Chapter IV- Meeting Piggy

The boys with Jack achieved results quickly, as they almost always did. Under Roger's sharp, watchful eye, they found some twenty branches and sticks large enough to use, brought them back to the camp, and improvised other items and plants found in the jungle to use as rope. The work progressed with remarkable speed; Jack figured they could soon try out things to use as covers for the wooden frames; the big plants with their wide, tropical leaves seemed the most logical choice.

Tony got up in a nearby tree, plucking at various fruit-bearing plants within reach and eating the ones he liked. The pudgy boy with the glasses walked over, staring up at Tony with his hands on his hips. "Be careful up there!" he called. "There's probably a lot of things that look okay, but are poisonous!"

Tony ran a hand over his black hair, chomping down on a handful of berries he'd just taken off a tree. "I know what's poisonous or not", he said casually. Reaching out his skinny arms again, Tony grabbed what looked like a passion fruit and bit into it. Whatever it was, it was good.

"My brother did BUD/S and all the big survival schools. They teach you what's poisonous, what's good- and he came home a few times and taught me."

The pudgy boy didn't give an inch of ground, though. "Did he do survival school in the tropics?"

Up in the tree, Tony shrugged. "I dunno." How did he know where all those schools were? His brother had said a couple of them, the instructors had made even getting there a test. You had to find the school yourself.

"Well, I know BUD/S is in California!" the pudgy boy said. "There's totally different plants in California, than in this place! So we gotta take precautions, or it won't matter."

Jack was up on Roger's shoulders now, sitting there and snapping off some useful-looking branches from a low-hanging tree. He looked over at the boy with the glasses now. "What won't matter?" Vaguely, Jack remembered this boy had spoken up at the clearing. How had he forgotten to bully him around a bit before the trip? This kid had to be new, and new kids learned their place at Davidson. Boys like Jack made sure of it.

"Once we get rescued." The boy said in response.

Jack just shook his head as he went back to work on a wooden tent-frame. "You better start learnin' to live with yourself, because we ain't gonna get rescued."

The fat boy squinted at Jack through his glasses. "What're you talkin' about?"

Inwardly, Jack nodded again. Yep. This kid had definitely not had his ass kicked enough times. Not yet. But Jack kept the conversation civil; he liked playing games with the lower classes. In Jack's mind, "lower classes" wasn't just people less rich than him, though there were a lot of them. No, in Jack's mind, the "lower classes" were people simply inferior in one or more ways to Jack. That included just about everybody.

Jack shrugged as if the answer to the fat boy's question as obvious. "Just being logical. A plane goes down in the middle of the ocean, there's no wreckage; who's gonna find us?"

Now the pudgy boy was angry. This kind of talk was gonna destroy the group's morale; even somebody as new to military school as him could see that. And Jack was an officer! He was supposed to be better than that. "Why don't you just shut up?" the boy said, not bothering with subtlety.

Jack laughed and looked to the pudgy kid, incredulous. "Are you telling me to shut up?" The very tone of Jack's voice said the boy had absolutely no business doing so.

But the fat kid held his ground. He had a backbone, Jack had to give him that. That, at least, set him above the dozens of whiny new kids Jack seemed to meet in a day. What was he, their damn babysitter? But this one had some guts. He retorted, "What we need around here is positive people. Not people trying to scare people!"

Jack laughed again. He thought the whole thing was hilarious. "What we don't need around here is you, shitbrain!"

Sam chimed in then. "His name's not shitbrain."

Then both the twins said, "It's Piggy!"

Jack grinned; that was exactly the name he was looking for. "Yeah!" he cried, slapping palms with the twins. Roger just grinned wolfishly at the fat boy, and briefly the latter had an image of a teenage boy so utterly insane, so raving mad, he'd eat another kid for dinner just to find out how it tasted. Piggy, for that was his name ever since he'd come to the Davidson Military School, turned away. The encounter no longer made him angry, but merely saddened him. Couldn't any of those boys see he was just trying to help?

"Shut up!" Ralph barked, appearing on the scene. "Everybody just shut up!"

Jack just shrugged and went back to his work, the others following suit. Taking Piggy away from them, Ralph tried to soften the blow of the moment. "It's just 'cause you're new."

But the fat boy wasn't fooled. "No, it's not. They've always called me names like that."

A riotous outburst of laughter followed his words; Jack and his group could still hear them and thought the whole thing very funny. Now Ralph started to really get angry. "Everybody just shut up, okay?"

For the second time, Jack just shrugged, as if to say "Whatever, man." An hour later Jack had essentially forgotten the whole thing. It wasn't like he cared if some fat kid's feelings got hurt. What was he now, somebody's mother? No. If someone wanted kindness and caring at Davidson, they could go see some bleeding-heart sap like Ralph. Jack had real work to do.