Son of Fletch

He was suntanned.

He looked up from the acoustic guitar he was tuning.

To the deputies following Fletch into the study, looking up, smiling, Jack said, “Ha!”

“I’ll be damned,” Fletch said. “You clean up pretty good, for a frog. Just maybe pigs can fly.” Louder, he said, “This is my son, Jack Fletcher. Deputies Will Sanborne and Michael Jackson, Jack.

Putting aside the guitar, Jack stood and shook hands with the deputies. “How’re you guys doin’?” Jack asked.

“Oh, my God,” Fletch muttered. “A Southern prince yet.”

“How come I don’t know you?” Michael asked. “We’re the same age.”

“Didn’t go to school here,” Jack answered.

“I don’t know you either,” Will said. “I’ve never seen you around.”

Jack hitched up his shorts slightly. “That’s because my daddy’s just a little bit ashamed of me.” At the word daddy Fletch felt like an electric shock hit his lower spine. “He took exception to my being born plumb ignorant and kept me away from him all my growin’ up years in one school after another.”

“He was raised by his mother,” Fletch said.

“Still—” Michael said.

“Who’s your mama?” Will’s question wasn’t as suspicious as it was country curious. The next question, with any pretext, would be, She got kin around here?

“Her name’s Crystal,” Jack said. “She’s in the radio business up north.”

Jack had eliminated the pretext. His mother was a Yankee. Named Crystal.

“She’s a career woman,” Fletch said.

Will said to Fletch, “His mama got custody of him?”

Fletch said, “Yeah.”

Will shook his head sadly. Fletch remembered Will had lost custody of his two children in a divorce. His wife had claimed that because of his hours, because of the danger of his job, because he wore a gun, Will was not as appropriate a parent as she.

“How long are you goin’ to be here?” Michael asked. “You get a license, I’ll show you where some of the best fishin’ holes are.”

“I’m driving him down to the University of North Alabama in the morning,” Fletch said.

Jack threw a glance at him.

“Good,” Michael said. “You’ll be home some weekends. We’ll work something out. Call me when you know you’re comin’ home. Your daddy knows my daddy.” He looked at Jack’s narrow waist, flat stomach. “You drink beer?”

“Do fish like water?”

“What kind of beer you like?”

“The wet, cold kind.” Jack laughed.

Michael shook Jack’s hand again. “We’ll work somethin’ out.”

“I’ll stay downstairs,” Will said, “while you two check out the rooms upstairs.”

Michael said to Jack, “There are some escaped convicts around here.”

“I know.” Jack laughed. “At first I thought Daddy got the pistol out ‘cause my head was spendin’ too much time in the refrigerator.”

“He just arrived,” Fletch said. “Hungry.”

Leading Michael up the stairs, Fletch heard Will, in the study, say to Jack, “I never even noticed a picture of you in this house.”

Jack said, “Well, my mama and my daddy haven’t had anything to do with each other for a long time now. One of those things. She needed my loyalty, you know?”

Fletch waited in the front hall upstairs while Michael checked the attics, the snuggery, the other bedroom.

“Ms. Carrie in there?” Michael whispered.

“Yes.”

“I’ll just crack open the door.” He leaned into the master bedroom. After he closed the door, he grinned. “Is she dead?”

“She sleeps quietly.”

“Does she stop breathing?”

“She doesn’t work at it.”

When they went downstairs, Will asked, “Everything okay?”

“Right as a whiff of magnolia on a summer’s breeze,” Michael said.

Jack shook hands with both deputies again. “Happy hunting,” he said cheerily.

Fletch led the deputies back to the kitchen.

As they were putting on their boots, Will said, “Now, Mister Fletcher. If they’re on the farm and watching, they know we’ve been here. As we patrol the farm, we just might squeeze them into the house. You know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“You all are probably in more danger now than if we were never here.”

“I understand.”

Michael opened the back door. It was still raining hard.

“Don’t you hesitate to use that pistol.”

Fletch thought of the charming, healthy, beautiful young man in his study. His son? “I won’t.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” Michael said.

“You all come back,” Fletch said. “You hear?”

4

Nice place you have here.” Jack cleared the coffee table of albums when he saw Fletch enter with a tray. “I could have come to the kitchen. Or wherever.”

Fletch put the tray on the coffee table. On the tray were the warm tuna fish sandwiches, a glass, and a half gallon of milk.

“I frequently eat in here.”

“How old is it?”

“The tuna fish? Probably ten, twelve years old.”

“The house.”

“Antebellum.”

“Here that means before the Civil War, not the Revolutionary War, that right?”

“The Brothers’ War,” Fletch said. “The War Between the States.” He sat in a wing chair. “You should know. You just oozed Southern like someone running for the office of county dogcatcher.”

“Not really.” Jack nearly was inhaling his sandwiches and milk. “Just tryin’ to be nice to your friends.” Jack grinned. “His daddy knows my daddy.”

The electric shock to Fletch’s lower spine at Jack’s use of the word daddy was just as strong this time.

“So tell me,” Fletch asked, “whom did you attempt to murder?”

“A cop.”

“Oh, God!”

“No. A cop.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“That’s no way to speak of Crystal.”

“It’s a wonder you’re still walking around.”

“I didn’t actually kill her.”

“A lady cop?”

“I didn’t stop to ask.”