Fletch, Too Read online

  Barbara’s eyes were bulging out of her head. “And he teaches school?”

  “High school math.”

  Barbara looked at Fletch. “Is he the man—”

  “Shut up, he said kindly,” Fletch said.

  As they ate, Fletch kept glancing at the huge man studying his newspaper. His bald head was as big as a boulder one would have to drive around.

  Carr said, “You work for a newspaper?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nice. What particular abilities do you need for that?”

  “Strong legs.”

  “And what do you get out of it?”

  “A hell of an obituary.”

  Eating with delicate manners, the man with the rough hands asked Barbara, “And you?”

  “I’ve been working in a boutique. Selling jodhpurs.”

  “Jodhpurs? My word, you Americans dress funny.”

  As they were finishing eating, Carr said, “How do you two feel?”

  “Hot,” Barbara said.

  Fletch pulled at his sweater. “Hot.”

  “It’s not hot, you know,” Carr said. “You’re at five thousand feet altitude.”

  Fletch said, “The slopes are dry, though. Definitely you need snow.”

  “I mean, how do you feel, jet lag and all?”

  Barbara said, “Numb.”

  “We’re determined to live through the day,” Fletch answered. “Otherwise, we’ll never adjust.”

  Carr thought a moment. “Seeing your dad doesn’t appear to be appearing … How ought I say that? You write for a newspaper.”

  “He’s not here,” Fletch said. “And it’s not news.”

  “I have some private business this afternoon, out in Thika.” Suddenly there was even more red in Carr’s face. “You both seem open enough. I mean, you’re open to the fact that there is a language called Swahili, and you might pick up a few words.” Barbara was watching Carr closely, wondering what he was talking about. “Private business. An odd sort of appointment. Well,” he sighed. “Your dad seems to have missed this appointment, and I don’t mean to miss mine.” He scratched his ear. “With a witch doctor.”

  “A witch doctor,” Fletch repeated.

  “A witch doctor,” Barbara repeated.

  “I have a problem.” Carr wasn’t looking at them. “I’m not having much luck with something. There’s a question I might as well ask.”

  Barbara said to Fletch, “A witch doctor.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Fletch said.

  Carr looked at his watch. “No point your hanging around here for Fletch to show up. I mean, the other Fletch. You might as well come with me. Take a ride through the suburbs of Nairobi.”

  “Are you sure we won’t be in the way?” Fletch asked.

  Carr laughed. “No, I’m not. But what’s life without risk?”

  Barbara said to Fletch, “I think if that other Fletch shows up, we don’t particularly want to be here. Right now.”

  Carr skidded back in his chair. “I’ll get the Land-Rover. It will only take a minute. It’s over by the National Theater.”

  “Hurry up,” Barbara said. “I want to do something.”

  They ran up the stairs at the back of the lobby.

  “What?”

  On the second floor they walked along a sun-dotted courtyard in which there was a Japanese garden.

  “Get these clothes off me.”

  “Barbara, there isn’t time. We kept this nice man waiting long enough this morning. He sat there sipping only half a beer while we screwed around.”

  “Will you tell Carr about what you saw this morning at the airport?”

  “I was thinking of it.” Fletch fitted their key to the lock. “Witch doctor!”

  In their room, all their clothes had been put away.

  On the bureau was a pair of new sneakers. Next to them was a note.

  Dear Mr. Fletcher:

  Instantly your sneakers were damaged beyond repair in the wash so we have replaced them.

  With apologies,

  The Management

  Norfolk Hotel

  “My holey sneakers! How embarrassing!”

  Barbara read the note over his shoulder. “How sweet!” She had a pair of scissors in her hand. “You’re right. How embarrassing.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Take ‘em off.”

  “Take what off?”

  “I can’t stand being in these clothes. I can’t stand seeing you in those clothes. We can’t go around on the equator dressed like this.”

  “My wife is attacking me with a scissors! We haven’t been married a week!”

  “Take your pants off or I’ll cut them where you stand!”

  “Help! Dan Dawes! Save me! There’s a villain in my room!”

  In the bright, midday sunlight, the shamba was country quiet.

  Fletch and Barbara stood aside, along the stick fence inside the enclosure.

  Carr, his big, rough hands looking useless hanging at his sides, stood in front of the witch doctor.

  She sat on the ground in the doorway of her dung and thatch house. Her legs, wrapped in a black, thigh-length skirt, were straight and flat on the ground before her. Her feet were bare. There was a red Turkish cap on her head.

  Her husband, in threadbare shorts, threadbare suit coat, no shirt, barefooted, sat on a low stool to her side, facing her, utterly attentive to her.

  Together, the ancient couple did not weigh as much as one hundred pounds.

  Across the enclosure there were three young men, late teenagers, dressed only in tawdry shorts, distantly present. Two were swaying drunk. The eyes of the third shone across the courtyard, attentive, alert.

  The old lady witch doctor had drawn in white chalk a rectangle around her in the dirt, even over the dark little rug at her side. She had put white chalk dabs on each of her temples.

  Then she had sung a nonmelodic song, prayer, incantation.

  Her husband handed her a narrow-necked vase. Again and again, she would shake a few beads out of the vase into her hand, study them, flip them onto the dark rug, scatter them and regroup them with her fingers, watching how they came together. She would murmur a bit, sing a bit, gather the beads up, put them back in her vase, shake it, start over again.

  The husband watched everything she was doing with reverent attention.

  A clucking chicken crossed the enclosure.

  Carr hadn’t said much on the ride to Thika.

  He had been waiting for them outside the hotel in his Land-Rover. He smiled when he saw Barbara and Fletch now in shiny powder-blue shorts, Fletch in thick ski socks and white new sneakers, his sweater cut from armpits to waist, sleeves cut off. Barbara was in one of Fletch’s T-shirts and her rubber sandals. “That looks better,” Carr said.

  They stopped at an inn outside Nairobi called the Blue Post and had a cup of soup in a garden overlooking a short waterfall. “This soup cures all.” Carr said. “Upset stomach. Broken heart. Although not traditional, probably even jet-lag. Very special here. Made of bones.” He waved at the hills behind him. “Various animals. Boiled bones. Herbs. God knows what.” It was a soup that puckered the throat. Fletch did feel better after drinking it.

  Bouncing along the hard-top road, Carr missed the turning. He had to back up, half off the road, half on. Everywhere, along every road they had been on, besides the cars and trucks, there was a heavy traffic of people walking, both sides, going both ways, mostly people dressed in dark, cheap pants and shirts, dresses, many barefooted; always a few schoolchildren in uniform shorts and shoes, socks, shirts, and incongruous sweaters. Many times, Fletch noticed, there would be a man walking with a child or children. Carr turned onto a dirt track that wound through a field of standing corn.

  Completely invisible from the road, thirty meters inside this cornfield was a little village, a half-dozen well-spaced dung and conically thatch-roofed houses, each separated by its own thick stick fencing.

  The witch d
octor appeared and took her position sitting in the doorway as they arrived. This was a genuine appointment. Carr gave Barbara and Fletch a look indicating they should stand aside in silence. He stood in front of the old lady.

  Suddenly, the third young man, the one with the lively eyes, strode across the enclosure in a full-blown gait that could carry him across the world. He stood between Barbara and Fletch. They made room for him. He faced Carr and the witch doctor. Then he sat down on his heels.

  In a moment, he tugged Fletch’s ski sock.

  Fletch looked down.

  “I’m James,” the young man said. “Get down.”

  Fletch bent his knees but could not sit on his heels. Not for long. He sat cross-legged on the ground.

  Barbara sat cross-legged, too.

  Seeing this, James changed his position so that he, too, was sitting cross-legged. One of his knees was on Barbara’s leg, the other on Fletch’s.

  Fletch jerked his thumb at his wife. “Barbara.” He pointed his thumb at himself. “Fletch.”

  James’s eyes widened. He stared into Fletch’s eyes and then looked away. He gave Fletch the whole song, all five notes: “Oh, I see. Sorry.”

  “Say what?”

  “I know of your father.” James rushed on. “The reason I told you to sit down, you see,” James said softly, “is because these things take a long time.” He said to Barbara, “You must be careful not to get sunbite.”

  Barbara looked confused. She was against the fence. There was no place for her to move.

  Whispering, James said, “Do you know what the man asked her?”

  Carr had said something to the witch doctor after she had put the chalk around her and on her temples.

  Fletch said, “I heard, but I didn’t understand.”

  “He said he is trying to find something. He wants her to tell him where it is.”

  “Why did she put the white marks on her temples?” Barbara asked.

  James looked at her as if she had asked if the sun rises in the east everywhere. “So she can communicate through the gods on Mount Kenya with your ancestors.”

  Fletch said, “Oh, I see.”

  “The white is the snow.”

  “That’s the snow,” Barbara said.

  Sitting against the stick fence in the dirt under an equatorial sun, Fletch asked, “Has she ever seen real snow?”

  “I doubt it. She’s reading the beads. Five beads is for man, three for woman, two for house. Something like that. I don’t know. Each bead means something different. It’s all very complicated.”

  “It must take a long time to learn,” Barbara said.

  “Learn,” James said. “Yes. But, you see, she is a witch doctor.”

  “You mean, she doesn’t have to learn?”

  “Yes, much,” James said. “But you can’t learn, if you haven’t the ability.”

  James pulled a sun-bleached hair out of Fletch’s leg. He looked at it closely between his fingers in the sunlight. Still holding it, he looked at Barbara’s legs. Examining the hair again, he said, “It must be funny to be not black.”

  Fletch heard Barbara saying, “You are a blackness I’ve never seen before. You’re so very black the way some people are so very white.”

  “I have no white blood,” James said. “Probably in England or America or wherever you come from all the black people you see aren’t black at all. They have white blood. Do you like being white?”

  “Well enough,” Fletch said.

  James blew the hair off his fingers. “I haven’t decided whether it’s better being black or white.”

  “Is James your real name?” Fletch asked.

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “It’s not an African name, is it?”

  “Would you rather call me …” James seemed to be making up a name. “… Juma?”

  “Sure. I don’t care.”

  “That’s fine,” James said. “You’ve probably known another James somewhere before, and you shouldn’t confuse me with him.”

  Barbara said, “Not likely, Jim-Bob.”

  Juma giggled. “The witch doctor just said to the man, ‘You are looking for something you haven’t lost.’”

  There was a conversation going on so quietly over by the doorway Fletch was scarcely aware of it. “Did Carr agree?”

  “Carr said it’s a place he’s looking for. It’s been lost a long time.”

  Now Carr was leaning over the witch doctor.

  The old woman put her cupped hands up to him.

  Carr spit in her hands.

  Fletch looked at the ground. “Maybe I should ask her where my father is.”

  “Your father’s not lost,” Juma said. “He’s here in Kenya. Fletch. I know him.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “He flies planes. I’ve seen him. I’ve seen Carr before, too. I get everywhere.”

  Barbara said, “Shhh.”

  Juma whispered, “She said he’ll find the place, but it will be difficult. The dead people there want him to find it, so they will be remembered.” He listened a moment. “She said he must go far, far south where there are hills and look for a river.”

  Carr looked around at Fletch. His face beamed with vindication.

  “Oh, wow,” Barbara said. “Mumbo jumbo.”

  Fletch asked, “How old are you?”

  Again Juma seemed to take the time to invent something. “Thirty-seven.”

  Fletch said, “Okay.”

  Juma was listening intently. He put his hand on Fletch’s knee. “She’s talking about you.” The witch doctor was looking at her beads on the little rug, rolling them back and forth. She appeared to be talking to them. “She’s asking why don’t you come forward.”

  Forehead creased, Carr was looking at Fletch. Juma pushed him. “Get up. Go forward. She’s saying something to you.”

  Fletch got up. He dusted off the seat of his pants.

  He stood in front of the tiny witch doctor.

  Carr said, “She wants to know why you haven’t talked to her.”

  “No disrespect,” Fletch said. “Right. Where’s my father?”

  Carr started to speak to the old woman. Instantly she began to speak, not to Fletch but to the beads she was rolling around the rug.

  When she paused, Carr said, “She says you have no question, but something you must say, or it will be worse for you.”

  “What will get worse?”

  The witch doctor was continuing to make her little noises.

  “She says you must speak to her. You are carrying a box of rocks? which will get heavier and heavier until your legs break.”

  “I have strong legs.”

  “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

  “Maybe.”

  “She says you must drop this box of rocks or go away, as she does not want to see your legs shatter.”

  Fletch looked across the enclosure at the two teenagers swaying, dizzy-eyed drunk in the sunlight. He looked at Barbara and Juma sitting together against the fence like schoolchildren born and bred together. He looked down at the little old lady sitting in the dirt in the doorway of her dung house.

  He looked into Carr’s face.

  Fletch said, “They’re my rocks.”

  Fletch was the first one out of the enclosure, to spare the witch doctor the sight of his legs shattering.

  Fletch hit his head against a thick branch forming an arch over the gate.

  Juma said the two-note song: “Sorry.”

  Rubbing his head, Fletch said, “Why are you apologizing? I walked into it.”

  Juma said, “I’m sorry you bonked your noggin.”

  Barbara came through the gate, sunburned.

  Carr exited, looking bemused, if not bewitched.

  They went up the track to the Land-Rover.

  Swaying, the two young men were fumbling with the gate.

  Fletch said to Juma, “Your two friends are pretty drunk.”

  “‘Friends’?” Juma did
not look at them. He did not look at Fletch. He looked deep into the standing corn.

  Juma frowned, but said nothing.

  “No, I don’t know him.” Carr smiled. “I thought he was a friend of yours.”

  On the dance floor at the Shade Hotel, Juma was break-dancing with some paid-for performers. It was early in the evening and only a few of the tables in the yard had people at them. The performers seemed to be showing Juma a few things, and Juma seemed to be showing them a few things. A tape machine at the edge of the stage/dance floor was playing “Get Out of Town” loudly.

  “He just got into the car with us,” Barbara said. They were at a little wooden table under an umbrella. “First he said his name is James. Then he said we could call him Juma.”

  Carr said, “He probably just wants a ride back to Nairobi.”

  Carr had gone across the yard to the barbecue pit and ordered their dinners. A waitress brought three beers.

  Fletch said, “I asked him how old he is and he said thirty-seven,”

  “He is thirty-seven,” Carr said.

  They watched Juma on the stage/dance floor spinning like a top on the muscles of his left shoulder.

  “There are two rainy seasons a year here,” Carr said. “The short rains and the long rains. Ask someone how old he is, and hell tell you how many rainy seasons he has behind him. In Juma’s case, it would be thirty-seven. That means he’s eighteen and a half years old.”

  Fletch said, “Oh, I see.” He was getting the three little notes nearly right.

  On their way from the witch doctor’s shamba to the Shade Hotel, Carr had driven them on a detour through Karen. They had stopped at Karen Blixen’s, that is, Isak Dinesen’s farm, or what’s left of it. Not a tarted-up tourist attraction yet, the low stone house and a few acres adjoin a business school. They had gotten out of the Land-Rover and walked around, under the trellis, through the roots and trunks of the great trees in back.

  Barbara and Fletch had sat for a moment on the stone arrangements near the back door where Karen Blixen had held court with her people and maybe did some of her writing about them.

  “Dinesen, Hemingway, Roark,” Carr said. “That was all light-years ago, in African time.”

  “Time, space.” Juma started back to the Land-Rover. “They were always light-years away from Africa, anyway.”