Son of Fletch

Even the blood in his legs seemed to be congealing. He could not move.

He just needed time, a few minutes, to clear his head, regain his vision.

In and out of consciousness, at some point he realized he had forgotten to relieve the sheriff of the small, personal gun he knew the sheriff always wore inside his boot in an ankle holster.

He also realized he had failed to search the sheriff for a wire garrote, and relieve him of that.

16

“Are you all right, Fletch?”

With the ringing in his ears, his still-blurred vision, Fletch had not heard or seen Carrie approach.

“Like a coconut,” he said.

“What happened?”

“I got hit on the head.”

“By what?”

“A bowling ball.”

“You’re not making much sense,” Carrie said. “Your eyes are glassy.”

“I came across Joe Rogers in the woods,” Fletch said. “I thought I needed to confirm what Jack said about him. Joe was a friend.”

“Looks like you confirmed the worst.”

“I did.”

“Poor Francie. I expect she has no idea of this at all, at all.” Carrie’s eyes scanned the dark woods. “Where’s Joe now?”

“Taking a nap.” Fletch jerked his thumb toward a place in the woods not far behind them. “I knocked him out.”

“You knocked the sheriff unconscious?” Carrie’s giggle sounded a little nervous.

“He’ll be snoozin’ a little while.” Fletch fingered the lumps on his head. “How we protect ourselves from the law once we leave here I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Can we leave now?”

“No.” Fletch rubbed what parts of his head did not hurt too much, to encourage the blood to course. “I can’t drive. I can’t see very well. I can’t even walk yet. Sit down. Give me a few minutes. Then we’ll go.”

“Poor Fletch.” Still glancing nervously into the woods, Carrie sat on the ground beside him. She took his hand. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Yeah,” Fletch said. “Don’t sing ‘Rocky Top’ just now.”

She said, “Not to that stupid music.”

Fletch tried to focus, concentrate on what was happening in the middle of the campground.

The men generally were moving in circles around the bonfire, some clockwise, some counterclockwise. They reminded Fletch of young people in Spain, boys and girls, walking around a town plaza, a paseo, scrutinizing each other without looking directly at each other, while hoping themselves to be admired.

Those who had been marching in place began to move forward around the bonfire. Some marched quickly, pretending they had marshal’s batons, others shouldered rifles. As they did so, their arms flashed out at each other. In what could have been seen as friendly gestures, they slapped the backs of the heads, the shoulders of those they passed. But they were hard slaps.

Fletch winced at every slap to the head he saw.

The “dancing” was turning violent.

The men seemed to be enjoying themselves, their violence.

Most had taken off their shirts. Their sweating chests, backs gleamed in the moonlight, firelight.

At first, circling the bonfire slowly, they cuffed each other’s heads, shoulders with the palms of their hands. Then, bare-chested, they began to bump into each other full-bodied, laugh, go on to bump into someone else even harder. A few got knocked down. It seemed a playful, primitive, silly game. They butted heads. A few faces became bloody. They ran up behind each other and kicked each other, hard. One older man, personally affronted, broke his bottle over a boy’s head, sending him sideways onto the ground. Some paired off and began wrestling on the ground, freestyle, not according to any rules, just clutching each other, bringing each other down, rolling together over the vomit.

All this to blaring march music.

Also watching the “dancing,” Carrie said, “What fun. Does this come under the heading ‘Boys Will Be Boys?”

Fletch said, “Just Saturday night at the ol’ campground.”

Leary was in his element. Laughing insanely, he ran around, bumped people, butted people, punched them directly in their faces.

Fletch said, “I don’t know how that guy is still standing up.”

Just then someone ran up behind Leary and whacked him over the back of the head with a board.

With both hands, Fletch grabbed his own head.

Leary was totally unconscious when he fell.

“He isn’t,” Carrie said.

Some of the younger ones were trying to do something probably they had seen in movies, which did not work for them, not karate, not kick-boxing, just some ignorant, ungainly high kick aimed at each other’s throats, heads usually, which sent themselves into a facedown flop on the ground.

Watching them, focusing badly, still feeling nauseous, full consciousness coming and going, in his memory, Fletch heard Toninho say,

“Orlando … Give Fletch a demonstration of capoeira, of kick-dancing. You and Tito. Make it good. Kill each other.”

This memory came from long ago and far away.

In that memory, Fletch and Toninho were sitting by an uncleaned swimming pool outside a house of ill repute in the mountains above Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“Wake up,” Orlando said.

In a short moment, Tito and Orlando had the rhythm of it, had each other’s rhythm. Gracefully, viciously, rhythmically, as if to the beating of drums, with fantastic speed they were aiming kicks at each other’s heads, shoulders, stomachs, crotches, knees, each kick coming within a hair’s breadth of connecting, narrowly ducking, side-stepping each other, turning and swirling, their legs straight and their legs bent, their muscles tight and their muscles loose, their fronts and their backs flashing in the sunlight, the hair on their heads seeming to have to hurry to keep up with this frantic movement. With this fast, graceful dance, they could have killed each other easily.

Eva had come onto the porch to watch. Her eyes flashed. A few faces of other women appeared in the upper windows of the plantation house. Everyone loves the Tap Dancers…. They’re sleek.

“Remember…” Toninho was saying. “A skill developed by the young male slaves, in defense against their masters. They would practice at night, to drums, so if their masters came down from the big house, to look for a woman, they could pretend to be dancing. Thanks to—what is the word in English?—miscegenation, such skills ultimately were not needed….”

There was a loud Thwack! and Tito began to fall sideways. He had taken a hard blow to the head from the instep of Orlando’s foot. The blow could have been much, much harder. Tito did not fall completely.

“I told you to wake up,” Orlando said regretfully.

Recovering, Tito charged Orlando like a bull, right into his midriff. Orlando fell backward, Tito on top of him. Laughing, sweating, panting, they wrestled on the grass. At one point their bodies, their arms and legs, were in such a tight ball perhaps even they could not tell whose was whose.

Eva, moving like Time, went down to them.

Finally, Orlando was sitting on Tito and giving him pink belly, pounding Tito’s belly hard repeatedly with his fists. Tito was laughing so hard his stomach muscles were fully flexed and no harm was being