Son of Fletch

19

“Blythe 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….”