Son of Fletch

“Jack.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes I say my name is Fletch.”

“Oh. That sounds more familiar.”

“Fletch Faoni. Lots of people are called Jack.”

“Gee. And all this time I thought Crystal liked my first names.”

“Irwin Maurice,” Jack blurted.

Crouching on bent knees, Fletch finished cleaning up the mess on the floor. He picked up the towel and turned it over. “Would you believe I didn’t know you exist?”

“I know you didn’t. Mother didn’t want you to.”

Fletch looked up at the barefoot boy with cheeks wet with rain. Without using the towel, Jack had just hung it around his neck. “Why not?”

“Said I was none of your business. Shouldn’t be a burden to you. You didn’t ask for me. She conned you, entrapped you, or something. Way she tells it, she virtually had me by artificial insemination.”

“Not quite. Although I think she would have had you by parthenogenesis, if she could have.”

Jack did not ask what parthenogenesis meant.

Still crouching, wet, filthy towel in hand, Fletch continued to look up at the young man, who had not moved back, or away, across the room, who remained standing closer to Fletch than normal, as if to sense him.

Jack’s hair was curled with rain and mud. His face was streaked by dirt in dried sweat, especially in his day- old, two-day-old light beard.

He smelled of outdoors, rain, sweat, trees, hay, exertion.

Fletch said, “We made love only once.”

“She’s told me you were both naked on a bathroom floor struggling to free yourselves from a shower curtain you had fallen through, or some such ridiculous thing. And so I got born.”

“That’s about right.” Fletch smiled. “Entrapped in a shower curtain. Something like that. But she didn’t exactly entrap me. We were at a journalism convention at Hendricks’ Plantation, in Virginia. In fact, if I remember correctly, I entered the shower voluntarily. Of course, it was my shower, and I can’t remember how she happened to be in it. What’s more, it was a real case of coitus interruptus. I mean, after being interrupted by a third person, we both did return our attentions back to what apparently turned out to be your conception. She must have timed the occasion perfectly. It wasn’t until later that I realized Crystal was trying to get pregnant. By me. Crystal always was good at timing things.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“I was complimented.”

“Did you love her at all?”

“Oh yes. Crystal was charming, brilliant, witty, thoughtful, perceptive, loving, with gorgeous skin and eyes. She could have been a great beauty.”

“Except she probably weighed a ton and a half.”

“She felt she had a weight problem, yes. Does she still?”

“She weighs about right,” Jack said, “if only she were fourteen feet tall.”

“I think she hadn’t many lovers.”

“From what she’d told me,” Jack said, “Mother made love only twice in her life. Once to you, and once, long before, to a man named Shapiro.”

“Oh, yes. I remember now. That’s how I figured out what she was doing. She had attempted this selective breeding once before.”

“And was she terribly fat even then?”

“Corpulent.” Fletch dumped the dirty wet towel into the wastebasket. He stood up. “Trouble with Crystal was that she thought she was unattractive. She told everybody she was unattractive all the time. So most people saw her as unattractive.”

Jack said, “You did what you did without forethought.”

“You’re well-spoken. Yes. Without much forethought. But I could have done something else.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

Fletch cut his eyes to read the young man’s face. “Are you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did I make a mistake?”

Finally the young man stepped into the middle of the room. His eyes scanned the light switches. “Do the lights in this house go on automatically?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because the lights went on one by one. Fifteen minutes later you came down the road in the Jeep by yourself. What do you have, some kind of a radio switch in the Jeep?”

Fletch asked, “In which barn are your traveling companions?”

The young man hesitated. “The one further from here.”

“Do they smoke? Do they have matches, lighters?”

“They don’t smoke. I don’t know if they have lighters.”

“If they have matches they’re probably soaked and useless.”

“How did you know about them? My ‘traveling companions’? Why do you call them that?”

“I met the sheriff on the way home. There are roadblocks up. They’re looking for you.”

“Oh. And the sheriff mentioned the name Faoni to you?”

“Kriegel. Faoni. Leary. Moreno. Which one are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The murderer, the attempted murderer, the kidnapper, or the drug grocer?”

“Attempted murder.”

“I see.”

The young man stood very straight. “I’m asking you if you are alone in the house. I know there was no one in the house before you arrived.”

“You’re trying to tell me you’ve got big, tough friends outside.”

“Yeah.”

Fletch moved some of the papers on his desk, revealing the handgun. He picked it up and put it in his belt. “You saw me arrive alone.”

The young man raised his chin a little. Still he seemed to be sniffing Fletch warily. “Yes.”

“The barns are the first places the cops will look for you, and your traveling companions. As kids they hid in barns themselves.” Jack said nothing. Pointing, Fletch said, “Uphill of the back barn, to the left, about one hundred and fifty meters, is a deep gully. There’s all kind of junk, trees, old barbed wire, fence posts, whatever, thrown in that gully as somebody’s idea of a means to prevent erosion. In a storm like this, shortly, if not already, water will come streaming hard down that gully. I’m certain the cops will not go into that gully.” They will not go into that gully, Fletch knew, because as kids they learned that’s one of the places where the snakes are. He asked Jack, “Do you want to help your traveling companions escape?”

Jack said, “Yes.”

“Then go lead them up to the gully, tell them to hunker down in it, and to stay there until further notice.” Further notice will come, Fletch continued in his own mind, after your traveling companions have been thoroughly exhausted, terrified by snakes, and beaten up by rushing water beating them against trees, fence posts, and coils of rusty barbed wire. “Better put your boots back on. Outside.”

“Why are you helping me? I, we’re a danger to you. And you’d better believe it.”

“Hey. Aren’t fathers supposed to grab every minute they can get to spend with their sons? I mean, here you are, taking probably just a short vacation from a federal penitentiary; clearly you’ve gone considerably out of your way to come see your old dad…”

Narrowing his eyes slightly, Jack said, “You’re ‘mildly curious’ about me.”

“Sure I am. What with the cops looking high and low for you, we’ll have some real quality time together.