Savages

  “No, thank you, Aunt Ruth.”

  “Then thank Mr. Scott for coming to see you. Now hop upstairs to your baths.”

  Together the two little girls stood up, dejected but polite. They shook hands with Harry, then trailed from the room hand in hand.

  Carey’s sister said apologetically, “They don’t usually cry. They don’t do anything. They just sit around the house or stand hand in hand in the yard. I don’t know what to do with them. In a way, not knowing is worse than bad news, because it prolongs the suspense. Their wounds can’t start to heal until they’re sure they’ve been wounded.”

  “Where will they spend Christmas?” Harry asked.

  “I’m planning on staying a couple weeks until they’ve finished this school term, then I’m taking them back to Seattle. My three kids might cheer them up.”

  Harry doubted it.

  * * *

  “Be reasonable, Harry,” Jerry Pearce said again, drumming his fingers on the zebrano table. The two of them were alone in the boardroom; the office staff had gone home long ago.

  “I might say that to you,” Harry retorted.

  Jerry Pearce shrugged his shoulders. “We’ve done all we can, but now we must concentrate on running the company. A lot of people depend on us for their jobs. Shareholders won’t stand for us sitting around wringing our hands forever. It’s sad, it’s tough, but it’s happened. You’ve got to accept that, Harry.”

  Slowly, Harry said, “You don’t want me to galvanize Washington into action, do you? You’ve kept me busy visiting the grief-stricken relatives—to get me out of the office and waste my time. The Board is using me to make everyone believe a thorough search is being made. What would suit you, Jerry, is a long-drawn-out, incompetent search, during which you establish your ability to run this company. The longer you’re acting president, the greater chance you have of showing that you can do the president’s job and should keep it if those missing men are never found. And there will be no criticism from the Board of the way this search is being conducted, because it isn’t in their interest to have those people found. Those acting vice presidents all want to be permanent vice presidents, don’t they?”

  Jerry looked at Harry, who was standing at the huge uncurtained windows, his hands in his pockets, against a background of the starlit winter sky. Jerry said, “We’ve all been very impressed by your efforts, Harry, but we feel there’s nothing further to be done. Forget this Boy Scout nonsense and get back to business. Stop this wild-goose chase and concentrate on tying up on the contract with Raki as fast as you can. We all know he’s a bastard, but then so are a lot of people, and you know how to handle him.”

  Harry thought, It’s a good thing I didn’t let Jerry have Arthur’s watch. It would have turned out not to belong to Arthur and then, somehow, it would have been misplaced or stolen, conveniently lost forever.

  Jerry looked at Harry’s angry face and said, “Perhaps this is a little premature, but there’s a strong feeling around here that you should have a seat on the Board. Think of what goes with that, Harry. The stock options, the prestige, the money. Now is the time for you to concentrate on your career. This could be your great opportunity.”

  Harry felt like smashing Jerry’s glasses into his skull. Did Jerry think he was stupid, didn’t know he was being bought off? At that moment Harry realized that the most important thing in his life was finding Annie. And if Annie was still alive, he’d never let her go again. What the hell, he could always get another job.

  Harry said, “Sure, I’ll go back to Paui as soon as I can—but I’m going to keep on looking for them. And you can’t stop me, Jerry. Because I’ve got that watch! And that’s proof that there’s something to search for!”

  As he strode out he slammed the door. It felt great.

  * * *

  On Thursday morning, December 6, Harry flew from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles. As there were no seats on a Qantas flight, he caught the Pan Am 2:30 P.M. flight to Sydney, where he arrived at 4:20 on Saturday afternoon, having lost Friday by passing over the international dateline. He spent the next two weeks working almost nonstop in his office.

  He heard on the Nexus grapevine that Arthur’s daughter had given birth to a boy, two months premature on December 12.

  On Saturday, December 22, Harry again caught his favorite Qantas 6:30 P.M. flight from Sydney to San Francisco. The Boeing 747 landed on the West Coast at 6:20 P.M. Harry caught the night flight to Pittsburgh, where a limousine waited at the airport to drive him the last sixteen miles of his journey to Annie’s home where he would meet her boys and take them away for Christmas.

  Harry took Annie’s boys to the place in the Allegheny Mountains where he had skied with their mother. Of course Wisp had changed a lot in twenty-five years, though there were no plush condominiums or four-star restaurants. People came here to ski. Instead of a few wooden cabins and a single tow rope, the ski resort now had a base lodge and three chairlifts, a T-bar, and Poma lift and there were now sixteen trails. Parts of the “Face” had the toughest moguls you’d find anywhere; “Possum” and some of the other trails meandered gently from summit to base, which gave them plenty of choice. Harry had learned never to trust a person’s own judgment of his skiing ability, and maybe Annie’s boys didn’t ski as well as they thought.

  Harry had reserved a six-person apartment in the lodge. Annie’s boys banged into it in their heavy ski boots and threw their gear on the bunks.

  Harry said, “Before we start, I’d like to suggest that, until we get back to town, no one talks about anything but skiing.”

  “Immersion amnesia,” Fred grunted.

  Harry nodded. “Skiing takes all your concentration. That’s why we came here.”

  * * *

  Again, Harry turned to look behind him, where the trail curved down from the pine woods. Still no sign of young Rob. When they got back, Harry would have to speak to the boys about waiting for him. He’d also have a word with that crazy Dave. Just after lunch, Harry had seen him going for a fifteen-foot jump off a cliff onto a flat landing. Harry had yelled to him to stop. Dave had given a rebel yell and taken no notice. He went over, almost in free fall, and landed so hard that his skis went down eighteen inches and his poles were almost buried in the snow. Dave had struggled his way out of the snow, scowled back up at Harry and his brothers, then continued down the mountain, too fast and clearly out of control.

  “We all have different ways of showing grief,” Harry had said, grim-faced, to the others. “But smashing yourself up on skis seems pretty pointless. Your mother wouldn’t like it.”

  Now, in the late afternoon, Harry looked up at the sky. The sun had disappeared behind pale clouds. Again he looked back along the trail.

  The small figure of fourteen-year-old Rob appeared between the pines, moving at a snail’s pace in graceless, tense jerks. By the time the boy reached him, Harry realized that he was terrified.

  “What happened, Rob?”

  Rob’s teeth were chattering. “I lost you just before the trail hit the trees. I fell on the snowfield, above the crevasse. I knew the crevasse was there, because I saw it on the last run down.”

  Harry nodded. The crevasse plunged straight down about a hundred and fifty feet onto rocks. “You must have been too far over to the left.”

  Rob shivered. “I started to slide. The snow was frozen and I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t get a grip with my skis. I just slid on and on toward the crevasse. I thought I was going over.”

  “But you didn’t go over.”

  “I hit a snow ledge, and it stopped me. Can we rest here a bit longer?”

  Harry shook his head. “Best be getting down. It’s getting late, and look at that sky. We’ll go slowly.”

  A look of panic crossed the pale, freckled face. “I don’t think I can manage it, Harry.”

  “Let me rub you warm.” Harry pulled off his own cap and crammed it on the flame curls. He started to rub Rob’s arms, toward the heart, to improve his circulation. br />
  Rob collapsed in a heap on his skis. “I can’t move any further.”

  “Quit that,” Harry said. “I can’t carry you, Rob, and it’s not fair to get a stretcher up the mountain in the dark, when you don’t need it. Just get up and do it.”

  Shivering, Rob shook his head.

  Harry held out his ski pole. “Hang on.” He pulled the reluctant Rob to his feet and brushed the snow from him. “Now we’re going down slowly, Rob. Stick behind me. Try to see everything around you, not just the bump ahead. Widen your focus, relax and let your skis take you down.”

  Slowly they skied down the mountain.

  In their heavy boots they clumped through the lodge door into a blast of heat and light. They could smell hot rum punch and hear recorded sleigh bells and carol singing. “God rest you merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay …”

  “Hot showers and hot drinks,” Harry said to Rob as he took off the exhausted boy’s boots.

  As they approached their apartment, they could hear the noise from down the corridor. A door opened and a woman in curlers yelled out, “Any more noise and I’ll call the manager.”

  When Harry opened the door, a pillow hit him in the face. It had been thrown by Fred, the eldest, at his two brothers, who were struggling with each other. Their bodies banged first against the bunks, then against the couch. There was a sound of splintering wood as the two of them fell onto a chair.

  Harry dropped the ski boots. He leaped forward and tried to tear the two six-footers apart. All three landed on the floor, a mass of flailing arms and legs.

  “Rah-rah-rah!” Fred yelled from the window and threw a half-empty can of beer into the fray. It hit Rob on the ear, and beer frothed over the floor.

  Rob slammed the door shut and stood with his back to it. He yelled, “Fred, you bastard, you’re drunk again.”

  “Fucking tired of setting a good example,” Fred shouted. “Fucking tired of fucking Christmas. What have we got to celebrate?” Fred looked exactly the way Duke had in photographs taken when he was young. Huge and craggy.

  Rob rubbed his ear and yelled, “You keep away from me!” But he wasn’t really angry, he’d just been taken by surprise. Poor Fred had taken it harder than his brothers. As the eldest, Fred had had to deal with the lawyers and all that shit, and his math degree didn’t seem to be much use when it came to dealing with the family finances. For some reason Fred wasn’t allowed to use his parents’ bank account, but how else could he pay the maids and the gardener?

  Bill and Dave had been irritated by Fred’s sudden overprotectiveness and anxiety. Rob wished Fred would stop drinking.

  Fred flung another pillow at the struggling group on the floor. The pillow split and feathers flew through the air like a snowstorm in a glass paperweight.

  Rob felt tears coming. He rushed into the bathroom, slammed the door and locked it. Someone had been sick on the green tile floor.

  Rob leaned against the door and told himself that only kids cry. He was the only one of the four brothers who refused to believe their parents were dead. It was too frightening to think they were dead, that they’d been snatched away from him. He was so scared that he couldn’t stand it much longer. He felt the way he’d felt when he was little and Mom would walk ahead of him talking to one of the others and he would yell, “Wait for me!” He remembered the anguish of being a small child abandoned by the adult who meant safety. But she’d always turned, and smiled and waited.

  This time she hadn’t. This time, she’d abandoned him. Softly Rob cried, “I’m frightened.” Primitive terror overcame him again, as it had during the afternoon on the ski slope. He slid to the floor and wept.

  Harry eventually succeeded in separating Bill and Dave. Dave lay slumped in an armchair, while Harry held back the snarling Bill.

  Bill felt as if he were a piece of elastic that was being slowly stretched to snapping point. He was not numb with disbelief like Fred. He was simply furious. He was angry with his parents for dying. He felt cheated. He was angry with Nexus for not paying the wages of their household staff, for sending his father to that dangerous place and sending his mother as well—needlessly. He was angry with anyone who sympathetically asked, “Any news?” or who said, “Gee, Bill, I was sorry to hear …” They could keep their fucking sympathy to themselves.

  Dave leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. Dave thought he never should have told Bill how he felt.

  As Bill snarled and snapped at him, Dave felt he’d been pushed to the wall. He wanted to blame someone for the death of his parents; he wanted to attack, smash, destroy someone. Why not himself? He hadn’t even asked if the Paui trip was dangerous. He hadn’t done anything. Self-hatred gnawed at him.

  Harry finally released Bill and said, “Give me a beer, Fred. No, don’t throw it, mate.” He put up one hand and caught the viciously thrown can.

  “Don’t call me mate.” Fred knew that all his brothers felt the same way, they all resented this semi-stranger who presumed to share their sorrow.

  Harry said quietly, “Where I come from, it’s what you call a good friend.”

  “What makes you such a good friend? We hardly know you.”

  “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” Harry said, pulling open the can of beer as he moved to the bathroom door. He called, “Come out, Rob, there’s a good lad. I want a hot shower. And you can’t stay there all night.”

  Harry’s feelings were intense and confused. If Annie were alive and if they ended up together, then his love for her would have to include feeling at least friendly and concerned about these four hulks. No, that wasn’t fair. Rob was a gutsy, good lad. But having the other three around was going to be far more difficult, by about a million percent.

  Rob unlocked the bathroom door and stood there pale and unsmiling. “They’re not always like this,” he said sadly to Harry, looking beyond him to the wreckage in the apartment. “They weren’t like this before. They’re great guys, really.” Silently he added, Like you.

  Harry nodded. He didn’t say anything, but they all knew he was grieving as well. Like them, he had been raised tough, not to show emotion, not to speak about his feelings.

  He could see that the four brothers simply couldn’t escape from their bereavement. The sadness seemed to fill them and weigh them down and paralyze them.

  Harry turned to them. He said, “All I’m going to say is that your mother wouldn’t like this. Your mother loved you, she put her life into you and she wouldn’t want you to quit on it like this.” He paused. “And there’s one other thing I want to tell you. No matter what you idiots do, I’m going to be in your corner.”

  They all knew why.

  22

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1984

  Instead of being horrified at killing the native soldier, Patty merely said, “It wasn’t as bad as killing the hotel goat,” and then refused to talk about it.

  “I never thought that guilt-ridden sissy had it in her,” Carey said to Annie as they gathered firewood. “That wasn’t the gutless wimp I remember back in Pittsburgh.”

  “She wasn’t that bad,” Annie said.

  “She always made mountains out of molehills,” Carey reminded her.

  “Only sometimes,” Annie argued.

  Carey snorted. “She always had a good reason for never helping anyone out—too busy!”

  Annie’s bundle of firewood started to fall apart. Carey said, “If we tie two bundles of wood in the middle, you can loop the rattan around your neck and carry two loads instead of one. Let me show you.”

  As she retied their bundles, Carey said, “How about the difference in Silvana? Back in the old days she never lifted a finger.”

  “The camp would be far less comfortable if it wasn’t for Silvana,” Annie agreed.

  “Remember what a snob she was? Now she’s the maid and a really good cook.” Carey stood up and hung the two bundles of wood around Annie’s neck.

  Annie said, “Maybe we’v
e all always been tougher and smarter than we thought we were.”

  * * *

  That night Carey couldn’t get to sleep. She had been bitten on the eyelid by a mosquito and the irritation kept her awake. On one side of Carey’s bed, Silvana muttered in her sleep. On the other side, Suzy was mercifully quiet.

  While Jonathan was feverish, he had slept in the lean-to and Patty had slept on his bamboo bed. When he recovered, Patty, who still treated Suzy as if she had the plague, refused to move back into the hut where Suzy slept, so Carey had moved in with Suzy and Silvana.

  Suddenly Suzy started to whimper. Carey sighed. She knew what would happen next. Suzy, who hadn’t even been present when Patty knifed the soldier, seemed to have been most affected by the killing.

  Suzy started to scream.

  Carey rolled off her bed and shook Suzy awake. “It’s all right, it was only a dream.” She cradled Suzy in her arms and stroked her. “There, there, baby, it’s all over,” Carey whispered.

  “I can’t … can’t stand violence,” Suzy wept.

  “Then you came to the wrong Club Med.”

  Suzy continued to cry—partly because she was furious with herself. She’d always prided herself on being street-tough, but when Jonathan and Patty had suddenly appeared in camp covered in blood after burying the soldier, Suzy recalled the childhood dread she had felt when she heard the heavy shuffle of her father’s boots coming up the stairs. Since the killing, Suzy’s nightmares had been filled with shuffling boots and knives and blood.

  Now, as she clung to Carey, Suzy remembered clinging to her mother in the top apartment of the rickety, peeling house on Shadyside. During the day Pa worked in the clerical department of one of the big steel mills; at night he got drunk.

  He didn’t hit Suzy as much as he hit her mother. He didn’t beat them every evening, but often enough, so that both the fear and the anticipatory dread dominated her childhood. When put to bed, she never fell asleep immediately. As soon as her mother had tucked her in and kissed her goodnight, Suzy, in her Mickey Mouse pajamas, jumped up and stood in the crib, her ear to the living-room wall. She listened anxiously in the dark—which frightened her—for sounds of what frightened her far more. She could never hear what her parents were saying, but from the tone of their voices—her father’s rising, her mother’s pleading—she could judge whether an interruption might avert violence. When she became more terrified of staying than of going, she would run into the living room to ask for a glass of water—anything. Sometimes it worked.