The Last of the Savages (4 page)

M
emphis possesses a jagged vitality that seems more western than southern, as if its inhabitants have never been told that the frontier has moved on and, finally, disappeared. Although physically situated in Tennessee it is the spiritual capital of Mississippi, the metropolis to which planters sent their wives for finery and their sons for dissipation; and to which the sons and daughters of their slaves migrated to escape the brutal drudgery of the cotton fields. The city was once abandoned to fever, and a riverine funk still hangs over the housing projects of the South Side as well as the mansions to the east. At least that’s one theory, that it is the big river that makes people there a little crazy—the car-crashing debutantes, the love-triangle murderers, the dipsomaniacal aunts, the suicide uncles, Elvis.

“Why don’t you come home with me for Thanksgiving,” Will asked one day. We were dawdling on the squash court; Will had an excellent forehand but evidently felt that running for the ball was beneath his dignity.

I didn’t particularly want to admit that my parents probably wouldn’t stand for it or that in any case we couldn’t afford the plane ticket. As if anticipating the latter obstacle Will blithely offered to pay the fare.

Stunned, the best I could manage was “Have you asked your parents?”

“I don’t have to ask them. It’s my money.” When he saw that I didn’t recognize this distinction, he said, “I made it.”

Walking back to our room, Will stopped in front of the construction site, apparently mesmerized by the sight of the cement mixer churning away. When Will became fascinated by something he was beyond embarrassment. No matter how bizarre his enthusiasms, he believed in them utterly.

Worried that Will might forget or withdraw his offer, I finally succeeded in prying him away. And as soon as we got back to the room, he immediately dug around in the back of his closet and retrieved a crumpled shopping bag. When he dumped its contents onto his bed, I was astonished to see hundreds of bills of various denominations. From this gray-green pyramid Will picked out a handful of tens and twenties and held them out to me.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Put it back in the bag, for God’s sake. What if Matson or somebody walks in and sees this.”

“It’s my money.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Just take it. You want to come, right?”

In the end I constructed a flimsy rationale: I would accept the money if Will would clear it off the bed and promise to hide it somewhere else in the future. We’d both be in deep shit, I knew, if anybody found that kind of cash in the room.

“How much is there,” I asked, leaning against the door, holding it shut, as he casually stuffed the bills back into the bag.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “A few grand?”

On at least two occasions that semester I’d overheard Will discussing what sounded like large sums of money on the hall telephone; he had transparently changed the subject as soon as he saw me. Now, I didn’t inquire further into the source of Will’s shopping-bag funds, because I didn’t want to know and because I really did want to go to Memphis.

A kid whose name I have forgotten snapped our picture outside the dorm just before we set off for Logan Airport. It’s framed alongside the family portraits on my library table, and I’ve often thought the caption should read,
My real life begins.

A thin black man waiting beyond the gate called out, “Hey, Mr. Will.”

“Hey, Joseph.” Will was clearly delighted to see him; just as clearly, Joseph was embarrassed by Will’s hearty clap on the back. “If you want to know anything about us,” he said, “just ask Joseph.”

Will glared at me when I surrendered my suitcase to Joseph, refusing to relinquish his own battered canvas-and-leather duffel. “We can carry our own bags,” he said, then made a point, after we reached the car, of sitting up in the front seat, beside Joseph. They talked about their respective families while I sat in the back watching the unfamiliar landscape unscroll. When we passed through a neighborhood of sprawling ranch houses set on expensive-looking lots with incongruous architectural flourishes—cupolas and columned porticoes—Will turned and said, “Down here, anything without wheels, they put columns on it.”

Attached to the street by a long lasso of a driveway, Will’s house was in an older neighborhood: a brick mansion of Georgian heritage surrounded by four or five acres of mature trees and gardens. A satellite dwelling was set behind the main house. “That’s the old man’s quarters,” Will said, pointing as we drove slowly up the long drive. “After my little brother got killed he moved out there. He comes down to the main house mostly to eat supper and harass the rest of us.”

We were greeted with great enthusiasm by Beauregard, a black Labrador retriever, who thrust his head into our crotches and thrashed the air wildly with his clublike tail. Two English setters barked from their kennel stalls behind the garage. The humans were more elusive.

Our first stop was the kitchen, where Will embraced Eula, about whom he’d told me more than he had about his parents. Now the cook, she was once Will’s nanny. “Eula here raised me up,” he said.

“Don’t be telling folks that.” She laughed, freeing herself from Will’s
arm. “They be thinking it’s my fault how you turned out. Now go see your mama.”

Will’s mother was a brittle and elegant ash blonde who received us in the sitting room attached to her bedroom, a pastel chamber lined with floral chintz. She wore a brilliant dressing gown and seemed vaguely convalescent, but I was to discover over the succeeding days that her delicate femininity was annealed to a core of steel. She accepted and returned Will’s kiss on the cheek without exactly hugging him, then turned to me. “And you must be Patrick. I’ve heard so much about you, you’d
practically
think Will hadn’t met another living soul out east.”

“We’re roommates, Mama,” Will said, in answer to this … was it a complaint?

“Well, of course you are, dear. And I
couldn’t be
more delighted.” She patted the settee beside her. “You must be absolutely
exhausted
after your trip. Now Patrick, set down and do tell me every little thing about yourself.”

Will motioned me toward the door. “We’re going to get something to eat, Mama.”

“Your hair is dreadful,” said his mother. “You look like that awful singer who lives in that awful house out on Fifty-one Highway.”

No mention was made of Will’s father, and it was only at supper that he made his appearance.

Will’s description had led me to expect a monster, whereas Cordell Savage was a smaller man than I’d anticipated, shorter than Will—a recent development, I gathered; shaking Will’s hand in the dining room he said, “Just because you’re taller doesn’t mean you won’t get your damn hair cut first thing tomorrow, you hear?” Like his son, he was dark and handsome in a slightly menacing way—with heavy brows and the same blue, metal-cutting eyes. My own reception was far more generous, and once he heard it was my first visit to the South he greeted me like an official ambassador. “… and welcome to my home—I’m still titular head of the household though I’ve been exiled out back to the summer palace.”

“You moved out there your own self.”

“Boys who backtalk their fathers sleep under the stars.”

“Fine by me,” Will muttered faintly; I could see that for all his rebellion he was still afraid of his old man.

Cordell gave me the grand tour and pointed out a few of the highlights of his castle—portraits of noteworthy ancestors, including a Confederate general, whose full-dress uniform with saber hung from a mannequin in the library, and an alcove devoted to athletic trophies, medals and photos of Will’s older brother holding various sticks and balls. “Elbridge is a hell of an athlete,” he remarked, as Will slouched lower, appearing almost invertebrate; if there were a competition in sullen adolescent posture my friend could have won the gold medal at that moment.

Alongside Elbridge’s trophies were artifacts from the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, with which Cordell seemed to feel an almost mystical connection. The shelves and vitrines in the paneled library displayed ceramic and granite vases, limestone panels incised with hieroglyphics, wooden and cast-bronze figures with human and animal heads, dusty clay lamps and hundreds of amulets: mystical eyes called
uzats
, which protected the wearer against ghosts, snake bites and envious words; a red carnelian girdle tie of Isis, which washed away the sins of its possessor; and dozens of
scarabaei
—dung beetles with the heads of men and rams and bulls in jade, amethyst, crystal and obsidian, which were prophylactic against annihilation.

He handed me a beautiful object which he informed me was an alabaster kohl jar, carved approximately in the shape of a woman. “Feel that,” he said. “Feel the coolness, the smooth curve of the stone. Imagine: four thousand years ago someone held that object just as you’re holding it now.”

“My father believes he’s a reincarnated pharaoh,” Will noted.

“All of civilization,” Cordell said, “descends from the great alluvial delta of the Nile.”

“Which Dad confuses with our own Mississippi Yazoo Delta.”

“There are intriguing parallels,” his father said. “The founders of our city had a great many reasons to name it after the ancient capital of Egypt.”

“The institution of slavery,” Will said, “for instance.”

“The concept of hierarchy,” Cordell countered, “is how I prefer to think of it.”

“Easy to do when you’re high up in the archy.”

“I’ve had about enough of your talk for now, young man.”

I felt acutely uncomfortable witnessing this. I couldn’t believe how far Will was pushing it, and I faulted him for the bickering. I found Mr. Savage a terribly intriguing and presentable father.

Supper was served by Joseph, who now wore a white uniform and an impassive expression. Cordell told a great many stories about the family, several concerning a heavy-drinking uncle who had formal engraved cards printed that read:
Meredith Tolliver Savage apologizes for his behavior of ________ night and regrets any damage or inconvenience he may have caused.
He described the cyclical nature of the Savage family fortunes: his great-great-grandfather, a planter, who’d invested heavily in Confederate war bonds; a grandfather who recouped in real estate and poker; his hard-drinking father, who “lost his shirt in ’29 and then lost his britches in ’31, when cotton fell to five cents” and more elliptically, his own restoration of the Savage wealth and former properties through a series of entrepreneurial adventures.

“Marrying Mama didn’t hurt,” Will remarked.

“You should pray to be so fortunate,” Cordell said ambiguously, “in your own choice of helpmeet.”

“I don’t expect to ever get married,” Will said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mrs. Savage. “Of
course
you’ll get married.”

“You’d recommend it, would you, Mother?”

“Everyone gets married,” she replied stoically.

After dinner Will and I played pool in a paneled room consecrated solely to that pastime, and I remarked that his father wasn’t so bad.

“Hey, if the devil wasn’t charming,” Will said, flipping his hair away from his eyes, as he lined up a shot, “we’d all be living in the Garden of goddamned Eden.”

The next day was Thanksgiving. Cordell’s parents, I gathered, were
both dead, and Will’s mother was estranged from hers. Thanksgiving dinner was postponed until the arrival of Will’s older brother, Elbridge, who drove in from Sewanee. A handsome sophomore at the University of the South, L.B., as he was diminutized, was clearly the golden boy of the family, adored by parents and younger brother alike.

Cordell seemed indulgent and easy with his firstborn, in contrast to his prickly, almost hostile attitude toward Will; Elbridge was allowed to drink beer at the table and use the milder profanities, a fact I couldn’t help noticing when Will’s father rebuked him for saying “goddamn” just moments after Elbridge had. Not the least impressive of Elbridge’s attributes, along with his racing-green Austin-Healy 3000, was the girl he’d brought home in it. Her name was Cheryl Dobbs, and she was the most beautiful human I’d ever seen. Although it was hard to imagine what might constitute a normal night around the Savage dinner table, Cheryl Dobbs was blatantly a social disruption; Mrs. Savage was overly solicitous in a manner which I would later understand to indicate disapproval, while I went out of my way not to look at her, and thereby was constantly aware of her presence. I could see that Will was stricken, too. Mr. Savage was gallantly flirtatious. “Where exactly do they grow girls as pretty as you,” he asked. I blushed at this direct reference to her appearance, which was affecting us so powerfully. It seemed a violation of taboo.

Cheryl told us she’d grown up in a small town in Kentucky. A senior in high school, she’d met Elbridge at a Sewanee football game.

“Cheryl’s a champion majorette,” Elbridge informed us.

The putative champion blushed. “Go on, L.B., you’re just embarrassing me now.”

“How about a demonstration?” Cordell suggested.

“Now?” she asked, in a voice which suggested she was not entirely averse, looking around the table for guidance.

“Let the poor girl eat her supper,” said Mrs. Savage.

Cheryl looked to Elbridge, who seemed amused at the notion. “Go right ahead, honey.” Then I saw him wink at Will.

“My baton’s just upstairs in my valise,” she said, jumping up from the table, her eyes shining. “Won’t be but just a minute.” She disappeared, leaving an awful void behind her.

“The halftime show is a great American tradition,” said Cordell Savage. “A great southern tradition.”

“She’s a very traditional girl,” Elbridge said, smiling cryptically. I wondered if he was being condescending.

Within minutes Cheryl had returned with her baton, ripely overflowing a spangled cheerleader’s outfit. She stood next to Elbridge, all shy and eager. “Usually I have my music,” she apologized.

“We’ll just sing along in our own heads,” Mr. Savage proposed.