“And you’re not one to go with the flow?”
“Never have been.”
“You called her Princess Annie Maggie?”
“What’s that got to do with what we’re talking about?”
“Something.” Jack looked through the side window. “I think it has something to do with it. At least at one point in your life you accepted a hierarchical structure.”
“Oh, I see. You think you’ve got me.”
“Haven’t I?” Jack asked.
FLETCH SAID, “OI VEY!“
“Oi vey?” Jack said.
Softly, Jack had been playing the guitar and singing “Ol’ Black Joe.”
Going through the main square of Tolliver, Alabama, Fletch swerved the station wagon and stopped next to the curb.
Carrie was approaching them in the truck.
She parked against the curb on her side of the road.
Leary was still in the pen in the back of the truck.
Getting out of the station wagon, Fletch crossed the road to her.
“What in hell?” he asked.
“Fletch,” Carrie said through the truck window, “Have you ever heard the expression ‘I couldn’t get arrested’?”
“What happened? What are you doing here?”
“I got to the intersection at nine o’clock, on the dot. I pumped the accelerator, making the truck jerk so the jerk on the back would think we had engine trouble. I stopped. Fletch, there were no cops there! Not sign one of them. I got out, put the hood up, fiddled around with the engine. The goon in back was trying to climb over the cab’s rooftop to help me. The calf bull kept buttin’ him back. I had no choice but to slam down the hood and get going again.”
“You didn’t even go through a roadblock?”
“I never saw a cop anywhere. Not one. All the way here. I even sped. Went through stop signs. I tell you, man, I couldn’t even get arrested. Do you think all the cops in two states have gone fishin’?”
“I doubt they’d catch any fish, either.”
“I figured the best thing to do was come here. I’ve driven around the square four times, waiting for you. Tolliver doesn’t seem to have even a traffic cop! Not even a school crossing guard!”
“My God, I’m sorry. I never meant to put you at risk for such a long time.”
“I’m fine.” Carrie indicated the back of the truck with her thumb. “Better than he is.”
Fletch went to the back of the truck. “Hello, Leary. Have a nice ride?”
Leary was a mess. The calf bull had knocked out two of Leary’s teeth. His eyes were blackened and swollen. His face was cut. There was a deep gash on his bare left shoulder. He was covered with dung.
His skin was painfully burned, as red as the setting sun. On top of the sunburn, Leary had dozens of tick bites.
Through his swollen lips, Leary said, “I’m firsty.”
Fletch could not help a twinge of compassion for him.
The bull calf was no worse for his experience.
Carrie said, “He’s crisped up pretty good.”
Fletch had returned to the cab’s window. “Beat up pretty good, too. Jack and Kriegel have been complaining of being thirsty all the way down.”
Carrie smiled. “Bless their hearts.”
“I guess you have to come with us now. Damn, I didn’t mean this to happen. What happened to the sheriff? I couldn’t have been more clear with him. How could he let you get by?”
“I don’t know. Surprised me, too.”
“Well, I guess you have to follow us.”
“To the encampment?”
“Hey!” Leary shouted at him. “I’m firsty.”
“Oh, shut up!” Fletch said. “Are you a tough guy, or not?”
“Tough guy,” Leary confirmed.
“So.” Fletch sighed. “Turn around and follow us.”
“Okay.”
“Carrie …”
“What?”
“You did do what you said you were going to do, didn’t you? You did go to that intersection. I mean, you didn’t come here because you were worried about me, or anything, did you?”
“Shoot no.” She smiled. “I’ve seen too much of these villains as it is.”
“I can’t understand what happened to the sheriff.”
“Best-laid plans,” Carrie said, “often get screwed up.”
“Yeah. But I’m not sure we can take care of both of us. Bringing a woman, you, into a camp full of psychotic males … When we get there, you watch your mouth, will you?”
“Why, I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse while the collection plate is being passed.”
“Nothing you say can change these fools, you know.”
“Only thing they need,” Carrie said, “is shoo tin’.”
“Let’s not start anything, all right?”
Carrie stuck her jaw out. “I won’t if they don’t.”
Back across the road, Fletch opened the door to the front passenger seat. “You drive,” he said to Jack. “I’m not about to pass myself off as one of your merry band.”
Scooting across the seat, Jack asked, “Do you know how to get to this encampment?”
“Sure.” Fletch closed the door. “You know stupid people can’t keep secrets.”
Watching Carrie through the rearview mirror pull the truck up behind them, Jack said, “I was pretty sure you didn’t mean Carrie to meet us here.”
Fletch said nothing.
11
F letch said to Carrie, “Welcome to Sherwood Forest.” “Yeah,” Carrie said. “Where’s the Sheriff of Nottingham when you need him?”
There were many strange-looking men standing around. For the most part they wore army camouflage pants and shirts. Many wore wide belts with holstered knives and handguns hanging from them. Some were overbuilt, some overly fat, many short and runty, many with their heads shaved, faces scarred by acne or cuts, several showing damage wrought by alcohol and other drugs, teeth missing, noses broken, peculiarly intense eyes, one with an ear missing. A few held semiautomatic weapons carelessly.
One shirtless citizen was as big as Leary.
“These are the racially superior?” Carrie asked.
Fletch said, “Hush your mouth, girl.”
“They look like they were scraped off a tavern floor.”
The men gathered around the back door of the station wagon.
Kriegel had waited for Jack to open the back door for him.
The Reverend Doctor Kris Kriegel stepped out of the back door of the station wagon like the Empress Catherine alighting from her golden coach.
He raised his arms. “I have come!”
Carrie muttered, “He wishes he had.”
All the men standing around raised their right arms in stiff salute, except one, who raised his left arm.
There had been three men with semiautomatic weapons at the entrance to the encampment.
In a clipped voice, Jack had identified himself to them as ‘Lieutenant Faoni,’ Kriegel as ‘Commandant Kriegel,’ and told them Carrie and Leary in the truck behind them were part of the expected party.
“Who are you?” one of the men asked Fletch.
“Siegfried,” Fletch said.
Jack said, “Code name: Siegfried.”
They drove along a dirt road twisting through a thick forest.
Halfway along the road, another man stood with a semiautomatic weapon. He gave them a hard-eyed stare as they passed.
The encampment itself was a clearing of pasture gone to seed. In the most central place was a log cabin with a field-stone chimney, roofed front porch. At odd angles to each other were structures Fletch recognized as originally designed as carports: aluminum roofs held up by black poles in uneven cement floors. A few had their tarpaulin sides lowered, to keep out sun, rain, or eyes. Also at odd angles were several house trailers which had seen better days. Tipped on uneven cement blocks, their blue, white, gray, brown sides were sun-blistered. Recreational vehicles and smaller campers wer
e parked helter-skelter throughout the clearing. At the edge of the woods around the clearing were many Porta Potties. In the midday heat, the smell from them permeated the camp.
The place looked like a wacky seven-year-old boy’s idea of heaven.
More or less in the center of the clearing was a flagpole.
The flag hanging from it was not the flag of the United States of America.
It was not the flag of the Confederacy.
It was not the flag of the state of Alabama.
It was a flag with a red field. The black symbols on it each looked like a chicken’s footprint.
“Listen to them,” Carrie said. The men gathered around Kriegel were talking to him, to each other, in tones that sounded more tight, abrupt, angry than anything else. “There isn’t one Southerner among them.”
Fletch listened. “You’re right.”
“Why don’t these boys stay home? Why don’t they shit in their own beds?”
From the log cabin marched a middle-aged man. He was dressed in a brown uniform with patches featuring the chicken footprints on collar tabs and shoulders. His wide belt held in his sizable gut to a size forty-four. From it dangled a holstered six-shooter. In the sunlight, as he crossed the clearing, his hair was brassy.
Carrie snorted. “He must have gotten that dye job at the county fair!”
The man was followed by another similarly uniformed young man, a teenaged boy, carrying a clipboard.
“Firsty!” From his pen on the back of the truck, Leary pulled himself up on the bars. He had realized the truck had stopped moving. “Let me out!”
Fletch said to Leary: “Say ‘please.’”
“Fuck you,” Leary said.
The men parted for the neatly uniformed man. Standing before Kriegel, the man stood at attention. He tried to click the heels of his soft combat boots together. He gave the stiff-armed salute.
He introduced himself as Commandant Wolfe.
In a most languid manner, Kriegel returned the salute.
There were introductions all around. Right arms snapped up one by one.
“Can’t they go to the Porta Potties without permission?” Carrie asked.
Kriegel and Wolfe drew closer together. Everyone began to look at Carrie and Fletch. Kriegel said, “Brunnehilde! … Siegfried! … Good for us to have them here …”
Fletch said, “Oh, Thor!”
As the two commandants walked toward the log cabin, Jack approached Carrie and Fletch.
Carrie was looking at the calf bull on the back of the truck. “We have to get him in the shade, Fletch. Get him some water.”
“Yes.” The bull calf didn’t need to say ‘please.’ He had done a good morning’s work. Fletch said to Jack, “Help me lift the gate, will you? I think this bull calf has had just about enough of Leary’s company.”
Together they lifted the rear section of the pen.
Head and shoulders first, Leary crawled under the gate. He tripped on the truck’s tailgate and landed facedown on the ground. He laughed.
As Jack and Fletch refitted the rear section of the cattle pen, Leary got up.
With a rumbling giggle he bounded over to the only man there who was as big as he was.
Laughing, he smashed his forehead into the forehead of the other man.
He knocked himself unconscious.
The men watched him collapse onto the ground. They looked at him with only a modicum of curiosity.
Leaving Leary as he was, continuing to broil in the sun, they wandered off.
Carrie started the truck. She began backing it between house trailers toward the shade of the woods.
Jack said to Fletch, “What are your plans?”
“I’m not sure,” Fletch said.
“Are you going? Or do you mean to stay?”
Fletch hesitated. “I have some responsibility here. I helped you fools escape.”
Jack squinted at him. His smile was tight. “You mean to stay long enough to see what we’re doing, and why, the purpose of all this, and then turn us in?”
“Something like that,” Fletch said. “It’s been interesting so far.”
Then Jack’s smile was genuine. “You saw that turning us in immediately would serve no purpose?”
“You let me see you had an objective,” Fletch said. “You made me wonder what it was.”
Jack laughed. “You took the bait.”
“Yeah. I took the bait. You meant me to. So I did.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “I was hoping you would.”
“Clearly you did. You didn’t come cross-country to my house for my help. You would have been better off without it. You could have been here yesterday.”
“That’s for sure. With easy access to Moreno’s money.”
“You came to my house to involve me.”
“So far, it’s worked out pretty well.” Jack stuck his finger against Fletch’s solar plexus. “Siegfried.”
“Enough of that shit.”
Jack took a wad of bills out of his shorts pocket. “Two thousand dollars. Commandant Wolfe gave it to me. He wants me to rebuild the sound system.”
“What sound system?”
“There will be speeches this evening. Will you drive me into Huntsville to get the equipment I need?”
“Carrie will have to come with us. Or go home.”
“It would be better if she came with us.”
“Why?”
“Your theory. Cops look more closely at two men than they would two men and a woman.”
“I guess so.”
“I’ll go check it out,’ ‘Jack said.” See what we need. I’ll be right back. After I get something to drink. After I get a whole lot to drink.”
“Sure,” Fletch said. “We’ll do lunch.”
“FLETCH, THERE ARE women and children down there. Little children! Babies! In that big, filthy trailer.”
Fletch had wandered down to where Carrie had parked the truck.
Somehow she had gotten a big plastic tub onto the back of the truck, upside right. While the bull calf slobbered up the water, she poured more from a bucket through the rails of the pen.
“The children are filthy, Fletch. Dirty diapers everywhere. The trailer stinks. I think they’re hungry. The women seem half out of it. What are we going to do?”
“We’re going into Huntsville,” Fletch said. “With Jack.
Unless you’d rather take the truck and go home. I rather you would.”
“I can’t leave these children here. There’s a girl down there stuffing uncooked hamburger into a toothless baby’s mouth!”
“Well, you know,” Fletch said. “In this context. Women and children …”
“We’ve got to get them some baby food. Milk. Diapers. Soap. If we get them some soap, is there any way they can wash their clothes?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going with you,” Carrie said. “And I’m coming back.”
“THAT’S ODD.” CARRIE, in the middle front seat of the station wagon, craned to look over Fletch’s shoulder. Fletch driving, they were just entering the long wooded driveway out of the encampment. “A forest-green four-door Saturn with Tennessee license plates.”
“What’s odd about that?” Fletch, too, turned to look but could see nothing but the woods. “You finally found a car with Southern plates?”
“Francie drives a forest-green Saturn.”
“Francie who?”
“Joe Rogers’s wife.”
Jack sat to Carrie’s right.
“Sheriff Joe Rogers?” Fletch asked.
“Yeah,” Carrie said.
Fletch said, “Must be a coincidence.”
“Must be,” Carrie said.
12
H ello, Andy. How’s your head bone?” “Feels like less a bone, thank you, Mister Fletcher, more like a head. I swear, I got a good case of sound poisoning last night.”
“I suppose it’s possible. First, please tell me about the ‘seismic disturbance’ in
California. I still haven’t heard any news.”
“Cable is one thing, Mister Fletcher; I’ve heard your excuses for not watching GCN, but don’t you even have a radio down on that farm? A wireless? Are you too far from town to pick up the tom-toms?”
“Yes, Andy, we have radios. I just haven’t had the chance all morning to work the pedals to pump one up. They’re antique radios anyway. They only pick up Rudy Vallee and news of World War Two.”
Fletch sat in the station wagon in the sun-drenched parking lot of a shopping mall in Huntsville, Alabama.
The trip there from the encampment had been quiet. Carrie had sat in the front seat between Fletch and Jack.
Fletch had begun, once they had left the dust of the encampment behind them, by asking Jack, “Did you go to school, do all sorts of good things? Sports?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Bloomington. Chicago. Boston.”
“Boston? Why Boston?”
“Why not Boston?”
Over the ignored condition of the babies, children, women Carrie had discovered at the encampment, their hunger, their filth, what she believed she identified as evidences of physical abuse, her fury emanated as palpably from her as would a strong odor. She had difficulty even looking at Jack. Clearly, she had no interest in anything he had to say.
Sensing this, Jack had no interest in talking.
Fletch hummed “What a swell party this is …”
As soon as Fletch stopped the car in the shopping mall’s parking lot, Jack was out the door headed for an electronics store. Separately, Carrie headed for a supermarket.
Fletch took the cellular phone from under the car seat and pressed in Andy Cyst’s office phone number at Global Cable News in Virginia.
“The California earthquakes,” Andy mused, as if asked to discuss something that had happened in sixteenth-century France. “Considerable.”
“Considerable what? Damage?”
“Yes. No estimates yet. Covered a wide area along the southern coast. Power lines, water lines disturbed, some fires, a small bridge fell in, no major buildings collapsed, although many will have to be inspected before being occupied again, two deaths reported so far. Two aftershocks reported. Geologists are saying there is no more to worry about than there was before. That’s reassuring, isn’t it? The governor of California has issued a statement reminding people that most of California is not affected by earthquakes at all. I suspect that bit was written for him by the Chamber of Commerce goaded by amusement park operators.”
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