Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“I understand, Father. What do you want me to do?”

“I ask you, my friend, to speak to Father Smith, persuade him to come down and help me out. For just a few weeks.”

“Come down?”

“From the fire tower.”

“In a manner of speaking, you mean.”

“Not in a manner of speaking, cher. He won’t come down.”

“Won’t come down from what?”

“From the fire tower.”

“Literally?”

“Literally. He has a man bring up his groceries and empty his camp toilet.”

“How long has he been up there?”

“Three weeks. Since the hospice was closed.”

“Why was the hospice closed?”

A shrug. “The government. You know, they cut Medicare for hospices but not for Qualitarian centers.”

“Then is he staying up there as a kind of protest?”

A big French shrug, eyes going left, then right. “Who knows? Maybe, but it’s more than that.”

“How do you mean?”

“He told me that he had — ah — discovered a mathematical proof of what God’s will is, that is, what we must do in these dangerous times.”

“I see.”

“Now, he may be right. It’s out of my league. Me, I’m a very ordinary guy and have to baptize babies and run the school and suchlike. I’d like to preach the good news of the Lord, but it seems like I don’t have the time. Ask him if he can take off a little time from saving the world to help one po’ li’l priest.”

“All right, Father.”

“One more little thing—” He is shuffling papers on the table.

“Yes?”

“I’m supposed to be organizing an ecumenical meeting here—” He sighs. One more thing to do. “I got to find five of our laymen who are willing to — Would you be interested?”

“No, thanks.”

“Okeydoke,” says the priest absently, unoffended, shuffling more papers. Is he looking for something else I can do? I get up.

The doorbell rings. Mrs. Saia starts out from the meeting. Father Placide jumps up. “I’ll get it, Sarah! Hold the fort.” I think he is avoiding the meeting.

While Father Placide is gone, I am wondering how best to get out of here. The front door is blocked by the deacon, who likes to talk. I find myself remembering that during the race riots here years ago I once escaped through the ducts of the air-conditioning system. Now I remember. I used St. Michael’s sword to unscrew the Phillips screws of the intake grille of the air-conditioner — to escape during the riots.

One of the ladies is saying, “—and I heard that he wouldn’t even come down when he had a heart attack and wouldn’t let anybody come up to treat him except Dr. Gottlieb. And the only reason he let him come up was that he, Father Smith, had converted to the Jewish religion.”

“Oh no,” says Mrs. Saia sharply. “He’s peculiar, but he wouldn’t do that. I know him well — after all, he lived here. Peculiar, yes. Why, you wouldn’t believe—”

Ernestine Kelly breaks in with her low-pitched but querulous voice. I can see her sweet, sad face. “I don’t know about that, but I can tell you this on good authority because I know the people it happened to. Both desperate cases. One had a tumor of the womb which was diagnosed as malignant. The other, a close friend of mine, had a son working for Texaco who fell off a rig during a hurricane. After three days the Coast Guard gave up on him. Both of these people had the same impulse the same night, the exact same time, to get up and go for help from Father Smith. They did. Of course they couldn’t get up the tower, so they both wrote their intentions on notes and pinned the notes to the steps of the tower. The very next day the first person’s tumor had gone down — the doctors could not find a trace of it — and the other person’s son was found clinging to a board — for three days and three nights.”

Jan Greene snorts. “For God’s sake. Like Jonah. I mean, really. Has it ever occurred to anybody that he might be up there for a much simpler, more obvious reason?” Her voice is impatient, even ill-tempered. I can see her lean forward in her chair, eyes flashing, face thrusting like a blade.

Silence, then Ernestine Kelly’s injured voice: “Are you suggesting miracles cannot occur?”

“I am not. But why not look for simpler explanations?”

“Hmph. Such as.”

“Such as the tumor was a fibroid and went down spontaneously — they often do. The boy’s life was preserved because he hung on to the raft or whatever. And Father Smith could be staying up there for the oldest reason in the world.”

The other women wait. Finally someone says, “What’s that?”

“He could be doing vicarious penance for the awful state of the world. It is, after all, good Catholic practice,” says Jan sarcastically. “The Carmelites and the Desert Fathers have been doing it for centuries. This really slays me. Here we are on the very brink of World War Three, on the brink of destruction, and nobody gives it a second thought. Well, maybe somebody is. After all, how do you think the siege of Poitiers was lifted? How do you think Lucca was saved from the Black Plague in the fourteenth century?”

Hm. Poitiers? Lucca? Nobody knows how they were saved. The Desert Fathers. The other ladies are floored. But not for long. “I still say—” tolls Ernestine, her voice a soft little bell.

Father Placide is back. “Sorry, Doc. Another dharma bum. Trying to get out to California. Looking for a handout. One more thing, Doc—”

“Look, Father,” I say, lowering my voice, “I think those ladies are waiting for you to run the meeting. Hadn’t you better—”

Father Placide laughs. “You kidding, cher ?” For once he does lean close and almost whisper. “Me run that gang? I don’t tell them. They tell me.”

“Well—” I stand up. “I have to see Father Smith.”

“Good luck, ma fren ,” says Father Placide, shaking hands, hollow-eyed but merry. “Tell Simon to phone home.” He laughs. Tired as he is, he doesn’t seem to bear a grudge.

“I will.”

Dan — yes, that’s his name — looks up from his index cards as I pass and addresses not me, it seems, but there’s no one else in the hall.

“Why make it complicated?” he says, not quite to me and not quite as a question. “It’s just a cop-out. There is such a thing. He quit, period. Who wouldn’t like to quit and take to the woods? But somebody has to do the scut work. Some people—” he says vaguely, and goes back to spinning his Rolodex.

“Right,” I say as vaguely as I close the door.

6. THE FIRE-TOWER ROAD winds through a longleaf-pine forest to a gentle knoll perhaps fifty feet above the surrounding countryside. Beyond, fronting a meadow, stretches a spacious low building with a small central steeple, which looks stuck on, and far-flung brick wings. The building looks deserted. The meadow is overgrown. Half a dozen Holstein cows graze, all facing away from the bright afternoon sun.

There is a single metal utility shed straddled by the legs of the tower, fitted with two aluminum windows. A chimney pipe of bluish metal sticks through the roof.

Not a soul is in sight. I roll down the Caprice window and listen. There is no sound, not even cicadas. No breeze stirs the pines, which glitter in the sunlight like steel knitting needles.

Getting out, I walk backward, the better to see the tower. It is an old but sturdy structure of braced steel, perhaps a hundred feet tall. The cubicle perched on top looks like a dollhouse. One window is propped open. Shading my eyes against the sun, I yell. My voice is muffled. The air is dense and yellow as butter.

A bare hand and arm appear at the window. It is not a clear gesture. It could be a greeting or summons or nothing. I will take it that he is waving me up. I climb a dozen steep flights of green wooden steps smelling of paint. Presently the crowns of the longleafs are beside me, then below me. The heavy shook sheaves of needles, each clasping a secret yellow stamen, seem to secrete a dense vapor in which the sunlight refracts.