Fingerprints of Previous Owners Read online

  He asked his brother for the money, but his brother said he should save the money for what Wilson needed more urgently. “Care,” he named it. I thought perhaps we could manage one pass, and he could walk the beach while I walked the road and waited for him on the other side of the resort. But when I brought the orange card that was the pass home, Wilson refused it and sent me back the next day for a refund. He said the money was too great without his brother’s help. And the point was walking side by side. We would walk around the fences and on that stretch of road together. I could see disappointment in the way his skin relaxed around his eyes, however. Because the fullness of the plan was being eaten away, little by little, as if by ants. Any mention of the resort or the private beach by someone else made his face move in such a way as to confirm each hint he had of a wrinkle. Nights when he was very tired or feeling his pains he would forget to uplift his face for my sake and would say it made him angry to think we were not allowed to walk where we used to walk freely.

  I never told Wilson—nay, anyone—what happened the day I returned the day pass. (Perhaps returned is not the right term; they did not take the orange card from me but instead slashed through its words with a thick black marker before handing it back.) I decided to leave through the staff exit, because my nephew was working at the resort, and I had a message for him from his father. Nothing too important, but it seemed no great trespass to leave the resort through the truck bay. Lots of boys back there, both American staff and island boys: some playing cards and smoking; some hosing down what needed to be hosed; some working repairs on equipment in the garage; et cetera. All looked up at me, laughing eyes suggesting I didn’t belong there. Expecting I took a wrong turn, though I had chosen my path of exiting the resort. I didn’t see my nephew, however, so I proceeded toward the gate behind the trucks to be on my way.

  Some of them were silent as I passed; some muttered names—you know what kind of things they call a man like me. Bungy. And the like. Me, a man as old as their fathers, and yet some of their hands found their way to me—nudging me enough to try to provoke but not enough to cause me to leave my feet. And I continued to approach the gate to exit. Until one young man I’d never seen before on this island took a piece of pool equipment, a long pole with a net at its tip, and got it caught up in my ankles. I did fall to the ground. And what happened next, well, I will just say that it was a good thing that the dumpster had not been emptied yet that day, so I was not hurt by their throwing as I might have been, and it was not as difficult to climb out as it might have been. I was able to walk out the gate myself.

  I went home and was able to continue my plans with Wilson without any physical ailments to make our endeavor all the more impossible. Today is the closest I have come to entering the resort since that day.

  As for Wilson and me, we made it as far as Junkful Beach. This location is not so far from our home. But also this location is not so close to our home. No matter how you want to think of it, as far or near, that is the distance we walked. Wilson became weak, and even after resting for an extended period on the rocks at Junkful Beach, he was unable to continue. We were unable to continue. I had, of course, made arrangements for such a possibility by scheduling with another of my nephews several locations to which he would drive to see how we were faring. As it happened, we were at Junkful Beach for quite a while before his arrival for our eventual, and last, ride home. We sat in repose and talked and didn’t talk about everything and nothing for the better part of the afternoon in that strange mix that is Junkful Beach: the scruff of the weeds, the band of sand washed soft by the water insisting on coming in over and over again, the stretch of the water to the horizon, east to all sorts of places we have not seen with our own eyes. Africa, Asia. England the only faraway place I have seen, when I went to study a spell, long ago.

  Wilson gathered some energy, in our final half an hour or so there, to meander a certain stretch of the beach and examine—marvel at, more accurately—what we found there. What had found its final resting place on our little island, he said. The most unexpected object we uncovered that day was this child’s violin bow. How strange that the wood could be rubbed nearly colorless by the sea but that its strings could remain so wonderfully, relatively intact. Not all of them had hung on, but some had. In addition, how wonderful, Wilson said, that we found it among weeds so close in color. So that we knew there had to be something special about the way we used our eyes to find something that so many others would have mistaken for another ribbon of weed on the most unkempt beach of the island.

  His last days on the island before the series of planes took him to Miami, to his brother’s house, to die, he would recline on our front porch, facing the ocean, and wave the bow like a conductor’s wand. Wouldn’t it be the way, he said, in that way he had of saying such things, if we could direct it all. He moved his hands in concert with his eyes, in concert with the waves, as if he could catch up to and even overtake them. On the day of his departure he handed the bow to me and told me to keep it raised in the air, keeping him aloft even across the water between us.

  It was so very difficult to get off the island, in those days when the resort was flying so many in and out without the number of flights having caught up. I wanted to go with Wilson to the capital, to be with him at least for the two days he would be waiting for his flight to Miami. But there was only one seat to be had, for a stretch of months it seemed. We could not wait any longer, and I saw him off from the dock as he floated, seated backward on the boat, waving, to the airstrip to go and wait alone. In the capital for his flight, and then in Miami.

  The bow does not work, my friends. You may laugh at it, of course. It is powerless, in its way, against the ailments that overtook him. It was, in the end, powerless to conduct me through the visa channels in time to arrive for the funeral. I carry it on my back. Slung low on my back, against my spine. It is powerful in its survival, tossed in the sea, in the memories with which I’ve strung it taut. It reminds me, my friends, of the way we had to see to discover it. It reminds me, from behind, that I am not leading the way on my own.

  Chapter Five

  The Beach Blanket Blog said, “The House and Lovers’ Lookout Tour. Great views! Magical views!”

  Going inland in broad daylight: the real magic trick.

  I had a bunch of big greenish garbage bags Lem had given me. I’d convinced him part of my garbage duty could be collecting litter during the tour. I didn’t want to ask him for any favors, didn’t want to do anything that’d have him dogging up to me all the time again—all the time still. But Lem agreeing to the extra garbage duty I’d invented to do during my Maid hours meant I could walk up the path—the resort’s way inland—for the first time. The bags stuck to my hands in the heat, shimmered, as I slowly caught up to the tour group.

  I knew the Manions had gone up with this group. Maybe Jasmine Manion had taken her book up there, to compare what she saw to the map. As if I wasn’t drowning in the inland already—now that bag of hers was something I couldn’t stop tracking. Eyeing how squared-out its edges seemed.

  Getting inland through the resort’s path was so much easier than getting inland anywhere else on the island. They had dug into the hillside to make an evenly graded slope paved smoother than any paved road around here. As far as I knew, not a single one of us local folks who worked for the resort had ever walked this not-too-steep path, each serpentine curve the shape of a machete blade. It was as off-limits as swimming in the pool or sitting down to feast in the dining room. Drinking with a guest, island-glued to another in Lionel’s old truck. None of us had ever witnessed the AYS giving the tour: the storybook version of the inland, with its concocted Lovers’ Lookout.

  I shook one of the bags out to its length. It filled with air and my pretense of litter duty. Pulled a wisp of paper out of a bush. Realized the plant I was reaching into was landscaped haulback posed, almost unrecognizably, in carved circular sculptures along the path. So it could be tamed. Pricked me just
the same.

  I knew I was getting closer when I caught bits of conversations. Even closer when slices of tourists flashed in between the landscaped foliage. A glimpse of a man unfolding the legs of his sunglasses and wrapping them around his puffy pink face, then wrapping his arm around the waist of the woman next to him, who seemed not to mind his sweat. A glimpse of a kid with thick white sunblock puddled in the valleys around his nose, the divot below his mouth, the swirls of his ears, and the creases of his elbows. Squirming away when his mother tried to rub it all in. Glimpse of his mother: Jasmine Manion. Glimpse of his nanny stooping to take the boy’s hand, her dark eyes probably bloodshot and glassy behind mirrored lenses. A glimpse of an older woman in a broad-brimmed straw hat batting absentmindedly at the camera strung around her neck. Strolling up to the Manions too casually to be casual.

  “Where are you from?” she asked. “We’re from New Jersey. Central.”

  “Wisconsin,” Mrs. Manion replied.

  The woman leaned back as if a wind had come up out of nowhere. “Wisconsin? Really! Bruce,” she called, waving to a man nearby. “These people are from Wisconsin! Have you ever met anyone from Wisconsin?”

  “I most definitely have not! Wow.” His T-shirt stuck to him in shapes of sweat that made his torso look like a map. It was definitely the hottest day since the last boat came in and the farthest any of the tourists had gotten from the resort’s air-conditioned interiors; even the pool deck was speckled with fans.

  Jasmine Manion morphed into a streak of orange until I came around another bend in the path and saw her more fully: crisp white capri pants and a shimmery mango top that flowed around her. Full makeup. Matching earrings, bracelet, and necklace. Her hair was still pulled back in a tight, short ponytail, as it was during Lionel’s tour, but tiny ringlets were popping out along her forehead from the humidity. She was overdressed compared with the other women in their swimsuits and cover-ups or tank tops and shorts. Holding up her hand as a map of Wisconsin to show the other couple where they’d come from.

  Around another slight bend in the path, and I could see her son badgering her husband until his father handed over his sunglasses. Purple lines left on his nose. His grayish-brown hair was plastered to his forehead, drips of sweat migrating from his ears down to his chin. The boy looked up at his mother, showing off his oversized glasses. His cap of paper-bag-colored curls had tightened in the humidity, making his face look rounder and babyish. Jasmine Manion took a handkerchief from her palm tree–stamped bag and handed it to her husband. I couldn’t see inside the bag.

  I finally emerged from the landscaped path to the outlined clearing. The gray of the stone was brilliant in the sunlight. They called it the House, but it wasn’t a house. Really just three walls still standing: the taller wall connecting the lower longer ones was two stories high and pointed at the top so you could imagine the roofline. Still, much more of a house than anything stone I’d found. And so much higher off the ground—lift of importance. What house? Views of what? The blog hadn’t said, and neither did the AYS leading the group.

  There were open rectangles where the windows had been. A stone slab came away from the front door at an angle; the AYS called it the veranda. Steps had been built up to the second floor from behind; I heard the AYS say the original steps would have been more like a ladder through a hole in the floor, which made everyone gasp and laugh. Both kids and adults were scampering up and sticking their heads through the empty rectangles, making goofy faces for pictures in the empty spaces that had been windows. The ocean whooshed somewhere below. The way people pointed from the top of the stairs, through the upstairs windows, I assumed they had a tremendous view out to sea. Only me staring at stones instead.

  I hovered around, sniffing for the excuse of more garbage near the Manions. Her bag looked bulky. Had to keep my eyes down. If Jasmine Manion recognized me and said anything, the AYS would hear. If I hovered too close, the AYS would feel the change in one of their flat-eyed maids.

  “Alvin, let’s go up there and take some pictures,” Jasmine Manion said, nudging the boy toward Katelynn, who was snapping pictures of the ocean. I stayed at the nanny’s back; now that she knew my name, she was another hazard. Fire coral in murky water.

  “I think I’m going to find a chair,” Jasmine Manion’s husband said. “Are there any damned chairs around here? I’ll wait for you if you want to go up.”

  “No, come with me.” They stood facing each other, not saying anything for a minute. “I’m not going alone, and you know why. What happened by the truck?” She whispered truck. Her forehead stretched back, as if her point should be obvious. Then I saw her eyes dart around, maybe looking for the mophead cyclist.

  Her husband ticked his head to the side, an assent, and flicked the screen of his phone before sliding it into his pocket. “What’s the way up to the top? Steep?”

  She scoffed at him. “I don’t think so. The AYS said I could make it up all the way in my mules.” They both looked at her feet and, despite myself, I looked, too.

  Some unidentifiable string appeared nearby for me to pick up, slowly. A loop of clear plastic, slow again.

  Another couple had joined the conversation as well, smiling and nodding as one. The wife stood very close to me without seeming to notice I was there. Her hair hung in a blondish drape around her face; I was close enough to see the dark gray roots.

  “Isn’t it just gorgeous up here? I can’t get enough of this blue sky,” the husband said.

  “Yes, but it’s just so hot today,” the woman with the hat said. “When I was a girl, we used to go to the movies in the afternoon because it was air-conditioned, and we stayed there as long as possible in the cool and in the dark. I wouldn’t think there’s a theater around here, though.” She shielded her eyes from the sun and hunched her shoulders with a grimace.

  “When I was a girl, my mother used to drive around on the hottest days with all the windows rolled up so that people would think our car had working air-conditioning!” Jasmine Manion let out a half laugh, half whimper.

  Her husband looked annoyed, his hand swatting mosquitoes or the air. He turned toward the House. “Don’t talk about that now, Jasmine,” he said. “Let’s go up.”

  Whether she was following his command or just wanted to go, she quickly looped her arm through his, leaned into him, and stretched her leg in an overstated step toward what had been the doorway of the stone house.

  I stepped back as the AYS motioned for the group to turn away from the House facade and down a narrow path. I stayed a few steps back, not wanting her to see me watching but wanting to see Lovers’ Lookout.

  A few steps in, the tidy brush opened up to another small clearing with a railing built out from either side of a thick pillar of wood wedged into a base of stones. A balcony overlooking the sea. The tourists stared and stared; nothing they had to do but respect its beauty. The water out toward the horizon had been mesmerized into ruffles, but near the shore it lapped peacefully.

  The AYS, in her pink resort T-shirt and crisp white shorts, propped herself up on the railing and waved to get our attention. The sun caught her slicked-back ponytail with white stripes. Beneath the sleek plane of her sunglasses, her nose looked skinned, with a raw pink patch that matched her shirt.

  The group stirred when the Manion boy decided to scramble up an embankment toward some baby palms, slipping from his nanny’s grip like a thief. Heard one of the snorkeling women murmur, not that low, about where that boy’s mother was. The others just stared, silent and wilting in the heat.

  “Nathan! Nathan Manion, you get back here!” Katelynn’s eyes darted up toward where his parents were, worried they’d see she couldn’t wrangle him.

  It was so quiet except for the ocean and the nanny’s yelling. Nathan was sitting, laughing until she reached him, and she pulled him down alongside her, with both of them scooting through the dirt on their behinds. They were both filthy by the time they were back standing with the others. The boy’s laughi
ng had turned to crying as he fell against her legs. The other tourists looked at them with some mixture of disapproval and pity. I was glad no one was looking at me.

  When the AYS started speaking, her voice boomed out above the sound of the water, got their attention. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is Furnace Island’s own version of Lovers’ Lane. We call it Lovers’ Lookout. It is said that this is the most beautiful and the most romantic point on the island, and any two people who stand together and look out on the gorgeous sea from here will—be careful, now!—fall in love. Proceed with caution, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. You know how hot furnaces can get! And it is said that any two people who kiss up here will be bombarded with good luck for a year!” She wagged her finger around, head tilted to one side.

  There was a confluence of quiet laughs, and I could feel everyone around gravitating into pairs. Arms stretching around shoulders, cheeks and lips finding other cheeks and lips, the spaces through which you could see the sun between bodies thinned out more and more until they disappeared.

  The most romantic point on the island? Felt like I was on some other island with some other inland. I turned back away from the lookout and toward the House. Had a good view of it from the cleared-out space where we all stood. The sun had seemed to multiply in the sky, but I could see it all now through my squint. Its state of partialness—the doors and the windows just blanks of nothingness squared off by stone—made it resemble the crude triangle drawn on the map. The biggest point on that map. The Main House. Master Cruffey’s House.

  A handful of tourists were up there climbing around on the House, pointing and bending their arms to take pictures of themselves. They posed with the ocean at their backs, but that meant they were facing inland. What could they see? Maybe from their perch their today-view was my everyday-view—but bird’s-eye. Master’s-eye. Walls of stones swallowed by haulback, glimpses of buildings rising up from the brush like shark fins. Any sign of a diamond, with its bundle of sticks, just an accidental scribble in just another crumbling wall. Maybe they could see my path—I couldn’t calculate how far away it might be from where we were—but I doubted they could cipher what that was either.