Son of Fletch

He fastened the buckle. “And what’s your relationship to him?”

Jack said, “I’m his lieutenant.”

“I see.” Fletch led Heathcliffe out of the stall.

“Where are you going?” Jack asked. “How far is this store? Do you think you’re getting away?”

“I’m going up the hill to get your two other traveling companions. Want to come? There’s another horse there.”

Jack was trying to stay close to Fletch but away from Heathcliffe. “They’re too big.”

“Not so big.” Fletch climbed onto the horse. “Or you could jog along beside me.”

“Don’t you need a saddle?”

Fletch was riding through the back doorway of the barn into the corral. “Open that gate for me, will you?”

“Hey.” Jack trotted behind the horse. “You’re riding a horse barebacked in shorts.”

“Yeah,” Fletch said. “Just like a Native American.”

FLETCH SAT ON the horse at the lower end of the gully. Water still rushed down it noisily.

Sprawled in the gully, head down and forced into a loose bail of rusted barbed wire, left leg arced over an old washtub, was one of the escapees, the smaller, slimmer one, Moreno. His blank eyes stared at the cloudless sky of the new day. His throat was badly swollen.

Fletch guessed he had been bitten by either a rattlesnake or a copperhead, and then drowned.

Fletch said to himself, And then there were three.

FROM UPHILL CAME a loud, deep guttural noise. To Fletch it sounded like “Ou-row-ouu!”

He looked up to his right.

Charging down the edge of the gully toward him came Leary, all one-sixth of a ton of him. Soaking wet, muddy, he ran head down making this noise.

Fletch twitched Heathcliffe’s rein, circled him around to the left.

As Leary pounded toward Fletch, Fletch rode the horse into him.

Leary fell back into the gully.

Fletch backed the horse off.

“Ow-row-ouu!” came from the gully.

Leary climbed out of the gully.

Again, bellowing, he charged Fletch.

Again Fletch rode the horse into him and sent Leary falling back into the gully.

The third time Leary climbed out of the gully, he stood on its edge a moment.

Fletch sat three meters away, watching him. He wondered if Leary might be thinking of a better way to solve his problems.

No. He was just catching his breath for a new charge.

“Ow-row-ouu!”

The fourth time Heathcliffe pushed Leary back into the gully, there was a god-awful holler.

“ARRRRRRRRR!”

After backing off, Fletch’s feet flicked Heathcliffe forward to the edge.

In the gully, Leary had landed on Moreno’s corpse. Arms and legs flailing, trying to get off the already bloating corpse, splashing in the rushing water, fighting off barbed wire, rotten fence posts, the holey wash tub, Leary thrashed and bellowed until he was standing. Without hesitation he leapt at the side of the gully, flung himself against it. Kicking his legs, pulling with his arms, he scrambled up the gully’s muddy side.

Standing again at the edge of the gully, Leary breathed hard. He looked down at the corpse now undulating deeper in the rushing water.

Fletch said, “‘Mornin’.”

Leary’s close-set eyes near the top of his egg-shaped head looked up at Fletch.

Fletch asked, “Are you hungry?”

Dry-heaving, clutching his stomach, Leary stumbled down the hills a meter in front of Fletch astride Heathcliffe.

FULL LIT BY THE LOW morning sunlight, Jack sat on the corral’s fence watching them come over and down the last hill. As they approached, he asked, “Where’s Moreno?” Herding Leary into the corral, Fletch answered, “Dead.” As Fletch rode Heathcliffe through the corral gate, Jack quoted, “‘…just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide…’”

7

In the kitchen, Fletch said to Carrie: “Only three extra for breakfast.” “What happened to the other one?”

“Snakes got him.”

Carrie didn’t even look up from the stove. “Devil knows his own.”

Fletch asked, “Ham? Country ham?”

“That’s right,” Carrie said with fierceness.

“It’s going to be a right hot day,” Fletch said.

“That’s right,” Carrie said in the same tone. “And I mean to give these bastards a case of thirst that’ll make them unable to think of anything but cool, clear water. They’ll just wish they could spit!”

“Well, don’t give me any.”

“Would I do that to you?”

“God knows what you’d do to a Yankee.”

“Ah, Fletch. Don’t think of yourself as a Yankee anymore. You’re about gettin’ over it.”

Fletch began breaking eggs into a large bowl.

Jack had been amazed to see Fletch come out of the henhouse carrying eleven eggs. “Wow!” he said. “You make your own eggs!” Then he said, “They’re dirty!”

Fletch said, “You think they were hatched already scrambled with milk and butter?”

Jack grinned. “I was hatched sunnyside up, I was.”

“I see,” Fletch said. “So you scrambled yourself.”

Near them on the driveway outside the henhouse, Leary, clutching his stomach, stumbled around in small circles. Exhausted, bruised, frightened, nearly drowned, run over by a horse, terrified by landing on a corpse, he was about as worn down as a man could be.

Fletch thought Leary did not have a whole lot of fight left in him.

Emory had parked his noisy truck in the shade of one of the sheds. He had fed the horses and the hens.

When Fletch came out of the henhouse, Emory was standing aside. First his eyes studied Jack. Then Leary.

Then he looked at Fletch.

Fletch said, “Say hello to Jack Fletcher, Emory.”

“Jack Fletcher?” It was hard to surprise or impress Emory. In the years Emory had worked for Fletch he had seen many people, country-music stars, authors, politicians, African and African-American leaders, slip on and off the farm. When people in the area asked Emory who had just been to the farm, Emory’s answer had always been the same: I didn’t notice. Fletch knew Emory would not ask if Jack were son, nephew, cousin, or coincidence.

Emory and Jack shook hands.

Warily, Emory looked at Leary again. Fletch noticed that Leary’s shirt and jeans were so muddy and torn the signs identifying him as a convict were invisible. “Who’s he? Is he goin’ to be workin’ here?”