Savage Land

by Janet Dailey

  Silently Coley inched down the stairway, flinching at each reverberating roll of thunder. Downstairs at last, she tiptoed through the hall, one hand trailing to rest at her throat where it could immediately reach her mouth and stifle any cry she might make that would awake the rest of the house. The ominous darkness of the rooms beckoned her only to stop her with the sudden, blinding glare of lightning.

  The rain had just begun, its rapid pitter-pat racing against the swift tempo of her pulse. Behind her, the grandfather clock chimed the first hour, frightening her with its unexpectedness. She stumbled against the little table in the hallway and valiantly chased after the rocking vase of flowers all the way to the floor where it smashed with unnatural loudness in the silence.

  'Who's there?’ came a booming voice from an adjacent room. ‘Willy? Is that you?'

  The soft whirr of turning wheels reached Coley just before the beam of a flashlight. With a little smile of relief, she swallowed her heart before turning with trembling legs towards her uncle.

  'It's me, Uncle Ben,’ she whispered softly, her voice still in tune with her shaking legs. ‘I knocked over the vase.'

  Obligingly, he shone the light down on to the scattered fragments as she swiftly gathered them up.

  'What are you doing up?’ he asked gruffly behind the glare of the flashlight.

  'The storm woke me,’ Coley replied, placing the broken pieces in the wastebasket.

  'Frightened of them, huh?’ Ben snorted, wheeling his chair around, leaving her in blackness. An ominous clap of thunder sent her scurrying after him ‘Couldn't sleep myself.'

  Inside his den, the grey-haired man steered his chair over to the curtains and closed them, shutting out the storm. Then wheeling his chair over to the desk, he laid the flashlight down and lit two candles.

  'Electricity's out,’ he explained, glancing briefly at Coley's white face before manoeuvring his wheelchair behind the desk. ‘Sit down, girl. Might as well relax and talk to me until this storm blows over.'

  She sat down in one of the larger cushioned chairs, although she couldn't relax, not amidst the rumblings of thunder that still echoed into the room. The flickering candlelight cast a softening glow on the leathery face across from her.

  'My wife, rest her soul, used to pace from window to window every time there was a storm,’ Ben mused, gazing reminiscently into the flame of the candle. In the wavering light, Coley saw the twinkle gleaming in his blue eyes as he glanced over at her. ‘So I'm very accustomed to soothing frightened young women during a storm.'

  'You miss her,’ Coley said, smiling back at his twinkling eyes.

  'Yes,’ Ben sighed. ‘She's been gone for—well, ten years now. Just shortly after our only child, our son, and his wife were killed in an auto crash, she died.’ A glimmer of pain flickered briefly on his face. ‘Willy's husband had passed on the year before, so she moved in with me. And the place hasn't been the same since.

  'It's strange how the violence of a storm can bring back the good memories,’ he went on absently, his voice a little husky and nostalgic. He opened a drawer of the desk and took out a gilt-edged frame. He touched the face of it fondly before handing it over to Coley. ‘My wife,’ he said in explanation. His tone was almost reverent as he spoke. ‘That was taken a few months before she died.'

  It was a family portrait with the woman seated in the centre smiling sadly out at Coley. The slender, faintly lined neck was holding erect a proud white head, but the suffering expression in her eyes reached out to Coley as if to explain that the will to live was gone. The woman's delicate hand was gripping her husband's tightly, a more robust Ben Savage than was seated before Coley now. His hair was quite dark in the picture and there weren't as many lines on his tanned face. Then Coley was drawn to the two men standing on either aide of the couple. One she easily recognized as Jase, his blue eyes warmly looking out at her. Naturally he looked much younger and the scar wasn't there, just the rugged good looks accented by the confident tilt of his head.

  And the last person in the picture was Rick, a boyish laughing face barely concealing the mischievous twinkle in his eye. Coley recognized the resemblance to Jase, but Rick's face was softer not just because of lack of maturity either. No, it was the openness, the love-of-life expression that separated them. Yes, Coley could see how everyone would be drawn to Rick. Reluctantly she handed the picture back to Ben, wishing she could study it a little longer.

  Ben cradled it gently in his two gnarled hands as he gazed at it fondly. His forehead furrowed slightly before he put it down on the desk.

  'Tragedies always come in threes,’ he said softly, staring down at the picture. ‘I lost my grandson just five years ago.'

  'I know,’ Coley murmured. Ben glanced up at her sharply, his mind no longer drifting in memories but centred entirely on her. She squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze. ‘Tony told me.'

  'And Jase,’ Ben sneered, ‘what did he tell you?'

  'He ... he ... told me to ... to stay out of it,’ Coley stammered as her hands nervously twirled with the tie of her robe.

  'That's all?’ Ben asked, and snorted when Coley nodded.

  'But Uncle Ben, it was an accident. I'm sure it was an accident,’ she hurried, her words spilling over themselves in the urgency of speaking before Ben did.

  'You two have been together an awful lot lately,’ Ben said, the hawklike sharpness inspecting the reddening of her cheeks. ‘You aren't—'

  'Of course not,’ Coley interrupted, not wanting to hear how he might have ended the sentence. ‘It's just that—well, I saw Satan the other day.’ She leaned forward earnestly. ‘And I was scared. I was so scared I couldn't move, I couldn't run, I couldn't scream. I couldn't do anything. Then Jase pulled me off the fence just before the bull charged.’ The old man's eyes flickered ominously. ‘So you see, Jase saved me.'

  'But how long did he stand there just as terrified as you? And what part did Jase play in those scratches on your hands a few days ago?’ Ben asked astutely, and Coley paled at his words. Then with an almost physical shake of his head, he seemed to throw off her words. ‘The storm's died down. You'd better go up to bed.’ As she opened her mouth to speak again, Ben raised his hand and she saw the weakness and tiredness etched vividly on his face. ‘And take that advice he gave you—stay out of it. I'm too old a dog to be learning new tricks and he's like the leopard that can't change its spots. Go to bed.'

  Glumly, feeling she had somehow failed both Uncle Ben and Jase as well as herself, Coley accepted the flashlight and followed the beam out the door and into the hallway. She tiptoed up the stairs, grimacing at each betraying creak of the steps. She was almost to her room when she heard a door open beside her. She flashed the light on to Jason's face.

  'What are you doing?’ he asked.

  'The electricity's out,’ Coley whispered as he reached out and directed the light out of his eyes.

  'I know that,’ he answered softly. ‘I meant what were you doing up?'

  'The storm woke me.'

  'I wondered if you would sleep through it,’ said Jase, the reaching circle of the flashlight beam outlining a faint smile. ‘Where have you been?'

  'Downstairs,’ Coley replied hesitantly. ‘Uncle Ben was up, too, so I've been talking to him. Do you think the storm's over for the night?'

  She asked the question quickly to stop the mask from stealing over his face, and succeeded. He said he thought it was. He took the flashlight from her hand and led her to her door. For the first time, Coley noticed he only had on a pair of trousers and she had to pass that broad expanse of naked chest to get to her room. Her heart beat wildly as she stared at the curly black cloud of hair on his chest and wondered absently what it would feel like to touch it. Then his arm was around her shoulders and pushing her into her room. As she turned back to him, he placed the flashlight in her hand, turning the light off as he did so.

  'Good night, Coley,’ he said firmly, and closed the door, shutting her in and him out.

 
; Chapter Seven

  COLEY lightly trailed her finger along the outer edge of a burgundy red rose, revelling in the velvety softness of its petals. She swatted absently at a buzzing insect harassing the bare legs beneath her shorts. Glancing briefly at her golden tan, she was reminded of Jason's comment that she was a ‘long-stemmed yellow rose'. That seemed such a long time ago. Now he treated her with a brotherly indulgence and indifference. Not even brotherly, really, he never got that personal. All in all, she sighed deeply, since the night of the storm almost a week ago, their relationship, if that was what you could call it, had reached an impasse.

  It was frustrating, she thought, positively frustrating. In the past when they were together, although it hadn't been altogether satisfactory, at least he had been interested in her. Now he seemed to have patted her on the head and said run along, like a good little girl. Like a child, Coley thought angrily, taking out her temper on the rose stem and getting pricked in the process by one of the thorns. At her unwitting yelp of pain, Aunt Willy turned just as Coley put her finger to her mouth to bite the wound.

  'Coley, I told you to be careful of those thorns, they're so painful,’ Aunt Willy remonstrated lightly.

  The silver-haired woman dabbed her face daintily with an embroidered handkerchief, bumping her broad straw hat askew as she did so.

  'I'm so glad we have those big oaks to shade my roses from the afternoon sun. They'd just shrivel up and dry away without them in this heat.’ Aunt Willy took the roses from Coley's arms and put them in her basket before walking on to another group of bushes. ‘It's so difficult to grow roses in the south-west because of the intensity of the sun—did you know that, Colleen?'

  Without waiting for her to answer, Aunt Willy went on, enthralled by her very favourite subject.

  'But if you really want to see roses, my dear, I mean thousands and thousands of roses, you must go to Tyler, Texas. More than half of this nation's field-grown roses are produced there. Most people think of oil and oil wells, when you mention Tyler, but they've been growing roses commercially in Tyler since the 1870s. It's a standing joke that if there's oil underneath a rosebush, the rose stays. I'm sure that's a bit of an exaggeration, but we Texans are prone to exaggerate.'

  Aunt Willy laughed her tinkly laugh, but Coley knew that Aunt Willy secretly applauded the thought.

  'They have over five hundred different varieties. And all colours, from the whitest white to reds so dark that you wouldn't be able to spot them if they were floating in a pool of oil. George took me there several times in October when they have their festival. You really must go there some time and walk through Tyler Park in downtown,’ Aunt Willy urged with a wave of her shearers. ‘It's an experience you'll never forget.'

  Coley nodded absently, not able to mount much enthusiasm for the thought. She was too wrapped up in her dilemma over Jase to get excited about roses. That dumb Savage pride ruined everything, she thought.

  'You're very silent. Is there anything wrong?’ Aunt Willy asked as she took her gaze off her beloved roses long enough to see the disgruntled expression on Coley's face.

  'Oh, it's this ridiculous feud between Jase and Uncle Ben,’ Coley grumbled.

  'It's hardly ridiculous, my dear,’ Aunt Willy replied, her eyebrows raised at the unexpected subject. ‘There's a bit more to it than that.'

  'I know what it's about,’ Coley answered a little sharply. ‘But Jase is Uncle Ben's grandson. He can't really believe that Jase would let his own brother die.'

  “Fear does strange things to people, Colleen. In some people, their adrenalin increases to such a point that they're capable of doing things beyond the range of their normal strength. Others are turned to petrified stone. In one case we applaud and in the other, we condemn,’ Aunt Willy observed, picking up her shearers to give her attention to a rosy pink bloom.

  'I can't believe Jase is a coward any more than I can believe he's a murderer,’ Coley retorted, stung by the sagelike yet depressing wisdom of her aunt's words.

  'No one can really judge your inner person but God, Colleen,’ Aunt Willy said quietly, holding the now clipped bloom in her gloved hand. ‘Only the outward, visible act can be judged by man, with compassion hopefully, and Rick's death was ruled “death by misadventure".'

  'Then why must Uncle Ben go on punishing Jase as if he'd done it with his own hand?’ Coley cried.

  'You mustn't get so worked up over this,’ Aunt Willy began.

  'But how can I not when two people I've grown to love are...’ Coley stopped, her checks flushed at her words and the scrutiny in her aunt's eyes.

  'Listen, child, you shouldn't get too involved with Jase...'

  'I am not a child,’ Coley muttered angrily. Staring at her aunt with almost unnatural boldness, she added, ‘I'm nineteen and I'll soon be twenty. I am not a child!'

  Aunt Willy fell silent at her words, busying herself momentarily with her roses as if contemplating Coley's statement. Coley stood beside her, quietly wishing her anger had not made her words so sharp. She had no wish to offend her aunt. She was just tired of everyone putting her down. If only she was good at something, instead of so useless.

  'What we really should do, Colleen,’ said Aunt Willy, breaking into Coley's train of thought, ‘is have that party I've been talking about. You can meet some young people, get involved with some of their activities.'

  'So I won't have time to brood about Jase,’ Coley thought to herself, and was instantly sorry for the injustice of it. Poor Aunt Willy was only trying to cheer her up and, even though she couldn't manage much enthusiasm, Coley at least managed a cheerful enough agreement that her aunt was convinced it was a good idea.

  Coley had to admit, gazing at her reflection in the mirror, that when her aunt made a decision she carried it through with gusto. The very afternoon she had mentioned the party to Coley, Aunt Willy had begun calling the various families in the area and within two days had a long list of acceptances for her spur-of-the-moment party. Coley never realized her aunt could be so organized, because in the next two days she supervised not only the preparation of salads and desserts by Maggie, but also the placing of picnic tables and lights and all sorts of decorations around the sundeck by Danny and Tony. At the same time she scurried into town to pick out the accessories that she felt Coley needed to go with her yellow chiffon party dress. And with all that, the household never once seemed disrupted, a concession that Coley felt was for Uncle Ben.

  And now the evening was here, Coley's reflection in the mirror told her. Her hair was freshly styled by the salon and her yellow gown was just as beautiful as she remembered.

  The first car of arriving guests had slammed its doors just minutes earlier. Although she had one passing wish that Danny was still upstairs so that she could go down with him, Coley had no real anxiety at meeting so many strangers. A few months ago she would have been quaking at the thought. Still, she wasn't altogether excited about the party. It just didn't seem to matter somehow. As she smiled lightly at her reflection before leaving the room, her heart cast out one last wish that Jase would attend the party and not join in with Uncle Ben's declaration that he was going to shut himself in his room. Perhaps tonight, in these elegant clothes, Jase would see her as a woman...

  'There you are, Colleen dear,’ Aunt Willy trilled as Coley walked down the brick path towards the sun-deck. ‘My, you do look lovely tonight. Ethel, this is my niece, my great-niece actually, but let's not discuss ages now.’ Aunt Willy laughed lightly as she drew Coley by the arm into the circle of people gathered around her. ‘This is Ethel Merrick, one of my dearest friends, her husband Bob, and her two girls, Rachel and Roberta.'

  Coley nodded pleasantly to the two warm, sun-weathered faces of the couple and smiled at the two dark-haired girls, one a little older than herself and the other a little younger. But the long whirl of introductions had just begun, as more and more people began arriving and her mind began swimming with strange faces and names. There were the Hamiltons with a boy name
d Howard and a girl named Brenda; and the Rasmussens with five children, John, Joe, Janet, Judd and Jean; the Petersons; the Simpsons; the Johnsons; the Masons; and then she stopped trying to remember. There was just too many.

  Gradually, as fewer and fewer people arrived, the segregation into age groups began, slowly at first and then naturally until the families automatically split up as they arrived. Thanks to Danny and Tony, Coley found herself drawn into the circle of young adults and was soon laughing and talking with the rest of them. She was proud of the way Danny fitted in, as easily as he had made a place for himself on the ranch. One dark-haired girl that Coley couldn't remember being introduced to stared at her openly, which Coley thought in passing was rather rude, but she was too caught up in the infectious good nature of the crowd to wonder about it.

  The dinner bell rang out wildly amidst the deafening chatter of voices, followed by the familiar ‘Come and get it!’ which began another mad confusion.

  'I'll get your plate,’ Tony said, touching Coley's arm lightly as he turned to leave.

  'No, you won't, I will.’ A blond-haired boy who had been sitting across from Coley spoke up. She quickly tried to put a name with the face—Rex, Peter? No, that wasn't it.

  'Hey, come on, Dick,’ another boy cried. Dick, that was it, Coley, thought. ‘You're always grabbing the new birds. I'll get it!'

  That was one of the Rasmussen boys, Coley thought with a gleam of satisfaction.

  'You were getting my plate, remember, John Rasmussen?’ a lively anburn-haired girl put in.

  'Of course,’ John replied, a little disgruntled and red-faced. ‘But I can carry both of them.'