Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

Ricky plays with pleasure, takes a child’s pleasure in taking my cards, takes the greatest pleasure in double war, when there are two ties in a row and he wins nine cards. He evens up the cards against his stomach.

Vergil interrupts the second game of War. He comes down the stairs slowly. He is holding both rails as if he were unsteady. When he clears the ceiling and his face comes full into the fluorescent light, I notice that his skin is mealy. His eyes do not meet mine.

Without a word he sits on the sofa on the other side of Ricky and puts his hands carefully and symmetrically on his knees.

“Your turn,” says Ricky.

I am looking at Vergil.

“Come on,” says Ricky.

“Ricky, I have to talk to Vergil for a minute. Would you like to play that game over there?”

“Star Wars 4? It costs fifty cents.”

“Here’s three quarters. Vergil, you got any quarters?”

Vergil gives a start. “What? Oh, sure.” He digs in his pockets, gives Ricky more quarters. He puts his hands back on his knees. His expression is still thoughtful, but his face is still mealy.

“Okay,” says Ricky. “But leave the cards right here.”

“Okay.”

Presently lasers are lancing out into a three-dimensional cosmos. Satellites explode.

“Well?” I say to Vergil.

He opens his hands on his knees, inspecting them carefully, as if he were curious about the sudden change from the liver-colored backs to the creamy palms.

“Vergil?”

“They have a rocking horse up there,” says Vergil, bending his fingers and inspecting the large half-moons on his nails. For some reason he is talking like his father.

“A rocking horse?”

“A rocking horse with a socket holder for a buggy whip.”

“I see. What about tapes, cassettes, movies?”

“All that. There was a 3-D tape all set up. All I had to do was turn it on.” He falls silent.

“And?” I ask, irritated with him.

“It was pornography.”

“Pornography? What do you mean? Commercial? The stuff you can buy? Child pornography? What?”

“All that. I’m not sure. There wasn’t time. What they had set up to roll was a local tape. It was like home movies. I mean a tape of folks here. But there were commercial cassettes. I brought three.” He taps his jacket pockets.

“What did you see?”

The Star Wars 4 game stops. We wait while Ricky feeds new quarters and the laser explosions start up again.

“Vergil?”

Vergil hits on a way to tell me. Vergil is probably the most decorous man I know. He tells it as a report, as matter-of-factly as if he were reporting the soybean harvest to Lucy, number of bushels, price.

“In the home movies, that is, the 3-D videos, they had the children doing it with each other.”

“You mean boys and girls having intercourse?”

“Yes.” Vergil clears his throat. “And boys with boys. Going down, you know.”

“And?”

“They also have the children with the grown people.”

“I see. What grown people?”

“All of them. I didn’t have much time. I fast-forwarded it, you know.” He clears his throat, drums his fingers on his knees, looks around.

“Okay. What grown people?”

“Okay. Dr. Van Dorn, the Coach, Mr. and Mrs. Brunette.”

“Mrs. Cheney?”

Vergil snaps his fingers softly, as if he had forgotten a soybean sale. “Mrs. Cheney? You’re right. Mrs. Cheney.” He nods in appreciation of the correction.

“What were they doing?”

“Let me see.” Vergil is drumming his fingers and frowning in routine concentration. “Mr. Brunette was with Mrs. Brunette, but not in the regular way, and there were two girls with them. And — ah — Dr. Van Dorn was with a little girl — there was a lot more but I was fast-forwarding — there wasn’t time—”

“I understand. And there’s not time now.”

“Don’t worry. I have these cassettes. We can look at them later.” He does not know how to tell me.

“I understand, but I need to know now what you saw. I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell me directly. I know you have a great sense of propriety, but I have to know what you mean when you say that Mr. Brunette was with Mrs. Brunette but not in the regular way and about the two little girls. Ricky cannot hear us.”

“Right,” says Vergil, appearing to take thought, but falls silent.

“Goddamn it, tell me, Vergil. This is important.”

“All right. Mrs. Brunette was sucking off Mr. Brunette with the two little girls placed in such a way that they could watch, don’t you know.”

“I see. And Dr. Van Dorn?”

“Oh. Well, he had this child and he was holding her like — Oh. I also picked up these stills.” He is leaning over, fishing in his jacket pocket. “I had to grab what I could.”

“Stills?”

In the space on the sofa where Ricky was sitting and out of sight of Ricky, Vergil carefully lines up half a dozen glossy 5x7 photographs, taking care to place them at an angle so I can see them easily and he has to slant his head. Vergil is finding it useful to be overly considerate. There is only time to catch a glimpse of the Coach and Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Cheney on all fours, naked, the Coach behind her, also naked and kneeling, torso erect above her, and Mr. Brunette kneeling at a young man, not Claude, and Van Dorn lying on his back holding a child aloft as a father might dandle his daughter except that — when there are two knocks at the door, too sharp for knuckles, either boot heel or gun butt.

I sweep up the photos, slip them under the plastic cushion. Strange to say, what sticks in the mind about the photos is not the impropriety but the propriety: Mr. Brunette’s carefully brushed hair, cut high over the ears and up the neck in 1930s style, the vulnerability, even frailty, of his pale, naked back; the young man’s solemn, smartest-boy-in-the-class expression; the child’s — perhaps a six-year-old girl — demure, even prissy simper directly at the camera.

“And I got these cassettes here,” says Vergil helpfully.

“Never mind,” I say quickly. “There isn’t—” I see only the top cassette, Little Red Riding Good, showing Little Red Riding Hood without her hood astride the wolf in bed, who is dressed like Grandma in a bonnet and is arched up under her, in a cheerful opisthotonos, keeping her in place with his paws. “Just tell me quickly what the setup is with the additive, the source of the tube there.”

He speaks rapidly, hands on his knees. He could be in his chemistry class at L.S.U. “They have metal canisters lined up. They’re double-walled like a thermos. One was empty, so I could see that. One is upended right there in that corner and connected to that tube, rubber-stoppered, you know, like a chemical reagent. The reagent was stenciled on the side. Sodium 24.

“Concentration?”

“Molar.”

“I see.”

“They have a little card which gives the amount of additive per bottle down here. One cc. per ten gallons. What they must do is measure out the additive and add it to the Abita Springs water down here before they upend it on the fountain.”

“I see.”

After a while Vergil stirs uneasily.

“I wonder where they are.”

“What?”

Vergil leans forward to see me better. “I said I wonder where they are.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll be here.”

“You all right, Doc?”

“Sure.”

After another while Vergil gets up. “Doc, let’s go get Claude and get out of here.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll be here with Claude.”

“Doc, what you got in mind?”

“We’ll see. Here they are.” There’s a commotion outside and two more knocks.

5. IN THEY COME, a good-humored crew: Van Dorn smiling and natty in his new-style long knickers and Norfolk jacket; Mr. and Mrs. Brunette in proper sober suit and dress, but by no means lugubrious; Coach in a clean scarlet warmup suit, heavy-shouldered and big-nosed — he’s chipper, grips my hand warmly, is frank and forthcoming. He’s the sort of rising young coach who would talk optimistically about his “program”—Mrs. Cheney, hugging her arms, giving me a special look, almost a wink: I got them here, didn’t I? Claude is himself and of a piece, I see at once. Quickly he takes his place with Vergil, the two standing quiet and attentive, hands clasped behind them, as if they were attending a PTA meeting. There’s a word and a nod between them. Vergil nods at me. He wants to leave. I shake my head.