The Testament (15 page)

“I don’t know,” Nate replied. It was certainly nicer than the cattle boats. Someone was hammering in the back of it.

A coat of paint would help tremendously. The boat was at least sixty feet long, with two decks and a bridge at the top of the steps. It was larger than Nate had expected.

“It’s just me, right?” he asked.

“Right.”

“No other passengers?”

“No. Just you, me, and a deckhand who can also cook.”

“What’s his name?”

“Welly.”

The plywood creaked but didn’t break. The boat dipped a little as they jumped on board. Barrels of diesel fuel and water lined the bow. Through a door and two steps down, and they were in the cabin, which had four bunks, each with white sheets and a thin layer of foam rubber as a mattress. Nate’s sore muscles flinched at the thought of a week on one of those. The ceiling was low, the windows shut, and the first major problem was the fact that there was no air conditioning. The cabin was an oven.

“We’ll get a fan,” Jevy said, reading his mind. “It’s not so bad when the boat is moving.” This was impossible to believe. Shuffling sideways, they moved along the narrow walkway toward the rear of the boat, passing along the way a kitchen with a sink and a propane stove, the engine room, and finally a small bathroom. In the engine room a grimy, shirtless man was sweating profusely and staring at a wrench in his hand as if it had offended him.

Jevy knew the man, and managed to say the wrong thing, because sharp words suddenly filled the air. Nate retreated to the rear walkway, where he found a small aluminum boat tied to the
Santa Loura.
It had paddles and an outboard motor, and Nate suddenly had a vision of himself and Jevy scooting across shallow water, darting through weeds and trunks, dodging alligators, chasing another dead end. The adventure was growing.

Jevy laughed and the tension eased. He walked to the rear of the boat and said, “He needs an oil pump. The store is closed today.”

“What about tomorrow?” Nate asked.

“No problem.”

“What’s this little boat for?”

“Lots of things.”

They climbed the grated steps to the bridge, where Jevy inspected the wheel and engine switches. Behind the bridge was a small open room with two bunks; Jevy and the deckhand would take turns sleeping there. And farther behind was a deck, about fifteen square feet in size and shaded with a bright green canopy.
Stretched the length of the deck was a comfortable-looking hammock, which immediately caught Nate’s attention.

“This is yours,” Jevy said with a smile. “You will have lots of time to read and sleep.”

“How nice,” Nate said.

“This boat is sometimes used for tourists, usually Germans, who want to see the Pantanal.”

“Have you worked as the captain on this boat?”

“Yes, a couple of times. Several years ago. The owner is not a pleasant man.”

Nate carefully sat on the hammock, then swung his damaged legs around until he was fully fitted into it. Jevy gave him a push, then left to have another chat with the mechanic.

FIFTEEN
_____________

L
illian Phelan’s dreams of a cozy Christmas dinner were shattered when Troy Junior arrived late and drunk and in the midst of a nasty fight with Biff. They came in separate cars, each driving new Porsches of different colors. The shouting spread as Rex, who’d also had a few drinks, chastised his older brother for ruining their mother’s Christmas. The house was full. Lillian’s four children—Troy Junior, Rex, Libbigail, and Mary Ross—were there, as well as all eleven grandchildren, along with an assortment of their friends, most of whom had not been specifically invited by Lillian.

The Phelan grandchildren, like their parents, had attracted new pals and confidants since Troy’s passing.

Until Troy Junior’s arrival, it had been a delightful celebration of Christmas. Never had so many fabulous gifts been exchanged. The Phelan heirs bought for each other and for Lillian without regard to cost—designer clothing, jewelry, electronic gadgets,
even art. For a few hours, the money brought out the best in them. Their generosity knew no bounds.

In only two days the will would be read.

Libbigail’s husband Spike, the ex-biker she’d met in rehab, attempted to intervene in the rift between Troy Junior and Rex, and in the process got himself cursed by Troy Junior, who reminded him that he was a “fat hippie whose brain had been fried by LSD.” This offended Libbigail, who called Biff a slut. Lillian ran to her bedroom and locked the door. The grandchildren and their entourages drifted to the basement, where someone had stashed a cooler of beer.

Mary Ross, arguably the most reasonable and certainly the least volatile of the four, convinced her brothers and Libbigail to stop yelling and find separate corners between rounds. They drifted off into little groups; some in the den, some in the living room. An uneasy ceasefire settled in.

The lawyers hadn’t helped matters. They now worked in teams as they represented what they claimed to be the best interests of each Phelan heir. And they also spent hours conniving and figuring ways to get a larger piece of the pie. Four very distinct little armies of lawyers—six if you counted Geena’s and Ramble’s—all working feverishly. The more time the Phelan heirs spent with their lawyers, the more they distrusted each other.

After an hour of peace, Lillian emerged and surveyed the truce. Saying nothing, she went to the kitchen and finished preparing dinner. A buffet now made sense. They could eat in shifts, come in groups and fill their plates and retire to the safety of their corners.

And so the first Phelan family enjoyed a quiet Christmas dinner after all. Troy Junior ate ham and sweet potatoes by himself at the bar near the rear patio. Biff ate with Lillian in the kitchen. Rex and his wife Amber, the stripper, enjoyed turkey in the bedroom
with a football game on. Libbigail, Mary Ross, and their husbands ate on TV trays in the den.

And the grandchildren and their groupies took frozen pizza to the basement, where the beer was flowing.

________

THE SECOND family had no Christmas at all, at least not together. Janie had never been fond of the holiday, and so she fled the country, to Klosters in Switzerland, where the pretty people from Europe gathered to be seen and ski. She took with her a bodybuilder named Lance, who at twenty-eight was half her age, but happy to be along for the ride.

Her daughter Geena was forced to spend Christmas with in-laws in Connecticut, normally a bleak and gloomy prospect, but things had changed dramatically. For Geena’s husband Cody, it was a triumphant return to the family’s aging country estate near Waterbury.

The Strong family once had a fortune built in shipping, but after centuries of mismanagement and inbreeding the money had practically dried up. The name and the pedigree still guaranteed acceptance to the right schools and the proper clubs, and a Strong wedding still received a lengthy announcement. But the trough was only so wide and long, and too many generations had been eating from it.

They were an arrogant bunch, proud of their name and accent and bloodlines, and on the surface unconcerned about the dwindling family money. They had careers in New York and Boston. They spent what they earned because the family fortune had always been their safety net.

The last Strong with any vision had evidently seen the end and established trusts for education, thick trusts written by squads of lawyers, impenetrable trusts clad with iron and able to withstand the desperate assaults from future Strongs. The
assaults came; the trusts held firm, and any young Strong was still guaranteed a fine education. Cody boarded at Taft, was an average student at Dartmouth, then received an MBA from Columbia.

His marriage to Geena Phelan had not been well received by the family, primarily because it was her second. The fact that her estranged father was worth, at the time of the wedding, six billion dollars helped ease her entry into the clan. But she would always be looked down on because she was a divorcée and poorly educated at non–Ivy League schools, and also because Cody was a bit odd.

But they were all there to greet her on Christmas Day. She had never seen so many smiles from people she detested; so many stiff little hugs and awkward pecks on the cheeks and pats on the shoulder. She hated them even more for their phoniness.

A couple of drinks, and Cody began talking. The men grouped around him in the den and it wasn’t long before someone asked, “How much?”

He frowned as if the money was already a burden. “Probably half a billion,” he said, the perfect delivery of a line he’d rehearsed in front of his bathroom mirror.

Some of the men gasped. Others grimaced because they knew Cody, and they were all Strongs, and they knew they would never see a dime of it. They all quietly seethed with envy. Word filtered out from the group and before long the women scattered around the house were whispering about the half a billion. Cody’s mother, a prim and shriveled little woman whose wrinkles cracked when she smiled, was appalled by the obscenity of the fortune. “It’s new money,” she said to a daughter. New money earned by a scandalous old goat with three wives and a string of bad children, not a one of whom had attended an Ivy League school.

New or old, the money was much envied by the younger women. They could see the jets and beach houses and fabulous
family gatherings on distant islands, and trust funds for nieces and nephews, and perhaps even outright gifts of cash.

The money thawed the Strongs, thawed them to a warmness they had never shown to an outsider, thawed them to the point of melting. It taught them openness and love, and made for a warm, cozy Christmas.

Late in the afternoon, as the family gathered around the table for the traditional dinner, it began to snow. What a perfect Christmas, all the Strongs said. Geena hated them more than ever.

________

RAMBLE SPENT the holiday with his lawyer, at six hundred dollars an hour, though the billing would be hidden as only lawyers can hide such things.

Tira likewise had left the country with a young gigolo. She was on a beach somewhere, topless and probably bottomless too, and completely unconcerned with what her fourteen-year-old son might be doing.

The lawyer, Yancy, was single, twice divorced, and had twin eleven-year-old sons from his second marriage. The boys were exceptionally bright for their age; Ramble was painfully slow for his, so they had a great time playing video games in the bedroom while Yancy watched football alone.

His client was set to receive the obligatory five million dollars on his twenty-first birthday, and given the client’s level of maturity and direction at home, the money wouldn’t even last as long as it had for the other Phelan offspring. But Yancy wasn’t concerned with a meager five million; hell, he’d make that much in fees off Ramble’s cut from the will.

Yancy had other worries. Tira had hired a new law firm, an aggressive one near the Capitol, one with all the right connections. She was only an ex-wife, not an offspring, and her portion would be much smaller than anything Ramble received. The new lawyers of course realized this. They were pressuring
Tira to ditch Yancy and steer young Ramble into their corner. Fortunately, the mother didn’t care much for the child, and Yancy was doing a splendid job of manipulating child away from mother.

The laughter of the boys was music to his ears.

SIXTEEN
_____________

L
ate in the afternoon, he stopped at a small deli a few blocks from the hotel. He was roaming the sidewalks, saw that the deli was open, and walked into it with the hope of finding a beer. Nothing but a beer, maybe two. He was alone on the far side of the world. It was Christmas and he had no one to share it with. A wave of loneliness and depression fell hard upon Nate, and he began to slide. Self-pity seized him.

He saw the rows of bottles of liquor, all full and unopened, whiskeys and gins and vodkas, lined up like pretty little soldiers in bright uniforms. His mouth was instantly dry, even parched. His jaw dropped and his eyes closed. He grabbed the counter so he wouldn’t waver, and his entire face contorted with pain as he thought about Sergio back at Walnut Hill and Josh and the ex-wives and the ones he’d hurt so many times when he crashed. Thoughts spun wildly and he was about to faint when the little man said something. Nate glowered at him, bit his lip, and pointed at the vodka. Two bottles, eight reais.

Every crash had been different. Some were slow in building, a drink here, a snort there, a crack in the dam followed by more. Once he’d actually driven himself to a detox center. Another time he’d awakened strapped to a bed with an IV in his wrist. With the last crash, a maid had found him in a cheap motel room, thirty bucks a day, comatose.

He clutched the paper sack and walked with a purpose to his hotel, stepping around a group of sweaty little boys dribbling a soccer ball on the sidewalk. So lucky are the children, he thought. No burdens, no baggage. Tomorrow’s just another game.

It would be dark in an hour, and Corumbá was gently coming to life. The sidewalk cafés and bars were opening, a few cars moved about. At the hotel, live music from the pool drifted through the lobby, and for a second Nate was tempted to get a table for one last song.

But he didn’t. He went to his room, where he locked the door and filled a tall plastic cup with ice. He placed the bottles side by side, opened one, slowly poured the vodka over the ice, and vowed not to stop until both were empty.

________

JEVY WAS waiting for the parts merchant when he arrived at eight. The sun was up and unfiltered by clouds. The sidewalks were hot to the touch.

There was no oil pump, at least not one for a diesel engine. The merchant made two calls, and Jevy roared away in his pickup. He drove to the edge of Corumbá where a boat dealer ran a salvage yard cluttered with the remains of dozens of scrapped vessels. In the engine shop a parts boy produced a well-used oil pump, covered with oil and grease and wrapped in a dirty shop rag. Jevy gladly paid twenty reais for it.