Fletch, Too

After gazing, not really looking, into the jungle for several minutes while taking a water/rest break from his work, Fletch jumped.

A young man was looking back at him.

The young man stood perfectly still on one leg. His other foot was off the ground. His body was in profile but his head was turned to look full-faced at Fletch. Extremely tall, extremely thin, the young man’s body was an upright black stick among the foliage. He wore a feathered headdress. His earlobes had been opened and extended. They hung nearly to his shoulders. Over one shoulder he wore a strip of cloth which joined the narrow strip somehow around his waist. Bracelets were around the muscles of his arms. His anklets were red. His fingers loosely held a spear upright against his body.

“Hey!” Fletch said in suprise. “Hello!”

The young man did not speak or move.

“Jambo!” Fletch said. “Habari?”

Nothing.

Fletch held up his gallon jug of water. “Magi baridi?”

No response.

The young man stared at him silently, unmoving.

Fletch waved at him and went back to work.

With a panga he was cutting a trail wide enough through the light brush for the Jeep, from the riverbank into the jungle. He had not disturbed the baobab tree. Barefooted, in his swimming trunks, he worked alone.

Carr had told him never to take a step without looking carefully for snakes. During the morning, Fletch avoided a half dozen.

That morning Carr and the others were extending the path along the riverbank. The trees along the river were bigger, older, heavier. The ground needed filling in. That job required more of a team effort.

Doing this mindless work alone in the jungle, sweating profusely, felt good to Fletch. Besides lovemaking, his body had been confined too long to chairs and airplane seats, strange beds, the newspaper office. Since receiving the letter from his father the day of his wedding Fletch’s mind had been belted with the unexpected too regularly: the conversation with his mother; flying out to Kenya; seeing the bloody, murdered man at the airport; his father not showing up; some of the things Barbara had taken to saying and doing. He did not understand the jungle noises, but he found them soothing. He admired the birds, as they came and went. He watched for snakes and cleared a path through the brush.

During the morning, whenever Fletch would stop to straighten his back, drink some water, which was frequently, he would look at the young man standing silently, watching. The young man was more still, more unmoving, than any animate object Fletch had ever seen. Standing still for a long period is the hardest exercise. Being so still, first on one leg, then on the other, took great discipline. Fletch never saw him change his weight from one leg to the other. Why was the young man posing this way?

During his first few breaks, Fletch would hold up his water bottle in offering to the young man, then wave at him before going back to work.

But as the morning wore on and Fletch found himself thinking about this and that, “Running for Love” humming in his mind, he forgot the young man was there. Gazing around, Fletch’s eyes would not pick out the still figure unless he remembered him and focused on him. The young man’s silence, stillness, made him drop from consciousness, almost disappear from view.

Juma spotted him immediately.

Late morning, Fletch heard Juma coming down the trail Fletch had cut. He was whistling that Italian love song. From one hand dangled a full gallon of water.

“Fletch must drink plenty of water,” Juma said. “Fletch is not used to this heat. Fletch is not used to this work. Fletch comes from America, where the hardest work is pushing buttons.”

Juma’s body was as soaked with sweat as Fletch’s.

Juma put the fresh jug of water on the ground. Looking up, he saw the young man standing on the knoll.

“Ug!” Immediately, Juma grabbed up two handfuls of dirt. He flung one handful in the direction of the young man. “Idiot!” He started toward the young man. Closer, he threw the other handful of dirt. “Go away! What do you think you’re doing? Stupid!”

Juma stooped to pick up a stick.

His eyes now on Juma, the young man stepped sideways into the jungle. Immediately the foliage covered him.

“Son of a bitch!” Juma yelled after him. “Why don’t you come into this century!” Turning back to Fletch, Juma said, “At least this half of the century.” He dropped the stick.

“I wanted to see how long he’d stay that way.”

Juma waved his hand. “For the rest of his life. He’d die that way.”

“Why was he doing it?”

“Who knows? Who cares? Some of these people live in another world. They know about radios, telephones. Tire-some. Someone that age …”

“Thanks for bringing me the water.”

Juma picked up the empty jug. “Carr said he’ll be along later, with your lunch.” Juma began to walk down the trail. “Go ahead. Eat in the midday. It will make you more hot, more tired, sweat more. You Europeans insist on consuming and wasting, consuming and wasting, just to keep yourselves sick.”

The young man with the spear did not return, that Fletch could see, or feel.

Fletch was hungry for lunch well before Carr arrived.

They sat cross-legged on the ground in the center of a wide bare spot. They ate fish sandwiches with a third jug of water.

For all the water Fletch was drinking, he was urinating little.

Carr said, “I thought you’d appreciate a morning working alone.”

“I enjoyed it.”

Fletch told Carr about the young man who had spent much of the morning at silent attention watching him. And that Juma had come along and chased him away.

“Sounds like a Masai moran. A warrior. A mti. An mtii. They’re not allowed to carry shields anymore.”

“Why did he carry a spear?”

“Because of the snakes.”

“Sounds sensible. Maybe I should carry a spear.”

“Pretty far south for a Masai these days. But you never can tell. They’re nomads. Follow the grazing.”

“What tribe is Juma’s?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s Kikuyu. There are over forty tribes in East Africa.”

“And over all these centuries the tribes have remained segregated enough, distinct enough, so that you can tell one from the other?”

“Pretty much so. To this point in history, the political struggles in Africa have almost nothing to do with ideologies, East versus West, socialism versus free enterprise, communism versus capitalism. The struggles for power are among the tribes. Wish you’d tell your chaps in Washington that.”

“Ill write them a letter.”

“There’s even a tribe near here which denies it exists. No one but its own members knows its true name. You meet a member of that tribe and he will always tell you he’s a member of some other tribe. Prove to him he’s not, and he’ll say, ‘Well …’ and insist he is a member of even another tribe. They’re a secret tribe. They camouflage themselves among all the other tribes. The true name of the tribe may be the Wata.”

“Sure.” Fletch grinned. “Wata tribe. I got it.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Was Juma working with you this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Are you paying him?”

“Am I paying you?”

“No.”

Carr smiled. “You’re working off that mosquito net you and Barbara wrecked last night.”

“Oh.” Fletch scratched his elbow. “You know about that.”

“Raffles mentioned to Sheila this morning that someone will have to spend a day sewing.”

“Sorry about that.”

“There is a technique to doing what you want to do under mosquito netting. You’ll learn.”

“So why is Juma working for you if he’s not being paid?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him to come with us. I didn’t ask him to work. I guess he just wants to be with us.”

“Are you paying the other men?”

“Of course.”

“Why does Juma want to be with us?”

“Perhaps because he loves you?”

“Loves who?”

“Loves you. Loves Barbara. Do I mean love? He’s very curious about you both. He watches you very closely, how you walk, how you talk, relate to each other, and others, what and when you eat, drink, how you dress, what your bodies are like and how you use them, your minds.”

“I’m curious about Juma, too.”

“It’s a very dear relationship, if you find you can relate to it at all decently. He’s interested, but uncritical. Can you understand that?”

“The other night, standing on the sidewalk outside the Norfolk, he said something which totally baffled Barbara and me. He said he doesn’t decide who are his friends and who are not his friends. He said something like making such decisions is very hard, but he may have meant very harsh.”

“Generally very uncritical,” Carr repeated.

“He certainly made a fast decision about the young man with the spear standing in the bush over there. Instantly, he picked up things and started throwing them at him. He swore at him.”

“Yeah. Well. A modern young man like Juma is apt to have great impatience with other people, especially people his own age, who cling to tribal ways. They don’t like that spear-shaking image of Africa.”

More quietly, Fletch said, “He certainly seems to have made a rather harsh decision about Sheila.”

“Yes,” Carr said. “He inherited that. There is a distinct prejudice here against people of East Indian extraction.”

“Why?”

“Throughout Africa, throughout much of the third world in fact, Indians own most of the duccas, the stores. They do most of the trading, the buying and selling. Therefore, the native populations think the Indians have an disproportionate share of the goods and the money.”

“Do they feel the Indians exploit them?”

“Don’t we all feel a little exploited by the shopkeeper? We give him more money for something than he paid for it, and we know it. Then, with his profits, the shopkeeper goes off and builds a house better than any we could afford. Trouble is, some of the poorest Africans I know are of East Indian extraction. Some of the richest, too. Sheila was born in Kenya. She was a workingwoman when I met her. She worked for a car rental agency.”

“So Juma crosses her off completely, as a Kenyan, as a woman, as a person.”

Carr shrugged. “Prejudice is like that. Are you surprised to find prejudice in Africa?”

Fletch had finished his lunch. “Carr, I went to the jail yesterday.”

Carr’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

“To see my father.”

“They let you in?”

“They would have. My father sent out the message that he wasn’t in.”

“Cute.”

“I thought so.”

“Can’t fault old Fletcher for his humor.”

“At least I proved one thing to myself.”

“What’s that?”

“There is a Walter Did.”

“Fletcher you doubt that?”

Fletch removed a speck from his eye. “I think Barbara was beginning to hope you are my father.”

Carr laughed. “I’m flattered.”

“We came to meet my father, you see, and we met you instead.”

Carr refolded the brown paper in which he had brought lunch. “If you keep cuttin’ trail, I’ll go get the corkscrew.”

“So I know Walter Fletcher exists,” Fletch said, “which I really didn’t know before.” He sighed. “And for once in my life, I know exactly where he is.”