Son of Fletch (15 page)

Apparently oblivious to all this, at the console, Jack threw a switch. Lights on the console’s panel went off.

Jack took off his earphones.

Pretending to rub each ear, he removed his earplugs.

Seeing him do so, Carrie and Fletch removed their earphones and plugs as well.

Carrie gripped Fletch’s arm.

Her eyes were blazing.

“What?” Fletch asked.

She nodded toward the back of Kriegel’s mostly fallen audience.

There, standing, staring at them, openmouthed was their friend, the sheriff, Joe Rogers.

“
N
o, no, no
,” Fletch insisted with as much conviction as he could. He and Carrie were skirting widely the ground on which the audience had stood, knelt, and puked, to get to the cabin’s porch where Jack was working with his electronic equipment.

At first, Fletch had started directly across the field to speak to Sheriff Joe Rogers.

Slipping on the wet ground, the sheriff had dodged behind the trailers into the woods.

“I tell you, Carrie, the sheriff is here as a police spy, or something, taking down names, license plates. You know, doin’ police business. He must be.”

“Why did he run from you?”

“Because I was being stupid. He didn’t want me to blow his cover.”

“Sure. I’ll believe that when catfish meow and climb trees.”

“He’s here on duty.”

“He’s in the wrong county for that, Mister Fletcher,” Carrie said through tight lips. “He’s in the wrong county, and he’s in the wrong state.”

Jack said to them from the porch, “That Kriegel! He sure can raise a stink, can’t he?”

“Somebody sure can.” Fletch and Carrie climbed the porch steps.

“How did you do that?” Clearly Carrie was willing to think better of Jack. Somehow, through electronic legerdemain, he had made almost everybody in Camp Orania vomit.

“Do what?” Jack was wrapping up his electrical wires, from microphone to speakers, console to microphone.

“Make the audience so aptly responsive,” Fletch said.

Jack grinned at Fletch. “I’ve learned a few things. How to Incapacitate People 101.”

Fletch asked, “Not ‘to go with the flow’?”

“Sure.” Jack laughed. “You didn’t see flow?”

“There was plenty of flow,” Fletch agreed.

It was almost fully dark.

Fletch looked around the camp. The sheriff had been wearing boots, jeans, and a Western shirt.

Some vehicles had left.

Bare light bulbs shone in some of the converted carports. Few of the trailers had lights on in them.

On the cabin’s porch, Fletch was satisfied they were out of earshot. The men in clusters around the front of the cabin were recovering from their illness, muttering to each other unhappily, even angrily.

“Ever hear of a Joe Rogers?” Fletch asked Jack.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “You all mentioned him in the car. A friend of yours. A sheriff. Right?”

“Right.”

“I looked into him for you.”

“Find out anything?”

“He’s an Enforcer.”

Hearing Jack, Carrie widened her eyes at Fletch.

“An enforcer of what?” Fletch asked. “Who?”

“Internal security,” Jack answered.

Fletch asked, “What does that mean?”

“Any of the members don’t do right, he takes care of them.”

“Disciplines them?”

“In a way,” Jack said. “This is a secret organization. Supposed to be. As you said, ‘Stupid people can’t keep secrets.’”

“He kills them?” Fletch was aware his heart was beating faster than normal. “He shoots them? Are we talking about Joe Rogers?”

“Yeah. Shoots them sometimes, I guess,” Jack answered. “Usually he garrotes them. With a wire. Leaves more of a message, you know what I mean?”

“Oh, God,” Carrie said. “Francie!”

“Encourages loyalty among the troops,” Jack said.

Fletch turned. He put his hands on the porch rail to steady himself.

Behind him, Carrie said, “Fletch …”

The bonfire was being lit with flaming torches by the aproned cook and another man.

The audience itself had broken up mostly into small groups of men who stood in the dark. Their camouflage shirts and pants, their boots, were well spotted with chili vomit.

Their voices were sullen. Bottles were being passed around. Even through the ever-pervasive smell from the Porta Potties or from wherever, the strong smell of vomit, Fletch caught the occasional sweet whiff of marijuana in the
breeze. From each group of quietly talking men, one or two looked out, around at all the other groups.

Fletch guessed they were discussing their sudden, wicked illness. It had lasted well more than an hour.

He also guessed, from the way they muttered, looked around suspiciously, they were also looking for someone to blame for their illness.

If it were not the nature of these people to blame others for their ills, Fletch reasoned, they would not be here.

Anyway, what alcohol and other substances they were ingesting now were going straight into empty stomachs, onto voided systems.

One man, more than forty years old, ambled up to the edge of the porch from a nearby group. He stood on the ground, talking up to Fletch. “Did you eat that chili?” he demanded.

“No,” Fletch said.

“None of it?”

“None of it.”

“And you weren’t sick. I didn’t see you pukin’.”

“Right. Eat I didn’t. Sick I wasn’t. Puke I didn’t.”

The man turned to the group he had left. “See? He didn’t eat the chili. He didn’t puke.”

An obscene muttering came from the group.

The man rejoined the group. “No chili. No puke,” he explained.

Fletch turned.

Only Jack and Carrie were on the porch.

Shoulders hunched, Carrie was leaning on the base of her spine, her hands on the porch rail.

Jack was connecting the speaker wires to an audio disk player.

“Now what?” Fletch asked him.

“We’re going to have a dance,” Jack said. “You like to dance?”

“Bugaloo.”

“You can bugaloo?” Jack asked Carrie. “Will you save a waltz for me?”

“Not tonight.” Carrie looked around at the glistening ground. “Don’t much care for your dance floor.”

“Aw, shucks,” Jack said. “You’ve got to get down.”

“Not on that mess. Fletch? Don’t you think we ought to get out of here, like right now?”

“What’s true?” Fletch asked.

Through the dark, Fletch heard a man from another group, one near the side of the cabin porch, say, “Who’s this Kriegel? Sounds like some kind of a foreigner to me.”

“English,” a voice answered. “He’s from our English counterpart.”

“German,” someone said. “Kriegel.”

“South African,” said another.

“Sounds like some kind of foreign faggot to me,” the first voice said.

The groups of men were drifting toward the bonfire.

Carrie said, “I really think it’s time to say good night, Fletch. I mean, get the E=MC
²
out of here!”

“Gee!” Fletch did not feel even slightly jolly. “Just when the dancin’ is about to begin?”

“You’ll want to see this, I think, “Jack said. “The dance.”

Recovered only somewhat, Leary was only a few meters away from Carrie.

“I don’t need to,” Carrie said. “I really believe I don’t need to see the dance. I’ve seen enough.”

“Give me a minute,” Fletch said. “You’ll stay here with Jack?”

Carrie said, “You take the worst times to pee.”

Jack inserted a disk in the player. He turned the volume up. “Loud enough?”

“Can’t hear you,” Fletch said. “The music is too loud.”

The music was martial.

Immediately, like puppets on strings, a few men around the bonfire began lifting their knees to it, marching in place, waving their bottles. In the firelight immediately their faces seemed transported into some kind of a fantasy.

F
LETCH AMBLED INTO
the woods behind the trailers.

Once in the woods, he did not stop the sound of his own walking over dead leaves soon enough. He also did not hear over the sound of the loud, martial music.

He heard the crack against his head just above his ear. He saw the flash of light.

Knocked to the ground, he rolled over.

Sheriff Joe Rogers stood over him with a wrist-thick tree branch.

Staring down at Fletch on the ground, the sheriff said, “Shit! What are you lookin’ up at me for?”

“You’re in the landscape.” Fletch put his hand over the lump developing over his ear. “The skyscape.”

“You’re not supposed to be lookin’ at me!”

“Can’t kill me while I’m lookin’ at you, is that it, Joe?”

“Sure I can.” The sheriff swung his club at Fletch’s head.

Fletch grabbed the club and pulled. The sheriff began falling toward him. Fletch put one foot up and caught the sheriff in the crotch.

Then Fletch rolled out of the way of the falling sheriff.

Fletch jumped up.

For a moment, facedown, legs spread wide, the sheriff remained still on the ground.

“Are you fixin’ to kill me, Joe?” Fletch kicked the sheriffs ass. “Are you fixin’ to kill Carrie, too?”

Fletch kicked him again, harder. “Get up, you bastard. I want to see such a two-sided son of a bitch from the front!”

For a heavy man, the sheriff got to his feet quickly and smoothly. He stood close to Fletch.

“Son of a bitch,” Fletch said. “The Enforcer for the Tribal Nation.”

The sheriff said, “Chief of Internal Affairs.”

Fletch scoffed. “Sure! Big titles justify anything, right? Bunch of psychotic children!”

“You could only be here for one reason, Fletcher. To destroy us. Somehow.”

“You’re just doin’ your job, right, Sheriff?”

“You’re damned right.”

“Last night, you and your deputies supposedly were out in the rain looking for ‘Commandant’ Kriegel. You let him slip right through, didn’t you? What was all that garbage you gave me this morning? Carrie was carrying one dangerous hombre on the back of her truck. I thought you were being too damned agreeable. You were pretending to be a little drunk, right?”

Eyes as wide and bright as a pickup’s headlights, the sheriff took a step toward Fletch. His fists looked as big as bowling balls.

“I thought I knew you, Joe.”

“You fixin’ to tell me how you mean to destroy us, Fletch? Will you tell me what the hell you’re doing here, or do I have to beat it out of you?”

“You can try. You’ve already discovered I’ve got a hard head.”

“Talk, goddamn it, before I twist your fuckin’ head off!”

The woods were flooded with the inane sound of martial music.

“I brought Kriegel here.”

“Sure you did.”

“You lost sight of him on my farm, didn’t you?”

“The hell you brought him here. You’re not one of us.”

“How can you be sure, Joe?”

“I’m damned sure. I know you, Fletch. I know all about you, Irwin Maurice Fletcher.”

“I guess you do, at that.”

“There’s only one reason you’re here. You mean to screw up our organization somehow. I’m in an important position here. I protect these people. And you’re lying. Only way to stop you from whatever you’re doin’ is to do you right here and now.”

“And that way no one back home will ever know what a murderin’, two-sided son of a bitch you are. That right, Joe?”

The sheriff smiled. “That’s right, too.”

Fletch said, “Don’t smile when you say that.”

Taking a sudden step forward, the sheriff began to wrap his forearms around Fletch’s head. He tried to grab his chin, force him to the ground, possibly break his neck.

Fletch spun faster than the sheriff expected. As he spun, he raised the side of his right hand fast and hard into the base of the sheriffs nose.

Fletch thought he was free of the sheriffs reach.

Until he felt something the size of a bowling ball slam against his head.

Fletch tripped over his own legs.

Lying on the ground, he saw right in front of him the club the sheriff had used on him.

He grabbed it.

Kneeling, he saw the sheriff lunging at him.

Using both hands, Fletch plunged the sharp end of the tree branch into the base of the sheriff’s stomach.

As the sheriff fell, Fletch jumped up.

Fletch clubbed the sheriff on the back of his head.

On the ground, the sheriff did not move.

Fletch felt the pulse behind the sheriffs ear. It was racing. The sheriff was unconscious, not dead.

Staggering, Fletch headed back toward the main cabin of the camp. His head hurt. It felt as if all the blood in his head was congealing into an immobile mass. His neck hurt. His vision was poor.

The first time he fell to his knees he vomited. “Camp Orania,” he said to himself. “Where the whole world comes to puke.”

The second time he fell, he was at the side of a trailer. His legs were too weak to continue. He fought unconsciousness. He was feeling worse rather than better.

He had to clear his head. He had to get Carrie out of there.

He leaned his back against the stacked cement blocks holding up one corner of the trailer.

Even the blood in his legs seemed to be congealing. He could not move.

He just needed time, a few minutes, to clear his head, regain his vision.

In and out of consciousness, at some point he realized he had forgotten to relieve the sheriff of the small, personal gun he knew the sheriff always wore inside his boot in an ankle holster.

He also realized he had failed to search the sheriff for a wire garrote, and relieve him of that.

“
A
re you all
right, Fletch?”

With the ringing in his ears, his still-blurred vision, Fletch had not heard or seen Carrie approach.

“Like a coconut,” he said.

“What happened?”

“I got hit on the head.”

“By what?”

“A bowling ball.”

“You’re not making much sense,” Carrie said. “Your eyes are glassy.”

“I came across Joe Rogers in the woods,” Fletch said. “I thought I needed to confirm what Jack said about him. Joe was a friend.”

“Looks like you confirmed the worst.”