breakfast.”
Fletch aimed a wide grin at him.
Jack asked Fletch, “You didn’t have any ham for breakfast, did you?”
“Just eggs and juice.”
“What else are you doing to incapacitate us?”
Fletch threw him another wide grin.
“I’ve got to have something to drink,” Kriegel said. “Soon.”
“If, as you say,” Fletch asked, “this tribal business is so natural, and happening anyway, why does it need encouragement?”
“We must protect ourselves, Mister Fletcher, to survive. We are the minority,” Kriegel said. “Doesn’t that frighten you?”
“Not really,” Fletch said. “But then again, everyone likes me.”
“It is natural to want one’s own kind to survive.”
“I have a different view,” Fletch said.
Through his dry throat, Kriegel said, patiently, “What would that be?”
“That tribalism is being used, around the world, by a lot of would-be tinpot demagogues and dictators, warlords, simply to grab power and all the good things for themselves. That that is what really goes on in the world, among whites, blacks, Orientals, women, children, always has and always will: power-mongering based on individual greed.”
Kriegel said, “I’m too thirsty to talk more.”
Fletch asked, “You don’t want me to respond?”
“I can’t think of any response you would have worth listening to.” Kriegel sighed. “What experience have you of these matters?”
“Some.” Fletch smiled. “For example, have you noticed that statistically the more separatism the worse the social, economic, health statistics regarding each underclass, women, children, gays, Afro-Americans, Jews, Native Americans, Asians, become in relation to the whole? Fractionalism, whatever, is like some kind of a weird, self- absorbing prism. It’s like a family in which the members, instead of loving and supporting each other, are negative toward each other, are suspicious of each other, hateful, destructive.
The individual suffers. The whole suffers. Haven’t you noticed that?”
“As I said…”
Through the rearview mirror, Fletch watched Kriegel’s eyes close again. Shortly, he was snoring.
“Ummm.” Fletch smiled at Jack. “Not the first time I’ve noticed that those who lecture, frequently don’t listen.”
What was weird to Fletch was that within that month, an Afro-American leader had sat with Fletch on the terrace behind the farmhouse and said much the same thing Kriegel had just said—only he said people of ‘Fletch’s kind’ would be extinct within 150 years.
Fletch was aware Jack was watching him.
Never had Fletch felt so studied.
Fletch said, “I’ve never been an easy convert.”
Quietly, Jack asked, “Is it possible you’re not listening?”
“I think I am. I think I have been. Listening and thinking. The Separate-but-Equal Doctrine was established in the 1896 United States Supreme Court decision Plessy vs. Ferguson. Thus were established the so-called Jim Crow Laws. At the time, I guess some thought it a big liberal leap forward. In the 1960s it was thought there could not be equality without integration. Then what? What has happened? Racism has taken off its coat,” Fletch said. “It is changing. Or clarifying. Now there are tribal wars everywhere. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ has become a slogan around the world. That can’t be denied.”
“And you’re not one to go with the flow?”
“Never have been.”
“You called her Princess Annie Maggie?”
“What’s that got to do with what we’re talking about?”
“Something.” Jack looked through the side window. “I think it has something to do with it. At least at one point in your life you accepted a hierarchical structure.”
“Oh, I see. You think you’ve got me.”
“Haven’t I?” Jack asked.
FLETCH SAID,
“Oi vey?” Jack said.
Softly, Jack had been playing the guitar and singing “Ol’ Black Joe.”
Going through the main square of Tolliver, Alabama, Fletch swerved the station wagon and stopped next to the curb.
Carrie was approaching them in the truck.
She parked against the curb on her side of the road.
Leary was still in the pen in the back of the truck.
Getting out of the station wagon, Fletch crossed the road to her.
“What in hell?” he asked.
“Fletch,” Carrie said through the truck window, “Have you ever heard the expression ‘I couldn’t get arrested’?”
“What happened? What are you doing here?”
“I got to the intersection at nine o’clock, on the dot. I pumped the accelerator, making the truck jerk so the jerk on the back would think we had engine trouble. I stopped. Fletch, there were no cops there! Not sign one of them. I got out, put the hood up, fiddled around with the engine. The goon in back was trying to climb over the cab’s rooftop to help me. The calf bull kept buttin’ him back. I had no choice but to slam down the hood and get going again.”
“You didn’t even go through a roadblock?”
“I never saw a cop anywhere. Not one. All the way here. I even sped. Went through stop signs. I tell you, man, I couldn’t even get arrested. Do you think all the cops in two states have gone fishin’?”
“I doubt they’d catch any fish, either.”
“I figured the best thing to do was come here. I’ve driven around the square four times, waiting for you. Tolliver doesn’t seem to have even a traffic cop! Not even a school crossing guard!”
“My God, I’m sorry. I never meant to put you at risk for such a long time.”
“I’m fine.” Carrie indicated the back of the truck with her thumb. “Better than he is.”
Fletch went to the back of the truck. “Hello, Leary. Have a nice ride?”
Leary was a mess. The calf bull had knocked out two of Leary’s teeth. His eyes were blackened and swollen. His face was cut. There was a deep gash on his bare left shoulder. He was covered with dung.
His skin was painfully burned, as red as the setting sun. On top of the sunburn, Leary had dozens of tick bites.
Through his swollen lips, Leary said, “I’m firsty.”
Fletch could not help a twinge of compassion for him.
The bull calf was no worse for his experience.
Carrie said, “He’s crisped up pretty good.”
Fletch had returned to the cab’s window. “Beat up pretty good, too. Jack and Kriegel have been complaining of being thirsty all the way down.”
Carrie smiled. “Bless their hearts.”
“I guess you have to come with us now. Damn, I didn’t mean this to happen. What happened to the sheriff? I couldn’t have been more clear with him. How could he let you get by?”
“I don’t know. Surprised me, too.”
“Well, I guess you have to follow us.”
