Fletch Reflected

11

“You see,” Fletch said to Crystal from his lawn chair, “my father was thought to be emotionally evasive. I guess that mixes up my feelings about Jack, and, you. That you didn’t let me know he existed, that I didn’t know Jack existed until two weeks ago tonight … leaves me uncertain as to how to respond to him.”

“Your father died in childbirth,” Crystal said from inside the handicap van. “So you always said.”

“Not quite,” Fletch said.

“He didn’t?”

“He didn’t.”

It was after dark.

The van was in the parking lot of a motel near the room Fletch had taken for himself.

Inside the van, its side and back doors open to catch the breeze, Crystal sat propped up in her hospital bed.

Outside the van, on the pavement, Fletch sat in a cheap metallic lawn chair.

A few people walking to and from their rooms and vehicles had looked at this odd arrangement of a man sitting in a chair on the pavement having a picnic with a woman propped up in bed in a van but none had said 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.”

“Dad …”

Fletch felt a cool breeze. It made him shiver. “It does sound as if he’s having a considerable run of bad luck. Did he break one of his own mirrors, do you suppose?”

“What Shana said is correct. There is reason for me to be here. I think this guy is going to get killed.”

“What about you? Are you being careful?”

“Oh, yes. No one suspects me. I’ve got a job as pool ornament.”

“As what?”

“I take care of all the sports stuff, pools, tennis courts, gym. I’m being paid more than I’m worth.”

“That’s good.”

“But I’m too far removed. I’ve only seen Radliegh twice. We haven’t met. I can’t protect him. I can’t find out what’s really going on.”

“What have you found out so far?”

“He’s built a paradise here in Georgia for himself, family, employees. They’re safe, secure, have everything in the world they could want.”

“Sounds nice.”

“They’re spoiled, at least his kids are, more than I ever believed possible.”

“Of course.”

“They hate him.”

“Sure.”

“More than hate. Resent him. Resent his existence.”

“You think one of his kids is trying to do the old man in?”

“On the other hand,” Jack said, “Doctor Radliegh appears to demand total control over everybody, where, how they live, what they’re doing, saying, thinking, every minute, even what they eat and drink. I was told I had six minutes to drive from the estate’s front and only gate to the car compound to have my car locked up.”

“Your car? You have a car? Of your own?”

“I bought one. In Virginia.”

“What is it?”

“A Miata. A used Miata.”

“Phew. Global Cable News must have overpaid you, too. I’ll have a word with Alex Blair about that. Affects my dividends, don’t you know.”

“I believe Shana was right. Somebody is trying to knock off Chester Radliegh.”

“Shana is the girl who is going to marry young Chester?”

Jack hesitated. “I’m not sure she’s going to marry him.”

“Oh? Has the vision of you arriving in your two-seater chariot rediverted her heart?”

“I think she’s misread at least one thing here.”

“I think I’m putting two-point-three and two-point-three together—”

“—and coming up with five, I hope? Right. Would you think of coming here to Vindemia?”

“Ain’t been invited.”

“You have to admit these are too many coincidences.”

“There are a lot.”

“And you are more a peer of Chester Radliegh.”

“Little ol’ me? A peer of the man who invented the perfect mirror? You think I invented the raspberry maybe?”

“Come on, Dad. I’m just a kid.” Come on, Dad. I’m just a kid. There was that cool breeze again. Fletch shivered. “What do I know?”

“Your mother comes first.” Fletch felt noble in the saying.

“I’m trying to prevent a murder here and I don’t think there’s a whole lot of time.”

“I’m just not sure,” Fletch said. “We’ll just have to see how things work out.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Wish Mama mal apetite.”

Fletch said, “Don’t break any mirrors.”

•

“Fletch?” It was later in the evening. Crystal and Fletch, sleepy now, were still keeping each other company in the parking lot of the Besame Motel. They heard a dance band playing from somewhere in the motel. They weren’t dancing. “What’s the difference between fat people and slim people?”

Fletch said, “Fat people have more weight?”

“Answer me seriously. It doesn’t really have anything to do with big bones. My bones aren’t big. Or glands. Surgery could fix that.”

“Genetic proclivities?”

“No one in my family I ever heard of was fat. Not like me.”

Fletch said, “I think it may have something to do with what one puts in one’s mouth. Do you suppose?”

“I know that. But why do you put what you put in your mouth and I put what I put in my mouth?”

“I’m not comfortable feeling full of food. I guess you are.”

“I see that. You hate having all this food and greasy bags around the van, don’t you? Every time you open food parcels you’ve gotten for me, you sort of wrinkle your nose.”

“I do?”

“You do. You wrinkle your nose and look away. Why does food that looks good to me repel you?”

“Habits, I guess. Just what we’re used to.”

“It’s more than that.”

“I once heard a famous professor of nutrition at Northwestern say something about people having to set or reset something like a food thermostat in their heads.”

“What does that mean?”

Fletch said, “You become more accurately aware of what food you need to get along and only consume that much, no more. You eat high-energy food, the food that creates its own energy causing you to use it up, burn it off, with activity. You don’t eat food that weighs more than the energy it produces. Something like that.” The throbbing engine of an eighteen wheeler at the back of the parking lot was keeping time with the dance band. “I don’t know. Why ask me?”

“I’ve asked enough experts.”

“Paying for advice doesn’t guarantee much.”

“Fletch? Am I mentally ill?”

“Crystal, you’re one of the brightest, most logical people I’ve known.”

“Then why am I the way I am? What’s logical about the way I eat? What sense does it make?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, what do slim people know that fat people don’t?”

“I think slim people do know something.”

“Please tell me what.”

“I think slim people define hunger differently. I think slim people know that much of what you think of as hunger they realize is a food hangover. Have you ever noticed that when you eat more than usual you feel hunger pangs sooner?”

“Oh, yes. All the time.”

“I think when you eat more than usual the body produces more than usual gastric juices, or something, and when they get done working on the food that is in the stomach, they send a signal to the brain saying they’re ready for more food to work on. I think maybe fat people see that as a hunger pang. Slim people feel the same thing but know they’re not hungry because they know they’ve eaten more than they need already.”

“Hunger I feel is not real?”

“No. It’s false. You just believe it’s real.”

“I’m not really hungry?”

“You can’t be.”

“Have you read this somewhere?”

“No. Just many times I’ve had to ignore hunger and discovered that the first hunger pangs aren’t real. They mean nothing.”

“The Chinese food syndrome.”

“One is apt to overeat Chinese food. Therefore, an hour later one has hunger pangs. But one doesn’t really need more food.”

“So how do you know when you’re really hungry?”

“You know. Your energy levels begin to drop. Then you should eat real food, not sugar, to maintain your energy. You should know about how much of what kind of food you need to produce the energy you need every day, and eat that much.”

“And forget about the feeling of hunger.”

“Something like that. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve been thinking about this, driving along, thinking about you. Maybe there are psychological reasons you are the way you are, as there are with everybody. I know you’re not crazy. But a lot of the problem may be in your head. A misperception of what you’re feeling. It’s what that professor said about thermostats.”

“Foodstats.”

“Something like that. We think about food differently. Like people who drink more than usual and then get up in the morning and respond to the hangover by having more to drink. It doesn’t make sense. One doesn’t need more to drink just because the liver or whatever is ready to process more.”

“Hunger pangs are a food hangover,” Crystal said. “Now I’ve heard all.”

“You asked. I’m no better than you. I just think about food differently.”

“Maybe because you’ve been really hungry.”

“Maybe.”

“I wonder if I’ve ever been really hungry in my life.”

“Probably not.”

“I just feel hungry all the time.”

“It’s not hunger.”

“Maybe you should write a diet book, Fletch.”

“You think I could sell it?”

“Nothing sells better than diet books. Diet books and cookbooks.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s never stopped other people from writing diet books.”

“I’ve just been thinking about it. About you. For you, maybe.”

His pocket communicator buzzed. He picked it up off the pavement beside his chair. “Hello?”

“Fletch, Mister Mortimer called here again.”

Fletch said to Crystal, “It’s Carrie, calling from the farm.”

“Your lover,” Crystal said. “Give her my best. No, come to think of it, she already has my best.”

Carrie said, “He sounds real mean, Fletch.”

“Mister Mortimer is real mean,” Fletch agreed.

“He’s warning you off his place loud and clear. How close are you to his boxer training camp, or whatever it is, now?”

“Pretty close. Another three hours, maybe. We should be there by nine or so in the morning.”

“Fletch, he doesn’t want you.”

“Sure he does. Everybody likes me. I’ve told you that.”

“He hates you!”

“He just forgets.”

“He insists you ruined his life.”

“How could I have done that? I just got him to put all his friends in jail, that’s all. Why should he be upset about that?”

“Then he had to run for his life, he tells me. From the boxing world to cow heaven, he says. From New York City to Wyoming, which he hates or doesn’t understand, or both. He’s lonely, angry, bitter—”

“And mean. I know all that.”

“Fletch, this is the seventh or eighth time he’s called here, warning you off. You should hear him talk!”

“I have.”

“I think you’d better take him seriously.”

“I do.”

“It’s a crazy idea, anyway, taking an overweight lady to a boxers’ training camp.”

“I’ve had crazier ideas,” Fletch said, “that have worked out.”

“Fletch, he’s said he’s borrowed three shotguns from neighbors. That if you drive onto his place he and his two boys—”

“Haja and Ricky.”

“He says they’re as mean as bare wires snappin’ in a rainstorm.”

“They’re as tame as garden hoses.”

“—will blast your head off.”

“Boxers don’t know how to aim beyond arm’s length.”

“Please, Fletch. He’s serious, I swanee down the back.”

“If he calls again …” Fletch hesitated.

“What?”

“… tell him we’ll be there about nine in the morning. Leave a lamp burnin’ in the window, darlin’. I’ll be home, either with my head on my shoulders, or carried under an arm, but I’ll be there.”

After he clicked off, Crystal said, “How much does Carrie weigh?”

“One hundred and twenty three pounds.”

“You don’t know how much I weigh, do you?”

“No.”

“That’s good.”