Realizing he’d again addressed us, he gripped the edge of a shelf. What could we do but reassure him that he had not completely lost his head? Reluctantly, we emerged from the dusty spaces behind books, where we’d been napping for weeks, undisturbed by the Plantations’ incurious guests. Professor Cleave dragged his hand across his forehead and leaned forward to study our antennae. As if he couldn’t help himself, he lifted a finger in the air.
“There is such a thing as cultural capital acquired through intellectual labor. This collection, however, is a thin veneer that disguises more than edifies.”
We’d already arrived at that conclusion. The guest library at the Plantations at St. Anne had never provided us with anything but a place to sleep. As for edification, its nearly inedible contents—thousands and thousands of alkaline-soaked pages embalmed in glue and strips of synthetic leather—hardly constituted proper food.
“The only thing worse than the false pretenses on display is the loss to those who would gain an education, were these books in a public library. There was once such a place.”
A set of frayed volumes between two ivory bookends caught his attention. He drew several books from the shelf and fingered the unraveling stitches of Queen Victoria’s Glorious Empire, the crooked cover of Missionaries Among the Pygmies of New Guinea, and the tattered Cultures of the British Raj. He considered the faded library stamps inside of each.
“One wonders why they keep these, if not to celebrate strange ideas.” Imagining we might have found, in his remark, some sanction for ignorance, he composed himself. “But perhaps there is something of worth to salvage from the rubbish.”
Or an organic snack, we might have added, but we’d always taken care to preserve the worn volumes between the bookends. Their earthly scent always recalled fond memories of napping peacefully in the stacks of Portsmouth’s library.
Professor Cleave drew a slender cloth-bound book from the shelf and squinted at its cover. We lifted our antennae as he leafed through The Wonder That Was Ours: Colonial Days on St. Anne, from the Perspective of a Loyal Crown Servant, by Winthrop Markeley, O.B.E.
“His was a rarified world, a rarely seen wonder. The days of Markeley were lean for most.”
He turned brittle pages riddled with brown spots, skimming passages about high-society pastimes and inspecting photographs of molasses vats and plantation managers in linen suits. He paused to consider an estate house vanishing from the grains of disintegrating paper.
“He’d find humor in this one. The UGG’s first meeting place in all its glory, or as he’d say, before they brought it to its greatest glory by drinking more than the British on their worst days.”
We crept to the edge of the shelf and strained our antennae toward the photograph of the old Markeley place, wearied by memories of sleepless nights and then stirred by thoughts of “boxing,” as Topsy had called it.
“He’d say they lit up the sky when they burned it, and then he’d find some way to connect it to the independence movement.”
He trailed off, envisioning the world his father had known. Then, recalling his own injunctions about stealing, he slipped the book into his jacket. “That we need to steal a book to save it from obscurity is the real abomination. It once belonged to all of us.”
We fluttered our wings as he walked through the lobby, past photographs of plantation managers mounted on horses, feeling as though he’d just reclaimed a small measure of stolen dignity.
When he stepped onto the porch, Tremor was nowhere to be seen. Professor Cleave looked at the polished car, and at a group of mercenaries near the front entrance, smoking and talking over lowered surgical masks. As he touched the railing at the top of the steps, he heard his name and turned around. Helen was rising from a rattan chair beside a tea trolley. Between her insistent pallor and the way she adjusted the folds of her skirt, she looked as though she’d stepped from the pages of the disintegrating memoir tucked in his jacket. Behind her, Dave was leaning against the armrest of a second chair, drawing from a cigarette and surveying the grounds with disgust. Like her, he had the look of a ghost, part of a bitter history forever unfolding into the present.
“Your father said it would only take until afternoon to get here,” Helen said. “He was right.”
Professor Cleave released his grip on the railing. “Of course he would have been right. When he was coming up, only the Governor had a car. You walked because that’s what you did.”
Dave stood up and scratched his bandage as if it were a second, hated skin. “We saw that fucking kid. Half hour ago, behind the house. Came out of nowhere in some kind of uniform and pulled a gun on me.”
“He didn’t pull it,” Helen said. “He put his hand on it.”
“To pull it.” Dave ground his cigarette beneath his shoe. “He was looking right at me, with his hand on it.”
Professor Cleave scanned the grounds. “Where did he go?”
“Who the fuck knows? And what the fuck is he doing in a uniform?”
Professor Cleave massaged his forehead. “Certain people erred in judgment. They know this now. He’d just been dismissed when you saw him.”
“Who the fuck hasn’t been fired before? He’s got a gun.”
“The woman at the front desk called security,” Helen said. “The manager’s coming down to talk to us.”
“She’s taking her goddamn time. I told those guys at the front gate. Told them what happened at the Ambassador, too. They got it. They said he should be strung up with razor wire.”
Professor Cleave looked at the mercenaries. “His gun isn’t loaded. They should be told that.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s waving it around. He’s dangerous.”
“It matters a great deal,” Professor Cleave said.
Helen started toward Professor Cleave. “The woman at the front desk seemed to know it wasn’t loaded—”
“He burned down the hotel and tried to kill me,” Dave said. “He probably murdered that guy on the beach. Who knows what else he did two nights ago?”
“We might never know,” Professor Cleave said quietly.
“Are you defending him? Think about everything he’s done.”
“I’ve thought about nothing else for days.”
“Someone should bust his skull open. String up what’s left and let everyone take pictures.” Dave collapsed into a chair and buried his face in his hands. When he sat up, his jaw was hanging slack, and his fingertips were moving along a strip of surgical tape.
Sickened, Professor Cleave started down the steps. On the bottom stair, he gripped the railing to steady himself. Helen stood above him, cradling her arms.
“Is there something we can do to pay you back? For letting us stay.”
He flinched, imagining something pecuniary and crass, something deeply American, in her question. “Send my father a letter. From the United States. He liked to get them. A very long time ago.”
He walked to the car, pulled the book from his jacket, and began to read. The sun was blazing, and yet he was suffering the heat, she knew, rather than bear their presence. To the sound of distant gunshots, she touched her cracked lips.
Dave looked at her and shook his head. “He was defending him. What the fuck is that about?”
Helen said nothing. From the top of the steps, she stared at Professor Cleave, standing in front of a polished black car, cradling a book in his palm and occasionally lifting his eyes to look into the distance, as if he were delivering a sermon.
Professor Cleave squinted at faded letters and struggled to distract himself from thoughts of a man picking at his bandages and talking about lynching. He leafed through brittle pages, pausing on the photograph of a house that had lit up the sky and then slipped into dereliction. When he looked up, the two Americans were sitting quietly on the porch, surrounded by the trappings of an empire moldering away in memoirs.
The sound of a gunshot drew him back to his surroundings. He remembered Tremor staggering from the lobby, bli
nded by a slipping beret. The boy, he thought, had lost his last protection. Certainly people in Portsmouth had seen him in his police uniform, and stories had begun to circulate. Rocky Point would exile him. His friends would shun him. Someone in Tindertown might kill him. The car was now as good as a hearse, and the boy would soon be sitting in its backseat, ignorant, if he were lucky, of the fate awaiting him. He imagined delivering the boy back to the streets, or to jail. He recalled Tremor on the Ambassador’s roof, brutalized and deeply afraid. The boy would never survive prison, if he even made it to trial. Most likely, he’d end up hanging in a solitary cell. Professor Cleave twitched at the memory of a wild pulse beneath his fingers and feared he might be sick.
He looked at the mercenaries standing near the gate, recalled their dead expressions and the crude tattoos covering their arms. He considered the tall windows fronting the house, overlooking the short drive to the entrance. He imagined Tremor’s terror, felt it in his own chest, and turned back to the gate. He counted three mercenaries. The others were nowhere to be seen.
“Beyond that, dispense with the problem as you see fit,” he whispered.
Professor Cleave surveyed a series of exposed fairways and patios, a small cluster of cottages, and a dense grove of trees obscuring the shore. He pressed his knuckles to his forehead and tried to imagine what had passed through Tremor’s mind when he staggered from the house. In his panic, the boy had likely run himself into a dead end on the beach. Professor Cleave cursed and started walking, trailing loose pages in his wake, dropped the book, and then broke into a run.
He found Tremor staring at the waves breaking along the shore. He called out once and walked to the water’s edge. At the sight of Professor Cleave, Tremor fell back on his palms and heels and crawled sideways across the sand like a retreating crab. Then he struggled to his feet and placed his hand on the gun. Sand clung to his pants, and his face was slick with sweat.
“I know it’s not loaded.” Professor Cleave took a step forward. “They’re looking for you. The police. Soldiers.”
“I didn’t kill the man on the beach,” Tremor said. “He was already dead.”
“I can drive you through the gate and take you down the road. Anywhere.”
“I wasn’t at the terminal.” Tremor lifted his hand to his own throat. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“If you have anywhere to go, you should leave now.”
Tremor looked up the coast, at the jagged outcropping of land beyond Rocky Point, the furthest reach of the only world he’d ever known, and out to sea, at oil tankers and barges distant enough to appear sedentary. They seemed otherworldly, shimmering pieces of an interrupted dream about to resume. He imagined, among them, splintered boats with hidden compartments.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Professor Cleave said. “You need to leave.”
Tremor stood motionless, in suspended flight, imagining a sinewy man in a wooden boat bearing him across the waves. Professor Cleave took another step forward. Tremor slid his fingertips beneath his collar and felt the edge of a welt on his shoulder. Then he remembered the last words his father had spoken to him, stepped away from the shore, and followed Professor Cleave, the man who’d tried to strangle him, into the trees.
When they reached the car, Tremor looked at the three mercenaries standing beside the front gate. His chest grew tight, and he forced himself to breathe, only to grow faint from the smell of rot and the sight of two Americans, the witnesses to his worst crimes, rising on the porch.
“Don’t stop,” Professor Cleave said, unlocking the car. “Just get in.”
Tremor climbed into the passenger seat and twisted around to look through the rear window. The man with the bandaged face was stumbling down the porch steps, and the woman was following him.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Tremor said again, turning to Professor Cleave.
Professor Cleave looked into Tremor’s eyes, unfocused by fear, and down at Tremor’s hands, faintly scarred and dusted with sand. For a fleeting instant, all that existed was the space inside the car, the boy sitting stiffly beside him, the sounds of uneven breathing. He thought of his daughter, of Cora and his father, and imagined wasting away in a jail cell for what he was about to do, for what he’d already done. He fumbled with the gearshift and the car lurched forward.
Halfway down the drive, a mercenary stepped into the car’s path. Professor Cleave braked and lowered his window. The mercenary placed his hand on the side mirror.
“This is a government car.” Professor Cleave gripped the steering wheel to control the shaking of his hands. “We need to leave the premises.”
The mercenary leaned forward. The smell of putrefaction moved through his mask. “Seems one of these rioters is running loose. Threatened a guest.” He looked at Tremor. “But you must know that already. Being on the police force. Maybe you can help us out. Mate.”
“We have business in Portsmouth,” Professor Cleave said.
“No business in Portsmouth now. Nothing left of it.” The mercenary addressed Tremor. “I need you to get out of the car. To answer some questions.”
Professor Cleave’s breath grew shallow. “We have government business. It’s urgent.”
“You could say this is urgent.” The mercenary took a step backward and angled his rifle toward the ground. “It’ll take just a minute. Turn off the engine.”
Professor Cleave struggled to speak as Tremor opened the passenger door and lowered himself to the ground. He was fumbling with his seatbelt when two soldiers came around the side of the house. He dug his nails into the steering wheel and listened to the mercenary leading Tremor toward the gate.
“What we can’t understand is how a rioter got over a wall,” the mercenary said. “With all the razor wire.”
Tremor faltered and then stopped in his tracks. He watched a flock of birds merging into a dark mass against the empty blue sky.
The mercenary turned to face Tremor. “Say, you’re the one who burned the body. Seen you on the news. Every bloody channel.”
Tremor looked into the man’s face, and his mouth parted around a broken word. He trailed his fingers across his cracked lips.
“Good on you. Taking preventative measures. No different than what we’re doing.” The mercenary pulled his mask from his face and spat on the ground. “Had monkeys in South Africa. Have them there still. They’re everywhere, moving from one place to the next. Diseased, the whole lot of them.”
Tremor grew dizzy at the sight of a dead bird caught in concertina wire.
“We’re no different, really. Except you’re a celebrity.”
Tremor’s fingertips slid from his lips.
“I didn’t hear you, mate,” the mercenary said.
“I just saw the man burned.”
“You need to speak up.”
Tremor took a step backward. “I didn’t burn him.”
“You don’t have to lie to me. But you’re right to worry. You don’t have many friends here. But you have friends somewhere. Gave you a uniform. Even gave you a gun. What is it?”
Tremor pressed his fingertips to his cheek and tried to speak.
“Your weapon. What is it?”
Tremor started to turn around.
“I’m still talking to you, boy.”
“I have orders.” Tremor’s voice broke. “To leave.”
“You still haven’t told me what kind of weapon you’re carrying.”
“It’s not my gun.”
“If it doesn’t belong to you, you’ll need to turn it over. You need authorization to carry a weapon here. Remove it from your holster and place it on the ground. Then you can leave.”
Tremor imagined making his way through Portsmouth, past shops and houses marked with his name. He thought of EZ and all the hard bargains he’d have to make, of how little left he had to trade. A wave of nausea passed through him, and he feared he’d lose control of his bowels. The gun’s dead weight seemed his only ballast. When it was gone, he’d
have nothing, but the man was standing before him, forcing a decision.
The gun seemed more unwieldy than he remembered. Its weight twisted his fingers into odd angles. He angled its muzzle toward the ground, envisioned himself curled within a fishing boat’s splintered hull, and then he crouched down. As he placed the gun on the grass, he lifted his face and looked into the mercenary’s eyes. He feared the mercenary would see that he’d released the safety and kick him in the head. The man took a step backward and leveled his rifle.
In that instant, time lost all meaning. The past slipped away, and with it, all regret. The future vanished, and with it, all responsibility. The world became a puzzle of shifting shapes. He heard a jumble of voices and whispered Mary’s name, and silence settled upon everything. In her silence, his last fear dissolved. He told himself he’d only imagined the power of Crazy Mary’s prayers and curses. Without the fear that had always defined him, he became nothing. He’d already stopped being a man when the bullet tore through his jacket.
LEGACY
IN THE END, EVERYONE leaves St. Anne. Most do it by dying. They leave their brittle wings and hollow bones behind, in neglected cemeteries or the stony ground beneath a golf course. Some—usually humans advantaged by canvas sails and gleaming wings—learn to master polluted currents and create new lives elsewhere. Humans comprise an opportunistic species adept at exploiting disequilibrium to colonize new niches, much like weeds sprouting amidst the stumps of a clear-cut forest. The Spanish built an empire on the graves of smallpox victims and the ruins of our homes. The British indulged sweet cravings until their teeth and souls rotted, and when they went bankrupt, Americans supplanted their Union Jack with a pink hotel. When the Americans leave, others will come.
Cockroaches also bear the hallmarks of opportunistic species: the ability to subsist on disparate food sources and exploit moments of disruption. Professional exterminators typically discuss cockroaches’ opportunism in pejorative terms. They write of “dietary indiscretion” rather than “adaptability” when noting our ability to subsist on anything from crème brulée to stamp glue. If only humans could register their own failings—the traits that distinguish their own opportunism from that of the so-called lower orders.
The Wonder That Was Ours Page 26
