Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

Both Coach and Mr. Brunette have grown more excited but seem at a loss, like the two deputies.

Mrs. Cheney presents to the sheriff again.

From above comes the sound of hollow pounding, like kettledrums. The growling deepens to a roar ending in a sharp barklike sound, aaargh. Everyone looks up, even Mrs. Cheney. Van Dorn is lunging back and forth behind the balcony rail as if he were caged, then comes swinging down the staircase until, halfway down and with both hands on one rail, he vaults clean over and, projecting himself in an arc more flattened than not, clears Mrs. Cheney and lands squarely on Sheriff Sharp’s back, bearing him to the floor, where he falls to biting the sheriff’s head, thumping, shrieking, roaring all the while.

There are other screams, mostly from the women but also from the sheriff.

The two deputies leap to the sheriff’s assistance, but succeed in little more than pulling and tugging at Van Dorn. Van Dorn is biting Sheriff Sharp’s head and neck.

“Vergil, Uncle, come here!” I motion to them above the din.

One of the deputies, the older flattop, giving up, stands back, unholsters his revolver. He bumps into the uncle directly behind him. Vergil is on one side of him, I on the other. The deputy looks up at Vergil, then over to me.

“Put the gun up.”

He puts the gun up.

“You want me to grab him, Doc?” says Vergil, nodding at Van Dorn, who is still atop the sheriff, biting and scratching but not doing him serious harm, I think.

“Okay, do this.” I pull Vergil and the uncle close so they can hear over the din. “Vergil, you stay here to see that nobody gets hurt. Don’t let Van Dorn put his arms around the sheriff and squeeze him. You’re the only one strong enough to handle him. Uncle, you go get a dozen Snickers — shoot the machine if you have to. I have to get the women out of sight. Mrs. Cheney! Teddies up!”

Van Dorn has knocked off the sheriff’s hat and is biting the top of his head.

Mrs. Cheney, who in fact has shrunk away from the fight, elbows looped over her head, arms flailing, is only too glad to have something to do, pulls her teddies up. I take her by the hand and Mrs. Brunette, who is no problem, who in fact is as docile as can be, her dress falling in place over her complex undergarments as she stands, take them both into the bathroom, reassuring them with nods and pats, close the door behind them. “Stay, ladies!”

Coach and Mr. Brunette are still excited, forgetting their submissive bachelor status. Coach is stamping with both feet, pooching his lips and making, I think, his hoo hoo sound, all the while looking around for Mrs. Cheney.

Mr. Brunette, standing, nattering, exposes himself, pulls down his mostly shot-away trousers, takes hold of himself, and starts for the stairs — looking for Mrs. Brunette? to become the new patriarch?

I grab Mr. Brunette, pull him toward the pantry, holler “Snickers!” to Coach as we pass. He follows willingly, loping along, stamping both feet.

The uncle has an armful of Snickers, having broken the glass of the dispenser.

The bachelors are content for the moment to gorge on Snickers in the pantry.

The women are quiet in the bathroom.

With the women out of sight, Van Dorn subsides, leaves off biting the sheriff, and instead cuffs him about in the showy, spurious, not unfriendly fashion of professional wrestlers. It is no problem to lure him away from the sheriff altogether with the Snickers. I tuck the candy in his coat pocket as one might do with a visiting child, head him for the pantry with a pat. Van is quite himself for an instant, noodles me around the neck with an ol’ boy hug. “Thanks for everything, Tom,” he says in husky, unironic, camaradic voice. “Thanks for everything, Tom.” But before I can answer, he’s clapping with his fingers, and off he goes, stooping and knuckling along to the pantry for more Snickers.

In no time at all, with the women out of sight, the sheriff is back in control, helped up and brushed off by his deputies, and has put on his hat to cover his bleeding head.

He too thanks me, shaking hands at length, with a sincerity which seems to preempt apologies. “I sho want to tell you, Doctor,” he says, keeping hold of my hand without embarrassment, “how much I apprishiate your professional input with this case. I mean, we got us some sick folks here! I may be able to handle criminal perpetrators of all kinds and some forensic cases — I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the subject, in fact — but when you get into real mental illness such as this”—he nods toward the deputies, who are keeping an eye on the pantry and bathroom, from which issue no longer roars and great thumps but smaller, happier sounds, squeals, clicks, and a few stomps—“I leave it to you, Doc.” He gives my hand a last pump.

“Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll leave them to you.”

“We’ll need you and Miss Lucy — all y’all, in fact — to come down and give affidavits.”

“Sure thing.”

We part as co-defenders of the medico-legal and criminal-justice system.

I am always amazed and not displeased by the human capacity — is it American? or is it merely Southern? — for escaping dishonor and humiliation, for turning an occasion of ill will not only into something less but into a kind of access of friendship. Both the sheriff and Van Dorn, as they pass, transmit to me by certain comradely nods, ducks of head, clucks of tongue, special unspoken radiations.

Handcuffs and restraints are not necessary. The faculty and staff of Belle Ame troop past in more or less good order, even a certain weary bonhomie all too commonplace after too-long, too-boring faculty meetings.

The uncle, Vergil, and I watch in the doorway as the squad cars leave.

“You want to know what I think of that bunch of preverts and those asshole redneck so-called lawmen — I mean, which is worse?” asks the uncle.

“No,” I say.

“Why don’t I make sure Lurine, Mrs. Cheney, gets home safe,” says the uncle.

“No.”

Vergil says nothing, gazes speculatively at the sky as if it were another day in the soybean harvest.

I look at my watch. “I have to go. Here’s what I suggest. I don’t think anybody feels like fooling with the pirogue. Let’s go to my car, take Claude and that other boy, Ricky, over to Pantherburn. I’ll drop you. Tell Lucy the situation so she can call the Welfare Department, state police — she’ll know — to take over out here until the parents can come get their children. Lucy can bring Vergil back to pick up his pirogue. Let’s go.”

There’s time enough after dropping them off to stop at the driveup window of Popeyes to pick up five drumsticks, spicy not mild, and a large chocolate frosty before heading up the Angola road.

1. NO TROUBLE GETTING BACK to Angola in time. No trouble with Bob Comeaux.

I simply retrace my steps, drive up the Angola road, chewing Popeyes drumsticks, park at old Tunica Landing, take jeep trail to levee, climb under fence, and stroll along hands in pockets like a Guatemalan ex-President returning from his exercise period. Two horse patrols pass me and pay no attention.

Back before two o’clock! Stretched out on my cot as if I’ve been locked up all morning, when Bob Comeaux and Max Gottlieb show up. (What a pleasure to steal time, to do a thing or two while appearing to be idle, even incarcerated!) I report to Elmo Jenkins, thank him for allowing me my “exercise period.” He asks no questions, thanks me again for my long-ago treatment of his auntee. Though he does not say so, I think he is really thanking me for not flying the coop. He has already heard from Sheriff Sharp, I can tell from his voice. We’re all on the same side now, I, warden and sheriff. “Your visitors just walked in, Doc.” What if I hadn’t been there! “I’ll send them up.”