Walker Percy - Lancelot

Ah, here it was. My blood type. IV-AB. Again the worm of interest turned in my spine. I sat down in my metal swivel chair at my metal desk in the pigeon roost. It took Fluker two weeks to shovel out 150 years of pigeon shit, scrape the walls, and reveal what Margot was after, the slave brick of the walls and the three-inch cypress floor, not only not rotted but preserved, waxed by guano.

The sun was setting behind the levee and shafts of rosy light from the glazed pigeonholes pierced the dim roost like laser beams.

I began writing formulae on a pad of yellow legal foolscap. Isn’t it a fact that blood types are hereditary and that when the genes or chromosomes split, the A goes one way, the B the other, but never the A and B together?

There was an unknown in the equation. I did not know Margot’s blood type, but did I have to? Let Margot’s gene equal X. My gene had to be A or B. Two equations were possible.

X + A = O

X + B = O

The equations do not solve. X does not have a value. My blood type and Siobhan’s blood type did not compute.

So I telephoned my cousin Royal in New Orleans. You remember him. Royal Bonderman Lamar? No? You know, Raw Raw, little bitty towheaded sapsucker from Clinton, Kappa Sig, trip manager for the team the last year? Used to stand around at dances, hands in his gabardines, grinning like an idiot, stuff between his teeth? Yes? Actually he was smart as hell, is now an excellent surgeon, makes three hundred thousand a year.

I put the question hypothetically.

“You got a paternity case?” asked Royal. “I thought all you did was look after Margot’s money and help niggers.”

“That’s what I’m doing.” The worm of interest was turning. I remember listening for something in his voice, a note of superiority. In college I was the big shot, Phi Beta Kappa and halfback, and Royal carried the water bucket. Ever since, downhill all the way for me and up for him. While I was sitting under the levee sweating in my seersuckers, musing and drinking, he invented a heart valve. So I listened for the note of superiority which God knows he was entitled to. It wasn’t there. Same Royal, simply cheerful, grinning over the phone, stuff between his teeth.

“You mean you got a nigger paternity suit? I never heard of such a thing.”

“Just tell me. Royal.”

“Tell you what? Oh.” He was still the same Royal in a way. agreeable and willing. The horsing around and even the “nigger” business was not quite as it sounded though, but part of a new broad manner he’d hit upon, found possible, just as he’d found it possible to be grave and loving at weddings in the family and even unsmiling, put his arm around a niece, and, not quite as tall as she, kiss her and wish her every happiness and mean it. Not even the “nigger” business was as it sounded because he operated on blacks and whites alike and didn’t call them niggers or even by their first names and sat them down together in his waiting room and did more for them than I did. He outdid me in the race thing. He did more and talked less.

“No. A type IV-AB cannot beget a type O no matter who or what the mama is.”

“I see.”

“What you got is a nig—”

“I know, I know.”

“—ger in the woodpile.”

“I know.”

The thunder machine started up again.

“My God, what’s that, Lance?”

“A thunder machine.”

“A what? Never mind.”

“Thank you. Royal.”

“Give my love to Margot.”

“Right, right,” I said and almost forgot to say, Give mine to Charlotte. “Give my love to Charlotte.” I hung up.

Give my love. I thought of something and called Royal again.

“Is the period of pregnancy exactly nine months?”

“It depends on what you mean by month. Average gestation for a full-term infant is ten lunar months. Two hundred and eighty days. But why—”

“What’s the average weight of a full-term infant?”

“Male or female?”

“Female.”

“Seven pounds.”

“Thanks. Royal.”

“Okay, Tiger.”

Tiger. Did he call me that in school? Or was there a note of condescension?

“Thanks.”

My records were very good. In seconds I can, could — Jesus, the place burned to the ground, didn’t it? — no, still can. The pigeonnier didn’t burn and I guess the records are still there. I could look up any given day’s receipts of the tourist take at Belle Isle.

I made calculations. This time the equations were simpler. In fact there were no equations because there were no variables. It was arithmetic. I needed four pieces of data. I had two: Siobhan’s birthday, April 21, 1969, and birth weight, 7 lbs. Subtract 280 days from April 21, 1969. I looked at my feedstore calendar. The remainder is July 15, 1968. I could remember nothing. Can you remember where you were in the summer of ’68? You can? Yes, you would. You didn’t keep records but you always had a nose for time and places. I remember you stone drunk here in New Orleans, on the ground in the weeds, on the levee, peaceable and not quite unconscious, sniffing the soil and saying “What place is this?” Is that why you chose the god you did, the time-place god?

My third and indispensable item came from a shot in the dark. The dark of the dead file where I kept old income tax data and work sheets. A shot in the dark, not really a lucky — unlucky? — shot, but rather the only shot I had. My worm of interest tingled and guided me like a magnet to a manila folder neatly lettered DEDUCTIONS, 1968. I’m sure you don’t have to worry about deductions but it’s a good way to remember where you were and what you did ten years ago. A hundred years from now histories will be written from the stubs of Exxon bills. Bastardy will be proved by Master Charge. There was a chance I could find out where I spent the summer or at least hit on enough clues to remember the summer. Suppose Margot and I had gone to Williamsburg to talk to the National Heritage people about Belle Isle (we did one summer). A possible deductible. It would show: Coach-and-Four motel bill, Delta Air Lines carbon. Suppose I had spent two weeks in Washington with the Civil Rights Commission (I did that in the 1960’s). A deductible: receipted Shoreham Hotel bill. Suppose I spent a month in England buying antiques to show and sell at Belle Isle (I did that in the bad years). A clear deductible: Pan Am or Amex card. But where was I in the summer of 1968?

I found out. Not where I was but where Margot was. Was that the significance of the tingling of the worm of interest? that actually I already knew but did not know that I knew or would not admit it, had even suppressed the knowledge so thai it might then be properly discovered, just as the astronomer already knows in his heart of hearts that that dot will have moved but won’t even think about it until the photographic plate is in his hand and he can see the dot in the right-wrong place — all this in order to do what? In his case savor the superiority of the real over the imaginary? In my case to do what? postpone the interesting horror the way a person will turn an unopened telegram over and over in his hand?

Here it was. Amex stub and customer’s copy and receipted bill from the Arlington. Texas. Roundtower Motor Lodge for $1,325.27. A clear deductible. Not for me but for Margot, who at the time was still technically an actress, never a very good one but an Equity-card-carrying one and clearly engaged in the practice of her profession, that was why we deducted it, not acting but attending Robert Merlin’s workshop at the famous Dallas-Arlington Playhouse. The entire month of July. Eastern Airlines tickets for June 30 and return August 1. She had not come home and I had not visited her. I knew because all at once I remembered the summer of ’68. The courts had just caught up with Feliciana Parish and a few of us moderate and peace-loving persons of good will of both races had our own workshops, with the schoolboard and teachers and PTA’s, so people wouldn’t get killed when school opened. We succeeded. Nobody got killed. On the contrary. New life was conceived.