Son of Fletch (18 page)

“Sir!” Jack could feel his torso pouring with sweat. He guessed the dose of salt he had had at breakfast that morning had held the sweat in his body until this unfortunate moment. “The regulations of The Tribe abhor any homosexual activity!”

“Homosexual?” Wolfe’s scalp, his hairline, appeared to move backward on his head. His right hand raised slightly toward the grip of his revolver.

“Anything that smacks of homosexuality. Sir!”

“Goddamn you! You think that I just suggested”—Wolfe breathed hard—“a homosexual…”

“You suggested stimulating me sexually. Sir!”

“That is not homosexual! You have been in prison! With nothing but men …” Staring at Jack, Wolfe lifted his revolver from his holster. “Are you accusing me of homosexuality? I will shoot you for saying such a thing! You think I will have you saying such a thing about me? I will say I came into the office and found you stealing files from the computer!”

Jack looked at the disks he had already filled on the desk.
That would be true
.

Wolfe raised the revolver. He aimed it at Jack. “You fought with me. I had to shoot you.”

In a bored, indifferent voice, Jack said, “Shoot me.”

He waved a dismissive hand at Wolfe.

Jack sat on the edge of the cot along the inside wall of the office. He picked up the guitar. He picked a few notes, strummed a few chords.

Still aiming his revolver at Jack’s head, Wolfe said incredulously, “You son of a bitch, you think you can charm me, or something?”

Jack nodded to him. “Yes.”

Jack played and sang for Commandant Wolfe the Kander-Ebb song “Tomorrow the World Belongs to Me,” from the musical
Cabaret
.

Listening, Commandant Wolfe slowly lowered the revolver. In the lamplight, his eyes glistened.

“Goddamn you!” Wolfe said.

Before he left the office, Wolfe said to Jack, “If you mention one word of this to anyone, ever, I will shoot you! I will kneecap you! I will shoot your balls off!”

Jack played the commandant to bed.

Then he returned to pulling files from the computer.

“H
I
.” J
UST BEFORE
dawn, Tracy stuck his head around the jamb of the office door.

“‘Mornin’,” Jack said.

He had copied everything from the computer and every system attached to it he could find via Tracy’s code book. Labeled in his smallest handwriting, in his own code, he had put the floppy disks back into their boxes, back into their plastic bags, doing his best to make them look new and unused.

He had been looking forward to a few moments’ sleep.

“What are you doin’?” Tracy asked.

Jack said, “Wonderin’ about coffee.”

“You just get up?” Tracy looked at the cot at the side of the office.

“I’m up.”

“I’ll get coffee. Black?”

“Sugar.”

While Jack stirred around the office, making the cot look more slept in, reinserting the charged battery in the camcorder, he wondered if Tracy was documenting on his ever-in-hand clipboard that at that moment in history he was
taking two teaspoons of instant coffee, one teaspoon of sugar, and two pints of water from the cabin’s kitchen.

Jack was grateful for Tracy’s sense of order.

He admired the way Tracy had established the camp’s computer. So very orderly. So very comprehensible. So very penetrable.

Everything in it had been wonderfully easy to steal.

“Here.” Dressed only in underpants, Tracy handed Jack his coffee. “One sugar.”

Then Tracy sat on the cot, knees drawn up, back against the wall. He was a slim teenager with dark hair, dark eyes.

“Tracy what?” Jack asked. “What’s your last name?”

“Wolfe.”

“Son of Carston Wolfe?”

“Yes.”

Although he was tired of it, Jack swiveled the desk chair around to face Tracy and sat in it. “Is Wolfe your real family name?”

“Of course not. My father had it legally changed. For obvious reasons.”

“What was your name originally?”

“None of your business, Faoni.”

Jack sipped from his mug. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’ve been in prison.”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“How are things going?”

“You mean, for the movement? Very well. In the last five years, Kriegel has organized chapters of The Tribe in every federal and major state prison in the country. Almost half the white men—at least those who have any hope of ever getting out—belong. Of course, many of them belong just to be safe while they’re in prison.”

Tracy stuck out his chin. “Who started it?”

“Who started what?”

“Didn’t the blacks in the prisons start organizing along racial lines first?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “For protection.”

“Protection against what? Aren’t the majority of prisoners in this country black?”

“No,” Jack said.

“It seems like it.”

“It’s a deep question. Anyway, Kriegel has developed a considerable force.”

“Yeah.” Bright-eyed, Tracy smiled in appreciation. “It won’t be long.”

“There are plans?”

“There sure are.”

“Like what?”

“Not for me to say. Kriegel has been briefed. By my father. There’ll be a formal meeting later today. I don’t know whether you’ll be allowed to attend.”

“Of course I will.”

“Not up to me. You think Kriegel committed that crime, got himself sent to prison on purpose, Jack? You know, to organize the prisoners?”

“God,” said Jack.

“It could be. He’s awesome.”

“I’ll say.”

“My father has developed an awesome training program here.”

“You enjoy it?”

“Yeah. I’ve become Expert at rifle and semiautomatic weapons. I qualify as Sniper. I’ve done hand grenades. I’m learning mortars now. We drill pretty hard, most days.”

“What fun.”

“Sabotage is what really interests me. Our Sabotage

Corps is really growing. My father says that’s where our real strength is, in sabotage.”

“What did your father do before he became Commandant Wolfe?”

“Sold insurance.”

“Ever in the military?”

“Army Supply Corps.”

“I see.”

“He’s really a great salesman. He could sell snowballs to Eskimos. You heard his speech last night?”

“Yeah. Where’s your mother?”

“She left us. Couldn’t stand the discipline. I mean, my father needs things exactly right, he’s so important and all, has so much responsibility, organizing all this. She couldn’t understand that some beatings are necessary, so people won’t make the same mistake twice, you know what I mean? I mean, all this is a big responsibility. My father is a great man.”

“Where are you from, originally?”

“Illinois. The Land of Lincoln. I hate that. Freed the mud people.”

“You were brought up this way from birth?”

“What way?”

“Oh, believing in …”

“White rights? Sure. My father’s grandfather was stabbed by a nigger.”

“Your great-grandfather was stabbed by a black person?”

“Why do you say it that way?”

“If he was stabbed by a white person, would you and your father be against white people?”

“I don’t much like the way you’re talkin’. Somethin’ seems wrong to me about the way you’re talkin’.”

“Do you ever get away from here?”

“The camp? Sure. I went to The Wave Pool in Decatur once.”

“Have fun?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“My father wouldn’t let me wear my uniform. There were niggers there. I mean, in the water. With the white folks. There were niggers everywhere I looked. I suspect some of them had knives.”

“Pretty scary, uh?”

“I wasn’t too scared. Just uncomfortable. They hate us.”

“Who does?”

“The niggers. They have to!”

“Why?”

“Hey, Jack! Why are you talkin’ this way? You’re Kriegel’s lieutenant, his aide.”

“So?”

“Some of the words you use sound to me goddamned liberal!”

Jack smiled. “I’m just questioning your motives, Tracy. What’s with this personal motivation? Sounds emotional, to me. Are you emotional? That’s soft!”

“Cut it out!” Tracy put his feet on the floor.

Jack said, “It just seems to me you can’t be a pure believer, Tracy, if you have a personal, emotional motivation. Haven’t you read Kriegel’s pamphlets? He says people with personal emotions can’t be trusted that much. Gee, I don’t know about you.”

Tracy went to the door. Looking around at Jack, his facial expression was similar to his father’s standing at the same door a few hours earlier.

Tracy said, “My father is a great man. And he says I’m
following in his footsteps. I’m doing everything he asks! What we’re doing is important! It’s necessary! Don’t you doubt me, Faoni! When the shootin’ starts, we’ll see just how you act! I’ll bet you turn into gooseflesh!”

“I don’t know, Tracy.” Still in his little desk chair, Jack shook his head. “I think you’d better rethink where you are, what you’re doin’. To me, you sound like a real soft guy.”

Tracy slammed the door behind him.

Jack chuckled. Through the office window the dawn was gray. He turned off the desk light.

“Another day.” Jack yawned. “More confusion sown.”

“
B
lythe Spirit. Good
morning.”

“Good morning. This is Jack Faoni. May I speak with my mother, please, Ms. Crystal Faoni?”

“Ms. Faoni is in concentration. Do you know the appropriate code, Mister Faoni?”

“Health,” Jack said.
Health
had been the appropriate code in all the years his mother had been visiting Blythe Spirit, twice a year. It had never changed.

From this observation, Jack assumed Blythe Spirit did not have the high rate of recidivism as did his mother.

“One moment, please.”

Jack had returned to the little office in the log cabin headquarters of Camp Orania. Since shortly after dawn he had patrolled the camp with the camcorder videotaping everything, from the main road in, the long, winding timber road, the odd, supposedly concealed pillboxes along it either side, the trailers, carport-bunkhouses, Porta Potties, the central log cabin, the flagpole, the flag, the hills surrounding the camp, the target ranges, the ancient, locked
Quonset hut he assumed was for weapons and ammunition storage.

And he had videotaped the cook hanging by his neck from the branch of a tree.

Upon his return to the log cabin headquarters Jack had interrupted the breakfasts of Commandants Kriegel and Wolfe and Lieutenant Tracy by telling them of the hanging cook. Tracy had made their breakfasts.

Kriegel slapped the breakfast table and laughed. “So! It wasn’t my speech that made everybody sick! For a moment there, I thought perhaps I had lost my touch! The boys knew it was the chili! So they hung the cook!”

“Damn,” Wolfe said. “It’s damned hard to keep a decent cook. That one wasn’t bad. He could make great pots of food out of anything we gave him!”

“Better they hang the cook than the speaker!” Kriegel laughed. “That’s what I say! The boys know Man does not live by bread alone!”

“Sorry to interrupt your breakfasts,” Jack said. “There’s another dead guy out there, too. In the woods behind the women’s trailers.”

“Have some eggs, Jack,” Kriegel said. “You’re looking tired. Didn’t you sleep well? I slept wonderfully! Nothing like a good purge for the system! You young are supposed to recuperate from a difficult time faster than we older people. Let me pour you some coffee.”

The four men finished their breakfasts. Wolfe and his son discussed where on the place they would bury the cook and whoever the other corpse was. Tracy was assigned to draft someone else as cook and put him to work preparing breakfast for the men as quickly as possible. Wolfe would organize the burial.

Kriegel said, “We’ll postpone the church service, our
Bible reading and my sermon, one hour, until after you dispose of the corpus delicatessen.” He laughed. “Will eleven o’clock be all right?”

“Eleven o’clock will be fine.” Wolfe put down his coffee mug. “I want the men awake when they hear that that damned Jew Moses married a nigger!”

Wolfe and his son left the cabin.

Kriegel said to Jack, “Moses married a nigger? Where do you suppose that man gets crazy ideas like that?”

Jack said: “Damned if I know.”

In compliance with camp security, Jack had understood, the only telephone at the camp was the one in headquarters’ little office. He knew his conversation was not being overheard. Kriegel had followed Wolfe out of the cabin “to see how blue the hanging corpse” was.

The phone rang ten times before Crystal answered it. Jack was used to that. His mother had difficulty moving, even across a health spa’s bedroom.

“Hey, Maw!”

“Jack, are you all right?”

“Fine and dandy. Except that I am in bad need of a few hours’ sleep and a shower. How are you doin’?”

“As usual. I have lost a few pounds.” To Crystal a few pounds was like a bucket of sand to the Sahara. “But are you all right? Tell me about yourself. Did you connect with your father?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think of him?”

“Senile.”

“Senile?” Crystal asked. “Fletch senile?”

“Yeah,” Jack answered. “He can’t remember any of the stories you tell about him….”

“
M
ister Fletcher? We
got us a dead man on the place,” Emory announced.

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes, sir. Dead and bloatin’ up real bad.”

Sunday morning, head still hurting, throat sore, neck stiff, Fletch had checked the fax machine in his study and, finding nothing yet on it from Andy Cyst, took his cup of coffee out onto the upper balcony. He loved to watch the rising sun dissipate the fog that was in the farm valley most mornings.

It had been nearly midnight when he and Carrie had left Camp Orania in Tolliver, Alabama, for home.

Before Fletch left the encampment, Jack had placed his hands on the windowsill of the station wagon as if he still had something, one more thing to say to Fletch. Fletch waited, but Jack said nothing.

Fletch realized that Jack was still in shock from having killed someone, their having found the cook hanging by his neck from a tree branch.