Fletch, Too

The hard rain did not begin until late the next afternoon.

Fletch had a raging fever.

Looking up, Fletch saw Carr’s face looming above him, looking larger than normal. Above Carr’s head was the peak of the tent. Fletch did not know how he came to be on the narrow cot in a tent. His legs ached. His head ached. He was cold. Sweating cold. His mouth tasted filthy. His right shoulder pained. He did not know the source of the pain in his shoulder.

“How do you feel?” Carr asked.

Fletch thought it all through again. “Wonderful.”

“That’s good.”

“May I have a blanket?”

“Sure.” Carr stuck a thermometer in Fletch’s mouth.

Barbara’s round-eyed face was over the end of the cot. Arms folded across his chest, Juma stood near the tent flap.

Raffles came in and covered Fletch’s body with a brown blanket.

Carr removed the thermometer and studied it. “At least now we know it wasn’t my superb flying that laid you low.”

“I’m hot.”

“I’ll say you are.”

Carr fed him a glass of cold soup and two pills.

“Pity,” said Carr. “We’re planning fettucini with a nice anchovy sauce for dinner.”

Consciousness coming and going, Fletch marked time through the night. He heard pots and lids banging in the cooking tent and then talk and laughter from the eating tent. Carr came to see him again, shook him awake, said something Fletch couldn’t remember long enough to answer, gave him two more pills, more cold soup. At some point, he saw Barbara’s face in the low light of the kerosene lamp. Then silence, long, long silence. Carr came again during the night. He helped Fletch sit up, take more soup, more pills. For a while, Fletch remained awake under the mosquito netting, conscious now of the raucous jungle noises. Hot, he tossed the blanket off. Cold, he pulled it back up to his chin.

Carr was there again in the morning. He read the thermometer in the daylight near the tent flap. “May you live as old as this reads,” he muttered. More soup. More pills.

“How do you feel?”

“Wonderful.”

“That’s good.”

There were more happy noises from the cooking tent, eating tent. Someone kept whistling the first four bars of that popular Italian song. Over and over. Maybe it was a bird.

Juma stood beside Fletch. He said nothing.

After a long while, Carr was in the tent with Barbara and Sheila.

Carr said, “You awake?”

“Wonderful.”

“We’re going to trek through the jungle to that mound we saw yesterday. Do you remember?”

“Sure. Mound.”

“See if we can dig up anything. Pick-and-shovel brigade. You’ll be all right?”

“Sure.”

“Sheila’s staying here. Can’t drag her through the jungle anyway. She’ll keep putting fluids into you, and pills.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll be back.”

“Right. Good luck.”

“You’ll be better when we get back,” Carr said.

“Absolutely.”

Carr’s big bulk moved away from the cot.

Barbara asked, “You want me to stay?”

Fletch wanted her not to have asked. “No.”

“I can stay.”

“No. It’s an exciting day.”

“You’ll be all right?”

“Go find the lost Roman city. You don’t want to miss that.”

“I really believe it is there.”

“Hope it is.”

“If you rather I stay …”

“No. Go with them. Go.”

“… okay.”

Barbara left the tent sideways.

Sheila’s voice seemed stronger. “You want anything now?”

“No. I’m fine.”

Sheila left.

Distantly, Fletch heard the Jeep start. Voices called to each other. The Jeep’s engine accelerated. There was a shout, a squeak of brakes. The Jeep started off again.

Raffles came in and washed down Fletch’s body with cold, wet rags. It felt wonderful. Raffles even turned Fletch on each side, to wash his back thoroughly.

“Raphael?”

“Yes?”

“Will you bring every blanket in the camp, please, and pile them on top of me?”

“Well. Okay.”

During the morning, Raffles and Winston entered the tent, not saying anything. They picked up the cot with Fletch in it and carried him outside. It was a surprisingly dark, gloomy day. They set him evenly on the ground under a tree.

Winston put a camp chair next to the cot.

“Rain?” Fletch asked.

“No,” Winston said. “Many times it looks like rain here, but there is no rain.”

Sometimes when Fletch awoke, Sheila was sitting in the chair, sometimes not. Sometimes she was leaning forward, working a wet rag over his face and chest. She gave him soup and a lighter, cold herb tea and the pills while either Raffles or Winston held his head up.

“Are they back yet?” Fletch asked.

Sheila said, “No.”

“You should be with them.”

“I’m glad to be with you.”

“What time is it?”

“Never mind.”

Going and coming. The day got darker rather than brighter. The air was heavy.

It was a long day.

Again, Fletch awoke in the tent. He didn’t remember being carried back.

Carr was standing over him, smiling.

Fletch hadn’t heard the Jeep.

“How do you feel?” Fletch asked.

“Wonderful!” Carr held his hand out. Fletch did not reach for it. Carr held something up for him to see.

“What is it?”

“Pottery shard. You can see a piece of what is distinctly a Roman soldier walking with a spear and a shield.”

“Fabulous!”

Carr held up his other hand. Something glinted in the low kerosene light.

“And, in case you have any doubts about what we have found, look! A coin!”

“No!”

“Yes!” Carr laughed. “Showing the head of Caesar Augustus. Or so we think. Wasn’t he the pretty one?”

“They were all pretty, as boys.”

“Definitely Caesar Someone.”

“My God!”

“And I think we may have found the top of an ancient wall. Pretty sure of it.”

“Carr, that’s wonderful!”

“I’ll say. Sheila’s outside doing the Masai jump, which ain’t easy on a crutch.”

“What’s that?” Fletch heard something like clods of dirt being thrown against the tent.

“Rain.”

“It’s going to rain?”

“Probably not.”

“Carr. Congratulations. Good news. Sorry I wasn’t there.”

Barbara came in behind Carr, to see how Fletch was.

“Fine.”

Carr said, “I’ll be back later, to take your temperature.”

Later, the sound of the rain was wild. Fletch heard none of the cooking, dining noises. The tent sides were billowing from the gusts of rain.

Fletch watched the water seeping in from under the tent sides. A few rivulets first, turning into brave streams, as well as a general dampness growing in from the sides, all sides; soon there were good-sized puddles inside the tent.

Carr was soaking when he came in.

He turned up the kerosene light on the box to read the thermometer. Frowning, he said, “You’re pretty sick, Irwin.”

“Sick of Irwin.”

“You should be better.”

“I agree.”

“You can only keep up these high temperatures so long, you know.”

“How long?”

Hands on hips, Carr watched how the rain beat down on the tent. “Can’t fly you out to the hospital in Nairobi in this weather. Can’t take off.” He looked sideways and down at Fletch. “You’ve got to get better.”

“My legs, Carr.”

“What about ‘em?”

“They feel awful.”

“Like what?”

“All broken up.”

Carr pinched a toe on each foot. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes.”

“Can you feel that?”

“Yes.”

“It’s just the fever.”

“They feel all broken up.”

More soup, more pills.

Fletch awoke while Raffles was washing him down again.

Fletch wanted all the blankets back on him.

The three blankets were soaked through. They weighed like lead.

Leaving, Raffles had to fight with the tent flap to secure it down against the wind and the rain.

Later, when Fletch awoke, Juma was standing over him silently. In the low light from the kerosene lamp, Juma’s hair and skin glistened with rainwater.

Fletch said, “Not a nice time.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“You’ve got to put down that box of rocks.”

The muscles in Fletch’s lower stomach heaved.

Juma helped Fletch throw up, on the ground, on the side of the cot away from the tent flap.

Then Juma was there, wet again, with a broom, pushing the vomit and the mud around it out of the tent. He held the bottom of the tent up with one hand while he swept the vomit out under it.

Alone, Fletch listened to the rain. It was interesting watching the vomit seep back in, under the tent wall.

When his stomach felt better, he rolled onto his back.

“Oh!” Fletch jumped awake.

There was a terrible smell in his nostrils.

Huge, red-veined eyes were staring into his from only a few centimeters away. His ears were filled with a weird, high crooning. There was pressure, warmth, against his forehead, and against his heart, and his penis and scrotum were warm. It was not the warmth of the jungle heat or the warmth of the fever. It was a different, drier, more real, more human warmth.

Looking down as much as he could from the staring eyes, Fletch saw the nose, the cheeks of an old face. Orange streaks were painted on the face.

The breath of the crooning old man was horrible in Fletch’s nose, mouth.

The old man’s forehead was pressed against Fletch’s. The old man’s left hand was pressed against the skin of Fletch’s heart. The old man’s right hand was cupped in Fletch’s crotch, over his penis and scrotum.

Breathing into Fletch’s face, the old man was crooning up and down the scales.

Fletch said, “Jesus Christ.”

When he awoke, the old man was gone. Had he dreamt it? The stink was still in his nostrils. The three wet-heavy blankets were smoothed over him again, from toe to chin.

He felt no better from the event, the reality, the dream. Except for the lingering smell, he felt no worse.

Box of rocks.

Then Carr, bare-chested, wet, was shaking more pills out of a bottle.

Fletch did not remember taking them.

The sound of the rain, pelting the ground outside, hammering against the tent, went on and went on and went on.

Suddenly, Fletch’s eyes were wide open. The low light from the kerosene lamp had not changed. The box on which the lamp stood, as well as the wet towel on the box, was suddenly clearer in Fletch’s eyes. The seams of the tent over his head were more distinct.

The air seemed cleaner in his nostrils. The ache in his head was gone, until he moved his head too quickly.

His arms were happy to move, lightly, as they were ordered.

He was free, free of the fever.

Through the sound of the rain he heard men talking. Two men. Their voices came and went under the sound of the rain.

No one was in the tent with him.

Realizing how heavy, wet the blankets were, he pushed them off him, to the bottom of the cot. Lying down again, he raised his legs, brought his knees to his chest, straightened them, let them down.

Free.

A decision had been made.

Bare feet in the mud, Fletch sat on the edge of the cot and tried to think about the decision. He listened to the rain. He felt cool, normal. There was nothing to think about.

The decision had been made.

This was right. This was normalcy. This was health. This was being alive. If he wanted to be open to life, health, normalcy, rightness, he also had to be open to the decision, commit himself to it, act on it, because the decision was based upon decisions made by everybody, everywhere, a long, long time ago, in the beginning, and those decisions, once made, determined how everything worked, life, health, defined normalcy, and if one, anyone, did not act basically within those deductions, or acted against them, or decided something else, then legs, which hold us up, support us, permit basic movement, progress, shatter, and shortly we are sitting in the dust, all of us, corrupt and cracked-headed, corrupting, awaiting the jackals.

Tired rising from the cot, dizzy at first, Fletch stood a moment sucking in the jungle air, heavy with rain. He could smell the jungle, the rotting roots and the slashed green leaves. He could hear the noises of the animals as they moved around in their world, acting within decisions, what was normal, what was health, what was life for them.

Making choices is the ultimate freedom in a world in which decisions have been made to permit such freedom. Failure to see that sometimes no choice can be made, that there is no personal decision, is the ultimate folly, the absolute destruction of self and all.

Fletch took the wet towel and tucked it around his waist.

Pushing aside the tent flap, he looked outside. There were signs of dawn in the sky. The rain was a nearly solid, straight-down torrent, hitting so hard it made the ground look almost jumping.

From which direction was the sound of two men talking coming? Two men, talking loudly over the sound of the rain, in English. Laughing. Listening through the opened tent flap, just inside his tent, Fletch could not make out what they were saying.

A tent across the way, newly put up, showed dim light around the edges of its flap.

Unsteadily, the rain beating on him, feeling good, feeling weary, feeling fresh, feeling slightly dizzy, Fletch splashed and slithered across the campside mud barefooted.

Do I have to do this? Am I sure I have nothing to decide? The decision has been made. We exist within context. That is our first, our only, our last decision. Making choices is the ultimate freedom. There is no freedom without basic decisions having been made. Self-discipline is the greatest exercise of freedom.

He pulled aside the tent flap and looked in.

Inside, Peter Carr and Walter Fletcher sat in canvas, wood-framed camp chairs. Each had a glass in hand. On the box beside the kerosene lamp was a nearly empty bottle of whiskey.

They stopped talking. They stared at Fletch.

The lines in their faces moved up from around their mouths to around their eyes.

Fletch said to Walter Fletcher: “Thanks for coming to the airport to meet us.”