the ceiling. “You were right over this room.”
“We heard you, too,” Fletch said. “You play the guitar well. I recognized it as a Segovia arrangement of something, but I don’t remember of what.”
“Who is upstairs?” Jack asked.
“Nashville?” Fletch asked. “You were headed for Nashville in a pink Cadillac?”
Near the windows, Kriegel swayed, eyes closed.
“Your playing could charm a collicky baby covered with poison ivy,” Fletch said.
Kriegel’s eyes popped open when Carrie entered the study. He gasped. He raised his arms at his side. “Brunnehilde!”
“Broom Hilda?” In her tanned, freckled face, Carrie’s wide-set blue eyes were flashing. Having ruled six large brothers, hefty farm workers, an ex-husband, sons, various obstreperous small children, and large animals, Carrie was the most dangerous person in that house, on the farm at that moment, Fletch reflected. Everyone might as well know it.
Having glanced contemptuously and dismissively at The Reverend Doctor Kris Kriegel, who looked like a dust ball in the gray robe, fuzzy gray hair sticking out over his ears, backlit against the French doors, she stared at Jack.
Jack returned the stare.
“Jack!” Kriegel said. “Is this your mother?”
Jack swallowed hard. “Of course not.”
Carrie was considerably younger than Fletch, and looked even younger than she was.
Kriegel took a few steps toward Carrie and Fletch. It seemed his intent to take them by the hands.
Fletch stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
Carrie turned her body square to him. Clearly, she was prepared to break his nose if he touched her.
“Brunnehilde and Siegfried!” Kriegel said. “How wonderful!”
“What’s his engine revvin’ for?” Carrie asked.
Fletch said, “I think we’ve caught a racist.”
“E=MC2!” She pointed her index finger at Kriegel. “You!” She pointed at the divan. “Go over there and lie down. You’re half stupid tired. Your other half is probably just plain stupid.” Shoulders drooping, Kriegel crossed the room to the divan. “And we don’t want to hear no more of your stupid shit about Broom Hilda and what’s-his-face. You hear?” Kriegel sat on the divan. He folded his hands in his lap. Smiling, he closed his eyes. She asked Fletch, “Who’s what’s-his-face?”
“Siegfried?”
“I never heard of nonesuch.”
“Ask Wagner.”
“Who’s Wagner?”
“Wrote music.”
“Got kinfolk around here?”
“Possibly.”
Again, she was staring at Jack as she would a horse before saddling him. “Shit,” she said. “He’s your son, all right. Clear as a church bell on a crisp night. He’s got your body.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Fletch said. “Last time someone said that about me and someone else, one of us got shot through a window.”
“It wasn’t you?” she asked.
“It wasn’t me.”
“I,” Jack said. “It wasn’t I, great writer.”
Carrie pointed her finger in Jack’s face. “And that’s exactly enough sass out of you, you unbroke pony. You do any buckin’ around here, and I’ll personally whip your ass all the way back to that stable you come from in Kentucky. And you’d better believe it.”
Jack’s face couldn’t be more startled if she had punched him hard.
He put his shoulders back. “Yes, ma’am.”
Eyes closed on the couch, Kriegel chuckled. “Wonderful! I’ve found them!”
Quietly, smiling to himself, Fletch said, “You all better believe it.”
“Ruinin’ your life the way you done. Takin’ a potshot at a woman just doin’ her work. Handsome boy like you? The way you play that guitar? What’s the matter with you anyway, boy?”
“Ah …” Clearly Jack had never been laced out by a Southern woman before.
Carrie continued, “What you doin’ here anyway? Never got in touch with your father all the years of your growin’ up, the minute you get in big trouble, runnin’ from the law, you show up here in the middle of the night, draggin’ these ugly messes behind you? What you want, boy?”
Jack glanced at Fletch. “Ah …”
She waved her hand at him. “I’ve heard and seen enough of you already. You guys go get some eggs.” She looked at the obedient Kriegel asleep on the divan. “If that bag of manure moves one flap, I’ll blast his parts all over the cornfield.”
Fletch said to Jack: “She will. You’d better believe it.”
OUTSIDE, JACK ASKED, “Eggs? How far is the store?”
Fletch ambled toward the barns.
Although the sun was just above the horizon, it already made steam rise from the puddles.
As he crossed the road, Fletch heard Emory’s truck coming down the hill. That truck hadn’t had a complete muffler in recent memory and could be heard well before being seen.
Jack walked beside Fletch.
“Who’s she?” Jack asked.
“Carrie.”
“You two married?”
“No.”
“You going to get married?”
“These days you marry a woman and two lawyers. Beds just aren’t that big.”
Jack said, “She doesn’t hesitate to rush in where fools would fear to tread, does she?”
Fletch said, “When Carrie twangs, you’d better listen.”
Jack pointed across the home pasture at the cottage. “No one lives there. I checked last night.”
“I can’t figure out how you found this place so exactly yesterday,” Fletch said. “Runnin’ from the law. Through a storm. You’ve cruised this place before, haven’t you? Scoped me out.”
“Yes.”
“As the man answered, when a friend told him he has passed his house the day before: Thanks.” Most of the cattle on the hills were visible cropping the fields. Later, once the sun was higher in the sky, they would disappear in the deep shade of the trees. “What crime put your Kris Kriegel in jail?”
“When he first came from South Africa,” Jack said, “in a hotel in Washington, the chambermaid, bringing in a mint for his pillow, or something, opened the door of his room just as he finished strangling a girl from some escort service. He was caught red-handed. Bare-assed and red-handed. Red-assed.”
“How long has he been in prison?”
“Five, six years.”
Fletch led Jack into the dark cool of the barn. “What’s this ‘The Reverend Doctor’ stuff?”
“I believe he has a Ph.D. from someplace. A real one.”
“Subject?”
“History, probably. Sociology? I don’t know.”
“And ‘The Reverend’ part?”
“I think he gave himself that while in prison. Sent five dollars for a certificate to someone advertising in the back of a magazine, or something.”
At one of the barn’s stalls, Fletch slipped the bit in Heath-cliffe’s mouth, the bridle and reins over his head.
