Fletch, Too

by Gregory Mcdonald

  He felt no better from the event, the reality, the dream. Except for the lingering smell, he felt no worse.

  Box of rocks.

  Then Carr, bare-chested, wet, was shaking more pills out of a bottle.

  Fletch did not remember taking them.

  The sound of the rain, pelting the ground outside, hammering against the tent, went on and went on and went on.

  Suddenly, Fletch’s eyes were wide open. The low light from the kerosene lamp had not changed. The box on which the lamp stood, as well as the wet towel on the box, was suddenly clearer in Fletch’s eyes. The seams of the tent over his head were more distinct.

  The air seemed cleaner in his nostrils. The ache in his head was gone, until he moved his head too quickly.

  His arms were happy to move, lightly, as they were ordered.

  He was free, free of the fever.

  Through the sound of the rain he heard men talking. Two men. Their voices came and went under the sound of the rain.

  No one was in the tent with him.

  Realizing how heavy, wet the blankets were, he pushed them off him, to the bottom of the cot. Lying down again, he raised his legs, brought his knees to his chest, straightened them, let them down.

  Free.

  A decision had been made.

  Bare feet in the mud, Fletch sat on the edge of the cot and tried to think about the decision. He listened to the rain. He felt cool, normal. There was nothing to think about.

  The decision had been made.

  This was right. This was normalcy. This was health. This was being alive. If he wanted to be open to life, health, normalcy, rightness, he also had to be open to the decision, commit himself to it, act on it, because the decision was based upon decisions made by everybody, everywhere, a long, long time ago, in the beginning, and those decisions, once made, determined how everything worked, life, health, defined normalcy, and if one, anyone, did not act basically within those deductions, or acted against them, or decided something else, then legs, which hold us up, support us, permit basic movement, progress, shatter, and shortly we are sitting in the dust, all of us, corrupt and cracked-headed, corrupting, awaiting the jackals.

  Tired rising from the cot, dizzy at first, Fletch stood a moment sucking in the jungle air, heavy with rain. He could smell the jungle, the rotting roots and the slashed green leaves. He could hear the noises of the animals as they moved around in their world, acting within decisions, what was normal, what was health, what was life for them.

  Making choices is the ultimate freedom in a world in which decisions have been made to permit such freedom. Failure to see that sometimes no choice can be made, that there is no personal decision, is the ultimate folly, the absolute destruction of self and all.

  Fletch took the wet towel and tucked it around his waist.

  Pushing aside the tent flap, he looked outside. There were signs of dawn in the sky. The rain was a nearly solid, straight-down torrent, hitting so hard it made the ground look almost jumping.

  From which direction was the sound of two men talking coming? Two men, talking loudly over the sound of the rain, in English. Laughing. Listening through the opened tent flap, just inside his tent, Fletch could not make out what they were saying.

  A tent across the way, newly put up, showed dim light around the edges of its flap.

  Unsteadily, the rain beating on him, feeling good, feeling weary, feeling fresh, feeling slightly dizzy, Fletch splashed and slithered across the campside mud barefooted.

  Do I have to do this? Am I sure I have nothing to decide? The decision has been made. We exist within context. That is our first, our only, our last decision. Making choices is the ultimate freedom. There is no freedom without basic decisions having been made. Self-discipline is the greatest exercise of freedom.

  He pulled aside the tent flap and looked in.

  Inside, Peter Carr and Walter Fletcher sat in canvas, wood-framed camp chairs. Each had a glass in hand. On the box beside the kerosene lamp was a nearly empty bottle of whiskey.

  They stopped talking. They stared at Fletch.

  The lines in their faces moved up from around their mouths to around their eyes.

  Fletch said to Walter Fletcher: “Thanks for coming to the airport to meet us.”

  The two men sitting in the tent staring up at Fletch through the dim light of the kerosene lamp said nothing.

  “Do you speak Portuguese?” Fletch asked the man with the thinning, combed hair, pencil moustache.

  “What do you mean?” asked Walter Fletcher.

  Fletch stood just inside the open tent flap. Behind him, rain poured with a steady roar.

  “I saw you,” Fletch said. “At the airport. In the men’s room.”

  “Oh, my God!” Carr sat forward in his camp chair. “Say it isn’t so.”

  On the box beside Carr, next to the kerosene lamp, next to the whiskey bottle, were the pottery shard and the Roman coin.

  Walter Fletcher stared full-eyed at Fletch. He put his whiskey glass on the box. He resettled himself in his chair.

  Ankles crossed, boot heels in the mud, hands folded in his lap, for a long moment Walter Fletcher studied Fletch’s face.

  Slack-jawed, Carr was staring at Walter Fletcher.

  For only a second, Walter Fletcher glanced at Carr.

  Then he looked at Fletch, for another long moment.

  “Well.” Abruptly, Walter Fletcher stood up. His boots were flat in the mud. He patted down the pockets of his safari jacket. Using both hands, he smoothed back his hair from his temples.

  Chin up, not looking into Fletch’s face, he brushed by Fletch. He walked out of the tent into the storm.

  “Where is he going?” Fletch asked.

  “Nowhere he can go.” Carr remained hunched over in his camp chair. “What a box of rocks. All this time, you’ve been thinking the murderer at the airport could have been Walter Fletcher.”

  Fletch shrugged. “The murderer was a local who came to meet someone at the airport … whom he did not meet.”

  “Don’t you think you’d better sit down?”

  “Jesus, Carr!”

  “What now?”

  Fletch had heard an airplane engine ignite. Carr had not.

  They both heard the roar of the engine as gasoline was pushed into it.

  Carr jumped up.

  Together, Fletch and Carr stood outside the tent looking through the heavy rain in the dawn across the campsite at the yellow airplane with green swooshes. The cockpit lights went off. The wing and tail lights were on.

  The airplane was turning around over the rough, wet ground. Wings rocking, it skittered around Carr’s plane and jounced onto the landing track.

  “A plane that light can’t take off in this heavy rain,” Fletch shouted. “Can it?”

  The glass in Carr’s hand had a centimeter of rainwater in it already.

  Carr said, “I wouldn’t try it.”

  The airplane almost made it. It splashed and swayed down the track. Its engine roared through the sound of the rain. Throwing water behind it, it lifted off the track. It rose against the tree line. For a moment it looked as if it were above the treetops.

  The left wing dipped. The plane fell.

  The plane’s left wing cracked against the top of a tree. The treetop shook. The tip of the wing fell into the woods. As if pivoting, engine roaring, the plane swung left around the top of the tree.

  Then only the undercarriage of the tail of the airplane was visible against the sky.

  From the woods was not a crash, but a thud.

  Instantly, flame was visible through the undergrowth.

  Carr thrust his glass into Fletch’s hand.

  “I’ll go. You’re in no condition—”

  Carr ran splashing through the rain.

  “The flames. Carr—”

  Fletch threw the glass aside. He ran, tripping over the wet ground, slipping in the mud.

  Fletch hadn’t gotten far when he fell, facedown in the mud.
He tried to get up, quickly. His head felt cement. Pain shot from his right shoulder. Weak from his days of fever, his arms and legs flailed the mud uselessly.

  He lay stomach on the ground a moment, his right cheek, ear in the mud, just breathing.

  He watched air bubbles in the mud break open.

  Rain-soaked, muddy from head to foot, a cut bleeding on his forearm, Carr entered Fletch’s tent.

  Carr shook his head, No.

  Fletch was sitting on the edge of his cot. Mud ran down his face, the front of his body, his chest, his stomach, into the sodden towel around his waist; down his legs into the mud at his feet.

  How many words did my father speak to me? He’s a pretty poor-lookin’ specimen, isn’t he? No. These were not words spoken to me, but about me. He said, What do you mean? He said, Well. Five words. My father spoke five words to me. In my life. In his life. In our lives.

  I had no decision to make.

  The basic decision ordering how people behave, for survival, the social contract, was made a long, long time ago.

  “Carr, he was trying to get away. Wasn’t he?”

  “Who knows?” Carr said. “Who cares?”

  “My mother said he was apt to evade moments of emotional intensity …”

  “How do you feel?”

  “… like being hung from the neck.”

  In the dim kerosene light Carr watched Fletch from across the tent.

  “He finally died in an air crash. In a storm. Not in Montana, but in Africa. Presumed dead. The courts made a presumption, which was almost right.”

  “All this noise apparently hasn’t awakened anybody.”

  “The sound of the rain …”

  “Yes. The sound of the rain.”

  “How did he get to be here? I never heard.”

  “You’ve been pretty sick.”

  “Were the charges against him dropped?”

  “All that was a joke already. Another funny story. The askari had no official standing. He was just an unlicensed guard from a jewelry store across the street. So Walter was released from custody after paying a fine, damages to the Thorn Tree Café, the askari’s hospital expenses, plus a few shillingi to make up for the weight the askari gained in hospital.”

  “I came halfway around the world to put my father out into a storm; to see him killed in an air crash. Poetry.”

  “Irwin …”

  “Yes, Carr.”

  “I know you can’t be feeling like a calisthenics director on a spring morning …”

  “How I Spent My Honeymoon.”

  “This is Tuesday. A plane leaves for London tonight. I think you and Barbara should be on it.”

  “Yes?”

  “As soon as the weather clears, I’ll fly you up to Nairobi, book your seats.”

  “Okay.” Fletch fingered mud from his eyes. “Anything you say. You’ve been a real friend, Carr. Thank you.”

  “Enough of that. I thank you. If it weren’t for the intelligence of you and Barbara and Juma, we never would have found the world’s latest ruin.”

  “Having found it will make a big name for you, Peter Carr.”

  “Yes. I want to go to Nairobi today and report the find. Show the evidence. Turn the whole dig over to the scientific wallahs. After discovering the place, I don’t want to be accused of messing it up.”

  “Right. Discover, but do not meddle. Be committed, but not involved.”

  “Also, of course, I have to report the death of Walter Fletcher to the authorities, get them down here.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the meantime, we still have the problem of the police accusing someone innocent of murder.”

  Fletch looked up at Carr’s solidity. “We’re not going to report Walter Fletcher was the murderer?”

  “Not unless we have to. Why should we? Why totally wreck the name Walter Fletcher? It’s a small world.”

  “You’re thinking of me.”

  “If it looks like they’re going to hang the wrong bag, you’ll come forward?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then there’d be a reason for coming forward.”

  “Maybe it will be an unsolved crime. But Dan Dawes—”

  “This morning you might write out an eyewitness account, beginning in the men’s room at the airport, including the events of this morning. Maybe I’ll show it to Dan Dawes.”

  “Okay.”

  “If the authorities come even close to indicting someone else for the murder, I’ll hand your account in officially. See if they want to bring you back to testify.”

  “Sounds like the best thing to do. I guess.”

  “I’ll get you some paper and a pen. A spot of tea might go well about now, too.”

  “Carr? Why are Barbara and I leaving so soon? Why are we leaving tonight?” Across the tent, still standing, ignoring the cut on his arm, Carr looked at Fletch without expression. “I’m thinking about a funeral. My father … The excitement of the discovery …”

  “The air crash will be investigated,” Carr said. “The authorities will be here. University people will come to see the ruins. The press. They’ll all be here by tonight.”

  “So what?”

  Carr took a step closer to Fletch. Even in that dawn’s light, Carr’s eyes were clear, blue. Quietly, he said, “Don’t you suspect your passports are phonies?”

  At Los Angeles airport, looking into her passport, Barbara had said, Where did this picture of me come from? Fletch had never seen his passport picture before either.

  “Well. I know we didn’t apply for them ourselves.”

  Carr nodded.

  “I’ve heard all the news.” Wet, bedraggled, Barbara stood inside Fletch’s tent.

  Propped up on the cot, the kerosene lamp pulled close to him, Fletch was writing out his account of the murder of Louis Ramon and the death of Walter Fletcher in an air crash during a storm.

  Before starting, he had showered most of the mud off him in the rain.

  My father did not die in childbirth.

  Barbara said, “I don’t know how I feel about it.”

  “How you feel?”

  “No.” She continued to stand a meter away from him.

  Sweat, humidity: Fletch was having difficulty keeping the paper dry to write.

  “We need to get packed,” Fletch said. “We’re starting home tonight.”

  “Once we came here to camp, we never really unpacked. Just underwear.”

  “I guess we don’t need to pack the torn sweaters and cutoff ski pants.”

  “I’ll hang them from the trees. Maybe the monkeys will wear ’em. Suits them.”

  “Still. We must repack.”

  “It’s not as if I’m overburdened with souvenirs.”

  “You have some memories. For the long ride.”

  “I never even sent my mother a postcard.”

  “You can send her one from home. Where’s Carr?”

  “In his tent. He’s writing something, too.”

  “His version of events.”

  “He says he thinks it will clear up enough for us to take off at noon.”

  Fletch looked out through the tent flap Barbara had left askew. “Can’t take off in this rain.”

  Barbara said: “So I heard.”

  “Your father was a murderer.” Barbara was buckling herself into her airplane seat aboard the midnight flight to London from Nairobi. “Won’t your mother love that? Think of all the books she’s written looking for the murderer.”

  Fletch was already buckled into his seat. He sighed.

  He said nothing.

  He had a long way to go with the other passengers aboard.

  He had a long way to go with Barbara.

  After they were airborne and the No Smoking sign went off and the stewardesses demonstrated to the passengers what to do if the airplane ditched and the Fasten Seat Belt light went off, the voice over the public address system said, “Will passenger Fletcher please identify himself. Mr. I. M. Fletcher?”


  Building a nest for herself in her seat, clearly Barbara did not hear the request.

  Fletch took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Don’t you suspect your passports are phonies! More trouble could wait.

  The rain had not lightened enough for them to take off from the camp until afternoon. Packing the airplane, Carr made lame jokes about the skis. No one looked down the runway track to where an airplane had crashed that morning, burned itself up; where there was still a corpse.

  There was a good-bye scene of mixed emotion. The workmen, including Winston and Raffles, said good-bye individually. Sheila had hugs and kisses for Fletch, Barbara, and Juma. They were all sad to be parting, sad to be standing near a terrible death, yet each quite glad that something sought at great expense had been found, that a historic discovery had been made, and that each had been part of it.

  Nor did Fletch look down for the burn hole in the woods as they took off.

  He did not put on his new white sneakers, courtesy of the Norfolk Hotel, until they landed at Wilson Airport.

  Juma and Carr helped them with their luggage to the International Airport. Juma stood with them while Carr took their return ticket to the airline counter.

  The few people who were in the airport at that hour looked curiously at the skis.

  Fletch said to Juma: “Nice time.”

  Juma’s head tilted. “Sorry.”

  “You have seats on tonight’s flight.” Their tickets and boarding passes were in Carr’s hand when he returned. “You have to take your luggage through Customs yourself. Do you have any Kenyan money? You have to turn it in.”

  Both Barbara and Fletch dug out the few Kenyan shillings they had and handed them to Juma. Laughing, they both said: “No.”

  Money in hand, Juma bent over laughing.

  Carr said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a long time. The plane doesn’t leave until midnight.”

  “Well be all right,” Fletch said. “I need to sit down.”

  “You’ll feel all right on the flight?”

  “Sure. I need the rest.”

  “Well.” Carr looked around the nearly empty terminal. “There are things I must go do.”