Born Savages Read online

  “I might,” Ren says, crossing the room and heaving her mattress off the box spring. She picks up a small velvet pouch and removes the contents. Six hundred and seventeen dollars. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

  Ren holds the wilted bills in her hand and drops to the floor. She needs more time to think and there is no time. After everything that’s been said, a critical stage has been reached. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen tonight. There will be time for doubt and regret later. That’s something she knows with utter clarity; later on there will be too much time.

  Her sisters are watching her, their solemn faces excessively painted with makeup.

  Ren clears her throat. “You guys. If I ask to borrow whatever money you have, would you give it to me? I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay it back.”

  The girls do not say a word. They search briefly through their belongings and deliver every bit of cash they find. The gesture, just a small favor between sisters, means the world right now.

  “Thank you,” she whispers and leaves them, praying for a few minutes of quiet so she can find Oscar, so she can make him understand what needs to happen now.

  But there is no such thing as quiet. There is her mother charging from August’s study, her father’s tired protests, her sisters’ confused whispers.

  Ren flings open the front door and her first deep breath is full of smoke and dust. The rumbling approach of thunder, the crack of nearby lightning, and the sight of Oscar Savage all collide. Every nerve in Ren’s body begs her not to descend those stairs and face them. Not because there is anything terrible waiting. But because she will make it all terrible herself.

  “Hey,” Oscar calls above the wind, waving from where he’d been lingering by the old hitching post, likely waiting for her. Ren stops and merely watches as he hurries over. She forces her body to be rigid when he tries to take her hand.

  Oscar frowns. “What is it?”

  I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Ren, what the hell is wrong?”

  “You are.”

  “Baby, what are you talking about?”

  She feels a slow tremor as it begins in her heart and spreads everywhere. She clenches her fists at her side. It’s the only way she can avoid throwing her arms around his neck.

  “I know,” she says quietly.

  “You know what?”

  Ren forces herself to look into his face. He’s full of confusion, concern. She’ll break his heart. She’ll break hers too. “I know all about you, Oscar. All about you and Lita.”

  Immediately he lets out a snort of laughter. Of course. Because it’s absurd. He won’t believe she’s serious. She has to make him believe. She takes a step back and looks at him with loathing.

  “I know you fucked my mother and then moved on to me. It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting!”

  “Are you crazy? If this is a sick joke it isn’t funny, Ren.”

  She remembers Lita’s words, hears her cold voice repeating terrible things that are a lie. “You are the sort of trash who’s only looking for the next hole to satisfy yourself.”

  “Loren.”

  “You got what you wanted. Now you need to go.”

  “This is bullshit! I don’t know what the hell this is really about but I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, you will. You have to.” She pushes the wad of bills against his chest. “Here.”

  He stares down at the money. “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s not much, but I’m sure my father will give you more if that’s what it takes.”

  Oscar grabs her by both wrists just as a cannon of thunder explodes overhead. “You don’t fool me,” he whispers, his breath hot on her neck. “I know this is not you talking.”

  She almost wavers. She closes her eyes and nearly tips forward right into his arms, knowing if she does she won’t have the will to ever leave them again. Rain begins to fall; slow, fat drops. When she opens her eyes the scene is full of people. It’s no longer just her and Oscar.

  As of right now there can’t be any more Loren and Oscar.

  Monty has chosen this moment to return. He parks the truck less than ten yards off and doesn’t cut the headlights, perhaps just stunned and perplexed by the sight of everyone hanging around in the muddy yard. The harsh yellow light of the beams let Ren see everything, more than she wants to see. Spencer stands about ten feet away, two shotguns slung over his shoulder. Brigitte and Ava have emerged from the house, wide-eyed with bewilderment, sharing the shelter of a pashmina scarf to keep the rain from their carefully teased hair. Lita and August are not far behind, Lita trying to elbow her way closer to enjoy the chaos she has caused.

  And Oscar…

  Oscar who she loves more than she loves herself is wearing a mask of betrayal and anger. She steps away from him, knowing there won’t be any forgiveness for what comes next.

  “Go,” she whispers.

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “Go, Oscar!”

  “You don’t mean it.”

  “Yes I do. We are finished. We are nothing. And you just…you need to leave me alone now!”

  He doesn’t touch her again. He leans in close and speaks in a low voice that only she can hear over the wind and thunder. “Then you better goddamn well say it. Tell me you don’t want me. Ren, you tell me that and I swear to god you’ll never fucking see me again.”

  She pulls back. “I don’t want you, Oscar. I don’t want you. I DON’T WANT YOU!”

  A bolt of lightning. A sonic boom of thunder. One final glimpse of his devastated face before she turns and walks deliberately away.

  The first person in her path is Spencer. She gives her brother a beseeching look and silently begs him to understand when she whispers, “Help him.”

  Walking is difficult. Almost as difficult as breathing. Her mother, a malevolent wraith, and her father, a weary loser, say nothing as she passes them.

  But then suddenly her sisters are there, on either side, supporting her. She’s never leaned on them before in her life but now she’s so very grateful that they exist. They bring her indoors, to the sanctuary of their shared bedroom and they fall in a pile on the nearest mattress. Ren doesn’t even know whose bed it is. All she knows are the soundless wails of anguish that shake her soul as she curls into a ball and shivers while her sisters hover, silently stroking her hair. She hopes it’s not the same for Oscar, that he feels more anger than grief.

  It’s the grief that’s unbearable. Anger is easier. Withdrawal is easier. If anyone dares to ask her for an explanation she will never tell them. At this point there is nothing to tell. There is no repairing this. The only way to endure, to survive, is to forget.

  She closes her eyes, sees Oscar’s face, and then willfully banishes it. As her chest heaves and her body is wracked with sobs, only one thought rolls through her mind, over and over.

  A plea. To herself, to Oscar, to an infinite and unsympathetic universe.

  Forget me. I’m sorry. Forget me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  OZ

  I can’t seem to follow my own plans so I keep inventing new ones. Two nights ago when I drove out of Atlantis, my agenda involved several days of wide open roads before landing in Glacier National Park. I could picture myself hiking through the stunning scenery as clearly as if I was already there. It would be clean, the air crisp. It would look nothing like the desert. There, in the Big Sky Country, I could salvage the peace of mind I’d lost the minute an oily California opportunist called for a man named Oscar Savage.

  Somehow though I wind up in Flagstaff and decide the world might look a little more cheerful after some sleep. My phone remains in my glove compartment and I haven’t touched it. It makes my head hurt a little bit to think of how much it’ll be blowing the fuck up if I actually dare to turn it on.

  There’s no reason for me to hang around in Flagstaff for an entire day but that’s exactly what I do. Four hours
get swallowed up in a black hole at a greasy café that serves good coffee and buzzes with the chatter of tourists en route to the Grand Canyon. Even though I’ve seen the Grand Canyon before, there isn’t anything on earth quite like it so I abruptly decide that I ought to see it again.

  On my way out of Flagstaff I stop to pick up some supplies. It’s enough to camp out comfortably for at least a week although I don’t really have any sort of a timeline in mind right now. No one on earth knows where I am. As I follow a line of cars on US Route 180 I wonder if I should examine why I can’t seem to find my way out of the state of Arizona.

  If I say I’m not thinking about her I’d be lying. If I insist that my own actions deserve an ounce of pride I’d be lying about that too. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve royally screwed up.

  Since it’s summer, the park is pretty crowded. It’s mostly families of all shapes and sizes posing by the rim, grinning ear to ear before a backdrop of one of earth’s most stupendous wonders. Snaking down the Bright Angel Trail behind slow-moving crowds and tourist-laden pack mules isn’t appealing at the moment so I decide to go hunt down a place to settle. I grab a spot in the middle of a crowded campground and pitch the cheap tent I’d impulsively purchased in town.

  It doesn’t take long to get set up. The faint breeze blowing through the tall evergreens is a welcome change from the bleak blaze that scorches the central part of the state. But once I get a look around I realize this is bound to be pretty far from the journey of serenity I had in mind. There are kids tearing pell-mell every which way, music blaring, couples bickering, grills smoking and dogs barking. The campsites are so close together I can almost reach one-handed into my neighbor’s site and spear a brat from the hibachi.

  On my other side, a family rolls into camp in a stuffed minivan that spits out two restless little boys as soon as the wheels stop moving. A man who probably spends as much time outdoors as I spend dressed in a kilt spills out of the driver’s side and I expect to hear him start bellowing at the kids. But he just smiles at them indulgently and leans against the van as his boys start fencing with long sticks. After wiping his sweaty red face with the hem of his shirt he starts unloading a ton of crap from the back. His tent is one of those monsters that’s large enough to be a small house and I can tell he’s gong to have a hell of a time getting it to stand. He seems to realize that too. Dismay is written all over his face when he gets a load of the size of the thing and all the poles and stakes involved. Meanwhile, a woman exits the van, checks the kids and walks over to him. She’s pretty. Petite and dark-haired, with a gracefulness about her, she takes the man’s arm and rests her head on his shoulder in a way that any red-blooded guy would envy.

  He kisses her on the forehead and says something, pointing to the two boys. I shouldn’t be staring and listening but I can’t hear anything anyway because someone nearby has decided everyone within a one-mile radius needs Taylor Swift telling them to shake it.

  The woman nods, kisses his lips, and calls to the boys, who apparently have rhyming names ending in ‘aden’. The three of them wave at the man and start walking cheerfully away as he begins surveying the tent pieces at his feet. He probably sent them on a hike so he can figure out how in the hell he’s going to get this thing upright without losing his man card in the eyes of his wife and kids. He pulls his phone out, squinting and scratching his head. When I catch a few words and realize he’s watching some ‘How To Put Up A Tent’ video that he probably found on YouTube, I’ve had enough. I hop off the flat rock I’ve been sitting on and decide to be useful.

  He looks up expectantly when he sees me closing in. “You staying right next door?”

  “Yeah. Look, I’ve got time to kill. Don’t mind helping you get your camp sorted out if you want.”

  He stares at me a moment, apparently decides I’m non-threatening and then extends his hand. “Appreciate it. Name’s Steve.”

  “Oz.”

  “As in wizard?”

  “As in short for Oscar.”

  Steve turns out to be chatty. He’s a financial adviser from the Phoenix area and this is his first family vacation in two years. The people who look like his wife and kids are in fact his wife and kids. The way he talks about them, with a kind of shining pride, marks him as one of the good guys even if he can’t pound a stake into the ground to save his life.

  After I get the stakes in and the tent upright there doesn’t seem to be much point in hanging around. Steve’s family is bound to return sooner or later and it would be better if I wasn’t here saving the day. Anyway, there’s got to be a less traveled trail I can explore for the remainder of the afternoon. As I’m grabbing some water from the truck and getting ready to head out, Steve calls me back.

  “Thanks for the hand, Oz. Listen, I may not be winning any prizes for outdoor survival anytime soon, but I can cook up a mean rib eye on the grill. Why don’t you drop by later and take advantage?”

  I have to grin over his earnestness. “I may just do that, Steve. Thanks for the offer.”

  When I’m out of the carnival-like camp atmosphere, I pause, check the position of the sun and start heading due east. I’ve got a bit of time before dark sets in and I plan on using it to clear my head. The other night when I drove out of Atlantis, I was just fine for the first hour as I rehashed current events.

  I thought I’d climbed out of the shadows and jumped back into Ren’s life just because I needed to see if there was anything left between us. But now I think maybe I wanted to torment her a little in the process. That’s tough for me to admit to myself but it’s true. A good guy, a guy like Steve for example, would have chosen to do it somewhere that didn’t have cameras. I could have done that. I should have done that. Maybe that old grudge was never as distant as I’d thought.

  There haven’t been any other hikers in sight for the last half hour. I’m probably several miles from the rim of the canyon but that’s okay. The woods have a special brand of peace all their own. The colors here are faintly pastel, punctuated with thick greenery. I hear a rustling in the leaves to my right and for a split second I’m looking straight into a pair of startled brown eyebrows before the creature – no antlers, a female – bounds off elsewhere.

  A few steps later I hear the rolling sound of nearby water and turn towards it. The brook is narrow but moves along at a good clip. The deer had probably paused here for a drink before I scared her off.

  Now that Ren is back in my head I can’t get her to leave. What’s more, I keep flashing back to that sex show in the back of my truck. If the idea of using her that way was to get my fill and move on then it doesn’t seem to have worked. At least for me. Maybe it did for her.

  All it takes is a quick memory jump, featuring her perky rosebud nipples and her sleek body opening underneath me, and I’m hard as fuck once more, wondering when it’s going to stop. Is this how it’s going to be forever? Is it what’s going to happen next time I’m getting it on with some other girl? Instead of being all pumped up about what’s in front of me I’ll just be comparing her to Ren Savage.

  I’ve got to get past this. I’ve got to replace her with something else, anything else.

  Yup, I’ll get right on that as soon as I finish kneeling here on the creek bank and punching the clown with my hand while I fantasize about fucking her.

  I had her down. I had her conquered. I had her begging for sweet release and willing to get busy in seventeen filthy ways. And even as it stings the edges of my heart a little I can’t stop thinking about it.

  When I’m done, I rinse off in the creek and zip my pants up, feeling guilty as a fourteen year old kid who’s dicking around with himself in the bathroom while his mother screeches from down the hall that dinner is ready. For a while I just sit on a wide rock, listening to the water and trying to remember details about one single other girl that I’ve dated or fucked or just had a cup of goddamn coffee with.

  And that’s the problem with trying to replace Ren. That’s always been the probl
em.

  In spite of everything, I don’t want to replace her. I can’t.

  When I get back to the campground it sounds like a street festival and smells like burnt hot dogs. Sleep may not be on the table tonight. I figure I’ll just make do with the granola I’d picked up at the store and keep to myself. If the spirit of masochism takes over I can check my phone and see what kind of damage I missed over the last few days. I haven’t touched base with Brock in over a week. It might not be a bad idea to let someone know where the hell I am. It’s a pretty safe bet I have about sixty-eight voicemails from Gary and friends reminding me of contracts and other failures. Sooner or later I’ll call him back. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll tell him I’m done answering questions and that I’m not going to interfere with whatever they decide to do with the footage.

  I’d forgotten all about Steve and his promise of steak until he yells good-naturedly that I ought to come on over.

  Steve blinks the smoke away and offers me a plate. “I took a guess that you’re a man who likes his dinner well done.”

  “You guessed right,” I say and confess that once I’ve got the juicy rib eye under my nose I’m suddenly hungry as a bear.

  Steve’s wife, Michele, perches on a footstool and eats daintily while asking me polite questions. The boys, who I have started thinking of as Aden 1 and Aden 2, toast marshmallows and make charming messes of their faces until Michele sighs and escorts them to the campground bathroom to get cleaned up.

  “You’re not here with any friends?” Steve asks, blotting his dripping chin with a paper napkin.

  “Nope. I tend to travel alone.”

  Steve doesn’t say anything and I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about inviting some sketchy loner to hang out with his family. He doesn’t let on if anything’s bothering him though. He just starts gathering trash in a plastic bag while I chew my steak.

  “First time at the Canyon?” he asks.

  “No. You?”

  “Drove up here once before, years ago. Day trip. Asked a girl to marry me that day.” He pauses and smiles wistfully at the memory.