Son of Fletch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “When?” Carrie drew her legs onto the couch under her.

  “Leaving as soon as I get dressed.”

  “You’re going to see Crystal. I thought she was out of pocket.”

  “I hope to see Crystal.”

  “Maybe she’ll show you her son’s postcards from Greece.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What if she does?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Carrie quoted Fletch: “‘We’re all mysteries awaiting solution.’”

  Fletch said, “We’re all histories awaiting execution.”

  “I don’t know what else you can do,” Carrie said. “I mean, you’ve got to try to see Crystal, soon as you can. Whatever else that kid is, or isn’t, he saved our lives last night as sure as God made bedbugs. I was awake much of the night. I must have turned fourteen miles.”

  “I know.”

  “Fletch, I’m not sure what I heard, saw yesterday. All those wild-lookin’ men together. Their crazy eyes. Their guns. The foul condition of the women and children. Those three guys ol’ Leary kindly run off after smashin’ two of their heads together. What I heard of that obscene speech. ‘Mud people.’ ‘Children of Satan.’ ‘Z.O.G.’ Chants of ‘White rights’ have been ringin’ in my ears all night. Everybody throwin’ up. Did Jack really cause that with his electronic gimmicks? That violent dancin’ around the bonfire. Those stupid men bumpin’ into each other like battery-operated toys, whackin’ each other over their heads. Seein’ Sheriff Joe Rogers killed with a single stroke of that boy’s hand. The cook hangin’ from the tree branch, his face all pooched out.”

  Carrie’s face did look as if it had spent the night in a pail of warm water.

  “Pretty rough on you.”

  “You, too.”

  Fletch said, “I’m still not sufficiently sure of anything. Maybe it’s the bangs on the head I got. I still don’t know why all this has happened, or what, if anything, to do about it.”

  She said, “I won’t really know what I saw and heard until I know if Jack is really your son. Does that make sense?”

  Fletch hesitated.

  “I mean,” she said, “if Jack is your son, what is he doing with these people? Whoever he is, why did he lead us into this putrid mess?”

  “Isn’t that what kids do? I’ve heard something like that, from parents.” Fletch picked up the phone. “I’ve got to call the sheriff’s department.”

  “I wish I could call Francie,” Carrie said. “Guess I’ll have to wait.”

  “Maybe forever,” Fletch said.

  “AETNA? HOW COME you’re workin’ Sunday morning? The choir can’t do without you.”

  “Hydy, Mister Fletcher. Everybody else seems just plumb wore out, after all this excitement about those escaped convicts, and all. Haven’t heard gurgle or burp from the sheriff since sometime yesterday. He could be dead, for all I know.”

  Fletch neither confirmed nor denied.

  “Say, Aetna, we have a dead body out here in the gully.”

  Carrie’s eyes popped.

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do. He’s been there all day yesterday, from the looks of him. His body is all swollen up. He’s popped his shirt buttons and split the zipper on his jeans.”

  Across the room, Carrie wrinkled her face and said, “Oouu…”

  “Do you suppose it’s anyone we know, Fletch?”

  “It’s a good bet it’s one of those escaped convicts you all have been lookin’ high and low for.”

  “The sheriff will be glad to hear that. The boys are sort of disappointed they didn’t catch a single one. I’ll call him before he gets dressed. He might want to run out and take a look before church.”

  “You do that.”

  “Is Carrie within hailin’ distance?”

  “She’s right here.”

  “Let me speak to her, will you? I got that recipe for firecracker cake from Angie Kelly I know Carrie wants real bad…”

  Handing over the mouthpiece, Fletch said to Carrie, “Aetna wants to talk to you. Firecracker cake.”

  “Oh, good!” Carrie crossed the study and took the phone receiver. “Ha, Aetna, how’re you this mornin’?”

  Going upstairs to dress to go to Chicago, Fletch muttered, “God! We’ll never get rid of that damned body!”

  21

  “Miami.” With a flourish, The Reverend Doctor Commandant Kris Kriegel unfolded a road map of the city of Miami, Florida, United States of America, on the square wooden table in the front room of the log cabin headquarters of the newly named Camp Orania in Tolliver, Alabama. The map covered the table.

  Commandant Wolfe looked down at the map. “Miami?”

  “Miami!” Jack said. “Phew!”

  As Tracy looked down at the map, his face glowed.

  Shortly after three o’clock Sunday afternoon, only the four stood around the cabin’s table.

  They were meeting later than planned.

  Jack had awoken in time to set up the sound system for The Reverend Kriegel’s religious service, prayer meeting, sermon, harangue, newly scheduled for eleven o’clock.

  As Jack put together the sound system, he saw the burial brigade, seven men with long-handled shovels, return from the woods. They stood around him drinking water from the cabin’s garden hose. He understood from the thirsty men they had dug one very big hole. They had dropped the hanged cook and the unexamined corpse of Joseph Rogers into the same hole with the shot and shredded remains of the bull calf.

  The Reverend Kriegel then had said a few words over the grave. To the men’s amusement, he commented on the appropriateness of “burying the cook cheek to jowl with roasted beef.”

  Before Kriegel’s eleven o’clock service, Jack again played martial music over the sound system, as Kriegel had ordered. After their party the night before, the members of The Tribe were bleary-eyed and listless as they gathered for the sermon.

  Each holding a Bible, Commandants Wolfe and Kriegel sat on camp chairs on the porch.

  Looking angelic, his eyes raised to the flag, Tracy introduced “our führer, The Reverend Doctor Commandant Kris Kriegel, whom lately God has released from the talons of the Zionist government.”

  The congregation sitting on the ground muttered, “Heil.” A few raised their right hands to chest level.

  “That government,” Kriegel began without preamble, “which has committed treason against every true white citizen of these great United States.”

  “White rights,” the congregation rumbled.

  “Today,” Kriegel announced, “we are witnessing the beginnings of a great, new, worldwide revolution. Some might call it the reemergence of nationalism. It is the revolution of The Tribes! We all shall rise and do glorious battle against each other! I tell you, my brothers, we must be ready to rise as a white nation! As every tribe, as every nation in this world is now doing, so must we purify ourselves, cleanse ourselves ethnically, rid ourselves of everyone who is not one of us!”

  At the electronic console, Jack inserted earplugs before putting on his earphones.

  Then he fiddled with some of the dials.

  To his regret, it was a very pregnant woman who began vomiting first, then two children.

  Very shortly, though, the men, all revelers the night before, were on their knees, puking on the ground. They tried to beat each other, their own women and children away from them with their arms as they crawled forward on their knees, to give themselves room to vomit and breathe.

  On the porch, Tracy had disappeared again.

  Commandant Wolfe had his hand on the screen door to the cabin when he doubled over and puked through the screen onto both sides of the door. His vomit dribbled down the door to the threshold.

  Preacher Kriegel vomited sideways onto the porch’s floor.

  Holding their heads and their stomachs, people stood when they could and staggered away. They headed toward their trailers, their campers, their carport bunks.

  Several rolled onto the gr
ound as soon as they reached shade.

  So:

  Lunch was not desired, prepared, or served;

  Camp Orania fell into a retching silence;

  The meeting between Commandants Wolfe and Kriegel did not commence until after three o’clock.

  “Do you trust him?” Wolfe glared at Jack as he entered the room for the meeting.

  “Oh, yes,” Kriegel said.

  Wolfe growled, “I don’t think I do.”

  Jack smiled at him. “Sure you do.”

  “Jack is an answer to a prayer,” Kriegel said. “He hasn’t been with me long, but it was Jack who organized my escape from prison.”

  “Ummm,” Wolfe said. “My son is one thing …”

  “And I’m another, right?” Jack asked.

  “Jack’s like a son to me,” Kriegel said. “Besides, you’ve seen his father.”

  “That’s one of the problems,” Kriegel said. “His father has made no commitment to us, I’d say, from the things he said.”

  “But he has,” said Kriegel. “It was Jack’s father who made my escape good. It was Jack’s father who hid me out, who disguised me, got me through roadblocks, who got me here safely.”

  “I don’t like the way that Fletcher guy talks.”

  “It’s not what a man says,” Kriegel said primly; “it’s what he does that counts.”

  “I think I’ll look into all that,” Wolfe said. “I have my own resources, you know.”

  In exasperation, Kriegel boasted, “Jack shot a cop. A woman cop.”

  “Well, all right,” Wolfe said.

  It was then that Kriegel unfolded the gasoline company’s road map of the city of Miami on the table.

  “Gentlemen,” Kriegel said. “Be seated.”

  They sat at the four sides of the table.

  “Even though there are only the two of us here,” Kriegel said, “with our lieutenants, this is a most significant meeting. It will go down in history. Therefore I have asked Jack to record it.”

  Jack took the small tape recorder out of his pocket and placed it on the road map of Miami. He turned it on.

  He’d had every intention of recording the meeting, asked or not.

  “Tracy,” Wolfe said. “Take notes.”

  Tracy was ready with his clipboard and pen.

  “Mine is a three-point plan,” Kriegel said, “which plan, byway of stating our goal, I shall describe to you somewhat backward.

  “Our goal is to drive the people from Miami.”

  “What people?” Wolfe looked down at the map as if it offered information other than the names of roads. “Why Miami?”

  Kriegel asked, “Haven’t you ever heard Miami referred to as ‘the capital of Latin America’?”

  Clearly Wolfe hadn’t. “It’s a mighty sprawly city.”

  “Nearly all the people in it are aliens,” Kriegel asserted.

  “Aliens?” Tracy looked at the map, willing to see aliens.

  “How do you intend to attack Miami?” Wolfe asked.

  “First, by Intelligence,” Kriegel answered. “Then by Sabotage. Only then by Force.”

  “You mean to capture Miami?” Wolfe asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Kriegel answered simply.

  “Capture and hold it?”

  “Why not? You’re thinking of the armed might of the Zionist government of the United States, aren’t you?”

  “I am giving it some thought, yes.”

  “Once we have captured Miami,” Kriegel said, “the area will be flooded by white Americans eager to cast off the yoke of democracy, equality, and all that crap. We will fill up Florida like a boot. Our population will flood up the coast and west even as far as Texas, Colorado, and Nevada. Miami will be our capital.”

  “Nice climate,” Jack commented.

  Wolfe said, “You think big.”

  “We will do this,” Kriegel promised. “And we will do this within three years.”

  “But how? Where do we get the manpower?”

  “Your organizations in this country report to me thirty thousand registered members. And I, at this moment, command half the prison population in the United States. Have you any idea how many men that is?”

  Jack said, “Lots.”

  “Besides, we are getting increasing numbers of followers among our student populations, our other unemployed … Oh, yes, we have the manpower, if we attract them, train them, and use them correctly. What we need are more and more training camps set up, using this marvelous Camp Orania you have established, Commandant Wolfe, as a model.” Wolfe tugged his shirtfront down and squared his shoulders. “Oh, yes, Commandant Wolfe,” Kriegel said, “I see you becoming an increasingly important figure in this movement.”

  Tracy, glaring, grimaced at Jack.

  “Intelligence.” Kriegel looked at the road map of Miami. “We need to know where the electrical power grids are that service Miami. How to turn the city’s water off. Sabotage the sewers. Sabotage the main bridges to the city to blow them up at the appropriate moment.”

  “There’s the sea,” Wolfe said, studying the map diligently. “The ocean.”

  “Yes.” Kriegel brushed that corner of the Atlantic Ocean with the back of his hand. “I expect the aliens to escape by sea. Back to Latin America. And New York.”

  “But they can ship food and water, troops into Miami by sea,” Wolfe pointed out.

  “There won’t be time.”

  “Sir?” Tracy asked. “How can we attack Miami if we’ve already blown up the bridges ourselves?”

  “That’s the charm of the idea,” Kriegel admitted. “Have you ever heard of a fifth column? The Trojan horse? Our troops will already be in the city. After the power and water are off thirty-six hours, first we seize the airport. And then our troops will proceed block by block, driving the aliens toward the sea.”

  “Phew!” Jack said. “They will drive the aliens toward the sea!”

  “There won’t be enough ships to take all the aliens away,” Tracy said.

  “Then we drive the aliens into the sea.”

  “Drive the aliens into the sea,” Jack repeated.

  Wolfe asked his son, “Are you getting all this down, Tracy?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  Wolfe sat back. “Seems simple enough. Tell me, Commandant Kriegel: how do we get the money for all this, for all the training we will need to do?”

  “Lots of little Miamis,” Kriegel said. “We shall establish a model. Within six weeks, I should think, after you train your men for this specific task, Commandant Wolfe, we will take just the men you have here—having chosen a small, fairly isolated city, in the Southwest, South, Midwest, West, it doesn’t matter—gather intelligence on it, turn off its power and water, attack it in force, and liberate from that town’s banks and other businesses what I think you Americans call ‘cash money.’ Millions and millions of dollars of cash money.”

  “Ummm.” Wolfe studied the matter. “Plundering. I like that idea. Will we try to hold these small cities?”

  “No,” Kriegel said. “Just plunder them. You’ll strike without warning, lock their police and other tiny town tyrants in their own jails, and make off, overnight, with every bit of cash and other valuables you can find.”

  Wolfe slapped the table with the palm of his hand. “Excellent! I’m with you!”

  “The rest of my plan concerns you and me, my dear Commandant Wolfe!”

  “Don’t you ‘my dear’ me,” Wolfe said quietly.

  “I intend to make my headquarters here, in this encampment, to which I have given the name Camp Orania.”

  “You are most welcome.”

  “Immediately, using whatever resources you have available, I shall need a handsome house built here for myself and personal staff. Large and beautifully furnished. And air-conditioned. Complete with swimming pool.”

  Wolfe blanched. “Of course.”

  “We must have the prestige of leadership, you see.”

  “Certainly.”

 
; “The membership, as it swells, won’t respect us without. I will need here a praetorian guard, men loyal absolutely to me and my safety. I will need similar domiciles in other parts of the country, with safe and well-planned escape routes out of and into each.”

  Wolfe blinked several times.

  “Come now,” Kriegel said. “Lieutenant Tracy has given me printouts of greetings from headquarters all over this great country and this great world. You must have my leadership. I insist things be done right. I shall have what I need.”

  Wolfe considered this.

  Jack said, “Also the helicopters.”

  “Yes.” Kriegel said. “Obviously I will need to be transported in and out of these encampments around the country by long-range helicopters.”

  “More than one?” Wolfe asked.

  Kriegel said, “They have so much downtime.”

  “Also he’ll need at least one escort helicopter,” Jack said.

  Kriegel laughed. “Not to worry!” He put his hand on Wolfe’s arm. “You see why it is important to put my plans into effect immediately! First thing in the morning you must begin training your men for our first plunder of a small city! To build up respect for us! To build up our membership! To build up our coffers! To give me the freedom to get around, meet with the other commandants, organize, for you to initiate training according to this plan, to work toward our goal!”

  “Miami,” Jack said.

  Kriegel stood up. “To Miami!”

  Tracy jumped up. “To Miami!”

  “One last thing,” Kriegel said before leaving the room. “Something must be done about the sanitation of this place. Every time I begin a speech, people throw up. It wasn’t the way the cook cooked. They hung him. It certainly isn’t my speaking. It must be the water.”

  “That’s right,” Jack mused. “It must be the water.”

  22

  “Pardon me, sir. Are you Mister Fletcher?”

  “I am.” The young man dressed entirely in white said, “One of our patients, Ms. Faoni, has expressed a wish to meet you. Would you mind?”