Son of Fletch

“He’s soft. Ugly. Sayin’ things that aren’t polite don’t make any more sense than fleas bitin’ a shag rug.”

“And I am …” Jack stood, the light in the opened back door behind him, in the coolness of the kitchen. “… What?”

Arms akimbo, Carrie said, “What are you? Only God and you know that, and I suspect you’re confused.”

“Confused?” Jack seemed to consider the question. “Maybe. I don’t think so. Maybe I’m not what you think I am.”

“Not Fletch’s son?”

“I’m Fletch’s son. You said yourself we look alike. Have the same bodies. Builds. Whatever you said.”

“You surely do favor him. You’re standin’ there fifteen feet away from me, head down a little bit, starin’ at me half-solemn, half-humorous, hands at your sides, all-neat and all-gangly at the same time just the way Fletch did before we ever touched each other. And a million times since.” Carrie asked, “Are you comin’ on to me, boy?”

“No, ma’am. I’m surely not.”

“You speak Southern pretty good, too, when you want to. I had to teach Fletch, and he never will get it right.”

“You must love him,” Jack said.

“Because I teach him Southern ways?”

“Because you’re putting up with our being here.” He grinned. “Because you haven’t shot any of us yet. ‘Course, I haven’t seen Kriegel lately.”

“He’s sleepin’ the sleep of the unjust. Does it surprise you, our puttin’ up with you all the way we’re doin’?”

“No. It’s what I expected. From him. He has a reputation for being curious.”

“Peculiar, you mean. We’re not at all afraid of you bunch, you know.”

“Clearly not.”

“Should we be?”

“Not of me.” Jack glanced through the windows. Outside, on the grassy slope, Leary slept. “As for the others, for a reason I’ve just recently figured out, they seem peculiarly weary this morning. Weak. Or dead. They spent the night in a gully fighting off snakes, rushing water, and God knows what else.”

Across the kitchen, Jack and Carrie gave each other a smile as brief as a glance.

“What does puzzle me,” Jack said, “is your manners. The manners of both of you.”

“Come again?”

“Neither one of you has said to me, simply, ‘Hello. How are you?’”

Carrie asked, “Did you or did you not arrive here out of a storm in the middle of the night, carryin’ three desperadoes with you?”

“Still…”

“I didn’t hear that you exactly knocked politely on the front door and came in all full of smiles sayin’, ‘Hello, I’m your son, Jack. How are you?’ Did you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Besides,” Carrie answered in a milder tone, “generally, Fletch doesn’t hold much stock in simple questions. He says, when you ask a question all you get is an answer to the question, not the truth. He says, to get the truth it’s best to wait and watch and listen.”

“Oh, yes,” Jack said. “I have heard that about him.”

“From your mother?”

“Yes. And others.”

“Did your mother love Fletch?”

“Yes.”

“Does she still?”

“Yes. And me.”

“What does she say about your bein’ put in prison? I’ll bet she’s proud.”

Jack turned his face away from her. “I’ll bet she is.”

“Well.” Carrie sighed. “One thing is sure about Mister Fletch. We’re goin’ to understand all this before we’re done, or die tryin’. And that includes you.”

Jack asked, “Why don’t you ask me how I feel?”

“About what?”

Jack lifted his arms from his sides. “About everything.”

“Oh, yes,” Carrie said. “Fletch calls you the tactile generation. For short, he calls you the scabpickers. What you know, what you do isn’t important, only what you feel. Well, let me tell you somethin’, boy: what you feel is important, all right, but there isn’t enough time on earth to know or care about all that you feel.”

Jack stared at her. “Suppress feelings?”

“No, of course not,” Carrie said. “Take a potshot at a woman cop because you feel like it. Maybe you’ll get to go on a teevee talk show so you can talk about your feelin’s. For fifteen minutes some people will say, ‘Poor you,’ and you’ll still end up in the jailhouse.” More gently, she said, “So how do you feel?”

“Weird,” Jack said. “I just met my father for the first time. I just met you. I see this place where you live.” He waved one arm. “You’ve got horses that sneak up behind you in the dark of the night and try to nibble the hair off your head! You’ve got goddamned oil paintings on the walls of your kitchen!”

“E=MC²!” Carrie expostulated. “Don’t you swear in front of me!”

“Swear! He had me put my ‘traveling companions,’ as he calls them, in a gully in a raging storm. He killed one and beat up the other two as surely as if he took a bat to them, and he never lifted a finger. My father!”

“Scared?” Carrie asked.

Jack took a deep breath. “I knew what I was thinking when I headed this way.”

“Well,” Carrie said, “I surely don’t, but I’ve had enough of you and your feelings for now. We’ve got things to do.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Clothes.”

“There’s a pair of huge overalls somewhere there in the back closet, left here by a hired hand the whole county couldn’t afford to feed. Sent him to Kansas. Maybe if we split them down the sides we can make them fit that nasty-lookin’ thing asleep on the grass outside feedin’ the ticks and fleas.”

Jack looked through the window. “He’s not feedin’ anything.”

“Oh, yes he is.”

“He said something about a suit for Kriegel. Shirt. Necktie.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Carrie said. “I’ll go wake Kriegel up. I look forward to givin’ him his breakfast. How’d you like that country ham you had for breakfast?”

“Salty.”

“You want some more?”

“Not just now, thanks.”

“Okay,” Carrie said. “You can tell me how you feel about that ham later.”

9

By golly, Ms. Carrie,” Fletch said, bounding into the dining room where Professor The Reverend Doctor Kris Kriegel breakfasted in state. “We’ve never had house-guests so plumb worn out in the mornings before, I do declare!”

In a white shirt, purple necktie, dark trousers, Kriegel sat at the head of the long, highly polished dining table. On his place mat was a full china breakfast setting, silver cutlery. At almost full attention, Jack stood beside, a little behind him.

“More ham?” Carrie asked the rotund little man.

“Please.” His pale blue eyes gazed over the saddle-shaped birthmark over the bridge of his nose. “It is most delicious.”

Carrie heaped more of the ham on his plate.

“All three hundred and fifty pounds of white and naked flab you all call Leary is dead to the world out on the