Last Resort (20 page)

I step forward. “I think I saw someone walking around the bungalows about an hour ago. Maybe less.”

Breathing heavily, Conner looms over me. “You did? Where’d she go?”

I point to the beach. Without waiting for us, Conner runs to the beach. The rest of us follow, scores of torches lighting the way. People call Alexandra’s name, fanning out from one end of the beach to the other. We find nothing.

Conner approaches me. “Are you sure it was her?”

“I didn’t get a good look.”

“Why didn’t you call out to them—see who it was?” Conner demands.

“I…I don’t know.”

I feel so incompetent. The guests on the beach—Gwen included—look at me like a jury delivering a guilty verdict. For a moment, it seems that Conner will throttle me, but he turns away and begins calling his wife’s name again.

Dawn. A cry from Dellas brings us running back to the beach. Alexandra sprawls on the shore, caressed by waves, and appears to be sleeping. She wears a long gown, now covered with wet sand and seaweed.

Dellas kneels beside her. “She wash up from de sea.”

Alexandra is dead. Conner strides towards us, staring at the body. Sitting on the sand, he rolls Alexandra’s head onto his lap. Mercifully, her eyes are closed. Head bowed, he brushes sand from her face. No one says a word.

Exhausted, I draw the heavy curtains in my bungalow to block the morning sun. The image of Alexandra’s body sprawled on the beach seems burned onto my retinas because I see nothing else. Collapsing onto the bed, I feel an odd lump beneath the pillow. It is a box of cookies with a note.

Phillip,

You’re awfully thin. I worry about you. Don’t tell anyone about this.

Gwen

Gwen must have pilfered the cookies from the supply room when Conner wasn’t looking. Perhaps Conner gave them to Gwen to win her favor. I devour every cookie in the box.

I sleep longer than necessary; maybe the cookies put me into a sugar coma. When I leave my bungalow, it is already the later half of the afternoon. I enter the restaurant to an argument already in process.

“We’re not going to stand for this!” Nelson slams a chair out of his way.

Robby stands opposite him behind a long table. “That’s the way it is, mate.”

Curtis stands beside Nelson with a helpless, confused expression. Pamela and Gwen sit at a nearby table.

“What’s going on?” I ask Curtis.

Before Curtis can reply, Nelson snaps, “They’re cutting off our meals—that’s what’s going on.”

“I don’t understand,” I reply. “Where’s Conner.”

“I’m right here,” Conner says from behind me. He walks to his rattan chair and takes a seat.

“You have no right!” Nelson rages.

For a man who just lost his wife, Conner seems remarkably at ease. “You and your boyfriend are a drain on this resort. We can’t afford to carry your dead weight anymore.”

“So this is how it’s going to be, is it?” Nelson glares at everyone in the restaurant, daring someone to speak up. “We’ve surrendered our freedom for Conner’s protection and now he lords over us like a tyrant. Go ahead. Sit there…all of you too petrified to speak, but mark my words, the next time he decides to starve someone into submission it will be one of you.”

“Conner, this doesn’t make sense,” I say, taking up their cause. “They’ve caught fish and provided food for the resort.”

Conner leans back in his chair. “They eat five times what they bring in…especially the fat one.”

“But what are we going to do for food?” Curtis says to no one in particular, sounding as though he was a child just informed that Santa died.

Conner gestures to the sunlit bay with an expansive sweep of his arm, like a game show host revealing a wonderful prize. “You’ve got an ocean filled with food. I suggest you get to it.”

“Wait, just hold on a minute,” I raise my hands to calm everyone down. “What’s happening here is part of a larger problem. We can’t keep relying on the food in the supply room.”

“We can if we supplement it with fish from the sea,” Robby interjects.

I shake my head. “Even then, you’re only prolonging the inevitable. Someday the supplies will run out. We’ve got to think beyond the storeroom. We’ve got to work with the islanders.”

Several people scoff at this. Conner smirks to Curtis, “It looks like you got your answer.”

I address everyone in the restaurant. “Not everyone on the island is a murdering thug. Just look at Dellas.”

Dellas, who leans against a pole nearby with her daughter in her arms, seems startled that I cited her as an example.

I stand before her. “Dellas, tell them that there is food on the island—there are farms, groves of tropical fruit. Tell them.”

Hesitantly, she nods.

“Of course she’d say that; she’s luring us out of the resort for her friends to kill us,” someone snipes from the back of the room.

Indignant, Dellas straightens up. “What Phillip says is true. Dere is food on de island. Maybe enough for all of us to survive. Papaya, mango, pineapple, and on and on. Dey got chickens and eggs and goat meat.”

“Then why aren’t you there eating this buffet?” Conner asks with a sly smile, and then answers his own question. “I’ll tell you why: Because you know those savages would cut you down the moment you stepped foot outside of this place. No, we remain here. We ration our supplies and catch what we can from the sea.”

Conner points at Nelson and Curtis. “You two knew the penalty for failing to contribute to the resort. From now on, you only eat what you catch. Robby will give you enough water each day to get by. No one is to give you any food, and anyone who does will face the same penalty as you.”

Nelson turns to everyone seated in the restaurant, searching for supporters and finding none.

“Cowards,” he sneers and leaves the room, Curtis close behind.

Conner stares at me, challenging me to say something more in their defense. To my shame, I fall silent.

Chapter Seventeen

Two days have passed since Conner denied Nelson and Curtis food from the storeroom, and they languish because of it. The pair spends most of their time in their bungalow, venturing forth when the sun is the weakest for a futile effort to catch fish. As before, Nelson does all of the fishing, snorkeling in the same patch of reef with the same limited results.

Nelson walks out of the water, back stooped, steps faltering.

“I don’t have the strength anymore,” he dejectedly slaps the empty net bag tied to his waist.

“Maybe Conner will see that we’re starving and he’ll ease up,” Curtis murmurs.

Nelson purses his lips with disgust. “We’ll get no pity from him.”

I take the spear and net bag from Nelson. “Let me give it a try.”

“But Conner said no one can help us,” Nelson counters.

I wag my finger. “No, he said no one can share food with you. I’m not sharing any of my food, but I will help you catch your own.”

Delivering on my intention is more difficult that I expected. The fish are swift and slippery. Only after considerable effort do I manage to spear one fish and bring it to shore.

“Thank you, Phillip,” Nelson gratefully takes the fish.

Leaving them, I find Gwen and Pamela at the opposite end of the beach, struggling mightily to knock a coconut from the top of a tree.

Arms crossed, grinning to myself, I stand off to the side.

Pamela thrust her hands on her hips. “A gentleman would assist a lady in need.”

“This is the best entertainment I’ve had in weeks,” I laugh, and then come up behind Gwen and grab the end of the pole.

Their pole is actually the remains of two pool skimmers tied end to end.

“I could probably do it easier alone,” I chuckle in Gwen’s ear.

She stands back with a flourish, as though to say
, The floor is all yours.

I take several unsuccessful stabs at the coconut, never coming close, but my efforts produce a chorus of laughter from Pamela and Gwen.

“Phillip, you’re holding the pole like a knight at a joust,” Gwen teases, and then steps in front of me. “Here, it will be easier to steady the pole if two people grip it.”

“The problem is that the damn pole is bending. It’s like trying to hit something with a limp noodle,” I gripe.

“My, my, sounds like a personal problem,” Pamela jests, provoking another burst of laughter from Gwen. “You know, they have medication for that.”

We give the coconut another stab and succeed in dislodging it, however in the process we send it hurtling towards us. Gwen screams and tumbles backwards in my arms onto the sand.

Flat on my back with Gwen atop me, laughing, Pamela triumphantly holds the coconut aloft. We rise to our feet and dust sand from our skin. It feels great to laugh with Gwen the way we used to, or to laugh at all, for that matter. As I part company with Gwen and Pamela, I catch a glimpse of Conner standing on the deck of the restaurant, watching us with keen interest.

In the early evening, I take my usual post along the edge of the lagoon. Scanning the opposite side of the lagoon for intruders, my attention draws, instead, to the resort. Shouts erupt, followed by Rhodesia’s wails. I cannot tell who is causing all the commotion, but several torches converge on a spot near the resort fitness center. Hurrying to the scene, I find what appears to be the entire resort gathered around Nelson and Curtis.

Bob and Dean hold Dellas by both arms. She struggles against them, doing a good job of it, too, while Rhodesia cries. The crowd parts as Conner and Robby stride through. Conner holds his axe.

I stand in front of Bob and Dean and order them to let Dellas go.

“She broke the law,” Dean grunts as he wrestles Dellas.

Bob addresses Conner. “We caught her sneaking food to Nelson and Curtis.”

Muscles in Conner’s face ripple in the torch light as he clenches and unclenches his jaw.

“This is crazy!” Nelson exclaims.

“No,” Conner is emphatic. “This is survival. Ours versus yours. The time has come for you to leave the resort.”

“Oooooh, banishment. How dreadful,” Curtis says with heavy sarcasm and shirks free of Bob’s grip.

Conner seems on the verge of planting his axe in Curtis’s skull. I quickly step between them and face Conner. “Wait! Listen to me. You can’t send them from the resort. It’s a death sentence.”

Conner slaps the wooden axe hilt into his open palm. “Would you like to join them?”

“Conner, no,” Gwen rests a restraining hand on Conner’s arm.

He vacillates for a moment, then shrugs her hand aside and points at me, “Don’t interfere. The rules have got to be enforced. I told Dellas not to give food to these two queers; she did it anyway. Now she’s got to go, and her kid, too. They shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”

Dean reaches for Rhodesia, but Pamela grabs her first, her eyes blazing with fury.

Nelson throws up his hands. “Fine. Fine. We will leave, but Dellas must stay. Don’t punish her. We pressured her into giving us food. The blame is entirely ours.”

I whisper in his ear. “What’re you doing? Don’t let them push you around like this. We can force them to allow you to stay.”

Nelson puts a hand on my shoulder as a father would when he is about to impart some wisdom to his son. “Yes, we could fight, Phillip, and we might prevail, but if we lose then Dellas loses, too. No, it’s better this way. We’ll go, without a fight, but only if Dellas stays.”

“You won’t survive out there,” I implore.

Nelson shrugs wearily. “We’re not surviving here, either. Maybe it’s just as well that we take our chances outside the resort.”

Nelson turns to Curtis who weeps by his side. “You understand why we have to do this?”

Curtis nods and Nelson takes Curtis’s hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

“So do we have a deal, then?” Nelson addresses the whole resort. “We leave now—no further debate—but Dellas remains.”

Conner glances at Pamela. She will not release Rhodesia without a huge battle, but Pamela is not the deciding factor. Conner looks to Gwen, her eyes fraught with worry, and she gives the slightest nod telling Conner to accept the deal.

“Dellas stays; the queers go. Robby, row them across the lagoon,” Conner commands, and then speaking specifically to Curtis and Nelson. “If you try to return we will kill you on sight.”

Nelson leads Curtis towards the rowboat. “You needn’t worry about that. We won’t be coming back.”

Pamela places Rhodesia in her mother’s arms. Conner pulls Gwen to the side, whispering something to her to which she nods solemnly.

Nearly everyone in the resort gathers to see Bob row Curtis and Nelson across the lagoon. I remain behind. Jonas stands behind a large potted plant, probably trying to hide from view. Our eyes meet. He has the same expression as mine—the look of frightened men who see injustice and are helpless to prevent it.

It is midnight. On patrol, I complete a circuit that carries me from the bungalows lining the beach to the lagoon in the nature preserve and back again. A full moon lights my path.

“Phillip.”

It is Gwen, crouching in the bushes between two bungalows.

“I can’t sleep, and I wanted to see you,” she whispers. “Where can we talk?”

I think of the nature preserve, but dread the mosquitoes.

“Let’s use the beach,” I suggest. “Nobody patrols there. We can sit on the sand where it drops off near the water and no one will see us.”

Once there, she touches her fingers to her lips in silent prayer, and then says, “I hope those two men will be all right.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. I’m so angry with myself for not putting a stop to it.”

She rests a hand on my wrist. “You did what you could. Conner was determined to get rid of them.”

“He wants to get rid of me, too.”

“I don’t know what I would do if you left. I couldn’t bear it.”

Her eyes search mine. In the moonlight, she seems impossibly fragile, like a delicate, porcelain figurine.

“I don’t understand, Gwen. We’re not together anymore. I know Conner wants you—”

“But I don’t want him,” she cuts me off. “You think just because Conner runs the resort and controls the food supply that I’d become his woman?”