“Your father was a murderer.” Barbara was buckling herself into her airplane seat aboard the midnight flight to London from Nairobi. “Won’t your mother love that? Think of all the books she’s written looking for the murderer.”
Fletch was already buckled into his seat. He sighed.
He said nothing.
He had a long way to go with the other passengers aboard.
He had a long way to go with Barbara.
After they were airborne and the No Smoking sign went off and the stewardesses demonstrated to the passengers what to do if the airplane ditched and the Fasten Seat Belt light went off, the voice over the public address system said, “Will passenger Fletcher please identify himself. Mr. I. M. Fletcher?”
Building a nest for herself in her seat, clearly Barbara did not hear the request.
Fletch took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Don’t you suspect your passports are phonies! More trouble could wait.
The rain had not lightened enough for them to take off from the camp until afternoon. Packing the airplane, Carr made lame jokes about the skis. No one looked down the runway track to where an airplane had crashed that morning, burned itself up; where there was still a corpse.
There was a good-bye scene of mixed emotion. The workmen, including Winston and Raffles, said good-bye individually. Sheila had hugs and kisses for Fletch, Barbara, and Juma. They were all sad to be parting, sad to be standing near a terrible death, yet each quite glad that something sought at great expense had been found, that a historic discovery had been made, and that each had been part of it.
Nor did Fletch look down for the burn hole in the woods as they took off.
He did not put on his new white sneakers, courtesy of the Norfolk Hotel, until they landed at Wilson Airport.
Juma and Carr helped them with their luggage to the International Airport. Juma stood with them while Carr took their return ticket to the airline counter.
The few people who were in the airport at that hour looked curiously at the skis.
Fletch said to Juma: “Nice time.”
Juma’s head tilted. “Sorry.”
“You have seats on tonight’s flight.” Their tickets and boarding passes were in Carr’s hand when he returned. “You have to take your luggage through Customs yourself. Do you have any Kenyan money? You have to turn it in.”
Both Barbara and Fletch dug out the few Kenyan shillings they had and handed them to Juma. Laughing, they both said: “No.”
Money in hand, Juma bent over laughing.
Carr said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a long time. The plane doesn’t leave until midnight.”
“Well be all right,” Fletch said. “I need to sit down.”
“You’ll feel all right on the flight?”
“Sure. I need the rest.”
“Well.” Carr looked around the nearly empty terminal. “There are things I must go do.”
Fletch said, “I understand.”
“One happy, one sad.”
“You’ll arrange for a funeral?” Barbara said.
Carr hesitated. “Oh, yes.”
Fletch said, “Carr … Peter Carr, we thank you—”
“No, no.” Turning away, his face reddened, Carr waved down Fletch’s speech. “Don’t embarrass us.”
Barbara said, “Thank you, Peter Carr.”
Fletch hugged Juma. “I’ll see you on television, kid.”
“See you on the funnies pages.”
While Barbara hugged Juma, Fletch hugged Carr. Then there was a general shaking of hands all ’round.
“Bye,” Carr said. “Fletch.”
Fletch said to Juma: “Friends?”
“Why not?” Juma asked. “Nice time.”
Fletch tilted his head.
The wait at the terminal seemed interminable. Barbara read magazines. Fletch thought over the account of the murder of Louis Ramon and the death of Walter Fletcher he had written and handed Carr.
Slowly it dawned on him that he had another story to write. A story much better than the stories of avalanches, mud slides, major earthquakes, airplane crashes, train wrecks, mass murders, airport bombings Frank Jaffe had requested. He had the story to write of Sheila and Peter Carr, the story of their historic discovery of the ruins of an ancient Roman city on the east coast of Africa.
After thinking about it, Fletch decided he would not mention to Barbara just yet that he would get a story for the newspaper out of their honeymoon.
Barbara nudged him. “That’s you.”
“They just paged you. Would passenger I. M. Fletcher please identify himself?’ she just said.”
“Oh.”
Fletch raised his hand. There were people milling about in the aisles.
“Maybe we get a free bottle of champagne,” Barbara said. “That would nice.”
“You’re always hoping.”
“Mr. Fletcher?”
“Yes.”
The stewardess handed him a letter.
“Mail delivery in midair?” he asked.
“Someone sent it aboard requesting it be delivered to you after takeoff. Would you like a drink?”
“No, thanks.” Opening the envelope, Fletch said to Barbara, “It’s from Carr.”
“Oh. No champagne.”
The letter read:
Dear Irwin:
The plan was that after meeting and greeting you and your bride, the man Walter Fletcher and I were going to take you aside and quietly explain ourselves.
Instead, the man Fletcher understood he was to meet you at International Airport and got himself into his own trouble, as you and I both know.
As you now must realize, the Kenyan government takes their official documents very seriously indeed. With the man Fletcher in jail, I suddenly saw him, and you and Barbara, as loose cannons careening around the deck. Forgive me, but I think you can understand I did not want my particular ship to sink, not at this point in my life.
The facts are these. I was in Kenya at the time English colonists had the choice of either going back to England or of turning their English passports in for Kenyan citizenship. I had flown planes in Chile, Australia, Colombia, then here. Even I had come to the point where I wanted to be a part of somewhere, of Kenya. While in Colombia, I had faked out heavy smuggler types, causing several to be shot, and they had proven slow to forgive. Occasionally, therefore, odd people would appear, looking for me, and I’d have to go hide in the bush until they went away. This was inconvenient. Always when they left they would leave the message that they would keep looking until they found me.
At the same time, Peter Carr had heavy debts he couldn’t pay, both in England and in France. I never inquired too deeply into the nature of his difficulties, but I believe they were severe.
Peter was English; I, American.
With only a little doctoring, during those days of official confusion, we switched passports, my American for his British, which I turned in for Kenyan. People who subsequently came looking for Walter Fletcher found Carr, and did not shoot him; people who came looking for Peter Carr found me, and left me similarly intact.
Thus we lived peacefully for years.
I realized I was taking a risk in inviting you and your bride here, but one, I thought, we could survive.
I was only half right.
I don’t deserve to be reported well to your mother, I suppose. We are grown-up people now. For each other, we can never be children again.
We were children when we married.
There was a storm the night in Montana I took off to fly home, just having had the news of your birth, but I never saw the storm. I landed at a small, closed airport just before dark. See in your mind’s eye, if you can, a boy, a teenager, sitting in the cockpit of his airplane at the end of a runway of a small, closed Montana airfield, a blizzard raging a few miles ahead of him, a very young husband who had just been told he was a very, very young father, shivering, feeling, thinking. More than my feet were cold. It was not Josie, my wife, I was rejecting. It was not you, Irwin Maurice, my son, I was rejecting (despite your moniker). I was rejecting myself that night, the idea of myself, as husband and father. That night I knew, as an absolute certainty, that I would be a terrible father, a terrible husband, a total disappointment, that I would cause more pain than we all could stand. There was no doubt in that boy’s mind, sitting in the dark, shivering in the cockpit, that you would be better off without me. I could have flown into the side of a mountain that night. I didn’t. For us all, I took the next option: disappear, get out of your lives, go have my own accidents without you as victims. Two days later, in British Columbia, I read of my probable demise. I left it at that.
Even so, I know I have caused you both much pain. Through the international brotherhood of flying buddies, I have had occasional reports, photographs of each of you. You’ve done okay without me; better I think, than you would have done with me. The history of my achieving my present maturity would gray the hair and crack the spine of even the most casual but consistent observer. I’ve barely survived it myself.
If you cannot report well of me to your mother, someday you might let her know I read her books as love letters I don’t deserve.
To you, my son, I offer a simple, sustaining thought: one mellows.
I appreciate your having enough mild curiosity to come see me.