Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“Do this please. Go to your car, but don’t make the call until you’ve driven ten blocks past those Cox Cable linemen. Then park and make this call. Call Belle Ame, here’s the number. Ask for a Mr. or Mrs. Brunette. All I want to find out is if they’re at the school. You don’t need to talk to them. Mrs. Cheney will probably answer the phone. You will learn right away either that they’re with the school or that she never heard of them. Hang up. You understand?”

“I understand,” she says, watching me like a hawk.

“Then call me. If Mr. and Mrs. Brunette are with the school, say this: Dr. More, I just called to say I can make it tonight. If Mrs. Cheney never heard of them, say: Dr. More, I’m sorry, but I’m going to be tied up at work. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” What she hears in my voice is the urgency. She’s halfway to the door.

“I appreciate this, Chandra. We have to be careful, even with a cellular phone. I’ll explain later.”

“No problem.” She’s gone.

After Chandra leaves, Hudeen and I are silent. Finally Hudeen says “Shew!” and then after a while she says, I think, “Humbug.”

I move to Chandra’s chair next to the wall phone. The seat is still warm from Chandra.

Before I know it, Hudeen has given me a plate of Tennessee ham, collard greens, black-eyed peas, two corn sticks which she makes in an iron mold, and a slab of sweet butter. “You ain’t going nowhere till you eat this. You looking poor. You been looking poor.” By poor Hudeen means I’m not fat. “You want some buttermilk?”

“Yes.”

I eat fast, watching the stove clock. It takes four minutes for the phone to ring. Hudeen jumps and says “Lawd.” I let the phone ring twice. I pick it up.

“Hello”—with a mouth full of collards.

“Dr. More?”

“Yes?”

“Chandra Wilson.”

“Yes, Chandra?”

“I just called in to the station and I can make it tonight.”

“Thank you for calling, Chandra. I hope you’ll feel better.” I hang up.

I eat it all. The ham is strong and salty. The collards are even stronger than Carrie’s mustards, stronger than the meat. Hudeen nods. She is pleased. She wants me fat.

I look at my watch and call Lucy at Pantherburn.

“Lucy—” I begin.

“Oh, my Lord, I’ve been worried to death. There’s something I’ve got to—”

I cut her off. “Lucy, I appreciate your concern for your uncle and I’m on my way.”

“What?”she says. “What?”

“I most deeply appreciate your concern for your uncle. I’m leaving now, okay?”

“Okay, but—” She understands that something is up and I can’t talk.

“I need you to help me make a professional call, okay?”

“Okay”—baffled, but she’ll go along.

“I’ll see you in half an hour, okay?”

“Half an hour,” she repeats in a neutral voice; then collecting herself: “Fine, I appreciate it!”

I finish the last of the buttermilk. “Thanks, Hudeen. They’ll be back tonight.”

“Bless God! I sho be glad.”

“Hudeen, don’t call Carrie Bon about Claude. Don’t call anybody.”

“Bless God, I’m not calling a soul.”

10. THE COX CABLE VAN is still in place, the lineman still in his bucket, the driver still behind the wheel. Neither man looks at me.

A pickup follows me through town, but it passes me on the boulevard, a new four-door Ranger. The passenger on the right wears a new denim jacket, a long-billed, mesh Texaco cap. He does not look at me. There is a nodding toy dog on top of the dash and a gun rack in the rear window. There is only one gun in the rack, an under-and-over rifle-shotgun. For a mile or so the Ranger stays a couple of blocks ahead. But when I pull into a service station it keeps going.

I call Lucy at the pay phone. Her “hello” is guarded.

“I’m at a service station in town. I can talk. I’m on my way to pick up Margaret and Tommy and Claude at Belle Ame. I’ll explain. Since you are making a professional call there, why don’t I pick you up? That way I could drop you and Claude off. To save time, meet me at Popeyes. Okay?”

“Sure.” She is still cautious, knowing only that something is up.

No sign of the van or the Ranger on I-12 or the River Road.

Lucy’s truck is parked at the rear of Popeyes, backed in under a magnolia heading out. It is two-forty-five. I park close, heading in, make a motion for her to stay put, and open the driver’s door. She slides over. She wears her white clinician’s coat — good, she picked up on the “professional call”—and has her doctor’s bag. She places the bag precisely on her lap, her hands precisely on top of the bag. She gives me a single ironic look under her heavy eyebrows but says nothing.

“We don’t have much time,” I say. We are spinning up River Road. I feel her eyes on me as I drive. “I have something to tell you. I think you have something to tell me. I’ll go first.” “You go first,” Lucy says.

“Ellen has gone to a bridge tournament in Fresno for the rest of the week. Without Van Dorn. I have reason to believe she is not well. I also have reason to believe there is something going on at Belle Ame, possibly involving the sexual abuse of children. For some reason Van Dorn has arranged for Tom and Margaret and Claude Bon to stay there with the boarders. I am going to pick them up after school. I don’t think there is anything to worry about — with them. What I would like to do is have a word with Van Dorn, and while I’m talking to him, I’d like for you to look around, preferably in a professional capacity, maybe some sort of routine epidemiological check, talk to children and staff, whoever, see what you can see.”

She hangs fire, eyes still on me, not altogether gravely. “Is that it?”

“For the present.”

“As it happens, I can do better than that. I was over there last week checking on a little salmonella outbreak. Nothing serious, but it would make sense for me to make a follow-up call, collect a couple of smears. In fact, I ought to.”

“Good.”

“May I say something now?”

“Sure. Till we get there. Which is right up the road.”

River Road is sunny and quiet. The traffic is light: two tourist buses, three cars with Midwest plates, half a dozen standard Louisiana pickups, three hauling boats. No new Ranger or van.

She speaks rapidly and clearly. “Comeaux is on to you. Their mainframe flagged down all our inquiries last night. They know what we know and that we know, even the individual cases. I’ve been at my terminal and telephone for the last two hours.”

“That’s okay. I’ve already spoken to Comeaux.”

“Here’s something that’s not okay.” Her voice slows. “Neither NIH nor NRS nor ACMUI ever heard of a sodium pilot by the name of Blue Boy or any other name. What do you think of that?”

“Maybe they don’t want to tell you.”

“Tom, I’ve got Grade Four clearance. I can access all three of them. Furthermore, I talked to Jesse Land himself.”

“Who’s he?”

“The director of ACMUI, and a friend and classmate at Vanderbilt. He would know and he would tell me.”

“That is strange, but right now all I want to do is—”

“Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Listen, please. This is stranger than you think. This means that Blue Boy is unauthorized officially and must have been put together by some sort of dissident coalition from NRC and NIH with some foundation money, probably Ford — I think I picked up something from them — plus an interesting local political connection.”

“Very interesting, but what are you worried about? Evidently you’ve already blown the whistle, told Jesse whoever.”

“It don’t work that way, Tom.”