Son of Fletch

Jack took off his earphones.

Pretending to rub each ear, he removed his earplugs.

Seeing him do so, Carrie and Fletch removed their earphones and plugs as well.

Carrie gripped Fletch’s arm.

Her eyes were blazing.

“What?” Fletch asked.

She nodded toward the back of Kriegel’s mostly fallen audience.

There, standing, staring at them, openmouthed was their friend, the sheriff, Joe Rogers.

15

“No, no, no,” Fletch insisted with as much conviction as he could. He and Carrie were skirting widely the ground on which the audience had stood, knelt, and puked, to get to the cabin’s porch where Jack was working with his electronic equipment.

At first, Fletch had started directly across the field to speak to Sheriff Joe Rogers.

Slipping on the wet ground, the sheriff had dodged behind the trailers into the woods.

“I tell you, Carrie, the sheriff is here as a police spy, or something, taking down names, license plates. You know, doin’ police business. He must be.”

“Why did he run from you?”

“Because I was being stupid. He didn’t want me to blow his cover.”

“Sure. I’ll believe that when catfish meow and climb trees.”

“He’s here on duty.”

“He’s in the wrong county for that, Mister Fletcher,” Carrie said through tight lips. “He’s in the wrong county, and he’s in the wrong state.”

Jack said to them from the porch, “That Kriegel! He sure can raise a stink, can’t he?”

“Somebody sure can.” Fletch and Carrie climbed the porch steps.

“How did you do that?” Clearly Carrie was willing to think better of Jack. Somehow, through electronic legerdemain, he had made almost everybody in Camp Orania vomit.

“Do what?” Jack was wrapping up his electrical wires, from microphone to speakers, console to microphone.

“Make the audience so aptly responsive,” Fletch said.

Jack grinned at Fletch. “I’ve learned a few things. How to Incapacitate People 101.”

Fletch asked, “Not ‘to go with the flow’?”

“Sure.” Jack laughed. “You didn’t see flow?”

“There was plenty of flow,” Fletch agreed.

It was almost fully dark.

Fletch looked around the camp. The sheriff had been wearing boots, jeans, and a Western shirt.

Some vehicles had left.

Bare light bulbs shone in some of the converted carports. Few of the trailers had lights on in them.

On the cabin’s porch, Fletch was satisfied they were out of earshot. The men in clusters around the front of the cabin were recovering from their illness, muttering to each other unhappily, even angrily.

“Ever hear of a Joe Rogers?” Fletch asked Jack.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “You all mentioned him in the car. A friend of yours. A sheriff. Right?”

“Right.”

“I looked into him for you.”

“Find out anything?”

“He’s an Enforcer.”

Hearing Jack, Carrie widened her eyes at Fletch.

“An enforcer of what?” Fletch asked. “Who?”

“Internal security,” Jack answered.

Fletch asked, “What does that mean?”

“Any of the members don’t do right, he takes care of them.”

“Disciplines them?”

“In a way,” Jack said. “This is a secret organization. Supposed to be. As you said, ‘Stupid people can’t keep secrets.’”

“He kills them?” Fletch was aware his heart was beating faster than normal. “He shoots them? Are we talking about Joe Rogers?”

“Yeah. Shoots them sometimes, I guess,” Jack answered. “Usually he garrotes them. With a wire. Leaves more of a message, you know what I mean?”

“Oh, God,” Carrie said. “Francie!”

“Encourages loyalty among the troops,” Jack said.

Fletch turned. He put his hands on the porch rail to steady himself.

Behind him, Carrie said, “Fletch …”

The bonfire was being lit with flaming torches by the aproned cook and another man.

The audience itself had broken up mostly into small groups of men who stood in the dark. Their camouflage shirts and pants, their boots, were well spotted with chili vomit.

Their voices were sullen. Bottles were being passed around. Even through the ever-pervasive smell from the Porta Potties or from wherever, the strong smell of vomit, Fletch caught the occasional sweet whiff of marijuana in the breeze. From each group of quietly talking men, one or two looked out, around at all the other groups.

Fletch guessed they were discussing their sudden, wicked illness. It had lasted well more than an hour.

He also guessed, from the way they muttered, looked around suspiciously, they were also looking for someone to blame for their illness.

If it were not the nature of these people to blame others for their ills, Fletch reasoned, they would not be here.

Anyway, what alcohol and other substances they were ingesting now were going straight into empty stomachs, onto voided systems.

One man, more than forty years old, ambled up to the edge of the porch from a nearby group. He stood on the ground, talking up to Fletch. “Did you eat that chili?” he demanded.

“No,” Fletch said.

“None of it?”

“None of it.”

“And you weren’t sick. I didn’t see you pukin’.”

“Right. Eat I didn’t. Sick I wasn’t. Puke I didn’t.”

The man turned to the group he had left. “See? He didn’t eat the chili. He didn’t puke.”

An obscene muttering came from the group.

The man rejoined the group. “No chili. No puke,” he explained.

Fletch turned.

Only Jack and Carrie were on the porch.

Shoulders hunched, Carrie was leaning on the base of her spine, her hands on the porch rail.

Jack was connecting the speaker wires to an audio disk player.

“Now what?” Fletch asked him.

“We’re going to have a dance,” Jack said. “You like to dance?”

“Bugaloo.”

“You can bugaloo?” Jack asked Carrie. “Will you save a waltz for me?”

“Not tonight.” Carrie looked around at the glistening ground. “Don’t much care for your dance floor.”

“Aw, shucks,” Jack said. “You’ve got to get down.”

“Not on that mess. Fletch? Don’t you think we ought to get out of here, like right now?”

“What’s true?” Fletch asked.

Through the dark, Fletch heard a man from another group, one near the side of the cabin porch, say, “Who’s