The Last of the Savages Read Online Free PDF Page A

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