Fletch Reflected (13 page)

“I’ve decided to try to take the old bastard by surprise.” Seeing the place, Fletch considered that Mortimer had real reason to shoot Fletch on sight.

“Fletch, slow down!”

“Hang on!”

“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing bringing me here?”

“Of course not!”

“Help! Let me out!”

“Now, Crystal,” Fletch said in a reasonable tone. “You wouldn’t know you were in Wyoming without a rough ride.”

A lanky old man appeared at the edge of the cluster of trees surrounding the buildings. In one hand was a shotgun. He fired into the air.

A shirtless boy in shorts ran to a position a few meters from Mortimer and knelt on one knee. He, too, carried a shotgun. He took aim at the van.

He fired.

A puff of dust arose in the air just in front of the van.

“Fletch!” Crystal screamed. “They’re shooting!”

“They’re shootin’,” Fletch said, “but they ain’t hittin’.” He began swinging the van’s steering wheel. “Zigzag,” he said.

“Fletch! Enough of zigzag! I’m sloshing around back here!”

Through the rearview mirror, Fletch saw the bottom half of Crystal’s sheet rising into the air. She must be raising her legs, he realized.

He didn’t know she could do that.

Mortimer, having reloaded, fired at the van.

His shot went high.

Fletch left the road. He aimed the van straight at Mortimer. He accelerated.

Going over ground even rougher than the road made the van jounce wildly.

“Fletch!” Crystal sounded like she was strangling. “You’re beating me to death!”

Mortimer jumped out of the way.

Holding his shotgun by the barrel like a club, the boy ran after the van.

Fletch stopped the van near the buildings in the shade of the trees.

In the swirling dust, the boy stopped a meter from Fletch’s open window.

“Hi,” Fletch said through the window. “Are you Haja, or Ricky?”

“Ricky.”

“What? Say that again.”

“Ricky.”

“Wow. ‘Ricky.’”

“What is the matter?”

“Never heard anybody say that before, I guess. That way.”

The sixteen year old had the perfect boxer’s build.

But his voice had a timbre that sounded as if it were coming from the back of a miles-long cave.

Ricky, holding the shotgun by the barrel with one hand, gently rested its butt on the ground. He positioned his legs oddly, creating the impression of being totally alert and relaxed at the same time.

Chin tilted sideways, the boy’s eyes looked at the ground between them. Then he ran his eyes slowly up the van’s door and fixed them on Fletch’s face.

Doing these simple things the boy gave the impression of complete readiness, to listen or to fight, to laugh or to twist Fletch’s head off.

“Wow,” Fletch said. “Fascinating.”

Fletch was dimly aware of Mortimer stumbling up, yelling his head off.

He tuned Mortimer in. “—G.D. S.O.B.! I told you to stay a state’s length away from me! I told you if you showed up here, I’d shoot you! And Goddamn it, I will!”

So great was Mortimer’s fury that he dropped the shell he was trying to jam into the shotgun.

Another young man, heavily muscled and well over six feet tall and naturally darker than Ricky, stood under a nearby tree, his long arms relaxed at his sides.

Fletch said to him, “How’re ya doin’, Haja?”

“Good,” Haja answered.

Fletch surmised from both boys’ sweaty hair and dusty socks they had been on a long run.

He envied them.

While Mortimer was picking the shotgun shell off the ground, Fletch got out of the van.

“Dreadful lookin’ place you got here,” Fletch said. “It’s a wonder we didn’t give it back to the American natives.”

As Fletch walked straight up to him, Mortimer dropped the shell again. He snapped the empty gun barrel closed. He pointed it at Fletch’s stomach.

“I told that damned woman of yours who answers your phone in Tennessee that if you showed up here I’d blast your head off.”

“Fletch?” Crystal’s voice quivered from the back of the handicap van. “Fletch?”

“She’s not a damned woman,” Fletch said, “and she’s not mine. She does answer the phone, when it rings. And I don’t much appreciate a city foulmouth like you shoutin’ barnyard language at a genuine country lady long distance!”

Mortimer’s eyes were blazing. “I’ll be damned!” He flung the empty shotgun onto the ground. “I’ll show these boys how I can take you apart with my fists!”

Fletch backed up. “Never mind. I suspect they know you can.”

Mortimer’s fists were raised. Wiry, at seventy four, he was ready to rain every combination of punches all over Fletch.

“Relax,” Fletch said. “I made you a hero.”

“A hero!” Mortimer exploded. “To who?”

“To the world!”

“The only people I cared about in the world I put in prison, thanks to you!”

“They were bad guys, and you know it.”

“They were my friends!”

Fletch turned his back on Mortimer’s fighting stance. Through his nose he inhaled deeply. “Fresh air. Don’t you just love it?”

“Fresh air!” Mortimer yelled. “What’s it good for? It smells like nothing! You know how long it’s been since I’ve smelled a bakery?”

Turning full circle, Fletch noticed Ricky had disappeared.

Haja still stood curious under the tree.

“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?”

By the angle of his head, the way he used his arms and his legs, turned his body into a K closing the side door of the van, somehow Ricky made Fletch watch him do it.

Mortimer may have developed the kid’s body but the kid’s presence was as natural to him as the color of his hair.

Fletch said, “I notice you don’t use contractions.”

Ricky said, “I do not?”

He opened the van’s door for Fletch.

“Bye,” Fletch said.

“Good bye.”

“Y
ou there!”

Walking his bike on a gravel path skirting the side of Vindemia’s main house, Jack looked up. An older woman was calling to him from a balcony. Wisps of her graying hair and her light bathrobe were being blown by the wind.

“Come here!” She pointed to an open, arched doorway beneath her balcony. “Go in there. Come up the steps.”

Overhead the ten huge flags on the roof were snapping imperiously in the wind.

He leaned his bike against a wall, went through the arch and up the stone stairs in the wall of the house.

She was the woman he had seen possibly weeping in the back of the chauffeur-driven stretch Infiniti the day he arrived.

“Do I know you?” she asked him. “I mean, have we done this together before?”

“What?” Jack asked.

“I need someone to take out my rubbish,” she said.

“Oh.”

“People keep forgetting,” she said. “To take out my rubbish.”

“I see.”

“I need this help.”

“Okay.”

“You look like the last boy who used to help me.”

“We’re infinitely replaceable,” Jack said. “I’m glad you realize that. He was my friend.” She stuck a bill into the pocket of his shorts. “Will you be my friend?”

“Sure.”

“It’s just this bag over here.” On the floor of the balcony near the French doors was a green garbage bag. “People keep forgetting it, you see.”

“I see.”

“If you’d just dispose of it for me.”

“Sure.” When he picked the bag up its contents clanked.

“That will be all.” Looking straight ahead, she went through the French doors into the house.