The Last of the Savages Read Online Free PDF Page B

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, wereboth 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;