Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“And you know I trust you.”

“I’m glad you do, Mrs. Cheney.”

“All in the world you have to do is tell me that drinking this medicine or vitamin-plus or whatever it is is the thing to do and I’ll do it.”

“It’s the thing to do, Mrs. Cheney.”

“That’s good enough for me. Hold the towel, Coach.”

“You can take the towel off, Coach,” I assure him. Mrs. Cheney raises the glass and, with the other pressed against her chest in a girlish gesture, drinks.

Van Dorn puts a finger on my knee. “You want to know something, Tom?”

“Sure.”

“I feel better already.”

“Good.”

“Listen,” he says, tapping my knee. “Do you mind if I add a footnote to history?”

“No.”

“It has to do with the Battle of Pea Ridge and our kinsman, General Earl Van Dorn. I can prove this, Tom. I have the letters of Price and Curtis. He had pulled off the most brilliant flanking movement of the war — except possibly Chancellorsville. It could have changed the war, Tom. If only it hadn’t been for those goddamn crazy Indians. Tom, I can prove it. Do you know what he had in mind to take and would have taken?”

“No.”

“St. Louis!”

“St. Louis?”

“I’m telling you. Old Buck would have taken St. Louis. Except for those fucking Indians. St. Louis, Tom.”

“Let me see. Just where was St. Louis in relation to Pea Ridge?”

“Hell, man, not as far as you think. Let me see.” He closes his eyes. “Three hundred miles northeast — and nothing between him and it.”

“What did the Indians do, Van?”

“Indians? Crazy. Whoops. Dance.”

“I see. Uncle Hugh.”

“Yeah, son.”

I get the uncle in a little pantry where the phone is.

“Uncle Hugh, I think we better call the sheriff.”

“You damn right. I’ve seen some white trash but I ain’t never seen nothing like this. I mean, we all do some messing around”—he gives me a wink and a poke—“but we talking about children. I brought my gelding knife.” He holds out the skirt of his hunting jacket to show me his Bowie knife.

“We won’t need that now. The thing is, Uncle Hugh Bob, this charge has been made before and dropped and Sheriff Sharp is not going to be impressed by us registering the same complaint.”

“Don’t you worry about it. He’ll come out. I know him. I’ll call him.”

“I know you know him. I know him too. He will come out, but he’ll take his time. It could be a couple of hours. Or tomorrow. He talks about lack of evidence. We want him out here when there is evidence — I mean unmistakable evidence.”

“When will that be, son?” The uncle’s dark hatchet face juts close.

“It’s beginning now. I’d want him and his men out here in no more than half an hour. It might get out of hand after that.”

“Don’t worry about it. Hand me the phone.”

“How are you going to get Sheriff Sharp out here?”

“Who, Cooter? Don’t worry about it. I’ve known that old bastard all his life. He first got rich on the Longs. Now it’s the Eyetalians running cocaine from the gambling boats in the river. Shit, don’t tell me. We still hunt a lot. Actually he’s not a bad old boy.”

“How soon can you get him out here?”

“How about twenty minutes?”

“That will be fine.”

The uncle picks up the phone, cocks an eye at me. “What’s going to happen between now and then? Maybe you better go over to the door by my gun.”

“Don’t worry. Make your call. Nothing is going to happen.”

7. IN FACT NOTHING HAPPENS for several minutes. Everyone is sitting peaceably. I observe nothing untoward — except. Except that the persons present do not exhibit the usual presence of people waiting — the studied inwardness of patients in a doctor’s waiting room, the boredom, the page-flipping anxiety, the frowning sense of time building up — how much longer? — the monitoring of eyes — I-choose-not-to-look-at-you-and-get-into-all-that-business-of-looking — or the talkiness. None of that. Everyone simply sits, or rather lounges, out of time, as relaxed as lions on the Serengeti Plain.

Mrs. Cheney is still holding Coach’s head against her breast and twisting the towel.

“Let’s take a look, Mrs. Cheney. The bleeding should have stopped.”

The bleeding has stopped. “You did a good job, Mrs. Cheney.”

“Oh, thanks, Dr. More!” says Mrs. Cheney, holding Coach close, patting him.

Coach’s eyes follow me trustfully.

Mr. Brunette has got his pants up and is sitting at his ease, only slightly off center, next to Mrs. Brunette, giving no sign of his recent injury. Having got him dressed, zipped up, belted, Mrs. Brunette is busy straightening his clothes, smoothing his coat lapels, adjusting his tie. But now she is busy at his hair, not smoothing it but ruffling it against the grain and inspecting him, peering close, plucking at his scalp. I realize she is grooming him.

The uncle too is at his ease, having taken his place between door and shotgun, not out of time like the others, but passing time like a good hunter waiting, hunkered down, blowing a few soft feeding calls through his fingers.

Only Vergil is uneasy, shooting glances at me. I know that what worries him is not what the others have done but whether I know what I am doing. He takes to pacing. I motion him over.

“Vergil, why don’t you go check on Claude and Ricky. But come right back. I might need you.”

“Good idea!” he exclaims, as pleased to find me sensible as he is to leave.

To share his new confidence, he leans closer, almost whispering, yet not really whispering. Somehow he knows that overhearing is not a problem now. “Am I correct in assuming that you expect them to regress to a primitive primate sort of behavior as a result of the sodium 24?”

“Not primate. Pongid. Primate includes humans.”

“Right. I had that in Psych 101. Did you know I was a psych minor?”

“No.”

“So the reason you’re doing this is not punishment or revenge but rather because, though they have not themselves received the sodium 24 earlier and are therefore entirely responsible for these abuses”—he pats the pocket holding the photos—“the only way you could be sure of convincing the sheriff of their guilt is to dose them up and regress them to pongid behavior, for which they are not responsible but which will impress the sheriff?”

“You got it, Vergil,” I say gratefully. “The only thing is, we don’t know if it will work. Otherwise the sheriff is not going to be impressed by this peaceable scene. The photos are probably inadmissible.”

“That’s ironical, isn’t it?” muses Vergil, glancing around at our little group.

“Yes, it is, Vergil. But we don’t have much time. Do you think you could check on Claude and be back here in five minutes?”

“No problem,” says Vergil, and he’s gone.

“How’s Coach doing?” I ask Mrs. Cheney, who is sitting between me and Coach. Though she has removed the towel from Coach’s head, she has her arm around his neck, her hand against his ear, pulling him close.

“Fine, darling!” says Mrs. Cheney, pressing her knee against mine. “You boys can both come by me!” Mrs. Cheney has suddenly begun to talk in a New Orleans ninth-ward accent.

I lean out to take a look at Coach. He has stopped bleeding and seems in a good humor, smiling and pooching his lips in and out.

“How are you, Coach?”

He too leans out in an accommodating manner and seems on the point of replying, but instead takes an interest in the leather buttons on the front of Mrs. Cheney’s dress and begins plucking at them.

“Mrs. Brunette, how is Mr. Brunette?”

Mrs. Brunette says something not quite audible but pleasant and affirming. She is busy brushing Mr. Brunette’s hair against the grain and examining his scalp. Mr. Brunette, head bowed in Mrs. Brunette’s lap, is going through Mrs. Brunette’s purse, a satchel-size shoulder bag, which he has opened. He removes articles and lines them up on the game table.