Fletch, Too Read online

  At dawn they stood by the main road. An iced fish truck going to Mombasa took them part of the way. After walking an hour, an old Kenyan née English farm couple picked them up in a Land-Rover they said they had brought to Kenya thirty-six years before. It jounced along well. Juma knew when to start walking again through the bush.

  They walked most of the way back to camp.

  Early afternoon they found Carr and Sheila with a team of workmen setting up the corkscrew for another dig downriver. Sheila stumped around on her crutch, being as helpful as she could be. Clearly, though, from the expressions on their faces, the way they moved, Sheila’s frustration had grown, Carr’s patience had thinned.

  That afternoon, in the steamy jungle, Sheila and Carr would have listened to any idea.

  Sitting in the shade of a baobab, Barbara, Juma, and Fletch explained the possibility they had thought of, that sometime during the last two or three thousand years the river had changed course. They should look for signs of another river in the area, one that no longer existed, one that might have existed in times of the Roman Empire, upon the banks of which the Romans might have built their city …

  Hearing the excited talk, the workmen worked themselves closer, then stopped, to listen.

  After listening, Carr studied Sheila’s face. “What do you think, old dear?”

  Sheila shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “Do you suppose we could spot such a thing from the air?” Carr asked.

  “Yes,” Barbara said firmly.

  “Maybe,” said Fletch.

  Wearily, Carr stood up. “I suppose it’s worth taking the plane up for a spin. I’m beginning to feel like an earthworm anyway.”

  Making a chair by clasping their hands and wrists together, Fletch and Juma speeded the laughing Sheila up the riverbank, through the camp, to the airplane.

  Having the idea the dry riverbed might be there, they spotted it almost immediately. A wandering, snakelike trail departed from the river five kilometers north of the camp to the right, the west, and wandered discernibly through the jungle on a longer course to the sea.

  Following it, Carr pointed through the windshield and shouted to everyone. “You see? At some time in history, the river fell to lower ground, took a shorter course to the sea.”

  “Water takes the course of least resistance,” Sheila piped up from the back, “unlike some reasonably intelligent people I know.”

  Carr was taking them all for a spin in the airplane—literally. He followed the dry riverbed to the sea. He flew low, at treetop level along it, to the east of it. Swooping up and down, crossing back and forth, he was proving to himself and everyone that the dry riverbed was distinguishable from all heights, all angles.

  Fletch was sick.

  Quite suddenly, he found himself fighting not to vomit. Below them, the landscape was moving much too fast, tilting, coming and going. His vision blurred. His head pounded as if stuffed with rusty pistons in a rapidly accelerating engine. The back of his neck tightened to pain. As well as he could, he sucked huge amounts of air into his lungs.

  A very different sort of sweat was on his face, the sort that made his skin feel distant to himself, and cold.

  “Carr,” he groaned. “I think you’d better put me on the ground soon.”

  “Look!” They were high in the air again. Barbara was pointing forward, so that Carr could see. “Look at that little hill.”

  “Look at that!” Carr banged the heel of his right hand against the control panel. “Right where I figured! A lovely big mound on a bend at the west side of the river, how far from the sea?”

  “Maybe ten kilometers,” Juma said.

  “That much, you think?” Carr spun the plane around and down, down again to the large mound next to the dry riverbed. He flew over it and around it several times. “If there’s not a city under that hillock,” Carr said, “I’ll eat a zebra raw!”

  Barbara said, “You just might.”

  Carr was really showing what he could do with an airplane that afternoon.

  When the airplane fell, Fletch’s stomach remained in the air. When the airplane rolled, Fletch felt his stomach was going to be splattered out through his sides. When the plane climbed, his stomach met itself just coming down with a lurch.

  His head wanted to burrow into the soft earth below.

  Getting into the airplane and taking off, Fletch had felt well enough.

  Shortly after takeoff, he felt a stab of pain in his eyes. Afternoon sunlight reflecting from the windshield of another airplane, far away, seemed to cut right through his brain.

  Breathing hard through lips that felt like sausages, Fletch knew he could not contain vomit much longer.

  He grabbed Carr’s forearm. “Carr!” he shouted. “I’m sick! Really sick! Please put me down on the ground as soon as you can!”

  “Tender tummy?” Carr examined Fletch’s face. “You’ve never complained of it before.” He rolled the plane into a left turn. “Hold on!”

  Only to Fletch did the rest of the flight seem interminable.

  He heard Carr say, “Hello. Look what the hyena dragged in.”

  Fletch opened his eyes. The airplane was approaching the landing track leading uphill to the camp.

  At the top of the track was parked a yellow airplane with green swooshes. The cockpit hatch was open.

  A man in khaki shorts and shirt stood beside the plane, watching them land.

  Fletch not only had the cockpit door open, but his seat belt off before Carr’s plane touched the ground.

  While the plane was still taxiing, Fletch crawled out onto the wing. As soon as the plane slowed, he rolled off the wing onto the ground, which, thankfully, did not move.

  Kneeling, Fletch vomited onto the ground.

  The plane came to a complete stop fifteen meters up the track. Everyone was helloing and offering to help Sheila disembark.

  Trying to keep his back to everyone, while trying not to kneel in his own vomit, trying to find new places to vomit, Fletch walked sideways on his bare knees across the track.

  Behind him, near the airplane, there was much excited talk. He heard the name Walter Fletcher. The names Barbara, Juma. Happy, happy talk about the new hope of their finding the lost Roman city. Comments about Sheila’s broken leg and Juma’s heroism. Something about the Thorn Tree Café.

  The voices were approaching Fletch.

  He scraped his knees a little further along the dirt.

  “And this,” he heard Carr say, standing over him, behind him, “is Irwin Maurice Fletcher. Bit under the weather at the moment, as you can see. ‘Fraid I did one too many loop-de-loops for him.”

  Surveying the long trails of vomit and knee scrapes he had left across the track, Fletch wiped his nose and his lips and his chin with his hands.

  Then, using his hands to push himself up from the ground, he stood up. His knees felt as if they had never worked, never bent, never clicked straight. They wobbled. His lower back felt like a rusty crane.

  He took a deep breath.

  He turned around.

  Carr looking solid, arms akimbo, Sheila on her crutch, one foot off the ground, Juma smiling uncertainly, eyes dancing, Barbara dressed like a drugged Sunset Strip tart, hair dirty, sweat and dirt sworling on her skin, stood with a stranger among them, all looking at Fletch.

  The stranger said, “He’s a pretty poor-lookin’ specimen, isn’t he?”

  Everything below Fletch’s waist went numb.

  He raised his face, for air. His eyes closed against a spinning sky.

  When his knees hit the ground, the back of his neck snapped forward. His right shoulder was shot with pain as he landed badly on his arm, twisting it.

  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 na
rrow 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 tha
t?”

  “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.