Fletch, Too

“How do you know this truck is coming?” Fletch asked.

“It is coming.”

“Can you hear it?”

“No.”

Before dawn, Barbara, Juma, and Fletch went out to the jungle track west of Carr’s camp and waited. They stood silently in the dew almost an hour, hearing the jungle noises turn from nocturnal to diurnal. They had one knapsack among them, which Fletch kept on his back. After a while, Barbara sat down on the dry track. Fletch lowered the knapsack onto the grass. Only after Fletch sat down did Juma.

After the sun was well up, they moved into the shade. Fletch left the knapsack in the middle of the track.

“Thirsty,” Barbara said.

Juma disappeared into the jungle. He returned with two grapefruit, which they shared.

“It will come,” Juma said.

“You sure you have the right day?”

No vehicle came along the track.

“Yes.”

“It’s almost noon,” Fletch said. “We could have walked to the coast.”

“Yes,” Juma allowed. “We could walk to Shimoni.”

Juma, Fletch, and Barbara had put in two more long days of clearing brush, digging holes, looking for Carr’s lost Roman city. Muscle-weary, tired of being slick with sweat, tired of being thirsty, even Fletch had begun to believe, to wish that there was an ancient Roman city underfoot, that some evidence of a different time, a different people, a different civilization would surface. To himself, as he worked, he marveled more and more at Sheila and Carr selling their house, selling an airplane, a part of Carr’s business, and devoting eighteen months rooting about in the bush on just hope.

They had started out that morning clean and cool and fed. Watching the birds and the monkeys sporting about near and across the jungle track, they were again glistening with sweat, even in the shade. They were developing a hunger and thirst grapefruit slices did not address.

Fletch said, “I feel guilty just sitting here. I feel we ought to be back helping Sheila and Carr. They said they’re going to give up their search soon.”

“The truck will come,” Juma said.

Fletch said, “Juma. You seem to have become fond of Sheila.”

“Yes.” Juma’s eyes danced in his head. “Nice lady. Good-spirited.”

Barbara asked, “Did you actually talk to this friend of yours with the truck?”

“He’s not a friend. Not an enemy, either, I don’t think.”

Fletch sighed. “Are we friends?”

Juma smiled. “Well see.”

“Did you talk to whoever this is who is supposed to be coming by in a truck?” Barbara asked.

“No.”

“Then how do you know he’s coming?”

“He is coming.”

“Do you know the driver at all?” Fletch asked.

Juma said, “I don’t know. Probably.”

“‘Probably’?”

“Then what are we doing here?” Barbara asked.

“Waiting for the truck,” Juma said. “There is nothing to decide about.”

About one-thirty, a diesel truck carrying bags of cashews ground its gears slowly up the track. Juma asked the driver if they could ride to Shimoni with him.

Of course they were welcome.

Lying on the bags of cashews on the back of the truck, they jounced along to the coast. The truck generated a little breeze, and the cashews smelled good.

Fletch never did know if that was the truck for which they had waited all morning. It was a truck. Eventually, it had come along the track. It did pick them up. It did transport them to Shimoni.

Fletch wondered how to ask Juma if it was the right truck.

After wondering a long time, Fletch found himself asking himself the question, What does it matter?