“Isn’t that what kids do? I’ve heard something like that, from parents.” Fletch picked up the phone. “I’ve got to call the sheriff’s department.”
“I wish I could call Francie,” Carrie said. “Guess I’ll have to wait.”
“Maybe forever,” Fletch said.
“AETNA? HOW COME you’re workin’ Sunday morning? The choir can’t do without you.”
“Hydy, Mister Fletcher. Everybody else seems just plumb wore out, after all this excitement about those escaped convicts, and all. Haven’t heard gurgle or burp from the sheriff since sometime yesterday. He could be dead, for all I know.”
Fletch neither confirmed nor denied.
“Say, Aetna, we have a dead body out here in the gully.”
Carrie’s eyes popped.
“You don’t say.”
“I do. He’s been there all day yesterday, from the looks of him. His body is all swollen up. He’s popped his shirt buttons and split the zipper on his jeans.”
Across the room, Carrie wrinkled her face and said, “Oouu…”
“Do you suppose it’s anyone we know, Fletch?”
“It’s a good bet it’s one of those escaped convicts you all have been lookin’ high and low for.”
“The sheriff will be glad to hear that. The boys are sort of disappointed they didn’t catch a single one. I’ll call him before he gets dressed. He might want to run out and take a look before church.”
“You do that.”
“Is Carrie within hailin’ distance?”
“She’s right here.”
“Let me speak to her, will you? I got that recipe for firecracker cake from Angie Kelly I know Carrie wants real bad…”
Handing over the mouthpiece, Fletch said to Carrie, “Aetna wants to talk to you. Firecracker cake.”
“Oh, good!” Carrie crossed the study and took the phone receiver. “Ha, Aetna, how’re you this mornin’?”
Going upstairs to dress to go to Chicago, Fletch muttered, “God! We’ll never get rid of that damned body!”
21
“Miami.” With a flourish, The Reverend Doctor Commandant Kris Kriegel unfolded a road map of the city of Miami, Florida, United States of America, on the square wooden table in the front room of the log cabin headquarters of the newly named Camp Orania in Tolliver, Alabama. The map covered the table.
Commandant Wolfe looked down at the map. “Miami?”
“Miami!” Jack said. “Phew!”
As Tracy looked down at the map, his face glowed.
Shortly after three o’clock Sunday afternoon, only the four stood around the cabin’s table.
They were meeting later than planned.
Jack had awoken in time to set up the sound system for The Reverend Kriegel’s religious service, prayer meeting, sermon, harangue, newly scheduled for eleven o’clock.
As Jack put together the sound system, he saw the burial brigade, seven men with long-handled shovels, return from the woods. They stood around him drinking water from the cabin’s garden hose. He understood from the thirsty men they had dug one very big hole. They had dropped the hanged cook and the unexamined corpse of Joseph Rogers into the same hole with the shot and shredded remains of the bull calf.
The Reverend Kriegel then had said a few words over the grave. To the men’s amusement, he commented on the appropriateness of “burying the cook cheek to jowl with roasted beef.”
Before Kriegel’s eleven o’clock service, Jack again played martial music over the sound system, as Kriegel had ordered. After their party the night before, the members of The Tribe were bleary-eyed and listless as they gathered for the sermon.
Each holding a Bible, Commandants Wolfe and Kriegel sat on camp chairs on the porch.
Looking angelic, his eyes raised to the flag, Tracy introduced “our führer, The Reverend Doctor Commandant Kris Kriegel, whom lately God has released from the talons of the Zionist government.”
The congregation sitting on the ground muttered, “Heil.” A few raised their right hands to chest level.
“That government,” Kriegel began without preamble, “which has committed treason against every true white citizen of these great United States.”
“White rights,” the congregation rumbled.
“Today,” Kriegel announced, “we are witnessing the beginnings of a great, new, worldwide revolution. Some might call it the reemergence of nationalism. It is the revolution of The Tribes! We all shall rise and do glorious battle against each other! I tell you, my brothers, we must be ready to rise as a white nation! As every tribe, as every nation in this world is now doing, so must we purify ourselves, cleanse ourselves ethnically, rid ourselves of everyone who is not one of us!”
At the electronic console, Jack inserted earplugs before putting on his earphones.
Then he fiddled with some of the dials.
To his regret, it was a very pregnant woman who began vomiting first, then two children.
Very shortly, though, the men, all revelers the night before, were on their knees, puking on the ground. They tried to beat each other, their own women and children away from them with their arms as they crawled forward on their knees, to give themselves room to vomit and breathe.
On the porch, Tracy had disappeared again.
Commandant Wolfe had his hand on the screen door to the cabin when he doubled over and puked through the screen onto both sides of the door. His vomit dribbled down the door to the threshold.
Preacher Kriegel vomited sideways onto the porch’s floor.
Holding their heads and their stomachs, people stood when they could and staggered away. They headed toward their trailers, their campers, their carport bunks.
Several rolled onto the ground as soon as they reached shade.
So:
Lunch was not desired, prepared, or served;
Camp Orania fell into a retching silence;
The meeting between Commandants Wolfe and Kriegel did not commence until after three o’clock.
“Do you trust him?” Wolfe glared at Jack as he entered the room for the meeting.
“Oh, yes,” Kriegel said.
Wolfe growled, “I don’t think I do.”
Jack smiled at him. “Sure you do.”
“Jack is an answer to a prayer,” Kriegel said. “He hasn’t been with me long, but it was Jack who organized my escape from prison.”
“Ummm,” Wolfe said. “My son is one thing …”
“And I’m another, right?” Jack asked.
“Jack’s like a son to me,” Kriegel said. “Besides, you’ve seen his father.”
“That’s one of the problems,” Kriegel said. “His father has made no commitment to us, I’d say, from the things he said.”
“But he has,” said Kriegel. “It was Jack’s father who made my escape good. It was Jack’s father who hid me out, who disguised me, got me through roadblocks, who got me here safely.”
“I don’t like the way that Fletcher guy talks.”
“It’s not what a man says,” Kriegel said primly; “it’s what he does that counts.”
“I think I’ll look into all that,” Wolfe said. “I have my own resources, you know.”
In exasperation, Kriegel boasted, “Jack shot a cop. A woman cop.”
“Well, all right,” Wolfe said.
It was then that Kriegel unfolded the gasoline company’s road map of the city of Miami on the table.
“Gentlemen,” Kriegel said. “Be seated.”
They sat at the four sides of the table.
“Even though there are only the two of us here,” Kriegel said, “with our lieutenants, this is a most significant meeting. It will go down in history. Therefore I have asked Jack to record it.”
Jack took the small tape recorder out of his pocket and placed it on the road map of Miami. He turned it on.