Chapter 4

Jeremy cut some vines and roots off one of the mangrove trees, and started moving some fallen trees, rolling them until he’d worked out a small and rather primitive lean to. It was big enough that maybe five people could squeeze into it.

Jeremy thought back to the days before this trip, when Sara’s father had made him promise that he would look after Sara. The whole reason he had gone on this trip was to look after her, and it was quite annoying. Sara was a nice enough girl most of the time but, there were complications, the fact that he had been sleeping with Sara’s mother for most of the last semester of school made him a little more nervous about starting something with Sara.

The bad part of that was, he was attracted to Sara, and he’d only started the affair with her mother because she had nearly raped him the first time they were alone together, and after that it just got to feeling comfortable. She was a nice enough woman. It seemed that her husband had been neglecting her for some time. She had assumed that he was boinking one or more of his students or teaching assistants. She had met a few of them; she had explained, and she was quite annoyed by the fact that they were all quite young and hot.

So the day she had made a move on Jeremy, he was more than a little shocked. Never mind that he gave her a full service. He had been mowing their lawn and trimming their hedges, doing general gardening for a little extra money, which was fine. They paid well enough. He’d never made a move on Sara, mostly because his studies and work had kept him busy, too busy to try. Not that he thought he had much chance, given the talk he had overheard at school.

His Uncle had helped him pack, he had been with special operations had had taught him more than a few things over the years. Between his demanding school work and his uncle’s demanding training at his father’s insistence, he had learned basic survival skills, as well as some botany, and hunting with primitive tools, how to respond in emergencies, things that his uncle felt might serve him well in the future. He had hooked him up with some guys at one of the local military hospitals to observe and learn; he learned a lot from those guys. Some of them were crazy and, others, well others were damn well out of their minds. He said a little silent prayer of thanks for all the training his father and uncle had forced on him.

Every Tuesday and Friday he would drop by Sara’s house and see if there were any chores, or anything to be done, and if there was time after the chores he’d have an interlude with Janna, Sara’s mother. On the weekend, his Uncle and father would throw parties and he would be expected to do things like rebuild motors or rebuild a car at least as far as he could be expected to do. He’d learned mechanics early, both automotive and aircraft and marine motors. He was a mechanical wiz kid.

At these parties there was drinking and debauchery, the friendly kind and the girls who came to the parties loved teasing Jeremy, often flashing him or groping themselves while watching him, but never touching him.

His father had a pot on the table, a big mason jar rather. The girls who came to the party were expected to put in ten dollars and they could do anything they wanted to try to distract Jeremy from his work, and if one ever did, she would get the pot. If they didn’t distract him from the work, then he would get a hundred dollars from the pot the rest would go back in so the amount would increase incrementally. It was his “College fund” or so his Father joked. There was easily ten thousand dollars in it, so there were always plenty of girls willing to have a try at the pot.