Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“Then we’re not close kin.”

“Hardly kin at all. I’m glad,” says Lucy.

We are walking again, the uncle in his outrider position. “I got me a pair of woodies right there,” he says, shaking two loose fingers toward the woods. “You ought to see that little sucker fly into the hole.”

“I’d like to.”

“They’ve long since left the boxes, Uncle,” says Lucy wearily.

“Do you know how he does that? Some people say he lights on the edge and goes in, but no. He flies in. I saw him. I’m talking about, he flies right in that hole. Do you know how he does it?”

Lucy, stooping and walking, is paying no attention.

“No, I don’t,” I say.

“He’s only got about a foot of room inside, right?”

“Right.”

“You know what he does — I saw him.”

“No.”

“That sucker flies right in and brakes in the one foot of room inside, like this,” says the uncle, suddenly flaring out his elbows like braking wings. “I’ve seen him! You want to see him? Let’s

go.”

“All right.”

“Not now, Uncle,” says Lucy.

2. LUCY AND I SIT on the gallery watching the sun go down across the levee through the oaks of the alley, making winks and gleams and casting long shafts of foggy yellow light. She smokes too much, long Picayunes, often plucks a tobacco grain from the tip of her tongue, looks at it.

Lucy fixes toddies of nearly straight bourbon in crystal goblets the size of a mason jar. My nose is running. Perhaps the toddies will help. I haven’t had a toddy for years. An eighteenth-century traveler once wrote of Feliciana and Pantherburn: “There is always at one’s elbow a smiling retainer ready with a toddy or a comfit.” What’s a comfit?

Beyond the oaks, the truncated cone of the Grand Mer facility rises as insubstantial as a cloud in the sunset. A pennant of vapor is fastened to its summit like the cloud on Everest.

We sit in rocking chairs.

“Well now,” I say after a long drink of the strong, sweet bourbon. My nose stops running.

“Yes indeed,” says Lucy.

A duck is calling overhead.

“Is that the uncle?”

“Yes.”

Footsteps go back and forth on the upper gallery. The quacking is followed by a chuckling sound.

“Is he talking to somebody?”

“No, he’s practicing his duck calls. He was runner-up in the Arkansas nationals last year. That’s the feeding call he’s doing now. He does it with his fingers. He’s been doing it six hours a day since January.

“I see.” I take another long pull. The bourbon is so good it doesn’t need sugar. “I was wondering why you wanted me to come.”

“I want you to stay here while Ellen’s gone. It’s all right with Ellen. I asked her.”

I look at her quickly. Is she trying to tell me something? She is. She rocks forward in her chair to look back at me, shading her eyes against the sun. “What if I were to tell you that it is absolutely all right for you to be here? Would you take that on faith without further explanation?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to explain further?”

“No.”

She looks at me along her cheek, eyes hooded.

I take another drink. “I appreciate it, but I’m fine. Hudeen’s taking good care of me.”

“Not as good as I could.”

“I’m sure of that.”

“No, I’m also selfish. Just now I think I can help you with your syndrome. I have an idea about it. And just now I also need you. You’re my only relative besides him”—her eyes go up—“and he’s driving me nuts. He needs you too. It’s all right for you to stay. Vergil thought you were my father.”

“Vergil?”

“You remember Vergil. He’s my only help on the farm, he and Carrie, his mother. You remember him. He remembers you. He drives the tractor, does everything. Unfortunately, I have to pay him a fortune. Nobody gave him to me. Will you stay?”

“You mean tonight or—?”

“Speak of the devil.”

Vergil has come onto the gallery behind us.

I had known him as a child, but do not recognize him. His father, laid up in a mobile home by the gate and living on the Medicaid Lucy got him, I remember as a hale, golden-skinned Ezio Pinza, fisherman and trapper, hearty and big-chested, too big — he had emphysema even then. They, the Bons, are known hereabouts as freejacks, meaning free persons of color, freed, the story goes, by Andrew Jackson for services rendered in the Battle of New Orleans. More likely, they’re simply descendants of the quadroons and octoroons of New Orleans. A proud and reticent people, often blue-eyed and whiter than white, many could “pass” if they chose but mainly choose not to, choose, rather, to stay put in small contained bayou communities.

Vergil Bon, Jr., is another cup of tea. He’s got the off-white skin, black eyes, and straight black Indian hair of his mother, but he wears, somewhat oddly, a Tom Selleck mustache. His body is rounded, drawn in simple lines, as if he still had his baby fat, but he’s very strong. It was his large simple arm I saw lifting the silver tractor tank. When we shake hands, he smiles but doesn’t look at me. His hand is large and inert. He thinks he’s being polite by not squeezing. He speaks softly to Lucy, shows her a greasy machine part. Lucy says, “You can? Okay, fix it and I’ll get a new one tomorrow. Write down what it is.

“He can fix anything,” Lucy tells me when he’s gone. “I pay him a fortune, but he’s worth it. Do you know he’s going to finish up at L.S.U. next semester with two degrees in geology and chemical engineering? He worked on the rigs for years, made toolpusher at age twenty-three, at four thousand a month. He’s thirty-five now and is going to end up owning Texaco. He helps me as a favor. I take care of his father. How about it?”

“How about what?”

“Staying.”

“I’ll stay tonight. As a matter of fact, I need your help.”

“With your syndrome?”

“It’s not mine. I think I’m on to something. But you’re going to have to tell me whether I’m as crazy as our ancestor. Furthermore, you’re an epidemiologist and this is up your alley. You saw what I found in Mickey LaFaye’s case.”

“Yes,” says Lucy solemnly. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I saw Mrs. LaFaye. You’ve got something. Perhaps we could help each other. Did you bring a list of patients with their social security numbers?”

“Yes. Why do you need them?”

“You’ll see. I’ve got a little surprise for you. A couple, in fact.”

Half the toddy is gone. She is drinking with me, drink for drink, and shows no sign of it, save perhaps a widening of the pupils in her dark gold-flecked eyes. But that could be because the sun is behind the levee and no longer in our eyes. The sweet strong bourbon seems to fork in my throat, branching up the back of my head and sending a warm probe into my heart.

“Ahem,” I say.

“Yes indeed,” says Lucy, smiling.

“Tell me — ah — about the syndrome,” says Lucy, pulling up close.

“Yes, certainly.” I do, at length, all I know, and with the pleasure of telling her and of her close listening, head cocked, tapping her lips with two fingers, brown gold-flecked eyes fixed on me above plum-bruised cheeks. It is a pleasure telling her, talking easily, she listening, smoking, and plucking tobacco grains from her tongue, we ducking our heads just enough to set the rockers rocking. I take an hour. She fixes us another toddy. She drinks like a man and shows no sign of it except in her eyes. Her eyes change like the sunlight, now lively A-plus smart-doctor’s eyes, now a woman’s eyes. Beyond peradventure a woman’s eyes. Above us the uncle is calling the ducks home for feeding and now and then gives a high-ball, a loud drake’s honk. We don’t mind.