“Sold insurance.”
“Ever in the military?”
“Army Supply Corps.”
“I see.”
“He’s really a great salesman. He could sell snowballs to Eskimos. You heard his speech last night?”
“Yeah. Where’s your mother?”
“She left us. Couldn’t stand the discipline. I mean, my father needs things exactly right, he’s so important and all, has so much responsibility, organizing all this. She couldn’t understand that some beatings are necessary, so people won’t make the same mistake twice, you know what I mean? I mean, all this is a big responsibility. My father is a great man.”
“Where are you from, originally?”
“Illinois. The Land of Lincoln. I hate that. Freed the mud people.”
“You were brought up this way from birth?”
“What way?”
“Oh, believing in …”
“White rights? Sure. My father’s grandfather was stabbed by a nigger.”
“Your great-grandfather was stabbed by a black person?”
“Why do you say it that way?”
“If he was stabbed by a white person, would you and your father be against white people?”
“I don’t much like the way you’re talkin’. Somethin’ seems wrong to me about the way you’re talkin’.”
“Do you ever get away from here?”
“The camp? Sure. I went to The Wave Pool in Decatur once.”
“Have fun?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“My father wouldn’t let me wear my uniform. There were niggers there. I mean, in the water. With the white folks. There were niggers everywhere I looked. I suspect some of them had knives.”
“Pretty scary, uh?”
“I wasn’t too scared. Just uncomfortable. They hate us.”
“Who does?”
“The niggers. They have to!”
“Why?”
“Hey, Jack! Why are you talkin’ this way? You’re Kriegel’s lieutenant, his aide.”
“So?”
“Some of the words you use sound to me goddamned liberal!”
Jack smiled. “I’m just questioning your motives, Tracy. What’s with this personal motivation? Sounds emotional, to me. Are you emotional? That’s soft!”
“Cut it out!” Tracy put his feet on the floor.
Jack said, “It just seems to me you can’t be a pure believer, Tracy, if you have a personal, emotional motivation. Haven’t you read Kriegel’s pamphlets? He says people with personal emotions can’t be trusted that much. Gee, I don’t know about you.”
Tracy went to the door. Looking around at Jack, his facial expression was similar to his father’s standing at the same door a few hours earlier.
Tracy said, “My father is a great man. And he says I’m following in his footsteps. I’m doing everything he asks! What we’re doing is important! It’s necessary! Don’t you doubt me, Faoni! When the shootin’ starts, we’ll see just how you act! I’ll bet you turn into gooseflesh!”
“I don’t know, Tracy.” Still in his little desk chair, Jack shook his head. “I think you’d better rethink where you are, what you’re doin’. To me, you sound like a real soft guy.”
Tracy slammed the door behind him.
Jack chuckled. Through the office window the dawn was gray. He turned off the desk light.
“Another day.” Jack yawned. “More confusion sown.”
19
“Blythe Spirit. Good morning.”
“Good morning. This is Jack Faoni. May I speak with my mother, please, Ms. Crystal Faoni?”
“Ms. Faoni is in concentration. Do you know the appropriate code, Mister Faoni?”
“Health,” Jack said. Health had been the appropriate code in all the years his mother had been visiting Blythe Spirit, twice a year. It had never changed.
From this observation, Jack assumed Blythe Spirit did not have the high rate of recidivism as did his mother.
“One moment, please.”
Jack had returned to the little office in the log cabin headquarters of Camp Orania. Since shortly after dawn he had patrolled the camp with the camcorder videotaping everything, from the main road in, the long, winding timber road, the odd, supposedly concealed pillboxes along it either side, the trailers, carport-bunkhouses, Porta Potties, the central log cabin, the flagpole, the flag, the hills surrounding the camp, the target ranges, the ancient, locked Quonset hut he assumed was for weapons and ammunition storage.
And he had videotaped the cook hanging by his neck from the branch of a tree.
Upon his return to the log cabin headquarters Jack had interrupted the breakfasts of Commandants Kriegel and Wolfe and Lieutenant Tracy by telling them of the hanging cook. Tracy had made their breakfasts.
Kriegel slapped the breakfast table and laughed. “So! It wasn’t my speech that made everybody sick! For a moment there, I thought perhaps I had lost my touch! The boys knew it was the chili! So they hung the cook!”
“Damn,” Wolfe said. “It’s damned hard to keep a decent cook. That one wasn’t bad. He could make great pots of food out of anything we gave him!”
“Better they hang the cook than the speaker!” Kriegel laughed. “That’s what I say! The boys know Man does not live by bread alone!”
“Sorry to interrupt your breakfasts,” Jack said. “There’s another dead guy out there, too. In the woods behind the women’s trailers.”
“Have some eggs, Jack,” Kriegel said. “You’re looking tired. Didn’t you sleep well? I slept wonderfully! Nothing like a good purge for the system! You young are supposed to recuperate from a difficult time faster than we older people. Let me pour you some coffee.”
The four men finished their breakfasts. Wolfe and his son discussed where on the place they would bury the cook and whoever the other corpse was. Tracy was assigned to draft someone else as cook and put him to work preparing breakfast for the men as quickly as possible. Wolfe would organize the burial.
Kriegel said, “We’ll postpone the church service, our Bible reading and my sermon, one hour, until after you dispose of the corpus delicatessen.” He laughed. “Will eleven o’clock be all right?”
“Eleven o’clock will be fine.” Wolfe put down his coffee mug. “I want the men awake when they hear that that damned Jew Moses married a nigger!”
Wolfe and his son left the cabin.
Kriegel said to Jack, “Moses married a nigger? Where do you suppose that man gets crazy ideas like that?”
Jack said: “Damned if I know.”
In compliance with camp security, Jack had understood, the only telephone at the camp was the one in headquarters’ little office. He knew his conversation was not being overheard. Kriegel had followed Wolfe out of the cabin “to see how blue the hanging corpse” was.
The phone rang ten times before Crystal answered it. Jack was used to that. His mother had difficulty moving, even across a health spa’s bedroom.
“Hey, Maw!”
“Jack, are you all right?”
“Fine and dandy. Except that I am in bad need of a few hours’ sleep and a shower. How are you doin’?”
“As usual. I have lost a few pounds.” To Crystal a few pounds was like a bucket of sand to the Sahara. “But are you all right? Tell me about yourself. Did you connect with your father?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think of him?”
“Senile.”
“Senile?” Crystal asked. “Fletch senile?”
“Yeah,” Jack answered. “He can’t remember any of the stories you tell about him….”
20
“Mister Fletcher? We got us a dead man on the place,” Emory announced.
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes, sir. Dead and bloatin’ up real bad.”
Sunday morning, head still hurting, throat sore, neck stiff, Fletch had checked the fax machine in his study and, finding nothing yet on it from Andy Cyst, took his cu
p of coffee out onto the upper balcony. He loved to watch the rising sun dissipate the fog that was in the farm valley most mornings.
It had been nearly midnight when he and Carrie had left Camp Orania in Tolliver, Alabama, for home.
Before Fletch left the encampment, Jack had placed his hands on the windowsill of the station wagon as if he still had something, one more thing to say to Fletch. Fletch waited, but Jack said nothing.
Fletch realized that Jack was still in shock from having killed someone, their having found the cook hanging by his neck from a tree branch.
So was Carrie, of course, and she was heading down the long dark timber road alone in the farm truck.
So Fletch said to Jack through the car window, “We’ve given each other interesting times so far, haven’t we?”
Jack said, “I’ve had more boring weekends.”
“The weekend isn’t over yet.”
Jack looked to his side. “Why are you leaving? It may be over anytime now.”
Coolly, Fletch said: “I have other things to do.”
Jack did not inquire.
Fletch said, “I’m a great one for confirming things.”
“Isn’t that how you almost just got killed?”
“One source for any story is never enough,” Fletch said. “By the way, thanks for riding shotgun for us back in the woods. You had both of us fooled.”
“I guess I still can’t say to you, ‘Trust me.’”
“Sure. You can say it,” Fletch said. “I’ll store the request.” Then Fletch said: “Repeat after me.”
“Okay.”
“All bullies are cowards.”
“All bullies are cowards.”
“Paranoids’ worst enemies are themselves.”
“Paranoids’ worst enemies are themselves.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Following Carrie on the long drive home to the farm, Fletch telephoned airlines.
Then he telephoned Andy Cyst at his home.
“Andy! I’ll bet you’ve heard enough from me today.”
“No, sir.” Andy yawned. It was midnight and Andy most likely had been in bed asleep. “It’s okay.”
“Thing is, I’d like to set up that story regarding people with life-threatening food addictions. Specifically, I’d like to do a short feature at that place called Blythe Spirit in Forward, Wisconsin.”
“You have a sore throat, Mister Fletcher?”
“A bit of a one.”
“Sorry. When do you want to do the story?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You mean, today? Sunday?”
“Is it Sunday yet?”
“As far as I’m concerned it is. After I go to bed and wake up, it’s the next day, however early. I was brought up that way.”
“Yes. Today. Sunday.”
“What’s the hurry, Mister Fletcher? It’s a pretty soft feature.”
“That it is.”
“I’ve got it. Sorry. This is your way of getting to that Faoni woman.”
“Yes.”
“And you need to get to her because of some other story you’re working on.”
“You’re thinking pretty well, for someone half asleep.”
“And let me guess: the other story has something to do with those escapees from the federal prison in Kentucky. Am I right?”
“I make no promises. I’m not sure what the story is. I’m not even sure there is a story. And if there is a story, at this moment I haven’t the slightest idea how I can get ahold of it, or how I can report it.”
“I understand.”
“Andy? To be honest, there is also a personal element to what I’m doing.”
“Aha! Just as I guessed: the shapely Faoni is an old flame!”
“Therefore I expect to pay my own expenses on this one.”
“We wage-slaves will appreciate that, Mister Fletcher.”
“Who is free on-camera in Chicago right now? Could Cindy and Mac meet me at O’Hare Airport shortly after noon?”
“I’ll check.”
“I’ll do the writing, of course, if…”
“Yes, sir, Mister Fletcher. I’ll get Research to fax you everything they have about food-addicted people at the farm before dawn.”
“Atta boy. Also everything about Blythe Spirit. Who owns it, who runs it, does medical insurance pay for their services, or is it a place one checks into with a credit card?”
“Yes, sir. But, Mister Fletcher …”
“Yes, Andy?”
“When I called Blythe Spirit they were highly protective of their patients, or clients, or whatever. What makes you think they’ll be glad to see you arrive with Cindy Watts and Mac and his camera on a Sunday afternoon?”
“You’ll have to talk with them, of course. That charm of yours. Assure them we absolutely shall respect the privacy of their clients, except any who volunteer to be interviewed on camera, either disguised or not. Their choice.”
“You don’t think they might suspect an ulterior motive if I call them at midnight and say a GCN crew is arriving at teatime?”
“I believe Blythe Spirit is a private, for-profit enterprise, Andy. You know they’ll be dazzled by the publicity possibilities. For them it means more clients, income, a chance to explain their meditation techniques. And you know the one thing people never can remain silent about is silence.”
Andy remained silent.
Fletch chuckled. “So call Blythe Spirit early in the morning and tell them we just happen to have a crew in their area, this is their big chance—”
“Okay.”
“Sorry to ask for all this at this late hour Saturday night, Andy.”
“Sunday morning.”
“Sunday morning.”
“It’s okay, Mister Fletcher. It’s always interesting to see how you work. I’ll bet you have a very big story here.”
“Don’t bet anything you can’t afford to lose, Andy. Don’t bet your job on it.”
When he arrived home, the Jeep was in the carport as clean as new.
Thus Fletch assumed a certain matter had been taken care of.
He assumed the remains of Juan Moreno had been carted off.
The garbage bag filled with the filthy prison clothes and boots was undisturbed by the back door.
The phones were working.
Before he had poured his coffee Sunday morning, Fletch had heard Emory’s truck arrive. Normally, Emory did not work on the farm Sundays.
Emory stood on the front lawn, squinting in the early morning light, talking to Fletch on the upper balcony.
“I didn’t know you and Carrie made it home last night. So I came by to feed the horses and the chickens.”
“Nice of you, Emory. We got home pretty late.”
“I didn’t know you were here until I saw the truck and the station wagon.”
“We were at a dance. In Alabama.”
“Was it a high ol’ time?”
“I guess. You should have been with us.”
“Did you do any buck dancin’, Mister Fletch?”
“Not last night.”
“Many pretty girls?”
“Pretty girls…” Fletch thought of the bare-chested men circling the bonfire knocking each other silly. “I only had eyes for Carrie, Emory. You know that.”
“None you’d bring home to Mama, uh?”
“A few I might bring home to the Judge.”
“That ugly, uh?”
“Criminal.”
“Mister Fletch, I thought maybe we’d lost a cow. Some-thin’ smelled dead. I followed my nose. To the gully. A human. A dead man in the gully. Suspect it might be one of those escaped villains?”
“Might be. All your relatives accounted for this morning, Emory?”
Emory laughed. “I never have been able to count ‘em all. The mess in the gully isn’t anybody I recognize, anyway.”
“That’s good.” On the balcony, Fletch blinked in the sunlight. “Guess I’d better come look, Emor
y, before I call the sheriff’s department.”
The sheriff’s department without a sheriff, he said to himself.
Fletch realized there really was not much need for him to go look. The mess in the gully was Juan Moreno, late of the federal penitentiary in Tomaston, Kentucky. Fletch had already seen him dead. He did not want to see him again.
His training as a reporter made him go down through the house, leave his coffee cup in the kitchen, walk with Emory up the fields to the gully, and peer down at what once had been relatively human.
He could not report anything of which he was not immediately sure.
“GUESS I’M GOING to Chicago.”
When Carrie came into the study in her bathrobe she was holding a cup of coffee to her lips as she walked.
At the desk, Fletch was reading through a sheaf of faxes which had arrived from GCN and Andy Cyst. There were several pages describing the clinical disorder of life-threatening obesity. There were two pages regarding Blythe Spirit, its founding, corporate structure, ownership, size, services offered, qualifications of senior staff, professional operating theory, licenses, etc.
There was a one-page note from Andy saying that Mac was in hospital with a slipped disk but Cindy and Roger would meet him at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport shortly after noon; the administration and staff of Blythe Spirit would be delighted to see the crew from GCN whenever they arrived that afternoon, and would do their best to prevail upon “one or two patients to volunteer for interviews.”
“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.”
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