell through the floor of the jail’s outhouse.
Evans‘ diagnosis was “temporary stinkitis and a punctured ego. Nothing serious.” The
constable looked perplexed; the lady was swift to take advantage. “You hear what de
doctah say? You hear all dem big disease I got!” “But dot ain’ seious,” the constable
argued, “I heah de doctah say so myself.” …All the way down the path I could hear
them arguing over the portents of my diagnosis. As they turned the corner out of sight
I heard the lady cry, “Punctured! Dot’s what I is! I goin’ to sue…”
This delightful tale takes the reader back to a time when ten acres of Bahamian
land with 500 feet of beachfront cost 40 dollars, when many people couldn’t pass
their eye examinations because they wouldn’t admit they didn’t know the alphabet,
when no roads existed and the only means of travel was by foot or by boat. The
Bahamas 60 years ago were mostly unchanged from the 19th century — a far cry
from the marinas and internet cafes of the 21st. That the Bahamas can still retain
this charm is why many ex-pats and sailors still flock here, and Cottman describes
this era and its characters with wit, grace, humour, and lucidity.
Available at bookstores in the Bahamas or from Amazon.com.
Keep up the good work.
The mag’s a good read that we
send to our yacht club back home
in Blighty!
Regards,
Ray and Irene McTear
S/Y ‘C-Drifters’
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MAY 2009 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 35