Only Make Believe (30 page)

Fletcher’s voice was low and desperate. “You’re making a bad, bad mistake, mister. I told you once, no, NO. I hate queers and sissies. Now you’re making me mad, trying to get my shorts down, want to get me naked, try to make me do bad, dirty things with you.”

His voice rising to a shout, he shook me harder, this time using both hands. “Got no interest in your homo crap, mister. Hear me? Just because I got a good physique, that don’t mean I’m gonna let queers like you see my stuff and all.”

“Plenty of men have seen it. That’s what I hear. Did you show it to the Diva? She wasn’t interested, was she?”

“I’m not one a those kind. Make me puke, mister.”

“What about the boy in the high school shower? He turned you down, didn’t he—called you queer—and you threw him against the wall?”

“I’m not. I’m NOT.”

“And I’m not an Air Corps gunner,” I replied, fighting for breath. “But I can do you—do you real good. Splash for splash.”

“Sheee-it. Kid stuff.”

“You want some of that kid stuff? Like down on Fowler Street during the War? Or the boy you beat off for? At the bible camp? Before you broke his jaw?”

He dropped me and reached for a giant bamboo log on top of the pile of firewood. Hefting it, he swatted me on the side of the head. I tried to roll away but the blow was too fast and too hard. I was down on my knees and about to lose consciousness when I heard the familiar skee-e-e-e-t of Jeep tires grabbing pavement. Bud to the rescue. Desk clerk Phil had found him—and just in time to keep me from being badly mauled.

Four Eyes ignored it, swung again and flattened the ear on the opposite side of my head. My face hit the ground. I woozily tasted dirt, blood and bitter St. Augustine grass. From the street, I could hear Bud shouting. “Get back, you guys. Stay right there. Let me handle this. Keep your mugs out of it.”

I rolled on my side. Bud charged toward us. He carried an oversize nightstick in one hand and a heavy flashlight in the other. He was wearing workout trunks, a fully loaded utility belt, combat boots and the T-shirt with the arms ripped off.

“Hands up, Fletcher,” Bud shouted. “Now. You’re under arrest. Assault, battery and disturbing the peace, to start with.”

“I’m not. He came here again saying ... bad, dirty things.”

Fletcher had ten or twelve inches on Bud in every direction. He was taller, wider and stronger. He reached out, grabbed Bud’s shoulder, took a step and tried to sling him into the fire pit. It was like a fight in the movies, or at a Marine training camp, only real.

Bud dodged past the fire and into the shadows. “You’re under arrest, Fletcher. Resisting arrest. Aggravated assault and battery. Get back, sir.”

“I’m not one. Make me puke.” Fletcher paused, extended his arms like a wrestler and cupped his hands in a come-come gesture. Peering toward Bud in the growing darkness, he bounced left, then shifted to the right. When he charged, Bud bopped him with the stick. The half-blind ex-lineman was no match for the battle-trained Marine. Down he went.

Bud rolled him and cuffed him. But Fletcher wasn’t finished. Throwing himself on his back, he aimed a kick at Bud’s crotch. He missed but caught Bud in the thigh.

Bud grabbed his leg and shouted, “I need help, here, Dan. Grab that belt. Get it around his ankles, yeah. Or knees. Watch the flashlight. Yeah, yeah. Goddamn it, watch the weapon.”

“Don’t shoot me,” Fletcher suddenly cried. His mouth was bleeding and he was breathing hard. “Please. You got it all wrong.”

Bud tightened the belt around Fletcher’s legs. “OK, I got it wrong. Fill me in. Start with why you was upstairs with the Diva. She give you a printed invitation?”

“I made a mistake. You see? Left my glasses in the car. Yeah, we talked in the club. And when she paid her bill, she gave the waitress her room number. 522, I still remember. I’m no dummy, mister. See, I thought, here’s this older woman, no Betty Grable, for sure, but still looks pretty good. Like I say, she talked to me nice and polite outside the club. So I figured maybe in private, well, it’s worth a shot. My wife’s expecting and we don’t, we can’t … But then I touched her cheek and found out she’s a he … Ow. That hurts.”

“Quit rolling around,” Bud growled, checking the cuffs on Fletcher’s wrists “Hold still.”

“You’re lying,” I almost shouted. “You wanted the whiskers
and
the little woman. Both.”

“Naw! Only she’s a he and I thought, well, OK. This once. Been weeks, weeks. But she said forget it, go take a flying—”

Bud sat back and just listened.

“You’re telling us you never got sexed up with a man before?”

“I wouldn’t, no. Never did.”

“And Jesus is running for governor as a yellow dog Democrat.”

“No. NO.”

“Never did anything—except in the dark at Bible camp? Or on your naked butt at that dive on Fowler? Or playing grab-ass in the locker room shower?”

Another detail clicked into place. “You slipped back inside my hotel through the service entrance out back. Didn’t you? And went up the fire stairs? And you did it again, the night you set her clothes on fire. Did you steal her lipstick and write that note on the door?”

Fletcher didn’t seem to hear me. “I been so good. Hadn’t lost my temper in so long. But with another kid on the way...”

“Didn’t you?”

He nodded dumbly. “Loading dock. Easier for my uncle to come in that way, with his leg. No steps, like out front.”

“The Diva was excited, wasn’t she, like some kind of bitch in heat? Wearing women’s clothes, having her own dream come true. She fooled Larry Doolittle and the twins. She got you hot as a firecracker. She looked just like a real woman, didn’t she? When you got upstairs she was already out of her dress and pretty aroused, wasn’t she? And what? She reached inside her panties and jock strap and started taking care of business? Sort of like a locker room or dormitory? The door was unlocked, wasn’t it? Cracked open a little bit, maybe? Far end of the hall. Nobody around. You were peeping?”

“No. Yeah, a little bit. I went inside. He let me look at the dirty pictures he had. Showed me his—you know. Told me no when I tried to touch it. Slapped my hand. Told me he was gonna make out a complaint. I got scared.”

“She didn’t know what she was doing any more than you did.”

Bud touched my arm. “Enough of that, OK?”

“Like hell.”

Bud was wrong. It wasn’t enough. Fletcher’s words had turned me a little crazy. I reached down, pulled up his undershirt and roughly tweaked one of his prominent nipples. “Dodged the draft, didn’t you,” I shouted. “Big stud horse of a guy, huh? But your bad eyes bought you a 4-F card. No army doc gonna make you admit you like girly-boys. You wanted the Diva, didn’t you? Wanted a girly-man—only you couldn’t ever say it, not even to Mr. Patt Cope.”

Fletcher tried to pull away. I pinched the other button. “They’re gonna love these tits up at Raiford state prison. You’re gonna be a big hit with the bully boys.”

Four Eyes shut his peepers tight, shook his head like a hurt pup and muttered, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. Mama, please, I didn’t.”

Suddenly, I thought of Mr. Patt in tears, weeping because he’d lost this big lug in the dark at a church camp. I realized I ought to feel sorry for Fletcher, too.

He’s also one of us.

The dog-dumb, half-blind, overgrown boy had been trapped since puberty—between a searing need for contact with smaller, brighter males and the slow realization that life and his limitations would force him to accept something else.

Mr. Patt, Diva DiGennaro and the boy in the high school shower were known victims. I figured there were more. We’d probably never find out how many.

“He could have read the Bible to you,” I whispered. “You could have let him love you a little. Only neither one of you could see what you had—right in front of your faces. You poor bastards. So scared, and somebody always getting beaten up for it.”

“Shut up, Dan,” Bud said, pulling me off him. “That’s just how it is. You know it is, for some men. None of us is that free.”

Bud reached for the flashlight, clicked it on and aimed at my face. I shut my eyes, eased down onto the grass and let him check me for wounds.

“Might need to get this cut on your knee attended to,” he whispered. “That’s about all I see. You ain’t in any dying condition.”

“Thanks, doc.”

He spat in his hand and applied it to the cut. “Sooner we get the mud and shit outta this the better. Only I got to go find a phone first. Get some help with Mr. Fletcher here.”

“Kiss it and make it better,” I whispered.

Bud laughed. “I’ve probably tasted worse. Glad you can still make jokes.”

And then we heard footsteps. Bud jumped up and swung the light toward the driveway. “Didn’t I tell you guys to stay in the Jeep?”

Chuck DiGennaro—no limp biscuit in the muscle department—was marching toward us, followed by two boys his age. One was about Chuck’s size, the other as tall and almost as muscular as Fletcher. Like Bud, the boys were dressed in workout clothes. Chuck wore Bud’s garish, hibiscus-pattern swim trunks under a Marine-green T-shirt.

“Where the fuck were you boys an hour ago?” I said, looking first at Bud, then at Chuck and his buddies. “I checked the rooming house. The backyard. Left messages from here to Tallahassee.”

“Thought I told you. These guys cut school to drive down and give me their statements. We was with a court reporter for five hours. Then Lee County treated the witnesses to lunch, over at the diner. Blue plate was fresh fried shrimp, right off the boat—all you could eat. We pretty much destroyed their profits for the week.”

Chuck and his shadow Cy had circled behind Bud and knelt to inspect the trussed-up Fletcher.

“This him?” Cy’s voice was deep and angry.

“That hurt my Daddy?”

Cy, the oversize lineman, leaned down for a closer look. “Don’t look queer to me.”

“Looks ain’t everything,” Bud said, grinning at his own joke. “Either way, he says he didn’t mean to. Mistaken identity, he says. Anyhow, I got to get a squad car over here and pick him up. You want to take the Jeep and go call, son?”

“Sure,” Chuck said. “Just give me a minute.” Feeling around in the half darkness, he found the bamboo club, picked it up and nodded at Eldon. Suddenly he raised it over Fletcher’s skull and muttered, “Now.” The two other boys grabbed Fletcher’s elbows. It crossed my mind that they’d worked this all out ahead of time, in general outline, anyway, just in case.

“Bash his queer brains out,” Cy whispered.

“Kick him in the balls,” Cousin Eldon echoed.

“Fucker,” Chuck cried, bringing down the club with both hands.

Fletcher went limp. Bud threw a quick block. Chuck wheeled, recovered and tried again. Fletcher tried to roll himself into a ball. Then he kicked out with both feet. At first, the cousins couldn’t control him.

Moving quickly, Bud bear-hugged Chuck and wrestled him to the ground. I grabbed the club and threw it in the fire. The overdone steak sizzled as it slid across the grate and into the dirt. Cy and Eldon called me some names I wouldn’t have thought Catholic boys would know.

Bud was astride Chuck’s heaving body. Chuck was bawling and beating his fists against Bud’s chest. Bud cuffed the boy’s cheek with a gentle hand.

“You ain’t the law, son. I am. And I sure know how you feel. So cry it on out. That’s it. Let it go, let it go for good. There’s gonna be justice. There is. You just cry it on out and let the law take care of the rest.”

“Can’t trust … anybody. I’m fucked. My daddy’s dead. His killer’s a dummy but he’ll probably get off. You can bet he’ll say Daddy brought it on himself. Say he deserved it. Asked for it. That’s what Cissy and Roy think.”

“Trust me on one thing, son. This man’s going to prison. You hear me? I swear.”

Chuck nodded and cried some more.

Bud gently smoothed Chuck’s wet cheek, then looked up at Cy and Eldon. “You boys think you could settle down long enough to haul your buddy’s ass out of here?”

Cy nodded. Eldon whispered, “If you say so, sir. But couldn’t we just—?”

Bud cut him off. “No, you can’t. But you can do this—for me. And for him and for his daddy. Get Chuck back in the Jeep, find a pay phone, call the sheriff’s office and tell them Detective Wright needs back-up and a vehicle to collect a murder suspect. Say Marlyn Road, corner of Llewellyn. Then skedaddle back to Bradenton. Pronto. On the double. It wouldn’t help a case before a jury for the dead man’s kid and his buddies to be in on the capture and beating. This ain’t no wild west show, boys. We don’t need no posse.”

The squad car and Albert Fletcher’s brother arrived almost simultaneously. Rob Fletcher explained that the wives and children were at a baby shower over at grandmaw’s place. Brother Rob had worked late, gotten hungry and phoned Al to suggest going out for beers and burgers before the wives got home. When Albert’s phone didn’t answer, he’d driven home to check on him.

Bud informed him that Brother Al wasn’t going anywhere except jail. Rob tried to get ugly but he shut up fast when Bud and two uniformed officers explained the situation.

Rob Fletcher looked stunned as he watched the officers load Albert into the back of the Ford cruiser. “Don’t you worry,” Rob called his brother. “Uncle Barfield will have you out of there faster than these clowns can write up a parking ticket.”