Read Online Bear and His Daughter by Robert Stone - Free Book Online Page A

he would not be seen. Willie caught him all the same.
    “Fencer!” Willie cried, so loudly that the bird beside him set up a squawk in anxious imitation. “Look at Fletch with that lush! Look at him suck on it.”
    Fencer smiled tolerantly. “Fletch is just relaxing.”
    “Don’t get so juiced I can’t tell you, Fletch—I’m talking about Chattanooga! I’m talking about that eight-story hotel!” He raised his clenched hand as though he were wrestling with angels.
    “Every notion that could be acted upon with the human body was acted upon under my eyes, baby. My nights were rich—they were cloying. But—listen to this, Fletch—of all those fleshy games I saw played, the most spectacular beyond any shadow of a doubt was played by one man! One solitary, ordinary-looking citizen in a room by himself! I have never again seen anything like it.”
    Willie Wings paused to catch his breath. He rubbed his hands together.
    “So…” he sighed, and a drawling self-deprecation came into his voice, “so waal you could say it was just a cat playing with himself.” He leaned his head on the seat as though overcome. “But let me tell you,” he said softly, “let me tell you, buddies—he
really
played with himself.”
    When Willie Wings settled back, exhausted, Fletch saw that his eyes were filled with tears.
    Fencer was flushed with affection. When he spoke it was with difficulty. “Oh God, Willie. Oh, Willie.”
    Willie Wings sat with eyes closed, nodding.
    “Oh, Willie,” Fencer said.
    “Yeah,” Willie said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
    Fencer sought Fletch in the rear-view mirror.
    “Fletch,” he said gently, “can’t you get with us?”
    “Jesus Christ,” Fletch said. He said it quite involuntarily.
    Willie Wings, his reverie shattered, turned and glared.
    “I’m sorry I told you, Fletch, you’re such a drag. I’m really pissed now,” he told Fencer, “and I’m a little sorry about what’s happening.”
    “Don’t be,” Fencer said reassuringly. “Don’t regret nothing.”
    On the leeward side of the mountains, the land was much drier. Jungle clung to the canyons, but there were broad expanses of brushland grown with mesquite and agave and flowering redbird cactus. Occasionally the road ran past shapeless masses of concrete where half-finished constructions had been trapped by floods from the rain-soaked sierra and left to molder.
    Whenever a burro or a longhorn cow went by, Willie Wings, who loved animals, had a good word to say for it.
    Fletch rested his head on the tire in a state of deep depression. From time to time, he would attempt to bring himself up with a drink from his thermos, but to no avail. They were, he had noted, only a few kilometers from Corbera, the highest town in the valley—from there the road climbed steadily toward the dirt track that led to the crater. If he was to get out of the car and have no more of Fencer and Willie Wings he would have to do it in Corbera, from where a bus ran to the coast. If he flung himself out of the car, as he now and then considered, they would simply stop and come back for him and he would have to explain to Willie Wings.
    Corbera was about ten minutes away; one drove through it completely in five minutes—he had therefore only fifteen minutes to devise a ruse or a confusion in which he might make his escape.
    He lay back and considered his prospects—Willie and Fencer had fallen silent. They passed the Purina plant which marked the outskirts of Corbera. Fourteen minutes. Fletch took another drink; the parrot squawked to alert Willie Wings. Thirteen minutes.
    Fletch considered the peculiar question of whether there had ever been an element of choice connected with his excursion. One thing was certain: he had not refused to come. He thought this significant.
    At the moment when his rational process was most acutely engaged, his thoughts were frighted by the hated voice of Willie Wings.
    “Now that man in Chattanooga didn’t claim to be no