The night air was sour on the sleeping porch as Gene tossed in his bed, unable to quiet his mind. They had watched from the upstairs windows as the British officers came in the rain to take the body away. Gene felt he would never forget the image of the tarp in the back of the truck bed, a mound underneath, as if it were nothing but dirt being moved from one place to another. And after they had gone, and the brothers had climbed under their covers, he couldn’t stop thinking about a sermon of his father’s, one more somber than usual. He couldn’t remember the occasion, but he could distinctly hear all these years later the exact way his father had intoned the sobering words: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.”
The only sound in the darkness was the wind through the rushes, bringing relief from the monsoon damp. Clouds blocked out the stars. The breeze picked up and sent Gene’s mosquito net fluttering, then died as suddenly as it started. There lingered the scent of fruit, like the infused water Arthur used to leave for their visitors in their bedrooms. He breathed deeply, and his stomach gurgled in response. He sighed and threw the covers back, swinging his legs out and over the shadowy floor.
The guards had left, having no one to guard. As Gene crept through the dark hall, the house felt lonely, left behind. Outside, the mango trees loomed over the tennis courts and stood tall and sheltering, their thick trunks like temple pillars, their fruit the heavenly bodies above. Gene, in his nightclothes and bare feet, could feel the monsoon ants crawling over his toes. He stepped over wet roots and reached up to feel the branches. His fingers followed one, over glossy leaves and dead-end twigs, until he found the smooth touch of mango skin. He grasped it firmly, his nails breaking through, and tugged it down. It snapped free and sent the branch flying, and he heard somewhere in the darkness the sound of more fruit dropping from the force. He would remember to pick them up tomorrow in the light, so that they wouldn’t rot.
He brought the fruit close and sniffed it. Fresh, mellow, not quite ripe but close. It was too firm, and he’d have to use a knife. He looked in the direction of the cookhouse but of course couldn’t see anything. Through the darkness, he could hear a slithering, snakes tangling among the roots of the tennis court. He turned and hurried to the cookhouse, surprisingly sure on his feet without light to see—though maybe it was the darkness that made him see things so clearly. He remembered the knife in the grass the day they had returned from the Old Gope, and the story the judge had told. He said the woman had tried to kill him that day. Could it have been her, and not Arthur, who had shot him? He shivered in the dark. Forgetting the knife, he clutched the mango to his heart and ran back to the house.
When he burst back onto the sleeping porch, he was surprised to see a lantern lit next to John’s bed. His brothers were all sitting still in the weak glow.
“I’ve just thought of something—” he began.
A sharp hiss shushed him.
“We’re holding a moment of silence for Uncle Ellis,” John said.
“At this hour?” But no one answered. He could only hold his breath while they prayed to themselves. Even Lee had his eyes closed, but he peeked at Gene with one open, raising his brow. Gene stood there, the juice from the mango drying sticky on his fingers.
“Amen,” said John.
“It was Jaya,” Gene exhaled.
“Who?”
“The woman! The Indian woman who stayed here last and ran away weeks ago. Ellis said she’d pulled a knife on him.”
“But it doesn’t make sense,” said Lee. “She came out of nowhere and left just as soon. Why would she want to kill Uncle Ellis?”
“She seemed awfully friendly with Arthur,” said Will. “He’d know something. In fact, I bet you they were cohorts. But a woman couldn’t have done that. Now Arthur—never liked the look of Arthur. Always felt strange with him around.”
Gene shook his head. He couldn’t believe after all these years with their servant, his brother could say such a thing. He felt that Arthur couldn’t be guilty, but he didn’t know for certain so didn’t say anything. Still, he couldn’t deny the emptiness he felt in the house now that Arthur was gone. For as long as he’d lived here, Arthur had always been around, always faithful. What could have changed?
“Uncle Ellis was a fool to not go after that woman,” Will muttered. “Couldn’t he see people are getting more violent in this country?”
“He thought he was impervious,” whispered Gene. “That it would never come to this, no matter how things have been building.”
“He was a fool,” Lee concurred. “But an innocent one.”
“What!” Gene cried. “He was a vile, ignorant—”
“Oh, come off it, Gene,” said John. “We all know you didn’t like him for whatever stupid reason, but the man’s dead, for God’s sake! Can’t you keep your ill thoughts to yourself now?”
“I’m not saying—”
“You never even called him uncle,” Will whispered.
“That’s because he wasn’t our uncle!” He hurled the mango at his brother, smacking him in the chest. Will seemed too stunned to know what had hit him, but Gene, fresh off the adrenaline of his sure shot, kept going. “He was just some sad, old man lost on this continent, where everyone who knew him hated him. Except you all, for some reason! Or maybe that’s it. Everyone hates us, too, pedaling our God to people who don’t need him. So he decided to tie himself to us, to Dad and Mother, and their thoughtless sons, who think guns and bullish talk are admirable.” Gene could sense the air turning, a hardness setting on his brothers’ faces. But he couldn’t stop. “What are we even doing here? We’re just outcasts. Indians hate us, the British look down on us. It’s high time we left India.”
“Then go,” said Will.
“What?” said Gene.
“Sis. Did you ever think that maybe you don’t belong in this family?” He picked up the mango from where it lay at his feet and hurled it back at Gene, who dodged it and heard it thump against the door frame. “You never join in on things we do, you always complain, and I for one would gladly take your extra helping at suppertime.”
Gene was speechless. He looked to Lee, but his face was cast in shadow.
“And you’ve got no right, speaking about Uncle Ellis like that,” said John, rising from his bed. “Sorry your pea-sized brain can’t remember all the great things he’s done for our family, but it doesn’t mean they never happened. Dad and Mother had no one when they first got here. We’ve got to stick together now, in times like these with the whole country getting angrier by the day.”
“What does sticking together have anything to do with this?” said Gene. He could feel the hairs rising on his neck, like some wild thing, as the wind kicked up through the rafters. “It’s sticking together that got us into this mess. We don’t have any friends here, and the only so-called ally we had has just been shot in our own house.”
“So what are you saying?” said Lee, his calm voice all but lost in the wind.
“I’m saying we should leave. We were all going to America eventually. Why not now? I mean, can you honestly say this place is the same? We don’t even have Arthur anymore! How are we going to survive on our own?”
“Gene’s right,” came a small voice from the doorway. Mrs. Hinton stood in the cold glow of the lantern, her eyes wide and sparkling as though she was seeing them all clearly for the first time. Gene wondered how long she had been standing there and how much she had heard. She bent down and picked up the mango, one side of it smashed and oozing. Taking her little finger, she traced the lesion in its skin and tasted the juice.
She stepped closer, her footsteps making no noise at all, and went to sit on Gene’s bed. The covers were still pushed back from when he had left it, and the way she perched among the folds gave her the appearance of a mother bird. The boys, Gene included, awaited with dropped jaws the words she would feed them next.
“We must go,” she said, louder this time, as though to convince herself just as much as them. She handed the mango to Gene, who took it and sat beside her. She stroked his hair, then cupped his cheek, making him feel, for a moment, like a child again.
“What about school?” Gene blurted, then realized what a stupid question it was at a time like this. John shot him a look like ice, but Mrs. Hinton gave a faint smile, understanding.
“You’ll carry on in America, and I’ll write to my cousins to help us get sorted. We’ll tie up things here. Your father will speak to the mission about what’s happened. They’ll no doubt understand. We’ve stayed on longer than they ever imagined, I think. Besides, there’s more work we can do in America. We were going to leave soon anyway. Now is the time.”
“But I like it here,” Lee said. Gene felt sure it was the first time any of them had ever said that, and he wondered if it were true or if it was just that India was all they’d ever known. “This is home,” Lee added.
John shook his head, his dark hair growing frizzy in the humid night air. He looked wild in the flickering shadows of the lantern, illuminating the young wrinkles and sun-worn patches of his skin. “We can’t go,” he muttered.
“John,” Mrs. Hinton began, but he raised a hand to stop her.
“We can’t just leave India the second Uncle Ellis drops dead. Someone killed him. And how would it look if we fled now? We’ve got to stand our ground.”
Mrs. Hinton rose from the bed and stepped toward the door. “Then you’re a fool,” she said, turning.
John walked over to the doorway, his left fist clenched. He stopped inches from her, obscuring the light from the lantern. She all but disappeared in his shadow. “And what would that make you?” he said. “You, who have stood by all this time and just let things happen to you. To all of us. Who are you, to have spent so many years building a life here, only to abandon it in an instant? Does that make you a fool too?”
Gene felt sick, like the room was spinning, the Earth upside down. John wasn’t wrong, and that was more terrifying. He couldn’t see his mother’s face, but a noise, like a squeak, escaped from her mouth against her will. When John turned from the doorway, she was gone.
“Well?” John said, staring at the rest of them through the dim light. “Am I right?”
“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Lee said. And then, in a small voice, “Even if it’s true.”
No one spoke as they all took in the prospect of actually leaving. Now that it seemed a reality, Gene realized he didn’t have anyone to miss or to say goodbye to in any meaningful way. They were well known as that family of Baptists, but over the years, they hadn’t ever managed to grow close with anyone. They had relied too much on their apparent need to “stick together,” as John had said, instead of making any personal connections. Ved was the closest thing Gene had to a friend, but even then he’d always felt the pressure to appear as the padre’s son, never being himself—with anyone. In fact, the only person he’d ever been his real self with, however briefly, was Arthur.
He leaped out of bed and tried to remember where he had left his bike as he pulled on his shorts, which were hanging on the bedpost. “I’m going to see him,” he said.
“Who?” said Will.
“Arthur. If we’re going to leave India, I want to say goodbye.”
“He doesn’t deserve a goodbye.”
But Gene was already out the door, his shoelaces untied and dragging against the hardwood. He found his bike leaning against the cookhouse. As he pushed off, he looked in the window and thought he saw something. A trick of the darkness, perhaps, or of memory—he could picture so clearly Arthur through the window, surrounded by the earthenware pots and tarnished tins on a hot evening, working away.