He stroked away, crossed the beams from several yachts, and disappeared into the darkness.
CHAPTER 4
Els insisted on sitting in the front passenger seat for Sparrow’s tour, the first stop of which was the Culturama Bar, where he bought rotis to eat along the way. The aroma of curried vegetables partially masked the odor of diesel and open drains that pervaded the congested center of Charlestown. On the sidewalks, uniformed schoolchildren and bank employees crowded among women in dresses. She’d expected the island people to have a distinctive look, a tribal resemblance, and was surprised by the diversity.
When she mentioned this, Sparrow stared into the knot of traffic ahead and said, “Nevis people come down from slaves, miss.” He pointed out a fenced empty lot near the sea and a plaque across the street. “Das where dey say dey used to sell dem. We come from different parts a’ Africa. White masters like black women, so we mixed up with dem now.” The traffic cleared and Sparrow maneuvered the van toward the courthouse. “De white people tek way we identity,” he said. “So we hadda fin’ a new one. We is Nevisians now.”
Pricked by her own display of insensitivity and na?veté, she looked out the window at an elderly man soaking his legs in the hot spring below the remains of the Bath Hotel.
They drove around the island counterclockwise. Sparrow showed her the plantations, some mere ruins of sugar works, some transformed into posh hotels, each with a history both rich and cruel. She was charmed by the place names—Gingerland, Morning Star, Saint John’s Fig Tree, Coconut Walk, Chicken Stone, Hermitage, Golden Rock—and the views of neighboring Redonda and Montserrat.
“That house we saw, the one that’s for sale, must be as old as some of these others,” she said. “Does it have a name too?”
“Trouble,” Sparrow said. He pulled up in front of Nevis Pottery, where, he explained, the craftspeople worked with locally dug clay. He ushered her inside and told her she couldn’t leave without a souvenir.
She selected a rustic horse, captivated by its energy.
Once they’d passed the airport and the cottages at Oualie Beach, Els began looking for the abandoned house, and as they climbed the hill toward its gate, she said, “Pull over there.”
“Crazy to stop here,” Sparrow said.
“Pull over.”
With a whispered expletive, he stopped in the dirt strip between the road and the wall and looked at her. “Doan get out here, miss.”
“Just a peek.”
When she opened her door, he grabbed her arm.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said.
“Jumbie doan want nobody ’round here.”
She shook free and said, “Jumbie, whoever he is, will never be the wiser.” She hopped out and went to the gate. The frosted flames of giant blue agaves stood sentry on either side of the drive. A Jeep was parked farther up the hill, the trunk of an uprooted palm dimpling its bonnet. The tree’s dried fronds obscured the view of the house, but she could see wide stone steps rising to a covered gallery with a frill of gingerbread trim. Another fallen palm had sheared off a corner of the hip roof.
A bearded man stood at the end of the gallery beside a crimson hibiscus. Wedging her sandal between the boards of the gate, Els pulled herself up, waved, and called to him.
“Miss, who you talking to?” Sparrow said.
When she looked back at the house, the man was gone. She returned to the van and pulled out her tote.
“Get in, miss,” Sparrow said. “Now.”
“In a sec.” Coralita vine had claimed most of the wall, nearly covering a sign warning “Beware of Gardenia.” She opened the letterbox built into the wall with “Jack” painted on its door. Empty but for a spider’s web and the bodies of its prey.
Sparrow hit the horn.
“Just hold your horses,” she called. She took out her beach read, Island of the Moon, and scribbled the estate agent’s number inside.
Sparrow shot her a look of pure terror, gunned the engine, and raced away toward town, swerving around a man on a donkey.
“You crazy son of a bitch,” she yelled after him. She kicked a pebble across the road, followed it, and threw it as hard as she could toward the sea. It bounced off a boulder and plopped into an incoming wave. She gazed back at the house and garden, which evoked her favorite childhood stories—tales in which nothing was as it appeared—and wondered what secrets they held.