CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Conch* * * * * *
The breezes snapping along the deck were cooler, now, as summer had passed away before the onslaught of subtle autumn. It was early in the morning and, through the dim grey, the harbor was visible to those awake to see it. For the few soldiers wandering the deck, performing duties that were second nature, the sight of a thin fair-haired boy leaning against the rail, his arms folded across it, chin pressed upon the chilled metal, was no longer uncommon. All understood that, while he was always polite, there was some great sorrow about him. To a point the boy was unapproachable.
Ralph had become fond of rising early. The other boys that had been brought off of the island knew enough to stay away from him, whether from shame or common sense. So, as most days since the island went, he was alone. Samneric were isolated as well in a sense: alone with each other, and that was enough. He was a little jealous, deep inside, on how they had always had each other and always would. No matter how many boys were on the ship, he was alone inside.
The fog was nibbling at his arms through the ill-fitting jacket the officer had supplied him with. Chilly and damp, it pushed on his browned skin. He continued to stare at the peaceful harbor, and, after another moment passed, blinked his eyes a few times. The far too familiar feel of threatening wetness was present again and he scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand. Home, he thought. Finally home. He should have been happy, should have been as excited as the littluns had been the night before when they had docked. He hadn't slept restlessly like the other boys with the excitement of coming home, but rather with the weighty pain that had yet to leave him.
"I wish none of it had happened," he said in a whisper. "I wish I was back in the cottage, when Mum and Da were still together."
He rubbed at his eyes again, his cheeks wet not from fog. A forbidden swell of anger bubbled of in his chest.
"Sucks to the island!"
Looking down at the softly lapping water, he cried quietly, shoulders rising and falling in movements, made jerky by the erratic, muffled sobs. Ralph saw the tiny ripples piercing the ocean waves, the miniature echoes of his tears. He had lost count of how many times he had cried on this endless journey home to Britain. The crying, in any case, was supposed to be therapeutic, but never did it quell the hurting inside. A petty little thought crossed his mind that the officer didn't care, and it made him cry harder, for some unknown reason.
A hand dropped on his shoulder and he started, automatically wiping hastily at his reddened eyes. The officer stood behind him and the man glanced awkwardly to the side as the boy sniffled once. "Ralph, we're almost ready to leave the ship," the man said kindly. "The families are already waiting along the dock. Would you mind waking the others?"
With a mute shake of his head, he slipped past the smartly dressed officer, padding silently to the large metal door that led to the stairs.
"Quiet boy," the man murmured to himself, frowning in mild puzzlement.
Ralph grasped the large bell resting on the small table in one of the large, cramped holds, staring distantly at the sleeping bodies. Jack was curled in one of the cots, an unreadable expression on his sleeping face, while the littlun beside him kicked restlessly in his slumber. Ralph stared hard at the choirboy, and then turned his gaze to the wall. With a swift flick of his wrist, the bell pealed out with great clarity, startling the lighter sleepers and rousing the others. Sam and Eric, sharing a cot, were two of the light sleepers; they both shot up, smacking their foreheads against the top bunk.
Smiling a little, he stuck his other hand in the bell, stilling the clapper.
"Ow!" moaned Sam. "Did you have to—"
"—ring that so—" continued Eric, rubbing at his reddened forehead.
"—loud?" Sam finished, poking momentarily at his twin's forehead, earning a jab in the ribs in return. The twins grinned at each other.
"The officer says we can go home now," Ralph said quietly. A still moment followed, as the boys conjured up images of home, of parents they had nearly forgotten.
"Mummy!" one of the littluns, Percival it seemed, cried, almost rapturously, and the excited chatter of boys filled the large hold. Some of the smaller ones, such as Percival, were crying. Samneric, in contrast, started brushing off their shirts and picking off crumbs, starting sentences and completing each other's in a mad sort of conversation about how much they had missed their older sister and their parents.
Somewhere in the corner Jack was watching quietly as the small ones, including his bedmate, formed a small crowd around Ralph, pleading to get through and go to the deck. His expression was without emotion, clean and remorseless, and he slowly stood up from his cot. The tattered rested still on his bright red hair, and he folded his arms around his stomach. Some of the youngest boys pulled away from him, flashes of fear brushing over their faces before their attention was drawn back to clamoring for freedom.
With a reluctant grin, Ralph moved aside from the opening and the smaller children burst up it, pounding eagerly up the steps. They were ready to return to the familiarity of mother and father, and a constant home. The older ones moved at a slightly more sedate pace; some of the ones that harbored a grudge against him, like Roger, glared fleetingly at him, and then stormed up just as eagerly. Jack was among the other group of biguns: he simply walked up, unusually quiet.
Samneric remained behind and, with a faint degree of amusement despite the pain that Piggy was not among the lot, Ralph watched as they dug through the pockets of the baggy clothing the officer had given them. They were obviously searching for something they could not find, and it was exasperating the both of them.
"Oh, wait—" said Eric.
"—we haven't checked our—" Sam muttered.
"—back pockets yet—"
"—have we?"
There was a moment of relative quiet as Eric struggled to get his hand in the back pocket and Sam snickered.
"Well, check yours!" Eric finally cried indignantly.
"All right!" Sam replied, still snickering.
The situation probably would have reversed if Sam had not simply sat down lightly.
"Not in mine," he told Eric. "I would've felt it."
"Then where did—"
"—we put it?"
Ralph rubbed at his eyes again, a tired feeling knotting in his chest. "Samneric," he started wearily.
"Got it!" one of the twins declared triumphantly, holding up a small glittering piece of whiteness.
"It was in his jacket," the other added.
Samneric hurried over to him, cupping in both their hands the piece of whiteness, holding it up to Ralph. It was recognizable, with the faint curve bumping its edge, and a tiny splash of streaked red stained one part of it.
"We're awful sorry," Eric said softly.
"It was all we could find of the conch, Ralph," Sam continued, just as softly, and their normally cheerful faces were solemn, sad.
He picked it up with trembling fingers, his face blank, and the shard of the conch rested in his palm, rocking back and forth a little on its curve before settling. He watched it, the streak of garnet as part of the broken shell as Piggy had been. Silently, the twins ascended the stairs, walking together slowly.
Pale and contrasted by the eternal drop of blood, the conch shard was clutched tightly in Ralph's hand.
Some of the sailors paused in their tasks, leaning over the railing that faced the dock, as the children all but cascaded down the ramp lowered to the wooden planks. Countless anxious families milled about, wives with tearful expressions, husbands with desperate twists to their faces, siblings peering around the throng along the dock. In this time of war, there were precious few true joys. For the sailors and the officers, this was one.
Ralph was one of the last off the boat. Fate had once more tossed him beside Jack, for the former chiefs departed together. Sharing looks between them, Ralph's angry and Jack's empty, they went their different ways.
A spry woman with dark gold hair was standing on her tiptoes, trying to see over the shoulders of the families reuniting about her. The tall dark-haired man at her side seemed as anxious as she; he was twisting a black cap in his hands, the fabric wrinkling and stretching. "Ralph!" the woman bellowed, with a remarkably loud voice. "Ralphie, where are you?" The man threw in: "Ralph!" Simply 'Ralph,' he said and nothing more.
There was a certain degree of shock to see his parents, enemies now for four or five years, together. That shock, however, was quickly overrun by the instinctive security gained inside at finding his guardians, waiting and right in front of him when he needed them. Tucking the conch piece into his pocket quickly, he rubbed his hands down the sides of his pants nervously, wishing he had a comb for a brief moment, so he might straighten his hair out. Finally, he stepped forward, swerving carefully around a hysterical woman clutching Percival to her, the both of them crying.
"Mum, Da," he said quietly, "I'm here."
In an instant, he was engulfed in two pairs of arms at once, the slender ones of his mother and the muscular ones of his father. The embrace was warm, secure, and for the first time since they had left the island, he felt as if he was finally all right.
Some ways to his left, Samneric were doing their best to escape the affections of a willowy brunette a few years older than they.
"Gross!"
"Aw, don't kiss us!"
The twins struggled futilely.
"We've missed you, you know," their father, a mischievous-looking man with a honey-yellow beard told them.
"Quite a lot," added their mother, a dark-haired woman currently dabbing at her tear-brightened eyes with a hankerchief.
"Then, if you—"
"—missed us so much—"
"—get Jenny off!"
Jack wandered a bit away from the happy, clamoring crowd, purposefully evading the reunion with his parents. He seated himself on the dock's edge, staring down at the murky blue water lapping around the wood posts supporting the dock. A thousand chaotic thoughts and images ran rampantly throughout his head, thoughts on things he had forgotten were wrong, images that were violent and streaked through with a bloodlust that remained, on the island, constantly hungry. Folding his hands in his lap, he watched the wavering, blurry reflection that watched him as if he was the blurry one.
He wondered, for a moment, how he could have ever sunk into that state of primeval violence and hatred. What frightened him the most, as he cocked his head to one side and saw his reflection do the same, was that he could feel a part of him, in his gut, in his chest, in his skull, that still reveled in it. Some horrible, evil part of him still thirsted for blood, for death.
He was scared.
A month ago, when they first left the island, he was angry, still violent and smoldering darkly inside.
Now, he was isolated, scared of himself. He had killed. It wasn't that he killed the pig, no. He had helped kill Simon. He had led the others to wild abandonment of rules, order, and safety; indirectly, it was his fault that Piggy died. He had wanted, more than anything, to kill Ralph, to see Ralph dead with his head resting on a wooden spear thrust into the earth.
He wanted, so badly, to pretend none of it had happened, to go back to the way his life had been, with his parents in their cozy home.
"I can't," he said hopelessly, and he pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees.
In the six o'clock morning fog, Jack cried.
"Jonathon!" the woman was crying, glancing around in an almost panic. "Jonathon, it's auntie! Where are you, sweetie?" To her chest she clutched a small bag of peppermint sticks and in her other hand she held a glossy photograph, and she was a bit plump with a crown of light brown hair that fell to her shoulders, where it was curled. She couldn't find her nephew anywhere.
Sidestepping around a family that was chattering excitedly to each other, she stepped tentatively about.
She knew he was here; the letter had told her the children were coming, so he must be here, somewhere. Perhaps, she rationalized, he was with a friend, looking about to find her as she was him. Glancing around again, she held a hand to her lips, pausing in her walking. "Jonathon?" she called softly, tightening her handgrip on the peppermint sticks. "Jonathon, where are you?"
She looked at the photograph she held, and turned to a tall, husky man near her. "Excuse me, sir," she interrupted, expression hopeful. "I'm trying to find my nephew: have you seen him?" She handed the photograph over and the man shook his head slowly.
"My apologies," he smiled at her, "I haven't seen him."
"Oh," she said in a quiet voice.
The fair-haired boy with the man pulled away from the mother fussing over him and pulled down on his father's wrist, studying the picture with an unreadable look to his face. "I know him," the boy said slowly. He looked at her, and his eyes were suddenly wet with tears. "Piggy."
The woman wrinkled her eyebrows, trying to read his emotions.
"Piggy," he repeated, voice cracking. "He isn't here anymore." He let go of his father's wrist and dug into his pants' pocket, pulling out a small object in his fist. Taking the woman's limp hand, he dropped it on her palm, curling her fingers loosely about it with his own fingers. "This is…part of his conch."
She lifted her palm up, tilting it toward her face, and opened her fingers. A smooth, curved white shard of a conch rested there, one brilliant streak of permanent red etched on it. Soundlessly, wordlessly, she moved her lips, her shoulders shaking in little tremors. "My baby?" she whispered, broken.
The officer turned, smiling at the crew. "We've done a fine thing today," he said, tipping his hat at them. "Now, let's get back to business, gentlemen."
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Notes: We were instructed to write a thirteenth chapter for Lord of the Flies in Honors English (9th Grade), which was quite a while ago – over a year. I'm a better writer now, but nonetheless, I have a soft spot for this. Dedicated lovingly to Austin and the rest of Mrs. Lowry's class, for heckling me constantly on adoring Samneric so much.
Disclaimer: Do I sound like a genius beyond compare to you? Exactly!