“That’s okay. I’ve got it, too. When I called you this morning, I couldn’t get through. Would you believe the telephone company has recorded its message notifying callers of your seismic disturbances?”
“But everything else you said was crazy. Only three men escaped from Tomaston Prison. Their names are Moreno, Leary, and Kriegel. No Faoni.”
“Alston, are you sure?”
“Fletch, I talked with the Attorney General of the state of Kentucky. I talked with the warden of Tomaston Prison. I talked with the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. No Faoni.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There never has been a Faoni.”
“What?”
“The federal penitentiary in Tomaston, Kentucky, did not, and never has had an inmate named Faoni.”
“John Fletcher—”
“Not John Fletcher Faoni, not Alexander Faoni, not Betty Boop Faoni. I have just checked the entire federal penal system. There never has been an inmate named John Fletcher Faoni.”
I’m being used
, Fletch said to himself.
I knew it. I am being involved in something…. But by whom? For what reason? This kid knows about me things only Crystal knows… our tumbling out of the shower… Kriegel recognized a physical similarity…. Carrie said we are similar…. John Fletcher Faoni has not been a prisoner…. He is in Greece
…
Alston asked, “Are you fantasizing up a son in your dotage? A big one? One you don’t have to burp?”
Dragging two loaded shopping carts behind him, Jack was crossing the parking lot toward Fletch.
Heat waves from the noonday sun were rising from the pavement in the parking lot.
In fact, Jack was an apparition shimmering in the heat waves like a moving figure in a fun house mirror.
“A fantasy,” Fletch said. “Maybe a fantasy.”
“Fletch, are you all right?”
“I’ve got to hang up, Alston. Hide the phone.”
“Hide the phone?”
Fletch hung up.
And hid the phone.
A
S SOON AS
J
ACK
loaded his electronic equipment into the back of the station wagon, Carrie appeared with bundles and bundles of milk, cereals, baby food, diapers, soap, cleaning fluids, brushes, mops …
The three of them sat as before in the car.
Almost perfectly silently.
Fletch asked, “Lunch, anyone?”
“Fast food,” Carrie said. “In the car. I’ve got to get back.” Slowly, with jaw jutting, she looked up from Jack’s legs to his waist to his chest to his face. “Before I’m guilty of child abuse, too.”
“If that’s the case,” Jack said, “we have to stop at a drugstore, too.”
“What for?” Carrie still stared at his profile. “You run out of mean pills?”
“Concentrated salt,” Jack said. “To sprinkle on baked ham.”
“What do you want to stop for?” Fletch asked.
“Earplugs.”
Carrie said, “Now there’s a good idea. Get some for us, too.”
“I will.”
As the car rolled forward, Jack slid the tips of the fingers of his right hand down his left forearm. He said, “I’m hardly sweating at all. Must be all that salt I had for breakfast.” Jack looked at Fletch and Carrie. He smiled broadly. “You guys seem to be sweating a whole lot!”
In fact, they were.
“
S
onsabitches. Damned bastards
. I hate to accept their food. In the reclined driver’s seat of the station wagon, Fletch had slept most of the afternoon. He awoke when Carrie opened the door and got into the front passenger seat.
The sun had lowered considerably, but not the temperature.
Carrie handed Fletch a plastic bowl of chili, a plastic spoon, and a can of soda. She had her own bowl of chili and can of soda.
“Then don’t,” Fletch said. “Let’s not eat their food.”
“I have to. I’m starving,” she said. “Anyway, I brought enough food into this place to get something in return.” She looked like she had been ridden hard and put up wet. She tasted her chili. “Yee! It tastes like chopped horned toads and ketchup! These foreigners don’t even know how to make respectable chili!”
Before sleeping, Fletch had parked the station wagon in
the shade of the trees not far from his truck, but facing away from the center of the encampment. He was overlooking three rotting trailers around which there were women and children moving slowly if at all in the heat.
He and Carrie had brought the bags of groceries and cleaning materials down to the trailers. Indeed, close up, the women and children did look malnourished. They were listless. Their clothes and their skin were ingrained with dirt. Both the women and children had enough bruises to satisfy Fletch that at least this part of the encampment was ruled by iron fists and steel-toed boots.
A few of the boy children were dressed in little camouflage suits and combat boots. One six-year-old boy was fully dressed in a uniform similar to that worn by Commandant Wolfe, even to the chicken-footprint insignias.
The girl children and women were dressed in cotton shifts thinned by wear. Many were barefoot.
He thought if he slept lightly in the station wagon he could keep a cat’s eye on Carrie as she tried to organize feeding-cleaning-and-washing brigades at the trailers. Surely a yell from her would awaken him no matter how soundly he slept.
Fletch did not even taste his chili.
“Guess what happened?” Carrie asked.
“Tell me.”
“Three of these jerks came down to the trailers. At first they just stood and stared at me. Pulling from beer cans and whiskey bottles. Eyes bulging, you know? Pants bulging. I’ve seen it before.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“No need to. They came closer. Began making remarks. You know.”
“About you?”
“Sure. They were spread out, one on each side, one in the middle, making a triangle, so I couldn’t have gotten off the porch of the trailer. Fletch, I really believe they would have done it right there, in front of the women and children. You know? Put me in my place.”
“Carrie!”
“Calm down. Guess who showed up and smashed two of their heads together and kicked the third one’s ass so hard I declare he fractured his tailbone.”
“Jack.”
“No. Leary.”
“Uh?”
“Leary. He roared at them, ‘Leave my lady alone! She’s nice to me! She’s my friend!’” Carrie giggled.
Cross-legged, Leary sat near them in the shade. He was scooping chili from a huge plastic bowl with his fingers. Most of it made it into his mouth.
From his sharing the cattle pen on the back of the truck with a bull calf all the way down from the farm, his mouth—lips beaten, missing teeth—should have been too sore to take in food. The areas around his eyes were swollen and purple. The gash on his shoulder had not been cleaned any more than the rest of him. The manure on his overalls and in his hair had dried.
Still shirtless in the split overalls, his skin looked painfully red from sunburn. He was covered with festering tick bites.
“We sure have been nice to him,” Fletch drawled. “We surely have.”
“I guess he thinks so. Nicer than anybody else, I guess. For the rest of the afternoon he has stayed within three or four meters of me. I swanee, I’m safer here than at a Daughters of the American Revolution convention!”
Fletch said, “Glad he appreciates all we’ve done for him.”
“There’s something else I must tell you.”
“Isn’t attempted gang rape enough?”
“I snuck over for a peek at the license plate of that forest-green Saturn.”
Fletch shrugged. “Oh?”
“Fletch, the license plate is from our county.”
Even without having tasted the chili, Fletch felt a very unpleasant sensation in his belly. “Carrie, you and I both know Sheriff Joe Rogers. I’ve been huntin’ and fishin’ with him. He’s been to the farm more often than the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Never by word or deed has he expressed anything racist I’ve noticed.”
“Only an ignoramus would, in front of you.”
Again, Fletch said, “It must be a coincidence. There must be more than one green Saturn in the county.”
Carrie said, “I’m pretty sure it’s Francie’s car.”
Quietly, Fletch said, “I sincerely hope it isn’t.”
Carrie said, “That makes two of us, bubba.”
“Carrie, why don’t you climb into the truck and take yourself home?”
“What are you doin’ here?”
“Watching. Listening. Thinking.”
“You think you’re at a railroad crossing, or something?”
“We know this young man is a liar.”
“We do?”
“While you and Jack were shopping I stayed in the car and used the phone.”
“I guessed as much.”
Fletch said, “There was no inmate in the federal penitentiary at Tomaston, Kentucky, or in any federal penitentiary, named Faoni. Never has been.”
Carrie swallowed the last spoonful of chili out of her bowl. “Faoni was stenciled on his shirt. So were the words ‘Federal Penitentiary Tomaston.’”
“I know. Anybody can stencil anything on clothes.”
“So this kid wasn’t in prison?”
“This kid must have been. How else would he know and have the trust of Kriegel, Leary…. But if he was in prison, his name isn’t Faoni.”
“So this kid isn’t your son.”
“The question remains on the floor, as the parliamentarian said, considering the chair.”
“Is there a John Fletcher Faoni? You think he may have just known Crystal, and he’s making this whole thing up?”
“There is a John Fletcher Faoni. Son of Crystal Faoni. And he did go to school in Bloomington, Chicago, and Boston.”
“So?”
“According to his mother’s secretary, John Fletcher Faoni is spending the summer in Greece.”
“In Greece,” Carrie repeated. “Well, this surely isn’t Greece.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“It’s not even on the way to Greece, from anywhere much.”
“No. So we know this kid lies. If he lies about one thing, why not lie about everything? There’s no point in asking a liar for the truth, is there? I just have to cool it. Watch, wait, and listen. Why is he lying? Who is he? What’s his purpose?”
“You didn’t speak to Crystal herself?”
“No. She’s out of pocket.
Incommunicado
on some sort of a fat farm. Well, it’s more than that: I guess it’s a place for people with serious food addictions. Andy Cyst did not succeed in getting through to her.”
Carrie said, “We’re all addicted to food.”
“There is a food addiction that is life-threatening.”
“Wow. Humans sure go awry easy. I was addicted to ice, once.”
“You needed iron. This young man said he shot at a cop. Is it true? This young man said he was in prison for attempted murder. Is it true? This young man says his name is John Fletcher Faoni. Not all of the above can be true.”
“This kid could be as crazy as a groundhog on ice.”
“True.”
“It’s a fact that he’s hanging’ out with these racists.”
“That’s why we’re here. Who is he? What is he? What does he want from me?”
“He’s the self-styled ‘lieutenant’ of the murdering self-styled leader of a self-styled international hate group.”
“As some journalists would put it, ‘He sure appears to be goin’ with this particular flow.’”
“I suspect it’s not every man’s dream to discover his son is a cop-killing, escaped convict, racist, hate-group organizer.”
“It’s not a dream that has ever occurred to me.”
“So if he’s such a jerk, even if he is your kid, why should you care enough to stay here?”
“If I leave now I might lose track of him forever. Then I’ll never know the truth.”
“Maybe you won’t want to know the truth.”
“I always want to know the truth.”
“The truth can make you a prisoner, Fletch.”
“Carrie, I want you to go home.”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause if I go I’ll be worried to death about you.”
“I’ve been in worse situations.”
“If I stay, I’m pretty sure you’ll get us both out in time.”
“In time for what?”
Carrie was looking at the dark hills surrounding the encampment. “This is a foreboding place.”
Fletch said, “Speak of the specter.”
Jack was under the trees coming toward them. From one hand dangled headphones on short wires.
“Don’t speak of ghosts to me.” Carrie leaned forward in her car seat and watched Jack approach. “The kid walks like you.”
“Yeah. He puts one foot in front of the other. Don’t see just what you want to see, miss.”
“His hips and shoulders don’t move when he walks. Just his legs.”
“Sure,” Fletch muttered. “As evidence, that’s not exactly equal to a DNA test, is it?”
The station wagon’s front doors were open.
“Enjoyin’ yourselves?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” Fletch answered. “But nothing else.”
“Don’t like your chili?” He looked at the untouched chili in Fletch’s bowl.
“You can have it.” Fletch handed it to him.
Jack put the earphones on Fletch’s lap.
“What did your cook season it with?” Carrie asked. “Dried ragweed?”
Jack tasted it. “Yuck!”
Carrie said to Fletch, “The boy knows bad chili when he tastes it. Must have some sense.”
“What are the earphones for?” Fletch asked.
“You.” Jack was eating the chili. “You all.” He took two sets of earplugs from the pocket of his shorts and put them in Fletch’s hand. “Put these in your ears. When you see me
put my headphones on, you both put yours on. And leave them on until I take mine off. Earplugs and headphones.”
“Why?”
“Kriegel’s about to give a speech.”
“Give me those ear-stoppers,” Carrie said.
Jack said, “I fixed the sound system.”
Fletch said, “I don’t get it.”
Commandant Wolfe was striding toward them.
Jack said, “Wear your ear-stoppers.”
Wolfe stood at attention near the open car door. Jack backed up. He continued to eat his chili. “I am Commandant Wolfe!”
“I’m Shalom Aleichem.” Fletch stuck his thumb toward Carrie. “This is Golda Meir, as a girl.”
“Doctor Kriegel has warned me of your sense of humor, Mister Fletcher.”
Fletch said, “It is tolerable.”
“You may make these jokes, Mister Fletcher, but you and your lady are what you are and you can be nothing else.”