Fletch, Too

Fletch put his glasss of brandy on the ground beside his chair and stood up.

Juma draped the kanga over Fletch’s shoulders. “Keeps off the sunbite,” Juma said.

Then he folded the kanga in quarters again and using the same method tucked it around Fletch’s waist.

There was the sound of a burp.

Holding the glass to his face with both hands, a monkey was finishing Fletch’s brandy.

“Hold on.” Carr got up abruptly. “Better restrain that fellow until the brandy wears off.” He began to approach the monkey slowly. “No telling what he might do.”

Barbara said, “Just like your father, Fletch.”

Juma tugged the kanga off Fletch’s waist and handed it to Barbara.

“For me? A present?”

“Yes,” Juma said. “I got it for you. So you will be dressed right, and be cool.”

“How nice,” Sheila said.

The monkey had put down the glass. He scratched the top of his head.

“Thank you, Juma.”

When Carr was almost ready to pounce on the monkey, the monkey suddenly laughed and darted away. He scrambled up the banyan tree.

Hands on hips, Carr watched the monkey climb high into the tree. “Now what do we do?”

“Can you see him?” Barbara asked.

Using only one hand, chattering wildly, the monkey was swinging from a branch ten meters above the ground.

“Come down here, you silly bastard,” Carr said. “Do you suppose we can coax him down with a little more brandy?”

The monkey scrambled even higher. He was now fifteen meters off the ground. Putting one foot in front of the other, holding his arms out for balance, he teetered out a long branch like a tightrope walker. Looking down at them, he chattered a fairly long speech.

“He’ll hurt himself,” Sheila said.

“More than likely,” Carr agreed.

“The whiskey made the monkey drunk, you see,” Juma said.

The monkey stepped off the tree branch backward. He caught himself with both hands.

Using both arms, the monkey began swinging from the tree branch, swinging higher and higher.

“Oh, dear,” Carr said. “I’m afraid he means to give us a flying lesson.”

At the highest point of his swing, with no destination discernable, the monkey let go of the branch. He went up into the air feet first in a perfect arc.

Carr sprinted forward. “Can we catch him?”

In a great puff of dust, the monkey landed on his back a meter in front of Carr.

In the inflection of the disappointed, the monkey said, “Ohhhhh.”

“Bastard knocked himself out,” Carr said. “That’ll teach him to fly too far too high too fast.”

They were all looking down at the monkey unconscious on the ground.

“He will have a headache,” Juma prophesied.

Fletch said to Barbara, “Just like my father?!?”

After gazing, not really looking, into the jungle for several minutes while taking a water/rest break from his work, Fletch jumped.

A young man was looking back at him.

The young man stood perfectly still on one leg. His other foot was off the ground. His body was in profile but his head was turned to look full-faced at Fletch. Extremely tall, extremely thin, the young man’s body was an upright black stick among the foliage. He wore a feathered headdress. His earlobes had been opened and extended. They hung nearly to his shoulders. Over one shoulder he wore a strip of cloth which joined the narrow strip somehow around his waist. Bracelets were around the muscles of his arms. His anklets were red. His fingers loosely held a spear upright against his body.

“Hey!” Fletch said in suprise. “Hello!”

The young man did not speak or move.

“Jambo!” Fletch said. “Habari?”

Nothing.

Fletch held up his gallon jug of water. “Magi baridi?”

No response.

The young man stared at him silently, unmoving.

Fletch waved at him and went back to work.

With a panga he was cutting a trail wide enough through the light brush for the Jeep, from the riverbank into the jungle. He had not disturbed the baobab tree. Barefooted, in his swimming trunks, he worked alone.

Carr had told him never to take a step without looking carefully for snakes. During the morning, Fletch avoided a half dozen.

That morning Carr and the others were extending the path along the riverbank. The trees along the river were bigger, older, heavier. The ground needed filling in. That job required more of a team effort.

Doing this mindless work alone in the jungle, sweating profusely, felt good to Fletch. Besides lovemaking, his body had been confined too long to chairs and airplane seats, strange beds, the newspaper office. Since receiving the letter from his father the day of his wedding Fletch’s mind had been belted with the unexpected too regularly: the conversation with his mother; flying out to Kenya; seeing the bloody, murdered man at the airport; his father not showing up; some of the things Barbara had taken to saying and doing. He did not understand the jungle noises, but he found them soothing. He admired the birds, as they came and went. He watched for snakes and cleared a path through the brush.

During the morning, whenever Fletch would stop to straighten his back, drink some water, which was frequently, he would look at the young man standing silently, watching. The young man was more still, more unmoving, than any animate object Fletch had ever seen. Standing still for a long period is the hardest exercise. Being so still, first on one leg, then on the other, took great discipline. Fletch never saw him change his weight from one leg to the other. Why was the young man posing this way?

During his first few breaks, Fletch would hold up his water bottle in offering to the young man, then wave at him before going back to work.

But as the morning wore on and Fletch found himself thinking about this and that, “Running for Love” humming in his mind, he forgot the young man was there. Gazing around, Fletch’s eyes would not pick out the still figure unless he remembered him and focused on him. The young man’s silence, stillness, made him drop from consciousness, almost disappear from view.

Juma spotted him immediately.

Late morning, Fletch heard Juma coming down the trail Fletch had cut. He was whistling that Italian love song. From one hand dangled a full gallon of water.

“Fletch must drink plenty of water,” Juma said. “Fletch is not used to this heat. Fletch is not used to this work. Fletch comes from America, where the hardest work is pushing buttons.”

Juma’s body was as soaked with sweat as Fletch’s.

Juma put the fresh jug of water on the ground. Looking up, he saw the young man standing on the knoll.

“Ug!” Immediately, Juma grabbed up two handfuls of dirt. He flung one handful in the direction of the young man. “Idiot!” He started toward the young man. Closer, he threw the other handful of dirt. “Go away! What do you think you’re doing? Stupid!”

Juma stooped to pick up a stick.