anything.
Crystal and Fletch had shared a supper of buckets of fried chicken, cartons of potato salad, coleslaw, large cups of iced tea.
As they drove West to Wyoming, Fletch had found it a bother stopping frequently to buy fast food for Crystal. She would complain of hunger just minutes after she had eaten more than he might in a week. He did not consider it his place or expertise to curb her eating, or even comment on it, but he remained amazed at the amount of food she consumed. He felt his unsolicited comments, efforts to restrain her would do no good anyway. It would just hurt and cause her to suffer the more.
With her, he found himself eating more. Just driving, not getting any real exercise, he was uncomfortable with undigested food constantly in his stomach. He felt sluggish, sleepy. As he drove he became more aware of his stomach against his belt, and he did not like that feeling.
Much more of a bother was having to stop at rest areas and help Crystal off her bed, out of the van, using the hydraulic lift, to the women’s room so Crystal could relieve herself. The van had inadequate facilities for such functions. Never before had Fletch realized what a long walk it was from most car parks to the lavatories. Her full weight of over six hundred pounds would lean on Fletch as Crystal swung one fat thigh around her other, stop a moment, sweating and panting, quivering with the exertion of taking a step. People, especially other women and children, would stare at them in amazement, scorn. Crystal’s cheeks would be wet with tears at her humiliation. Breathing hard, she would say, over and over, “Fletch, how did I get this way? How did I get this way?”
Always on the long, torturous walks, Fletch would scan the other travelers for a strong looking woman with a touch of sympathy in her look. Such a woman he would ask to escort and help Crystal through the use of the women’s room. Some just nodded their heads, “No,” looked away, and went about their own business.
At the motel he had stayed in the night before, he had had to help her in and out of his bathroom evening and morning and help her through the entire routine himself. He tried to make light of it, but he certainly had not enjoyed it.
Fletch had always had great love for the human body and quietly remained horrified and depressed by seeing so closely what could happen to it by mere misuse.
So Fletch was sleeping in motel rooms these two warm nights on the road, Crystal in the van where she was more comfortable. She had read much of the previous night, snacking from bags of useless, greasy food he had bought at a truck stop for her.
Other than these botherations he was having a fine trip. As Fletch drove the van along America’s good highways, he talked about everything under the sun with Crystal in her bed in back. Their heads were less than a meter away from each other, although Crystal was facing backward and had to repeat some things she said.
They talked about Jack. Fletch was full of questions about his son. Crystal’s answers were detailed, incisive, understanding, frequently witty, admiring of her son, and, most of all, loving.
They talked about places they had worked as journalists, stories they had done, people they had known.
Fletch had many characters he had known, studied, resolved as much as one ever can, saved for “the long ride,” as he had always called it, and this was a long ride, and he described many of them to Crystal.
“You mean, your father wasn’t dead?” Crystal asked.
“No,” Fletch said. “My mother only said that. I guess she thought it would make things easier for me.”
“And did you actually meet him?”
“I ran into him, you might say.”
“How interesting.”
“I admit I was mildly curious.”
Fletch’s personal pocket communicator buzzed. He retrieved it from the front seat of the van.
“Hello?”
“Poppa! Poppa!” a child’s voice cried.
“Oh, God,” Fletch said, knowing it was Jack. “Not another one.”
“Same one,” Jack said in his own voice. “How’s Momma?”
“Want to talk to her?”
“Sure.”
While they talked, Fletch picked up all the wastepaper from their store-bought dinner and placed it in a nearby rubbish bin. Whether the American people realize it or not, Fletch thought, we are eating our trees.
“Fletch …” Crystal held the phone out to him.
Fletch took it and sat in his chair. He said: “Beep.”
“When will you get Mom wherever you are taking her?” Jack asked.
“Tomorrow.” He did not say he was not sure he could leave her there, in Mister Mortimer’s boxing camp. In his heart, he knew his best idea was crazy.
“I’m wondering …”
“I should hope so.”
“There are weird things going on here.”
“At Vindemia?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you went there, isn’t it?”
“I’m at the pay phone outside the Vindemia Village General Store.”
“I’m in a motel parking lot in Wyoming. So what?”
“I think there have been at least five attempts on Chester Radliegh’s life, possibly six. One really misfired and murdered someone else, this afternoon.”
“Who?”
“A scientist working in his lab.”
“So talk to me.”
“First Doctor Radliegh’s three year old horse, one he uses to jump over things?”
“A jumper. Yes.”
“Keeled over dead on him in the stable yard or whatever you call it.”
“Means nothing. Whatever you least expect a horse to do, it will do. In fact, there is a strain of horse, beautiful horse, which at about that age will die of sudden heart seizure.”
“The stableman thinks the horse may have been poisoned.”
“Okay. What does the autopsy report say?”
“Doctor Radliegh wouldn’t allow an autopsy.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said that doesn’t make sense.”
“A wet, bare wire he would have to plug in to get his morning coffee was left in a dark place for him. He only happened to notice the wire was wet and bare.”
“We’re all booby-trapped by our friendly household appliances.”
“His personal, in-his-dressing-room coffeepot unplugged, the wire wet, and bare, at dawn?”
“He could have rigged that himself.”
“A cabin he was expected to be in alone at four o’clock in the afternoon blew up at four fifteen.”
“Ummm. Is he having that investigated?”
“I think not. There’s some silly explanation being passed around about the furnace blowing up.”
“Maybe it did.”
“A cabin furnace on in Georgia in the summertime?”
“Probably all of a piece with the air conditioning system.”
“The front axle of a new Jeep he was driving on a mountain road broke.”
“It could have been damaged.”
“And,” Jack continued, “after a Doctor Jim Wilson was killed by lethal gas in the laboratory, while Doctor Radliegh was in the lab., trying to rescue him, the lab. blew up big-time. I was there. I saw it. I was sure Radliegh was killed.”
“The gas hit some flame, a pilot light…”
“Why the delay? It wouldn’t have taken that long for the gas to hit a flame in the same building. Why would a physicist have lethal gas in his lab. anyway?”
“Who knows? Undoubtedly Radliegh is playing with all sort of ideas, things no one knows about.”
