Fletch, Too

Fletch sat with Carr at the little table on the terrace on the sand bluff overlooking Lake Turkana. “A lake in the middle of a desert,” Fletch said.

Carr said, “The lake is down about a mile from its edges since I’ve known it.”

In the airplane coming in, Fletch had watched the Kerio River wandering over sand toward Lake Turkana. The river dried up miles before it reached the lake. A sad, empty landscape surrounded the lake, miles and miles in every direction. The only marks upon the landscape, besides the few, widely separated shambas, were water catchments, which were empty.

“The lake of many names.” Carr gazed over it. “Aman, Galana, Basso Narok, Jade Sea, Lake Rudolf, Lake Turkana. There are Nile River perch in it. Explain that to me. They used to grow to as much as two hundred pounds. Nowadays, they run thirty, forty pounds.”

Naked men on logs were fishing the lake.

A waiter brought two glasses, two bottles of premium beer, two bottles of lemon carbonated drink. “Thank you, Fred,” Carr said. He poured some of the beer and some of the lemon drink in each glass to make the shandies.

“Over there is Koobi Fora.” Carr tipped his head to the east side of the lake as he poured. “Where they found the remains of extinct elephants, both African and Indian. Explain to me how the skeletons of Indian elephants come to be here. Also seven human footprints, dated a million and a half years old. And, although some debate it, the remains of our first human ancestor, Homo erectus. First man. The papa of us all.”

To the eye, the other side of the lake was just rolling sand. Fletch said, “Lots to be explained.”

“I’ll say.”

A small, naked boy with a tall stack of aluminum pots on his head was trudging straight-backed through the sand from the village behind the lodge toward the lake.

“One can’t imagine what the landscape might have been like here when it first cradled human life,” Carr said. “Sure makes one curious.”

Fletch tried his shandy. “Is the research why McCoy flew here?” Then he took a thirst-quenching drink.

“I don’t know.” Carr blinked. “I didn’t ask him. Science wallah named Richard Leakey is in charge of all.”

“I can see why you’re digging around, looking for a lost Roman city.”

“What I’m doing is nothing. I’m just trying to go back a few thousand years.” From the terrace, Carr was scanning the horizon. “The landscape sort of calls for it. Here, in East Africa, you have sort of a time capsule, or time map. All of animate life before our very eyes, much of it still walking around, the rest being ghosts calling to us to be discovered. Here we all want to read the bones.”

Using only their hands as paddles, the fishermen straddling logs were coming in toward shore.

Fletch took another long swallow. “Carr, I was sort of surprised when you left our wounded man at the police station.”

Flying in, Carr had buzzed the lodge in the plane, signaling the manager, Hassan, to send a car for them. He had not been able to get the lodge on the radio.

While they were waiting at the airstrip, a man looking more ancient than Fletch had ever seen, longevity walking briskly in a loincloth, carrying a spear, marched out from under a bush. Carr said this man would be in charge of the airplane while they were at the fishing lodge.

“I’ve never seen anyone so old,” Fletch said. “How old is he?”

“Right,” Carr said. “About my age.” Fletch figured Carr to be in his late forties.

The Land-Rover which brought them to the village was driven so fast over the packed sand road Fletch was sure it would fall apart. He was sure the man’s split skull would fall apart.

“Did you see a hospital?” Carr upended his glass. “The colonists were better at building police stations than hospitals.”

They had left the wounded man propped on a wooden bench inside the police station. Carr had explained everything to the only officer there. When they left, the police officer was still working on papers at his school-sized desk. He had only glanced at the wounded man when Carr had said he was a thief.

And the wounded man had watched them leave with eyes of weary patience.

“What will they do with him?” Fletch asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe put him back in the bush. Or into the lake.” Crossing Ferguson Gulf to the lodge in an aluminum outboard boat, they went through a herd of crocodiles. Flamingos stood in the shallower water. “McCoy is right, you know. One shouldn’t meddle too much. I was indulging my own conscience.”

“You were being kind,”

“Kind to myself. That’s the hell of original sin, you see. One can never be quite sure what is kindness to another.”

Near the water’s edge, the little boy with the pots on his head was doing a crazy dance in the sand. None of the pots fell off his head.

Watching Fletch watching the boy, Carr said, “Once in a small village way out in the bush, I saw a woman buy a postage stamp. She put the postage stamp on her head facedown, and then placed a rock on the stamp, to walk home that way. Made great sense. That way the glue on the stamp wouldn’t get sweated away, and the stamp wouldn’t blow away.”

“I doubt I could walk two meters with a rock on my head,” Fletch said. “Or a postage stamp.”

Carr said, “My witch friend in Thika says you’re carrying a whole box of rocks.”

Fletch said nothing.

One of the fishermen who had emerged from the lake, shoving his log ashore, grabbed up the small boy. Holding the boy to his chest, the man danced in circles. The pots flew off the boy’s head and scattered everywhere in the sand.

“Instead of wondering what the land tells us,” Carr said, “right now, I’m wondering what the sky is trying to tell us. I think we’d better eat.”

“Okay.” Finishing his drink, moving slowly in the heat, Fletch watched the naked man and boy give the pots a quick rinse in the lake.

Entering the lodge’s dining porch, Fletch saw the man and boy, hand in hand, begin their trudge through the sand back toward the village. Again, all the pots were stacked tall on the kid’s head.