“I’ll send you a loaf of Brooklyn pumpernickel,” Fletch said. “You can stick it up your nose.”
Lithe as a panther, Mortimer came swinging at Fletch. “I’ll rip your nose off you!”
Not raising his hands, Fletch ducked and backed up. “Cut that out!”
Pursuing him with perfect footwork, Mortimer said, “I’ll cut your fuckin’ heart out! Your eyes—”
Backing up, Fletch’s heel tripped on Mortimer’s shotgun.
Fletch fell to the ground.
Resting on his elbows, Fletch said, “You can’t hit me down here.”
“Mister Mortimer?” Ricky’s low voice demanded immediate attention.
He was standing in front of the van.
“Mister Mortimer,” Ricky said. “Come here, please.” His voice was as pervasive as mist. “There is something you must see.”
Fists still at the ready, Mortimer studied the boy. “Can’t you see I’m busy? I’m going to make chopped liver out of this …”
“Wuss,” Haja said.
Mortimer looked down at Fletch on the ground. “He’s a ‘was’ all right. He’s a never was! Get up, you bug, you bugger, you journalist!”
“If I do, you’ll hit me,” Fletch said. “So what’s the point? I’ll only find myself down here again.”
Ricky: “Please, Mister Mortimer.”
“All right.” Mortimer aimed a not very serious kick at Fletch’s boot. “What is it?”
He spat on the ground and stamped around the front of the van.
Fletch quickly got up and followed them.
Ricky had opened the sliding door on the other side of the van.
“What is it?” Mortimer asked impatiently.
Using his well-sculpted head as would a stag, his eyes as would a man who had looked from the top of mountains, Ricky indicated Mortimer ought look inside the van.
Mortimer looked. Then peered. Then squinted. “What is it?”
Crystal let out a little sob.
Mortimer stepped up into the van.
He looked a moment at Crystal on the bed.
He gasped.
“Oh, my dear lady!” He picked up her hand. “What has happened to you?”
“Oh, Mister Mortimer!” Crystal wept. “I don’t know!”
•
“I’m glad you brought her here,” Mortimer said. “Now get out.”
He had come from behind Fletch, through the broken spring door of the old farmhouse.
Fletch, feeling shunted aside by all the activity, had been standing on the porch looking out over the plain. A Mrs. Robbins he had found in the kitchen had provided him with a cup of coffee.
He had driven through some gorgeous parts of Wyoming to get here, but these acres were desolate. It looked to him as if the grass grew here as thin hay. A cow by herself would need acres to graze. Here even a cow would be lonely.
Immediately upon discovering Crystal in the back of the handicap van Mortimer had begun organizing.
While Crystal waited in the van, Haja and Ricky had dismantled Mortimer’s own king-sized bed and lifted its frame, box-spring and mattress to the barn and rebuilt it in a corner of the gymnasium just outside the swing door to the locker room. Mortimer made the bed himself.
The gym was not that large, but it was well built: hardwood floor, a boxing ring in the center, the latest in exercise machines along the far wall, as well as head and body punching bags.
The only thing odd about the gym was that the mirrors on the walls were old-fashioned: they were not perfect mirrors.
There was a sauna and whirlpool in the locker room, as well as open showers, basins and toilets.
Having some experience at it, Fletch tried to help bring Crystal into her new bed. Silently, firmly, Mortimer, Haja, Ricky elbowed him aside. They let Fletch run the van’s hydraulic lift to lower them all to the ground.
On the porch, Fletch said to Mortimer, “You don’t really hate me, do you?”
Mortimer spat over the porch rail. “Sure. You did the right thing, Fletch, as far as I was concerned. So did I. I’d seen what was wrong with the boxing game all my life, never took part in the filth but I went along with it. Impaling my young contender on that iron fence in Gramercy Park …”
“His name was Shane—?”
“Goldblum. Shane Goldblum…. Well, it made everything inside me, how can I say it, hunker down, atomize, and then …”
“I came along and gave you a way of blowing up.”
“You see, with my friends in prison, well, when we write back and forth to each other, I blame you for everything. Everything I did to them.”
“They deserved it. They’re bad guys.”
“Yeah, but they’re my bad guys. We grew up together, worked together. Who else, what else do I know? Loyalty may be a virtue, but it’s also a convenience. So, yeah, I hate you. You made the best of me, so I hate you. What else do you expect? My best boxers came to hate me. I made the best of them, they’d find themselves unique, alone, isolated, just like I am, so they’d blame me, hate me. Most people, I figure, never do anything unusual, they just go along with whatever it is, mediocrity, corruption, because they can’t stand the idea of being unique, alone, isolated.” Mortimer’s blue eyes scanned the field Fletch had just been watching. “I’ve been thinking of importing some pigeons. How do you think they’d do here?”
“Not well. Not enough used lunch bags.”
“Yeah. Well, the place needs used lunch bags, too.”
“Haja and Ricky seem like nice kids. Hopefully contenders.”
“Sure.”
“That Ricky has some presence.”
“Presence?”
“You haven’t noticed?”
“What’s presence already?”
“I don’t know. Dignity? His own sense of time, space, sight, sound? Self-awareness?”
“He’s just in love with himself. Somehow he makes you pay attention to him, watch him, when he’s not doing anything! A boxer? I don’t know.”
“So you think you’ll be able to help Crystal?”
“You said she’s a heavyweight.”
“Yes, I did.”
“A heavyweight challenge all right.”
Fletch said, “I’ll go say good bye.”
•
“You’re leaving?” Crystal asked. “You’re leaving me here?”
“Mister Mortimer is putting me off the place,” Fletch said.
“Don’t hesitate,” Mortimer said.
“Where’re you going?”
“Somewhere the landscape has more than one line to it.”
“Get out of here,” Mortimer said. “Ricky, see this bum off the place.”
“I’ll call,” Fletch said to Crystal.
“Tell Jack where I am.”
As Fletch was escorted by Ricky out of the gym, Mortimer was saying, “Now, listen, dear lady. You’re not going to lose weight right away. First we’re going to build you some muscle. You’ll be losing fat, but you’ll weigh the same, because muscle weighs more than fat, you see? So you’re not to get discouraged.”
Crystal murmured, “All I want is to take in the food I need for what I’m doing.”
“That’s very good,” Mortimer said. “Where did you learn that?”
