Fletch Reflected

22

“This place will go to ruin in no time,” Mrs. Houston said to Jack.

He could not disagree with her.

Vindemia was already ruined.

Confused, concerned, curious, Jack had bicycled around the estate after he had cooked and eaten a large breakfast alone in his cottage.

Although it was early Sunday morning there were cars coming and going on Vindemia’s roads. And they were not maintaining the sedate speed limit. Nor were they all vehicles that belonged to the people who worked and lived on the estate. A few honked at him impatiently to get himself and his bike out of their way, off the road. An approaching car passing another sent him and his bike into a ditch.

The gates of Vindemia were open.

The guardhouse, which had stone walls a foot thick and sat in the middle of the double road, was empty. The telephone had been pulled from the wall and taken. When Jack had entered Vindemia he thought he had seen a small television in the guardhouse. There was none there now.

The gatehouse itself appeared empty. A first floor window had been smashed. Curtains flapped through an open second story window. The screen on the back door had been broken.

From there, Jack looked back at the main house, a mile away.

The ten huge blue and white flags were not waving from the roof of the house. No one had raised the flags, even to half mast.

Jack realized he had missed the sound of the flags snapping in the wind.

He rode to the village.

In the streets around the village cars were parked in front of nearly every house. A few cars were parked on the lawns immediately in front of houses. There were more children’s toys scattered in the yards than there were children playing with them.

There were many cars and pickup trucks parked in front of the General Store. The woman who had been clerking the store stood on the porch in a housedress and slippers. She glanced at Jack when he pulled up on his bike. She had a coughing fit. Two men came out of the store carrying cases of groceries, passed her on the porch, went down the steps and packed the cases in the trunk of a small car.

On the sidewalk in front of the Recreation Center had been spray painted: GIMME SOME SUGAR, SANDY.

At the end of the street the digital clock in the tower whirred silently. The flag on the tower had not been raised.

Deducing easily, Jack rode to the vehicle compound.

The chain locking the gate had been cut through. The chain-link gate was open. The door to the shed had been kicked in.

Almost all the cars, except Jack’s, were gone.

In the shed Jack found his own car keys hanging on a peg and pocketed them.

Only a few airplanes, the two small jets marked RADLIEGH MIRROR, the ancient two-seater, and another small corporate jet were still there. Jack had been hearing the planes of party guests taking off much of the morning, even before dawn.

There were no cars in the parking lot of the office building.

He rode around the country club. There were many cars parked there. Sunday midmorning it sounded as if a party were raging. Jack smelled pork barbecue smoking. Golf carts were lined up at the first tee like toll booth traffic. There were more brightly clad people stirring around the country club than Jack knew were on Vindemia.

He watched teen-agers racing golf carts. The youngsters were trying to brake and spin the golf carts simultaneously to cut up the lawn. One racing golf cart nearly tipped over on the slope surrounding the swimming pool. That caused a laugh.

Biking back toward the main house, Jack found Mrs. Houston walking on the green verge along the side of the road. She carried a thick brown walking stick. She was not using it to walk.

Jack stopped his bike to talk with her. They were in the shade of the deciduous trees spaced along the sides of the road.

“You know,” she said, “when we first came here, when Chester was first beginning to build Vindemia, he tried to run a garden of his own. I guess I talked him into it.

“He couldn’t do it.

“He built a tight fence around it that went down three feet into the ground and six feet into the air, put a gate on it, and locked it. I asked him if he thought rabbits and deer and groundhogs have degrees in engineering.

“He watered it twice a day. Every day he gave it fertilizer. There was no such thing as a weed in that garden. As soon as I knew what he was doing, I told him to stop, leave it alone. Every time a plant looked peakish, he replaced it.

“He spoiled it. He killed it with care.”

While they talked, a pickup truck came along the road. Two men rode in front. A third stood in back.

There were two rifles in a rack in the truck’s rear window.

The truck was going slowly.

The two men in front waved at them.

As the truck passed, the man standing in back smiled down at them. He said to them, “Sure is a pretty place you have here.”

Neither Mrs. Houston nor Jack waved, smiled, or answered.

As the truck went around the curve an empty beer can thrown from it hit the pavement and rattled until it ran out of momentum.

Glancing at Mrs. Houston, Jack saw her cheeks wet with tears.

“Chester was that way,” Mrs. Houston said. “He thought about what people wanted, to be happy and healthy, needed, to fulfill themselves and be useful, and he provided it with an open hand. He protected them, even from themselves, if you know what I mean. And instead of getting back pleasure in their strength, happiness, accomplishments, some respect, appreciation, all he got back was envy, resentment, anger, hatred, everybody’s desire to destroy him or see him destroyed.

“He had to give up on his flower garden.

“Why didn’t he learn from it?”