Son of Fletch (17 page)

Instead, he said, “Jack’s retired now.”

“Yes. ‘Reluctantly retired and delightfully discontent,’ as he describes himself. He insists the fourth estate has slipped badly since it’s had to do without him.”

“He’s right. You ever hear him speak of his wife?”

“Oh, yes. I believe Mister Saunders has spent his best energies thinking up terrible, rude, hilarious things to say about her.”

“He has.”

“I know her, too,” Jack said. “They had me to dinner several times. She loves him truly, deeply, wonderfully.”

“Of course. And he loves her totally.”

“He says you were pretty good at your job, too.”

“He does?”

“Yeah.”

“He never told me that.”

“Sure,” Jack said. “He’s told me stories about you.”

“Everybody tells stories about me,” Fletch said.

“And none of them is true?”

“None of them,” Fletch answered. “Not one.”

They were silent a moment.

His head clearing, Fletch said: “I do believe this young man is trying to tell us something, Carrie.”

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Slowly, Fletch stood up.

He stood still a moment, while dizziness cleared his head.

When his vision cleared, he saw that Jack and Carrie were both standing as well.

“Well,” Jack said, “I guess I’ll leave you here.”

“Come with us?” Fletch asked.

“No.” The answer was immediate and crisp.

Jack turned on his heel. Hands in the back pockets of his
shorts, he walked away from them, back toward cabin headquarters.

Fletch and Carrie watched him go.

Carrie asked Fletch: “What do you know now you didn’t know before?”

Fletch said: “I know we’ve got to get the hell out of here. Right now.”

C
losely followed by
Carrie, Fletch worked his way behind the trailers toward where they had parked the station wagon and truck.

Although having to go along the edge of the woods, in and out of them, he gave the place where he had left the sheriff as wide a berth as possible.

He had considered walking all the way around the opposite side of the encampment, but he feared his head, pounding at every footstep, his legs, still wobbly, could not take such a long hike.

He did not want to collapse again.

“FLETCH!”

“Ohhhh,” Fletch said in disappointment. There was a wire around his neck. It was being pulled taut against his throat from behind. He had thought he was going to succeed in getting Carrie safely out of the encampment.

While trying to get his fingertips under the wire at his throat, Fletch was flung around to his left.

In a blur, he saw Carrie sitting on the ground like a rag
doll on a shop’s shelf. Her legs were pedaling to get herself up.

His ears flooded with a gurgling noise.

His eyes closed.

Suddenly, still moving sideways, he was falling freely.

On the ground, he sat up.

His fingers tore the wire from around his throat.

There was a dark bulk on the ground.

A slim figure stood over it.

Bending his knees, the young man crouched and put his hands out to the bulk. He turned the bulk over.

The heavyset man on the ground was totally inert.

“Jack?” Slowly Carrie was approaching the two figures, the big, heavy man on the ground, the slim, light man crouched over him.

As she reached them, she put her hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Jack …”

Fletch got up.

He went to them.

“Dead,” Carrie said. “Poor Francie.”

Still crouching, his hand on Sheriff Joe Rogers, with an ashen face Jack looked up into Fletch’s face.

Jack said to Fletch: “What do you know? I’ve killed a cop.”

T
OGETHER
, J
ACK
, C
ARRIE
, and Fletch continued to walk toward where the station wagon and farm truck were parked in the woods. Now they did not bother to keep to the shadows.

At first, they said nothing.

They had left the sheriffs body in the woods, well away from any natural path.

After a moment, Jack said: “I only hit him once.”

Fletch said, “I guess once was enough.”

Carrie was making sniffling noises as she walked.

As they approached the woods, a group of men Fletch had not seen at the bonfire came toward them. They were dragging something large and heavy on the ground.

It was the bull calf.

“Hey, Lieutenant!” one of them called to Jack. “You hungry?”

Fletch went to where the men stopped to rest. Dragging the bull calf by its hind legs and tail was tiring them.

They had shot the bull calf behind one ear. Executed it.

Fletch had not heard the shot over the music.

He looked back at Carrie, who had remained some paces away.

She was looking away in the moonlight. At her sides, her fists were clenched.

One of the men said, “We’re gonna have us some bar-b-que!”

In a low voice, Jack said to them, “I’ll be right back.”

He and Fletch continued.

Angrily, Carrie had walked into the woods ahead of them.

She screamed.

When Fletch got to her, she was slapping at a man’s legs dangling in the air. She had walked into them. The legs were swinging against her head and shoulders.

Fletch pulled her away from the dangling legs of the corpse.

He looked up.

He recognized the filthy apron.

“My God,” Jack said behind them. “They hung the cook!”

“
H
ave you filled
up your condom yet, son?”

The palms of his hands were on Jack’s bare shoulders. They slid to his neck and rubbed it, caressed it, gently, slowly, firmly.

“Not yet, sir.”

Nearing midnight, Jack, shirtless, sat at the computer console in the small office in one of the two front rooms in the log cabin headquarters of Camp Orania. When he heard someone coming, Jack had slid Tracy’s computer code book into a desk drawer, quit the modem, neatly stacked his disks and quickly typed on the blank screen,
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their Tribe
.

The members of The Tribe had not waited long enough for the calf bull to be cooked over what remained of the bonfire. Having had their systems thoroughly voided, they were too hungry. After parts of the calf bull were seared only, in drunken he-man competition, mostly the members of The Tribe ate the bull in bleeding handfuls, raw.

The cabin had four rooms, two in front, one, the smaller used as the office in which Jack worked, the other, with a fieldstone fireplace, as a living/dining room, kitchen. Kriegel slept in one small room at the back of the cabin. Jack had thought Wolfe was asleep in the other. In the half loft over the back of the house, Tracy slept.

Despite the occasional yell, Jack thought nearly everyone else in the encampment was asleep, passed out, knocked unconscious, dead.

Using floppy disks he had bought at the mall, first Jack had copied every file from that computer: membership lists, names, addresses, ages, occupations, brief biographies, as well as the names and addresses of the subscribers to the monthly magazine
The Tribe
, names and addresses of contributors, locations, numbers and balances of bank accounts belonging to The Tribe under names various, and usually suggesting a charitable or religious nature.

One account in a Birmingham bank was in the name of Carston Wolfe. It had a balance of $53,285.12.

Again using Tracy’s code book, and using the modem, Jack then found himself in a huge computer network. He scanned the “billboard,” the messages headed “Attention All H.Q.’s,” for the previous forty-eight hours.

The big news was that The Reverend Doctor Commandant Kris Kriegel had escaped the federal prison in Kentucky and would soon be among them. Commandant Kriegel would take his “rightful place” of leadership in the “international Tribal movement.”

Kriegel was described as “a founder and organizer of The International Tribe, an important religious leader, historian, anthropologist, philosopher, professor, author, and activist, a leading international advocate of White Rights.”

It also repeated that he was “wanted for questioning” by the South African government and “most police agencies in Europe.”

Nothing indicated that Kriegel had arrived safely at the camp in Tolliver, Alabama. There were several statements that Kriegel’s “Freedom, Life and Safety must be protected at All Costs by Every Member of The Tribe, even at the Supreme Sacrifice of That Member’s Own Life, for The Good of All.”

In the “billboard” there were scores of messages to Kriegel, apparently from “H.Q.’s” in many parts of the country and the world, congratulating him on his escape from prison; most such messages were accompanied by personal statements from people expressing eagerness to work with him “in bringing a new energy, sense of purpose, dedication, discipline, and organization to The International Tribal Movement.” One apparently humorously intended message suggested Kriegel never again delay himself, and the movement, by “ever again stopping to strangle a black whore
personally.”

Also in the “billboard” file were rantings, many not really comprehensible, concerning historic, universal, and immediate, local injustices committed by various nonwhite groups and individuals. The alphabet of derogatory names used for these groups and individuals in the “billboard” would make its own glossary.

Jack found the membership lists, et cetera, of groups around the country and the world all easily accessible from the little computer at Camp Orania in Tolliver, Alabama. Also, he found a list labeled “Those Targeted for Assassination.” To his great surprise, he even found particulars regarding Germany’s “Autonomen,” the hooded, masked
force that “protects” white rights demonstrators from German security forces.

Clearly, The Tribe was proud of its ability to document perfectly.

Also clearly, Jack thought, probably because the members of The Tribe believed in the righteousness of their cause and in the purity of their own hearts, their security systems were as naive as might be The Sisters of Charity’s.

All this information Jack was copying onto floppy disks when he heard a man’s heavy tread approach the little office.

When Commandant Wolfe entered the small office, Jack was typing onto the computer screen,
And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman
. —Numbers 12:1.

Caressing Jack’s neck, in a low voice Wolfe asked, “You haven’t filled even one condom yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

At the console, Jack sweated profusely. His floppy disks were plainly visible next to the computer. He hoped Wolfe was sufficiently computer ignorant not to suspect what he was doing. “Haven’t had time yet, sir.”

“A beautiful Aryan boy like you has no interest in sex?”

“I have interest in sex, sir.”

“What are you working on?” Wolfe continued to massage Jack’s neck.

“I’m typing notes for Doctor Kriegel’s sermon in the morning, sir.” Jack thumbed the edges of the floppy disks. “And putting into the computer some of his writings, you know, his sermons, speeches. Some of the things he wrote
while in prison. Very important I get them into the computer.”

“Kriegel had use of a computer in prison?”

“Of course,” Jack answered. “He worked in the library. You know about the computer billboard he established among the prisons?”

“Yes.”

“That was how he organized the prisoners around the country. No one could stop him. His newsletters that were mailed from Washington, Berlin, Warsaw, back to the prisoners …”

“Yes, yes. Our friend Kris Kriegel is a genius at organization. A spellbinder, too. What’s this?” Wolfe leaned over Jack’s head. From the computer screen, he read, “‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their Tribe

With Wolfe’s hands on his neck, Jack closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.

“Excellent!” Wolfe clapped him on the shoulder. “Simple, familiar statements! Exactly what is needed! Give them the familiar in a new context, and people will believe and do whatever you want! Isn’t that what preachers have been doing for centuries?”

Jack sighed. “If you say so, sir.”

“And what’s this? ‘And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.’ Moses married a nigger?”

“So it was reported, sir. Moses married interracially.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “Moses was a Jew, wasn’t he?”

“Such is commonly believed.”

Jack typed:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus
.—Galatians 3:28.

“Ah, yes.” Looking up, Jack saw Wolfe frown as he read. “I’m sure Brother Kriegel knows what he’s doing.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

Wolfe squeezed Jack’s shoulders. “Still, it is so late in the night.” Wolfe ran his hand up Jack’s arm. “You are so sweaty. Such a sweaty boy. Don’t you think it is time you filled at least one condom?”

“Sir?”

“Perhaps you need to be stimulated. Eh? You need to be stimulated a little?”

“Sexually stimulated?”

“Yes.”

“By you? Sir?”

Abruptly, Jack stood up.

In the desk’s lamplight, he faced Wolfe from a meter away.

Wolfe was shirtless, but otherwise dressed. He wore his uniform-like trousers. His boots. His holstered six-shooter.

Jack said, “Sir! The regulations of The Tribe prohibit the use of liquor and or other drugs!”

Mildly, Wolfe said, “Certainly.”

With a straight arm, Jack pointed through the cabin’s windows. “Sir! There was wide and general use of liquor and other drugs in this camp tonight!”

“Of course,” Wolfe said. “So? The boys have to blow off a little steam. More to the point”—he smiled at Jack—“we must attract them. How can we be responsible for the habits they bring with them? Someday, we will have tighter control….”