Fletch stopped. He cursed himself for not putting luggage in the car. Then he remembered he had left the garbage bag full of prison clothes and boots outside his back door, and he cursed himself again.
Michael put his hands on the windowsill of the door beside Jack. “Hey, Jack. Are you going to be home next weekend?”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “I’m not sure.”
“I’m off duty next Saturday, and there’s a party down at the river. Want to come?”
“Sounds good.”
“Girls,” Michael said.
“Sounds better.”
“You might bring your guitar.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll call your dad.” Michael looked into the backseat. “Who’s that?”
In the backseat, blinking slowly, Kriegel was waking up. The guitar was propped up on the seat beside him. Their shapes were similar. The guitar had the more attractive neck.
Fletch said, “That’s Jack’s teacher. Professor Josiah Black. We just picked him up this morning.”
“Good morning, sir,” Michael said.
Kriegel said, “I’m very thirsty.”
“How do you feel this morning, Michael?” Fletch asked.
The deputy stuck his fingers between his collar and his neck. “Still wet. Thanks for the coffee last night, Mister Fletcher. Sammy and Bobby are using your Jeep this morning. They’re still up by your place.”
“No harm done?”
“Began slidin’ downhill once and almost tipped over once, but other than that, we’re fine. That Jeep is fun!” Michael slapped the side of the station wagon, as he would the flank of a horse. “Well, don’t mean to hold you up. See you next Saturday, Jack.”
As Fletch worked his way through the roadblock, Jack waved his arm out the window at the deputy.
Then he returned to watching Fletch’s face. “Glad he didn’t hold us up any.”
“Nice of him,” Fletch agreed.
Kriegel cleared his throat. “I am very thirsty, I said.”
Fletch said, “Oh.”
Kriegel asked, “Who is this Professor Josiah Black?”
Neither Fletch nor Jack answered.
Kriegel insisted. “What did you mean by ‘Josiah Black’?”
Fletch did not answer.
“It comes from an old American song, sir,” Jack answered.
“What’s the name of the song?”
Jack said, “‘Ol’ Black Joe.”’
“‘Ol’ Black Joe’?” Kriegel spluttered. “You called me an old, black Joe? Is that supposed to be funny?”
“I had to tell him something, didn’t I?” Fletch asked. “Couldn’t say you are Santa Claus now, could I?”
“Mister Fletcher,” Kriegel intoned, “whether you like it or not, you are a member of our tribe.”
“What tribe is that?” Fletch asked.
Kriegel took a moment to collect his thoughts. “How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“I mean, don’t you realize you are the most despised person on earth?”
“Who, me?”
“You are the intelligent, educated to some degree, I gather, well-off, middle-aged, heterosexual white male. On this earth, you are distinctly the minority. Yet you and your kind have made the world, as we know it, what it is. For centuries, you have created the religious and political institutions, the businesses, the wars, laws that protect and suit you to the exclusion of others, while exploiting all people of color, Indians, Negroids, Orientals, even those less fortunate than yourself of the same tribe, the laborers, as well as all women and children.”
“Wow.” Fletch well knew these sentiments. He had been confronted with such often enough. “And all this time I thought I was just gettin’ along best I could.”
“Do you consider yourself ‘responsible’?”
“Oh, yes.”
“According to current cant, you are responsible for everything wrong with the world. Being ‘responsible,’ so it is said, is just your rationalization for controlling everyone else in the world, so you can have everything your way. The whole world is rebelling against you, Mister Fletcher. The women, the children, the Indians, the Negroids, the Orientals, and even some of your own kind we shall call here
Driving the station wagon, Fletch said nothing.
“Have you ever stopped to ask yourself,” Kriegel continued rhetorically, “why the Anglo-Saxon has had more than his share of the world’s good fortune?”
Fletch yawned. “Why?”
“Because we, not the Jews, not the Moslems, not the people of color, are the true descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
“‘E=MC2,’” Fletch quoted.
“What?”
Kriegel ran his tongue around inside his mouth. “How can I be so thirsty when I swallowed half a raging river last night?”
“You should have swallowed the other half, too.”
“You had better consider this seriously, Mister Fletcher.”
“What, your being thirsty? Chew buttons.”
They crossed the border into Alabama. The land had flattened. There were wide cotton fields on both sides of the road.
Dry-mouthed, Kriegel persisted lecturing in the backseat. “As the world’s populations increase, as the world’s resources decline, as the global economy thins, we, the true minority, are an endangered species. Within a few hundred years, if it takes that long, people like you will not exist. There will be chaos.”
“That’s quite a leap, isn’t it?”
“The truth is, it is the white male, the Aryan, the Anglo-Saxon, who has brought the only real order to this earth that this earth has ever known.”
“Oh, come now. What about Shaka Zulu?”
“Hear my word. This century some white people have tried to preach the equality of men and women, equality of the races, even the equality of children with adults. We must all live together in perfect harmony. Isn’t that the way some popular song goes? Have you visited universities or prisons lately, Mister Fletcher?”
“In fact, I have,” Fletch said. “Both.”
“And have you seen that in the great bastions of higher learning—once the exclusive enclaves of white males—women, Negroids, Asians, instead of integrating, have resegregated themselves into Women’s Studies, Afro-American Studies, Asian Studies? They have established separate colleges within the existing university structures. There is no place from the Balkans to the city of Los Angeles where tribal wars are not raging. Am I right? Humans basically are tribal, Mister Fletcher, something your government does not understand. There is the individual. There is the family. There is the tribe. In this country, after these two hundred years of democracy, the melting pot, you see the family breaking down, as a result of these impossible ideas. Is it a good thing? The tribes aren’t breaking down. They never will, anywhere in the world. Tribes support family. The family supports the individual. You had better realize to which tribe you belong, Mister Fletcher.
“God, am I thirsty.”
“Are you, indeed?” Fletch asked.
“Terribly, terribly thirsty. Can’t we stop for something to drink?”
“I don’t think that would be wise. You didn’t look half as nice in jailhouse denim, Doctor.”
“I’m thirsty, too,” Jack assured Kriegel. “I think it has something to do with the ham we had for
