My Years with the Savages

On August 18, an “Unclaimed Person” report was created in Parkland, Washington, for Jeffrey Lee Savage, whose body was found on August 10. Says the report, “This 64-year-old male died at his encampment residence due to causes still under investigation. Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office has been unable to locate family or friends able to claim their remains.”

Jeff and his twin brother Jay grew up on the same street as I did, 160th Street in what is now Tukwila—on the very southern border of the South Central School District. Though they lived about a mile east of me, we all rode the same school bus to Thorndyke Elementary—along with other 160th Street kids in the Class of 1979: Greg Beckel, Jerry Zilbert, Ron Miyatake, Debbie Bradley, Linda Dixon, Janine Martin, Mark Medina, Jay Magee (and starting in sixth grade, Terri Haggerton, right after Mark and Jay moved away).

Greg, Jerry, Ron, Debbie, and the Savages boarded the bus at the stop prior to the rest of us. Of the group, I was the youngest (having been moved up to second grade half way through my first grade year) while Jay and Jeff were the oldest (turning nineteen just prior to graduation).

The Unclaimed Persons report lists Jeff’s hair color as strawberry blond—and it always was. By contrast, Jay’s hair was a dark brown.

Despite being twins, there were many differences between Jay and Jeff. Jeff was quick to laugh and jest, while Jay—who suffered from some sort of learning or comprehension disorder—often reddened with frustration when jokes were being made. I think he often didn’t get them, or wondered whether he was being made fun of somehow.

Both Jeff and Jay were powerfully built—not remarkably tall, but very stout and not at all chubby as kids. Solid muscle. Jeff, though, tended to be very reserved in large groups and never drew attention to himself while Jay was prone to outbursts of anger and really couldn’t avoid drawing attention. But Jay was an exceptionally kind and sensitive boy, and I never knew him to hurt anyone in any way in spite of his many demonstrations of anger and great physical strength. He frightened and panicked easily.

Late in May during our fourth grade year at Thorndyke, Jay and I were playing with Greg Fisher in the woods below the playground during recess. We were all non-athletic nerds at that time, though Greg would later become a good basketball player and I managed to start a few games of football my senior year. Greg was pudgy then and giggled a lot, I was young and runtily skinny, and Jay never understood sports; so the three of us tended to avoid the main part of the playground. No use trying to do things for which we would be ridiculed.

The day in question, we were chasing one another along hillside paths, probably playing some form of tag. It was fairly warm and sunny, and the woods were bright with the rays that filtered down through the leaves and branches of the ancient maples.

As I paused to look back at Greg, I saw what looked like puffs of air kicking up through the leaves near the trail behind him. And I heard, seemingly disconnected to those puffs, and just a tiny bit later, POP POP POP.

Those sounds caught our attention. About two hundred yards distant through the woods, and at the bottom of the hill, a man stood aiming his rifle in our direction. Jay started screaming and all three of us took up positions behind sheltering tree trunks. As I recall, during this few seconds the shooter managed to get off another three or four rounds. Once we were under cover, the shooting stopped. After some minutes, Greg and I crept out to make sure the coast was clear.

I don’t know what Greg and Jay’s experience was with guns, but my family was full of hunters and I was familiar with various kinds of rifles and shotguns. I knew from the sound that this man’s rifle was a small caliber, much less powerful than my dad’s .308 bolt-action. But I was terrified nonetheless, naturally, as were Greg and Jay. It was some time before Greg and I could convince Jay to come out of hiding.

Something about that incident told me that Jay and I could be of help to each other. His physical strength at times would come to serve as protection for me, while my emotional strength would at times come to protect him.

We immediately reported the incident to Leonard Root, the school’s principal, and our teacher, Mrs. Lerner. To their credit, they went down into the woods with us to examine the scene, and even before recess was over. But I never got the impression they believed us. There was, of course, no evidence at the top of the hill, and no one was inclined to clamber all the way down to where we said the shooter was standing.

And this is how gaslighting works, of course. When trauma happens and you are gently humored but not really believed, you begin to doubt yourself. I never talked about the incident again to anybody, and over the years began to wonder if it was just my overactive imagination. (My sister Elane will happily tell you all about that: sasquatches, UFOs, and so on.) Finally, though, when Greg and I were roommates in college, I asked him about it. He remembered the incident exactly as I did.

Late in our grade school years, the Savages and I started spending a lot of time together during summer breaks, roaming the hundreds of acres of undeveloped woods sandwiched between 158th and 160th Streets, from Lewis & Clark Theater almost all the way down to Southcenter. We wandered and built trails, and renovated or added on to tree houses. We could be out in the woods all of a long summer day and never see another soul.

Both near my house and near the Savage place, we discovered trash middens from the 1930s—which to us were like treasure hoards. We never found precious metals, of course, but we carefully unearthed a lot of cool antique bottles, Depression glass, and housewares. My mom frequented antique stores with her friends, so I was aware that some of these things actually had value. We reburied the genuine trash.

During this time, Greg Beckel and Willard Stone started coming along with Jeff and Jay down toward my end of 160th Street. Sometimes Willard’s little brother Joe, my age, would join as well. One afternoon, the Savages and Stones were at my house playing on the tire swings my dad had rigged in the wooded lot adjoining our house. To hang the ropes, Dad had felled a small fir and then hauled the log twenty feet up into the canopy and lashed it two two other tree trunks. From that log, two stout ropes hung, lashed at the ends to two smoothly-worn tires. The favorite activity was tire swing wars, a game my brother Bob had invented: sort of like bumper-cars on swings, or tire-swing jousting. The object was to knock the other swinger off his tire, or make him cry uncle. This particular day, we had doubled up. I believe I was swinging with Willard while Jay and Jeff clung to the other rope—when suddenly the log crossbar snapped in the middle. Four boys were just too many! All our butts hit the ground and one section of the log came crashing down in our midst. Miraculously, none of us were hurt.

There were plenty of other of opportunities for harm out in those woods, too. We dug pits and made roofed shelters in them, not knowing about the need for a chimney or vent if you were going to built fires down there. On dark evenings we would pour gasoline into the soil and use ground-torches to light our path. We would stumble across stashes of drug paraphernalia, pornography, and women’s underthings. We would explore the spooky burnt-out and abandoned houses that abutted the woods.

One abandoned house stood in a very isolated patch of 158th Street, all by itself next to the vacant lot behind the Presbyterian church on 160th. Jay, Jeff, Greg Beckel, and I had converted a shed behind that house into our own private clubhouse. We brought in bits of broken and abandoned furniture, cleaned out discarded junk, put posters on the walls (some of which we drew and colored ourselves), and read the stacks of 1920s newspapers we found in the shed. During one winter, we even put up a Christmas tree and decorated it with red-and-green construction-paper chains and candles. We had storage places for personal items and the dirty magazines we had collected from the woods.

One day the four of us went into the house to explore it more thoroughly. It was a large three-bedroom farmstyle house with two of the bedrooms upstairs. It also had a full basement. Exploring the house was always creepy, but we had been in many times before. We were not particularly nervous.

But Jeff, who could be a little mean with Jay sometimes, lured Jay and I into the bedroom across from the basement door—and then shut the door quickly behind us, latching it from the outside. Jay was both panicked and furious. I watched in awe as this four-foot-something twelve-year-old delivered one kick to that solid wooden farmhouse door… and tore it off both the hinges and the latch, sending it tumbling down into the open basement stairway across the hall. Nobody laughed. And Jeff never did anything like that again.

As we moved through junior high, we gradually spent less and less time together. We rarely had the same classes. Greg Fisher became super-active in student government. I became a band and science nerd. Greg Beckel and I had a falling out that ended in fisticuffs. I started working through summers, and there was less and less “playing” to be done with neighbor kids, including Willard and the Savages.

After graduation, I lost track of all of them but Greg Fisher, with whom I roomed at the University of Washington. Greg and I would talk from time to time over the years, until he passed away a few years ago in the wake of many complications from a terrible car accident. I kept abreast of Jay’s life through my mom, who volunteered at the hospital where Jay worked as a janitor. Jay passed away many years ago due to poor health. I have been happy to cross paths with Willard again, thanks to the 21st Century phenomenon of Social Media.

I found out about Jeff’s passing the other day from another of our classmates, Gregg Hendricks, who received word from Jeff’s daughter after a friend stumbled across the public notice.

So many years ago. Fifty. And really, such good summers, and such good friends to share them with. I still feel most at home in the woods.