The Caretaker

by A. X. Ahmad

  “I’d like to stay here. I hated it in Boston.”

  “Well, I talked to Clayton, and we need a caretaker for the house. Our regular guy just broke his leg. You can start now, and we’ll pay you through next spring. What do you think?”

  She smiles and removes a strand of hair that has blown into the corner of her mouth.

  He is stunned. It’s impossible to get a job as a caretaker on the island; only old, trusted Vineyarders get to take care of rich people’s houses. And a steady paycheck means that he can stay here through the winter, maybe even move to a house where the heating actually works.

  “It’s not a lot of work. Close up the house, shovel snow, check for leaks. What do you say?”

  He nods slowly. “Okay, Anna—thank you. I’ll take the job.”

  She jingles car keys in her coat pocket and looks away. “Go see Clayton tonight, he’ll fill you in. I better get going. I’m catching the evening ferry to the mainland.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I need a change of scene. The last few months have been so … taxing. But I’m not going far, just to the house in Boston.”

  There seems to be nothing else to say. They turn and walk to Anna’s car, its engine still purring, the soft wail of jazz coming from inside. Ranjit knows that the silver Mercedes Kompressor costs more money than he has earned during his two and a half years in America.

  She stops, a hand on the door handle. “You’re sure you want to stay here? It’s brutal in the winter. I lived here off-season as a child, almost went mad with boredom.”

  He nods. “I’ll be all right. I’m used to the cold.”

  “I thought India was hot? Tropical?”

  “No. We have mountains too, high ones. With snow and ice.”

  She smiles apologetically, and her cheeks curve into dimples again. “I should have known that. Us dumb Americans, huh?”

  She puts a hand on his arm, a touch so soft that it’s barely there. She gets into the Mercedes, slams the door, and swings the car out onto the road. The powerful engine growls, and she’s gone.

  The pink neon sign in the liquor store window suddenly blinks out. An elderly man emerges from the store and begins to chain the front doors together.

  Ranjit kicks the glass shards aside and hurriedly climbs into his truck. What had he expected from the likes of Anna Neals? She is a senator’s wife, and he is just another servant here. Things might have been different if … but there’s no point in thinking like that.

  The adrenaline rush has subsided. He feels cold and nauseous, and blasts the heater before leaning back and closing his eyes. If Anna had arrived a few minutes later, he would have killed that man. He imagines sharp glass entering the man’s soft throat, the screams of a butchered animal …

  Taking a deep breath, he remembers what the doctors back home had said: The instincts are there, they don’t go away. Anything can trigger them: a loud sound, a movement in the periphery, a threatening shadow. The key is to not follow through, to short-circuit the impulse.

  Like the doctors taught him, he breathes deeply and imagines a calm, peaceful place. An image of the Golden Temple at Amritsar gradually takes shape: it sits in the center of the sacred lake, its golden dome burnished by fading sunlight, and from within it he can hear the sound of kirtans being sung.

  He is a boy again, following his mother down the long causeway leading to it, the marble warm under their bare feet. It is his father’s death anniversary, and they have come to the temple to pray. Underneath the threadbare dupatta that covers her head, Mataji’s face is pale, exhausted from crying all day, but she grows calm as she sings the evening prayers. The words float in the air, old and comforting.

  A faint, putrid smell tickles his nostrils, disturbing the image. He tries to ignore it, but it grows stronger, and when his eyes flicker open, there is a shimmer in the seat next to him. No doubt it is a trick of the fading light; closing his eyes again, he tries to return to the place of stillness.

  There is the sudden, rasping sound of breathing. Those bastards are back. His eyes fly open, and he reaches under his seat for a spanner, then stops abruptly.

  Sergeant Khandelkar is sitting in the seat next to him, wearing a white snowsuit, an assault rifle lying across his knees. He is bent over and coughing desperately, his eyes strained and watering.

  No, please, Guru, no. It must be a hallucination, triggered by the encounter with the two men. It will go away soon, he will wake up.

  The Sergeant’s head is shaved to reveal his bony skull, giving him the severe look of a priest. As he wheezes, desperately trying to breathe, Ranjit smells again the putrid smell of decay. Perhaps it’s a seizure, they say that people smell things right before their convulsions, almonds or perfume.

  The Sergeant manages to take a deep breath. “What is this place, Captain?” His voice is raspy, as though he isn’t used to talking anymore.

  Ranjit cannot answer. The doctors said this could happen and had given him a bottle of blue pills, but he’d thrown them away before he left India.

  “Not much in the way of cover here, is there? We’ll have to call for air support.” Sergeant Khandelkar shivers, and his face and hands are blue with cold.

  Ranjit finds his voice. “Sergeant, is it really you?”

  Khandelkar ignores the question. He flexes his bony fingers and stares down at them. “Those men, Captain. You could have easily taken them. Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t … I don’t fight anymore.”

  Khandelkar laughs. “I see, Captain. You don’t fight.”

  “I’m not a captain. I’m nothing here. Everything has changed.”

  “Nothing changes. Nothing changes, where I am.” Khandelkar’s hands are lilac, the color that comes before frostbite. “The cold burns like fire, Captain, did you know that?”

  “Khandelkar, I’m sorry, so sorry—” Ranjit reaches out to touch the Sergeant, and finds himself reaching through the air.

  The seat next to him is empty. Heat gushes out of the vents in the dashboard, and the air smells like burning leaves.

  “Sergeant, where are you?”

  In the silence Ranjit can hear the pounding of the waves across the road. He rolls down his window and feels the cold air buffet his face.

  Something is ringing. He fumbles in the pocket of his stained canvas coat and finds his cell phone.

  “Papaji, where are you? I’ve been waiting and waiting. My teacher is going home.” It’s Shanti’s nine-year-old voice, rolling her Rs like an American.

  “Beti, I’m sorry, I got tied up. Put on your coat and wait in the lobby, okay?”

  The truck engine rumbles into life, and he drives quickly down Beach Road, the ocean a dark blur to his right. After a few turns, he reaches Tradewinds Road and arrives at the long beige building of the Oak Bluffs elementary school. Shanti is sitting in the brightly lit lobby, twirling the ends of her long, curly black hair with one hand. Her high forehead and liquid brown eyes are carbon copies of her mother’s, but she has his tall, lanky build.

  She sees the truck and comes running out, her hair flying behind her. When she opens the door, Ranjit is staring at the empty seat next to him.

  “Hello, Papaji. What happened to your thumb?” She reaches out and holds his hand, staring at the knotted strip of cotton.

  He pulls his hand away, his breathing quick and shallow.

  “What’s wrong? Papaji, are you all right?”

  Ranjit cannot speak. He holds out his arms and hugs her, feeling her long, skinny body, her breath warm against his cheek.

  “I’m fine,” he says, pulling away. “I cut my thumb while working. I’m just glad to see you, that’s all.”

  “Can we drive along the ocean? I want to see if the ferry is in. And if the Flying Horses is open.”

  He’s told her a hundred times that the Flying Horses Carousel will be closed till the next summer, but she always insists on checking. It will take him out of his way, but he hates to disappoint
her.

  Sighing, he turns back toward the ocean.

  * * *

  He is silent as they drive away. All these years he has feared this would happen. He tries to remember the name of the pale blue pills but cannot.

  “Papaji, are you listening to me?”

  “Sorry, beti, what were you saying?”

  Shanti sighs dramatically. “You need to listen. This girl in my grade, Elena, she’s Portuguese, she said that all Indians are short. I said no way, you should see my dad, and she said you just look tall because you wear a turban, and I said, my dad is tall even without a turban, but she wouldn’t believe me, can you believe it?”

  “Beti, Americans have strange ideas about us.”

  “Not all of them. Just some. And, oh, Miss Heather said to ask you if we’re staying for the winter. She said that all the foreign kids start school in the fall but then they leave, and she never gets the textbooks back. Are we going back to Boston?”

  “We’re staying.”

  “Hector’s gone back to Brazil. And Jorge.”

  He thinks of the two miserable years in Boston, slaving in the basement of Lallu’s Indian store. “We’re staying, beti. Tell your teacher we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Okay, good, I like it here. Hey, I know the capitals of all fifty states. Let’s play, okay? Easy one first. What’s the capital of New York?”

  As the truck turns onto Seaview Avenue, the sick panic in Ranjit’s stomach begins to fade.

  “New York City, obviously.”

  “No, silly, it’s Albany. Now, California?”

  “San Francisco?”

  Shanti peals with laughter. “It’s Sacramento! Everybody knows that!”

  “It makes no sense. They always choose someplace that no one has heard of. In India, the biggest city is the capital. Like Mumbai. Or Chennai.”

  “Papaji, really,” Shanti says, dissolving with laughter, and he smiles too; being with her always makes him feel better.

  They enter the town of Oak Bluffs and speed past the large green oval of Ocean Park, surrounded by the sprawling bungalows of the African-American elite. They pass the strip of beach nicknamed the Inkwell, and just as the long pier of the ferry terminal appears, Ranjit swerves left into town. The marquee of the Strand movie theater is blank, and the carved wooden horses of the Flying Horses Carousel are motionless, but lights are still on at Jerry’s Pizza. Ranjit smells hot cheese and feels a sudden pang of hunger, then remembers that he’d given the last of his money to those two men.

  “Hey,” Shanti says, “we’re pretty late today. I hope Mama isn’t mad at us.”

  Usually Preetam sits at home all day, watching her Hindi movies, and panics if they are even five minutes late. But today she has gone with a neighbor to a sewing circle at the church and shouldn’t be back till dinnertime.

  “Mama’s out, remember? I have to go and talk to Senator Neals for a few minutes. I took you there during the summer—it’s the house with all the dolls. He was away, but you met his wife.”

  “I remember that house. Is he the man who’s been on television all the time?”

  “Yes, that man. But don’t ask him any questions.”

  “Why?”

  “Beti, rich people don’t like that. If he asks you any questions, just answer politely.”

  “I’m always polite, Papaji. You know that.”

  He nods absentmindedly. They drive through the town and stop at the drawbridge leading to Vineyard Haven. A red light flashes and the middle section of the bridge lifts up to let a yacht into the lagoon. He switches off the engine to save gas, an old habit from India.

  He is startled at how much information Shanti soaks up, but Preetam always has the television on, and Neals has been on the news for the last two nights.

  The news stations replayed the same footage over and over again, showing the Senator walking briskly up the steps of the floodlit Capitol. Despite his sixty-plus years of age, he had the quick grace of a much younger man, and his dark blue suit only emphasized his barrel chest and wide shoulders. His shaved head and flattened nose—at some point it had been broken and roughly set—only added to his aura of authority.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, the Senator made a speech about freedom and democracy, and then handed over the microphone to a young Korean-American woman journalist. Still pale from her months in North Korean captivity, the woman described in a shaking voice her arrest on a trumped-up charge of spying, and her subsequent death sentence. If the Senator hadn’t flown to Pyongyang to negotiate on her behalf, her body would now be arriving home in a plywood box. As soon as she was done, the reporters surged forward, shouting out questions, but the Senator just raised her arm in a victory salute and then escorted her away.

  The news stations all called the Senator a hero, and there was even talk of him running for President someday. Earlier that summer, the same news stations had broadcast programs on the Senator’s fading popularity and predicted that he wouldn’t be reelected. Thinking about it, Ranjit shakes his head. Opinions change so fast in this country.

  The large yacht slides under the raised drawbridge, only the top of its masts visible. Soon the bridge is lowered, and they clatter across it, skirting the town of Vineyard Haven.

  The island of Martha’s Vineyard is small—roughly triangular, twenty miles from east to west, and ten from north to south—but it houses many worlds. The WASPS live amid their white picket fences in Edgartown, while Oak Bluffs is the home of the African-American elite, whose bungalows cluster around Ocean Park. Vineyard Haven, with its wide harbor and bustling main street, is the commercial heart of the island. Senator Neals has chosen to live far away, among the movie stars and tycoons of Aquinnah, his custom-designed house perched high on its red clay cliffs.

  They drive down State Road, past the scattered restaurants and boutiques that cater to the summer people. Jenni Bick’s handmade journal store is closed, as is the Vineyard Glassworks, and there are only a handful of cars parked outside Kronig’s grocery store. As the population of the island shrinks from a summer high of a hundred thousand down to fifteen thousand, the Vineyard once again becomes a small town.

  The twilight gathers around them and Ranjit flicks on his headlights, illuminating stone boundary walls. Hidden behind these are the summer estates of the millionaires, only their driveways and NO TRESPASSING signs visible from the road; the houses are set far back, facing the water. They’re empty now, inhabited only by mice and the blinking lights of alarm systems. If this were India, poor people would cut the power to the alarms and move in, shit in the Jacuzzis, keep goats and chickens in the empty swimming pools. But this is not India, this is the Vineyard, and all these beautiful, perfect houses lie empty for most of the year.

  He drives through the exclusive towns of West Tisbury and Chilmark, and soon the road becomes a causeway, cutting between the dark waters of Menemsha and Squibnocket ponds. Reaching Lighthouse Road, they drive along the edge of the island, the jagged cliffs falling away to the ocean below.

  Ranjit turns into a graveled driveway that curves down the hillside, and the truck whines around the sharp turns. After one last dizzying twist the road flattens out, and there, beyond the Senator’s house, is the ink-black ocean, ranks of whitecapped waves racing to the open horizon.

  He turns off the engine and the air is filled with the roar of water. Shanti sits silently, mesmerized by the view.

  “Beti,” he says, “do you know what ocean that is?”

  “The Atlantic Ocean.”

  “And what’s on the other side?”

  “India.”

  “How come India? Not Europe?”

  Shanti shakes her head firmly. “No, it’s India. That’s what Mama says.”

  “What do you remember about India, beti?”

  She takes a deep breath. “We were rich in India and we had a big house and mango trees and many servants.”

  He nods slowly. Just as he thought: she doesn’t remember a thing abou
t India, and now Preetam is filling her head with nonsense.

  “Wait in the truck. I have to talk to the Senator.”

  Crunching over the gravel, he approaches the house, praying under his breath. Please, Guru, please let me get this job.

  From this level, the house looks deceptively like a modest one-story, its rough fieldstone walls topped by a wide, overhanging roof. The rest of it is hidden on the other side, two lower floors of steel and glass cut into the hillside, ending in a terraced garden with a kidney-shaped swimming pool.

  The doorbell chimes deep within the house, but there are no answering footsteps. Despite the chill, perhaps Senator Neals is out on the rear deck, where the sound of the doorbell will be drowned out by the waves.

  Shanti presses her nose against the truck window as he walks toward the high hedges that shield the back of the house. He spent hours during the summer trimming them into perfect cubes, but scraggly branches have broken through, undoing all his hard work.

  Pushing through a gap in the hedges, he looks at the rear of the house, its rows of tall windows dark and silent. He takes one step forward.

  And almost falls over Senator Neals.

  Chapter Two

  Clayton Neals is crouched over a deep hole. Dirt streaks his broad face, and the neck of his gray Harvard sweatshirt is ringed with sweat.

  “Who the hell are you?” He holds a large shovel, its metal blade as sharp as a knife.

  Ranjit steps backward, feeling the sway of shrubbery behind him. He is taller than the Senator, but the man has wide, powerful shoulders, and arms thick with muscle. On television, in a dark suit, he appears both powerful and controlled, but right now his face is twisted into a snarl.

  “I’m Ranjit Singh, sir. I worked here this summer. Your wife told me to come and see you about a caretaker’s job.”

  The Senator slowly lowers the shovel. “She said something about a caretaker, but I wasn’t expecting you now.”

  Damn it, there goes the job. “Sir, I drove up here all the way from Oak Bluffs. If you could spare a few minutes…” Ranjit glances at the hole the Senator is digging, deep enough for a foundation post. “I have a shovel in my truck. Perhaps I could help?”