Fletch, Too

“That’s fine,” James said. “You’ve probably known another James somewhere before, and you shouldn’t confuse me with him.”

Barbara said, “Not likely, Jim-Bob.”

Juma giggled. “The witch doctor just said to the man, ‘You are looking for something you haven’t lost.’”

There was a conversation going on so quietly over by the doorway Fletch was scarcely aware of it. “Did Carr agree?”

“Carr said it’s a place he’s looking for. It’s been lost a long time.”

Now Carr was leaning over the witch doctor.

The old woman put her cupped hands up to him.

Carr spit in her hands.

Fletch looked at the ground. “Maybe I should ask her where my father is.”

“Your father’s not lost,” Juma said. “He’s here in Kenya. Fletch. I know him.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He flies planes. I’ve seen him. I’ve seen Carr before, too. I get everywhere.”

Barbara said, “Shhh.”

Juma whispered, “She said he’ll find the place, but it will be difficult. The dead people there want him to find it, so they will be remembered.” He listened a moment. “She said he must go far, far south where there are hills and look for a river.”

Carr looked around at Fletch. His face beamed with vindication.

“Oh, wow,” Barbara said. “Mumbo jumbo.”

Fletch asked, “How old are you?”

Again Juma seemed to take the time to invent something. “Thirty-seven.”

Fletch said, “Okay.”

Juma was listening intently. He put his hand on Fletch’s knee. “She’s talking about you.” The witch doctor was looking at her beads on the little rug, rolling them back and forth. She appeared to be talking to them. “She’s asking why don’t you come forward.”

Forehead creased, Carr was looking at Fletch. Juma pushed him. “Get up. Go forward. She’s saying something to you.”

Fletch got up. He dusted off the seat of his pants.

He stood in front of the tiny witch doctor.

Carr said, “She wants to know why you haven’t talked to her.”

“No disrespect,” Fletch said. “Right. Where’s my father?”

Carr started to speak to the old woman. Instantly she began to speak, not to Fletch but to the beads she was rolling around the rug.

When she paused, Carr said, “She says you have no question, but something you must say, or it will be worse for you.”

“What will get worse?”

The witch doctor was continuing to make her little noises.

“She says you must speak to her. You are carrying a box of rocks? which will get heavier and heavier until your legs break.”

“I have strong legs.”

“Do you know what she’s talking about?”

“Maybe.”

“She says you must drop this box of rocks or go away, as she does not want to see your legs shatter.”

Fletch looked across the enclosure at the two teenagers swaying, dizzy-eyed drunk in the sunlight. He looked at Barbara and Juma sitting together against the fence like schoolchildren born and bred together. He looked down at the little old lady sitting in the dirt in the doorway of her dung house.

He looked into Carr’s face.

Fletch said, “They’re my rocks.”

Fletch was the first one out of the enclosure, to spare the witch doctor the sight of his legs shattering.

Fletch hit his head against a thick branch forming an arch over the gate.

Juma said the two-note song: “Sorry.”

Rubbing his head, Fletch said, “Why are you apologizing? I walked into it.”

Juma said, “I’m sorry you bonked your noggin.”

Barbara came through the gate, sunburned.

Carr exited, looking bemused, if not bewitched.

They went up the track to the Land-Rover.

Swaying, the two young men were fumbling with the gate.

Fletch said to Juma, “Your two friends are pretty drunk.”

“‘Friends’?” Juma did not look at them. He did not look at Fletch. He looked deep into the standing corn.

Juma frowned, but said nothing.

“No, I don’t know him.” Carr smiled. “I thought he was a friend of yours.”

On the dance floor at the Shade Hotel, Juma was break-dancing with some paid-for performers. It was early in the evening and only a few of the tables in the yard had people at them. The performers seemed to be showing Juma a few things, and Juma seemed to be showing them a few things. A tape machine at the edge of the stage/dance floor was playing “Get Out of Town” loudly.

“He just got into the car with us,” Barbara said. They were at a little wooden table under an umbrella. “First he said his name is James. Then he said we could call him Juma.”

Carr said, “He probably just wants a ride back to Nairobi.”

Carr had gone across the yard to the barbecue pit and ordered their dinners. A waitress brought three beers.

Fletch said, “I asked him how old he is and he said thirty-seven,”

“He is thirty-seven,” Carr said.

They watched Juma on the stage/dance floor spinning like a top on the muscles of his left shoulder.

“There are two rainy seasons a year here,” Carr said. “The short rains and the long rains. Ask someone how old he is, and hell tell you how many rainy seasons he has behind him. In Juma’s case, it would be thirty-seven. That means he’s eighteen and a half years old.”

Fletch said, “Oh, I see.” He was getting the three little notes nearly right.

On their way from the witch doctor’s shamba to the Shade Hotel, Carr had driven them on a detour through Karen. They had stopped at Karen Blixen’s, that is, Isak Dinesen’s farm, or what’s left of it. Not a tarted-up tourist attraction yet, the low stone house and a few acres adjoin a business school. They had gotten out of the Land- Rover and walked around, under the trellis, through the roots and trunks of the great trees in back.

Barbara and Fletch had sat for a moment on the stone arrangements near the back door where Karen Blixen had held court with her people and maybe did some of her writing about them.

“Dinesen, Hemingway, Roark,” Carr said. “That was all light-years ago, in African time.”

“Time, space.” Juma started back to the Land-Rover. “They were always light-years away from Africa, anyway.”

In the deepening dusk at the table in the yard of the Shade Hotel, Carr said, “You must be aware of what time it is, too. You’re on the equator. The sun rises at roughly seven each morning and sets at roughly seven each night, year-round. Sunrise is the beginning of the day, naturally, and sunset the beginning of the night. So if someone says he’ll see you at three tomorrow, he might mean ten o’clock in the morning. Ten might be five o’clock in the afternoon. Five tomorrow night is midnight.”

Fletch said, “Oh, I see.”

“It is through such simple misunderstandings,” Carr said, “that cultures clash.”