The Caretaker

by A. X. Ahmad

  It begins to work. He is a child again, back at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. He and his mother have entered through the gate by the tall clock tower, and the din of the city fades away, replaced by the sound of water lapping against the edges of the sacred lake. He lags behind his mother, watching the Sikh men in loincloths wade into the lake, carrying their small knives tucked into the folds of their turbans.

  He looks at the men’s faces. Some of them have grizzled gray beards and bellies, but others are young and muscled, their beards as black as night. Do any of them look like his father?

  He strains to find an image of his father’s face, but all he can remember is the medal in its square box. Pitaji had died the year after he was born, and that date is inscribed on the Param Vir Chakra medal. Sometimes he’d open the box and stroke it, feeling its cold, metallic surface, and then read the words inscribed on its back: To Major Khalsa Singh, for valiant courage in the face of the enemy.

  Ranjit’s friends say that he should be proud, and he is, except that each time he comes to the temple and sees these men, he starts wondering about his father. Would he be a graybeard now, or would his hair still be dark?

  Mataji turns to him, gesturing to him to hurry up. She has volunteered her services at the langar, the communal kitchen. As she walks she hums a verse from the Guru Granth Sahib:

  Even in a gale of torrential rain, I would go to meet my Guru

  Even if an ocean separates them,

  A Sikh would go to meet his Guru

  As a man dies of thirst without water

  A Sikh would die without his Guru …

  Ranjit watches a bather enter the waters of the sacred lake. Rings ripple through the water, growing larger, intersecting with others. He forgets all his troubled thoughts and merges with the peace and silence.

  * * *

  Deep into the night, he wakes suddenly, his heart hammering in his chest, ears straining to hear a sound. He hears Preetam’s slow breathing and the crashing of the waves down below.

  He has been dreaming again. He sighs, turns on his side, and closes his eyes.

  Then he hears it clearly.

  The sound of a car crunching over the gravel driveway, coming to a stop in front of the house. He is suddenly wide awake.

  Floating down the hillside is the muffled sound of voices.

  Chapter Nine

  He lies very still, listening intently.

  He cannot make out the words, but the voices are male, harsh and confident. They probably think that nobody is in the house, because his truck is hidden behind a stand of trees.

  Tensing, he waits for the shattering of glass, the sound of the door being forced. Instead there is a click, followed by the beep beep beep of the alarm being turned off. The intruders are inside the house.

  They have a key and the alarm code. Is the Senator back?

  Ranjit pulls on his jeans and his army surplus sweater and walks to the base of the stairs, hearing the voices drift down.

  “Hey, look at this place.”

  “Yeah, it stinks of money.”

  Not the Senator’s deep rumbling voice. These are two white men. Plaid-shirt and his brother. They have tracked him down.

  Returning to the bedroom, he slides his sheathed knife out from under the mattress. He remembers the dog lunging at him through the darkness, its fangs bared. This time he’ll give those bastards the fright of their lives.

  He puts a hand over Preetam’s mouth and shakes her awake. “There are two men upstairs. Don’t make a sound. Put on your clothes and wait here.”

  Her eyes are liquid with panic. “Ranjit, call the police.”

  “No police. I’ll take care of it. Get dressed.”

  He slides open the glass door and walks silently out onto the deck. Stars twinkle in the night sky and the air is as sharp as a blade. It must be three or four o’clock.

  The darkness is on his side as he takes the exterior wooden stairs up, three at a time, heading for the top deck. First rule of combat: identify the enemy.

  Lights are blazing in the living room. All the men can see is their own reflection in the sliding glass doors, but he can see them clearly. They are definitely not Plaid-shirt and his brother.

  Both men wear dark business suits. One man is dark haired and muscular, the other taller, with long hair so pale that it seems almost white. They stand with their backs to him, studying the glass case of dolls.

  Ranjit stays back in the darkness. The men look official. Did the Senator send them? Whoever they are, they can’t find him living here illegally.

  The taller man turns, and Ranjit sees high cheekbones framed by wings of long, white-blond hair; gold cuff links gleam in the sleeves of his white shirt, and he wears a black knit tie.

  He turns to his dark-haired companion, his voice strangely garbled. “Patience, Joey. Don’t go grabbing the first one you see—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Look in the bedrooms. Downstairs.”

  The men head for the circular stairs in the corner, and Ranjit thinks of Shanti, fast asleep on the floor below. He skids down the flight of wooden stairs that connect the two decks, turns the corner, and knocks softly on the sliding glass door of Shanti’s bedroom.

  She sleeps on. He pulls out his knife, slips its thin blade into the doorjamb, and feels the lock pop. As he steps into the room the blast of cold air wakes Shanti.

  “Hey, we have to go. Code Red.”

  “What, again? Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Go.”

  She stumbles to her closet, pulls on her new pink jacket and her boots. She grabs something from under the covers and stuffs it into her backpack. Under a minute. Good girl.

  “Take the outside stairs to my room. Your mother is waiting there. Take her to the truck, it’s under the trees. Got it?”

  Shanti nods, tosses the hair out of her eyes, and is gone.

  He pulls up the bedcovers and throws her clothes into the closet, hearing footsteps coming down the corridor, the voices getting louder. He steps out onto the deck and, just in time, pulls the glass door shut behind him.

  Hunkering down behind a deck chair, he waits.

  The door to Shanti’s room opens and a pale hand fumbles for the light switch. The blond man steps through the doorway and stops. For a moment Ranjit thinks he’s been seen, but the man is looking at his own reflection in the glass door, and brushes a stray strand of hair from his forehead. He is so close that Ranjit can see his manicured fingernails and his finely tailored pin-striped suit.

  The dark-haired man enters the room and yawns loudly. “Jesus, I’m beat. What do we have here?” He hitches up his pant legs and crouches in front of a shelf of toy dolls. “This is fucking stupid. Which one is it?”

  But the blond man isn’t listening. He crosses to the bed and puts his palm flat on the bedcover.

  “Joey. It’s warm. Somebody’s been sleeping here.”

  “What is this Goldilocks-and-the-three-bears shit? There’s not supposed to be anyone here, man.”

  “Shut up. Feel this.”

  The blond man is already walking toward the glass door. He notices the splinters around the lock and reaches into his jacket. There is a gleam of metal.

  The door slides open and Ranjit shrinks behind the deck chair, gripping its heavy metal frame with both hands. A white-knuckled hand appears, clutching a handgun.

  There is no choice now, no place to hide. Lifting up the deck chair, Ranjit brings it down hard, and the gun clatters onto the wooden deck. There is a shout of alarm.

  Ranjit turns and runs down the wooden stairs. There are frantic footsteps above.

  “Get him, stop him!” The dark-haired man peers through the stairs, arm outstretched, trying to get a shot through the risers.

  Ranjit vaults over the deck rail onto the terrace. He sprints around the empty swimming pool and across the brown grass of the lawn, heading for the dark outline of the shrubbery.

  He’s halfway there when there is the
hum of an angry wasp and the dirt ahead of him explodes.

  A silencer, he thinks, they’re using a silencer.

  He runs faster, the cold air searing through his lungs, then he’s through the shrubbery. The branches scrape his face, and the tall bushes close behind him like a wall.

  Another shot thwacks through the bushes, going wide, but he doesn’t look back.

  He’s running up the hill, out of breath now. Did he park the truck facing inward or outward? Please, Guru, let it be facing out.

  Lungs burning, he sees the truck, pointed toward the driveway, the pale face of Shanti in the front passenger seat. She sees him and turns the key in the ignition. Good girl.

  The engine rumbles, chokes, and dies.

  Ranjit gets in, twists the key again, and the engine roars to life. From the backseat Preetam is screaming something that he can’t understand.

  The truck roars into the first sharp curve and almost goes over. He fights the wheel, slams the truck around the next curve, and heads up the hill, into darkness.

  Chapter Ten

  The winding road through Aquinnah is a blur. Ranjit’s truck is pushing eighty but the blue tungsten headlights in the rearview mirror never fall back. He senses a powerful car hanging behind him, biding its time. As soon as there is room to pass, it will surge past and cut him off.

  The truck roars through the sleeping towns of Chilmark and West Tisbury and turns onto the Edgartown–West Tisbury Road. The road widens here, with a wide bike path running alongside it. The car behind growls and accelerates, preparing to pass. Good.

  Ranjit skews the truck sideways onto the bike path and screeches to a stop, his seat belt tightening against his chest. He reaches out and kills the headlights.

  A boxy white van hurtles past. At the speed it is traveling, it’ll take a few minutes to stop and turn around.

  He quickly backs the truck and turns onto a deeply rutted dirt track. Driving without lights, he takes each left fork, heading deeper and deeper into the brush. The few houses here are dark, their high slatted fences showing the outlines of sleeping horses.

  Soon there are no more houses and the truck’s tires slip on sandy soil. Stunted pines close in, their twisted branches scraping against the truck, and then the land suddenly opens up, and water gleams in the distance.

  He reaches a large sign that says LONG POINT WILDLIFE RESERVATION—MAINTENANCE STAFF ONLY. A padlocked gate bars his way, but he just drives around it, crashing through the undergrowth. He’d come here with Jõao during the summer to do some illegal fishing and learned some poacher’s tricks.

  The truck jolts onto a dirt track, and he follows it, stopping under a stand of trees at the edge of Tisbury Great Pond. When he turns off the engine the lap lap lap of the enclosed pond fills the air, and beyond that is the dull roar of the open Atlantic.

  Hah. They’d need a helicopter to find him here.

  He looks around, suddenly aware that Shanti is gripping her seat belt, a line of blood on her lower lip where she has bitten herself. Behind him Preetam is sitting stock-still, the hood of her new coat askew over one shoulder, crying silently, tears running down her cheeks and soaking into its plush collar.

  As the adrenaline rush fades, Ranjit tries to think. Had the Senator sent those men to retrieve something from the house? But why would they carry guns with silencers? Are they thieves, after Anna’s doll collection? She had said they were valuable antiques.

  With the engine turned off, cold seeps into the truck. Preetam is still crying, and he turns to the backseat.

  “Preetam, let me explain—”

  She draws in her breath sharply. “Why did we have to run from that house? Why?”

  He thinks back to the gun in the blond man’s hand, a greenish-gray .45 Colt automatic. With the silencer, Preetam wouldn’t have heard the shots.

  She leans between the seats and looks directly at him, her face streaked with tears.

  “I knew it was too good to be true,” she says. “I knew it all along.”

  He tries again. “Just let me explain. There are these burglaries happening on the island—”

  “If those men were burglars, why did we have to run away? Why didn’t you just call the police?” When he doesn’t answer, she continues. “No more lies, Ranjit. What are you trying to hide? That you took us to live in someone else’s house? And they came back and thought we were intruders? Now they will call the police and you will be in jail. Again.”

  “Please, not in front of Shanti—”

  “No. I will speak. All those years you were in prison, when everybody was spitting on your name, do you know what my father said? Divorce Ranjit, he’s useless. You’re young, you can get remarried. But I wouldn’t listen to him. It was my duty as a wife to stand by you, so I waited for you, for three long years.”

  “Preetam, please—”

  “Then, when you wanted to come to America, I did my duty as a wife, and I came with you, leaving my whole family behind. All of this, for you, so we could rebuild our lives. Then you go and take us to live in some stranger’s house…”

  He tries to reach out and hold her hand, but she pushes him away.

  Shanti is shivering, her big eyes focused on Ranjit. “Papaji, you were in prison? Why?”

  The army prison. He remembers the cold concrete floors and the smell of old sweat. Preetam had visited him just once, when Shanti was less than a year old. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, she had dressed up for the occasion in a white salwar kameez. Sitting across the scarred wood table from her, he could smell her perfume, and wanted to touch her.

  She asked him again what had happened up there, and when he told her, she insisted it was a mistake. She asked if her father, the Colonel, could help in any way. He just shook his head. Don’t come back here, he said. Don’t ever visit me here again.

  When they finally let him out, Shanti was almost four years old. She was singing to herself and playing in the garden, her dark curls bouncing. Seeing the tall, gaunt Sikh coming through the gate, she ran to her mother for protection.

  Now Shanti looks up at him, and her voice trembles. “Papaji, why did you go to jail?”

  “Something bad happened. Men died. I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.”

  “But it was a war, right? Men die in wars?”

  Not like this, jaan, not like this. “It was a mistake. All a mistake—”

  “Ranjit.” Preetam’s voice is tired and faint. “I don’t think I can stay here anymore.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. You two go back to Boston for a while, and I’ll sort out this mess—”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  He feels suddenly sick to his stomach.

  “I’m going to Lallu Mama’s in Boston, but I cannot go on like this. I cannot live with you any longer. It’s just one lie after another.”

  “What … what are you saying?”

  “I think we should live separately. I’m taking Shanti with me. I have to think about what I want to do.” Preetam leans back, her lips pressed into a thin line.

  “Papaji!” Tears spill from Shanti’s eyes.

  He holds his crying daughter, feeling the hot tears on his chest. He rubs her skinny, long back and tries to comfort her.

  “Enough of this, Ranjit. Drive us to the ferry in Oak Bluffs.”

  The pink light of dawn is filling the sky and a gentle breeze makes waves on the surface of Tisbury Great Pond. There is a cry and a pair of loons flashes up into the sky, twisting and turning.

  It is going to be a cloudless, sunny, beautiful day.

  Chapter Eleven

  The sun is still low in the sky when Ranjit drives up to the ferry terminal at Oak Bluffs. He has argued and pleaded with Preetam, but she returns again and again to their flight from the house, convinced that the owners had returned. There is no way he can tell her about the man with the gun.

  Before she gets out of the car, she turns fiercely to him.

  “I don’t ca
re how you do it, but I want you to get my wedding jewelry from the Senator’s house. Don’t bother bringing it to Boston. Call my uncle and he will come and get it.”

  She slams the door and walks away down the wooden pier, leading Shanti by the hand.

  “Wait—” Ranjit swings down from the truck as they walk away. “Preetam, please listen to me. Just listen—”

  The few walk-on passengers turn and stare at him, then at Preetam. She walks onward, dragging Shanti along, her eyes red, the collar of her black coat stained with snot.

  Ranjit knows what they are thinking: Look at these foreigners. He does not want to make a scene, and so he stays by the truck, his hands balled into fists.

  Without a backward glance Preetam vanishes into the dark mouth of the ferry. Shanti pauses and gives him a small, solemn wave. Then she too, is gone. The last few cars drive into the ferry and the bow doors swing shut. With a loud toot, the boat surges away, leaving behind a wake of plowed ocean.

  When they first boarded the ferry to come here, he held Shanti’s hand, and they watched a school of tiny silver fish nosing through the water. He felt the warm, salty breeze on his face, heard the clanging bells of the buoys, and felt free. The island was his last hope. He cannot let things end like this.

  One of the Brazilian ferrymen looks up from coiling hawsers, sees him still standing there, and says, “Mister, the next one is in three hours. You come back later, okay?” The man seems to be in a bad mood as he wrestles with the thick rope.

  “The ferry was pretty empty today, wasn’t it?” Ranjit says, just making conversation.

  The ferryman stops his work and looks up. “Of course it’s empty. Who the hell travels on Christmas Day?”

  Ranjit nods. “Oh yes, of course.” Christmas. He had forgotten all about it.

  He returns to the truck and drums his fingers against the steering wheel as he formulates a plan.

  If the men were professional thieves, the dolls are all probably gone by now; once they have what they want, they’ll leave the island. He can go back and move his family’s possessions out of the Senator’s house, then mess it up to make it look like another break-in. Senator Neals is sure to have massive insurance coverage, rich people always do. And once he has found another place to live, he’ll drive to Boston and convince Preetam to return. Yes, that is what he’ll do.