Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

But Vergil is not offended. “That’s right, Mist’ Hugh.” I can tell he’s smiling behind me.

“The thing about a woodcock is, all you got to do is just graze him with one little bird shot and he’ll fall down dead— just brush him, like”—the uncle shows us, brushing one hand lightly against the other—“and that sapsucker will fall down dead.” The uncle frowns and decides to get irritated with Vergil again. He becomes more irritated. “Some folks,” he tells me, as if Vergil can’t hear, “get their nose in a book and they think they stuff on a stick. Ain’t that right, Tom?”

Past the fence, for some reason we fall silent. I look around. There is no one and nothing to see except the vast looming geometry of the cooling tower and a bass boat uplake and across, the fishermen featureless except for their long-billed orange caps.

“Pull in right here at this towhead.”

“Let’s get this thing out of sight,” I tell them. We pull the skiff onto a sandbar under the willows.

“Who you hiding from?” asks the uncle.

“I don’t rightly know.”

“Ain’t nobody going to bother you at this end of the island. I ain’t ever seen a guard but once and he was a fellow I knew. He knew I was after woodcock.”

“I wish you had your shotgun now.”

“Shit, they out of season, Tom. You want to get me in trouble?”

Just beyond the willows we hit an old jeep trail, one of the many that crisscross the island. It doesn’t look recently used. We’re trespassing. I’m thinking of patrols. Vergil hangs back, walking head down, hands in pockets. Perhaps he is offended by the uncle, after all.

The uncle looks back and moves close to tell me something. He is still angry with Vergil. His feelings are hurt because neither Vergil nor his father will go fishing with him anymore. “Do you know what you get when you cross a nigger with a groundhog?” He lowers his voice, but maybe not enough, I think, for Vergil not to overhear.

“No.”

“Six more weeks of basketball.” He gives me an elbow. Get it?”

“Yes. Uncle, do you know where we’re going?”

“Sho I know. I know ever’ damn foot of this island.”

We cross other jeep trails, one with fresh tire tracks.

Presently the uncle stops. We’re at another fence, an enclosure. In the middle of the weeds there is a nondescript structure, a concrete cube fitted with a hatch on top like a diving bell.

“There’s a sign here,” I tell Vergil. Fixed to the gate is a small metal placard, the standard NRC sign, warning: RADIATION DANGER KEEP OUT.

“I never noticed that,” says the uncle.

We gaze. There is nothing to see, less than nothing. It is the sort of thing, a public-service-utility-government fenced-off sort of thing to which ordinarily and of its very nature one pays not the slightest attention.

“This is what you wanted to see?” asks the uncle, his head slanted ironically, a dark blade. We could be fishing for sac au lait.

“Two things,” says Vergil presently in a matter-of-fact voice. “You can see the pipeline in both directions, toward the tower and toward the intake, by the faint yellowing. See?”

“Yes.”

“You see the hatch?”

“Yes.”

“I judge the pump is waterproofed against high water, which can get up to six feet here.”

“I see.”

“I don’t see any nipples or caps like over at the intake.”

“Nipples? Caps?”

“You didn’t notice it?”

“No, I didn’t, Vergil.”

“Next to the intake. A three-inch fiberglass nipple stubbed off and capped. Not something you would notice unless you were looking for it.”

“You mean there was a pipe sticking out of the ground?”

“Yes. Probably with a valve just below ground, coming off a T. As if they might be taking samples from whatever is in the pipe.”

“Shit, let’s go,” says the uncle.

“Right,” I say, following them down the trail, thinking of nothing in particular. “Right.”

“We got time to catch a mess of sac au lait before dinner,” says the uncle.

“No, we haven’t,” says Vergil, pulling up short.

Blocking the jeep trail are two men. I recognize the red fishing caps.

But they’re not fishermen. They’re police, uniformed in brown, green-yoked shirts. Each carries a holstered revolver. I recognize the six-pointed star of the shoulder patch. They’re parish police, sheriff’s deputies. One is youngish, slim and crewcut. The other is even younger, but bolder and fatter. Both are wooden-faced. I am relieved. What did I expect, some secret nuclear police?

“You fellows looking for us?” I say, smiling.

They nod, not smiling. The younger, husky one has his hand on the holster strap.

“Could we see some identification, please,” says the older, wirier one.

Vergil and I reach for our wallets, hand them over.

“Shit, I didn’t bring anything but my fishing license. We were going fishing. Will this do?”

The older one looks at it, doesn’t take it. “What were you doing here?”

“I wanted to show them the best place in the parish for woodcock,” says the uncle. “But we ain’t hunting! Y’all from Wildlife and Fisheries? The doctor here is a birdwatcher.”

“You gentlemen better come with us,” says the older cop.

“What for?” asks the uncle.

“What’s the charge, Officer?” I ask.

“A fellow escaped from Angola last night,” says young and stocky.

“Do you think it’s one of us?” asks the indignant uncle.

“These two fellows have identification,” says old and wiry.

“Jesus Christ, are you fellows telling me you think I escaped from Angola?” asks the uncle. “Wait a minute. Y’all from the sheriff’s office in Clinton, ain’t you? Wait a minute. Don’t I know you?” he says to the younger. “Ain’t you Artois Hebert’s boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you know me. Everybody knows me. Hugh Bob Lipscomb. Ask Sheriff Sharp. I been knowing Cooter Sharp.” The uncle holds out his hand.

But the older deputy says only, “Let’s go,” and leads the way. The younger falls in behind us.

“There’s something funny about this,” says the uncle to me. “Those guys are from the sheriff’s office.”

“I know. Shut up.”

“They’re not NRC guards or federals! They didn’t even mention trespassing!”

“I know. Shut up.”

The lead deputy kicks up a woodcock. It squeals and goes caroming off in its nutty corkscrew flight, eyes in the back of its head. Once, the uncle told me why woodcock have eyes in the back of the head: “So they can stick that long beak, head and all, all the way down in the wet ground — and still see you.”

“Let’s go to Clinton,” says the older deputy.

8. BOB COMEAUX SPRINGS US from jail almost before we’re booked. Who called him? Nobody, he explains, a routine telex which flags him down whenever one of his federal parolees runs afoul of the law. Aren’t you glad I’m your parole officer? he asks amiably, shaking hands all around and even giving me a medical-fraternal hug.

Clinton has a new jail, or rather a carefully restored old jail done up in columns and shutters to match the colonial courthouse and the neat little shotgun cottage-offices of lawyers’ row. The jail is strangely silent, with only a black vagrant and a white couple in the squad room who are being released even as we are booked. Unlikely inmates they are, the couple, a solemn, respectable-looking man and wife who could be a Baptist deacon and deaconess, almost formally dressed, he in a somber but stylish charcoal-colored suit and tie, she too in suit and tie, she with handsome unplucked black eyebrows and black hair whirled up like an old-fashioned Gibson girl. He wears oversize horn-rimmed specs, which give him an incongruous impish Harold Lloyd look.