The Thanatos Syndrome

III

1. OUT OLD I-12 and into the sun toward Baton Rouge and the river. A short hop, but the old interstate, broken and rough as it is, is nevertheless clogged with truckers of all kinds, great triple tandems and twenty-six-wheelers thundering along at eighty who like nothing better than terrorizing private cars like my ancient Caprice. There are many hitchhikers, mostly black and Hispanic. The rest stops are crowded by pitched tents, seedy Winnebagos, and Michigan jalopies heading west from the cold smokestacks and the dried-up oil wells.

I fancy I catch sight of the Cox Cable van, but he is ahead of me, so how could he be following? But just in case. Just in case, I squeeze in between two tandems in the right lane, duck past the trucker and into an exit so fast that he gives me the bird and an angry air-horn blast.

Take to the blue highways, skirting Baton Rouge and the deserted Exxon and Ethyl refineries, picking my way through a wasted countryside of tank farms, chemical dumps, befouled bayous. The flat delta land becomes ever greener with a pitch-dark green, as if the swamp grass had been nourished by oil slicks. The air smells like a crankcase.

Upriver and into West Feliciana, the first low loess bluffs of St. Francisville, and into the pleasant deciduous hills where Audubon lived with rich English planters, painted the birds, and taught dancing for a living. Out of the hills and back toward the river and Grand Mer, the great widening of the river into a gulf where the English landed with their slaves from the Indies, took up indigo farming, and lived the happy life of Feliciana, free of the seditious Americans to the north, the corrupt French to the south, and in the end free even to get rid of the indolent Spanish and form their own republic.

Down to the old river and the great house, Pantherburn, once on Grand Mer itself, left high and dry by one of the twists and turns of the river now some miles to the west, leaving behind not a worn-out plantation but a fecund bottomland, Lucy’s two thousand acres of soybeans, straight clean rows now in full leaf gray-green as new money. A tractor pulling a silver tank trails a rooster tail of dust. The tractor stops. The driver dismounts and picks up one end of the tank.

The alley of great oaks which used to run from house to landing now ends in the middle of a field. The first house inside the gate is not Pantherburn but a new mobile home propped on cinder blocks and fenced by white plastic pickets. A Ford Galaxy, older than my Caprice, is parked under a chinaberry tree.

Pantherburn is a graceful box, a perfect cube flanked all around by wide galleries and Doric columns. Some colonial architect knew what he was doing. The plastered columns, as thick as oak trunks, are worn to the pink of the bricks and from a distance look as rosy as stick candy. The siding is unpainted, silvery lapped cypress. The house, lived in by Lipscombs for two hundred years, looks hard used but serviceable. It has not been restored like the showplaces on the River Road. An old-fashioned Sears chest freezer, big enough to hold a steer, hums away on the side gallery.

Inside, the house is simple and not large. The great galleries and columns give it its loom and spread. There are four rooms downstairs and up, divided by a hall as wide as a dogtrot.

Lucy and her uncle are waiting for me on the lower gallery, Lucy is in shirt-sleeves and jeans, hands in pockets, eyeing me, lip tucked. She reaches up and gives me a hug and, to my surprise, a frank kiss on the mouth. What a splendid, by no means small, woman. Again the smell of her cotton gives me a déjà vu. I know if I choose to know, but don’t of course, what will happen next. And yet I do.

The uncle shakes hands, giving one pump country-fashion, not meeting my eye, and stands off a ways, snapping his fingers and socking fist into hand. He is silent but agreeable. His face is as narrow and brown as a piece of slab bark. He wears an old duck-hunting cap and a loose bloodstained camouflage army jacket, with special pockets for shells and game. The cap is folded like a little tent on his narrow head.

We stroll around the front yard and to the back, which contains a tiny graveyard. The sun has reached the trees. It is cooler. Lucy walks like a housewife going abroad, arms folded, stooping with each step. The uncle keeps up, but in a flanking position, some twenty feet away. His old liver-and-white pointer, Maggie, follows at his heel, her nose covered with warts, nuzzling him when he stops, burrowing under his hand. He talks, I think, to us. He speaks of his bird boxes and points them out. “Ain’t been a bluebird in these parts for forty years. I got six pair this summer. I got me twenty pair of wood ducks down in the flats. You want to see them?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Not now, Uncle,” says Lucy, stooping over her folded arms as she walks.

The uncle, flanking, keeps talking, paying no attention to Lucy nor she to him. “Most folks don’t know how the ducklings get out of the boxes twenty feet high. Some say they climb down the bark using a special toenail. Some say mamma duck helps them down. Not so. I saw them. You know what those little sapsuckers do? They climb out of the hole and fall, flat fall out and hit the ground pow, bounce like a rubber ball, and head for the water.”

The graveyard is a tiny enclosure, fenced by rusty iron spikes and chest-high in weeds. “I can’t cut in there with a tractor, so it doesn’t get cut,” says Lucy.

“I heard they used to cut it with scissors,” says the uncle. “Did you know once there were forty people here not counting field people?” By “they” and “people,” he means slaves.

Lucy, paying no attention, shows me the grave of our common ancestor, an English army officer on the wrong side of the Revolution. It is a blackened granite block surmounted by an angel holding an urn.

“Do you remember that in his will he left his daughter, who was thirteen, an eleven-year-old mulatto girl named Laura for her personal use.” Lucy jostles me. “I wish somebody would leave me one.”

“You seem to be doing fine.”

“He suffered spells of terrible melancholy and harbored the delusion that certain unnamed enemies were after him, all around him, coming down the river and up the river to put an end to the happy life in Feliciana.”

“It was probably the Americans.”

“We come from a melancholy family. Are you melancholy?” she asks. “No, you don’t look melancholy; me either.” I notice that her cheeks are flushed. “He married a beautiful American girl half his age, only to have his first, English wife show up. Both women lived here at Pantherburn for a while.” Lucy gives me a sideways look.

“No wonder he jumped in the river. Which wife are we descended from?” I ask her.

“I’m from the English, the legitimate side; you from the American.”

“Then we’re not close kin.”

“Hardly kin at all. I’m glad,” says Lucy.

We are walking again, the uncle in his outrider position. “I got me a pair of woodies right there,” he says, shaking two loose fingers toward the woods. “You ought to see that little sucker fly into the hole.”

“I’d like to.”

“They’ve long since left the boxes, Uncle,” says Lucy wearily.

“Do you know how he does that? Some people say he lights on the edge and goes in, but no. He flies in. I saw him. I’m talking about, he flies right in that hole. Do you know how he does it?”

Lucy, stooping and walking, is paying no attention.

“No, I don’t,” I say.

“He’s only got about a foot of room inside, right?”

“Right.”

“You know what he does — I saw him.”

“No.”

“That sucker flies right in and brakes in the one foot of room inside, like this,” says the uncle, suddenly flaring out his elbows like braking wings. “I’ve seen him! You want to see him? Let’s

go.”

“All right.”

“Not now, Uncle,” says Lucy.

2. LUCY AND I SIT on the gallery watching the sun go down across the levee through the oaks of the alley, making winks and gleams and casting long shafts of foggy yellow light. She smokes too much, long Picayunes, often plucks a tobacco grain from the tip of her tongue, looks at it.

Lucy fixes toddies of nearly straight bourbon in crystal goblets the size of a mason jar. My nose is running. Perhaps the toddies will help. I haven’t had a toddy for years. An eighteenth-century traveler once wrote of Feliciana and Pantherburn: “There is always at one’s elbow a smiling retainer ready with a toddy or a comfit.” What’s a comfit?

Beyond the oaks, the truncated cone of the Grand Mer facility rises as insubstantial as a cloud in the sunset. A pennant of vapor is fastened to its summit like the cloud on Everest.

We sit in rocking chairs.

“Well now,” I say after a long drink of the strong, sweet bourbon. My nose stops running.

“Yes indeed,” says Lucy.

A duck is calling overhead.

“Is that the uncle?”

“Yes.”

Footsteps go back and forth on the upper gallery. The quacking is followed by a chuckling sound.

“Is he talking to somebody?”

“No, he’s practicing his duck calls. He was runner-up in the Arkansas nationals last year. That’s the feeding call he’s doing now. He does it with his fingers. He’s been doing it six hours a day since January.

“I see.” I take another long pull. The bourbon is so good it doesn’t need sugar. “I was wondering why you wanted me to come.”

“I want you to stay here while Ellen’s gone. It’s all right with Ellen. I asked her.”

I look at her quickly. Is she trying to tell me something? She is. She rocks forward in her chair to look back at me, shading her eyes against the sun. “What if I were to tell you that it is absolutely all right for you to be here? Would you take that on faith without further explanation?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to explain further?”

“No.”

She looks at me along her cheek, eyes hooded.

I take another drink. “I appreciate it, but I’m fine. Hudeen’s taking good care of me.”

“Not as good as I could.”

“I’m sure of that.”

“No, I’m also selfish. Just now I think I can help you with your syndrome. I have an idea about it. And just now I also need you. You’re my only relative besides him”—her eyes go up—“and he’s driving me nuts. He needs you too. It’s all right for you to stay. Vergil thought you were my father.”

“Vergil?”

“You remember Vergil. He’s my only help on the farm, he and Carrie, his mother. You remember him. He remembers you. He drives the tractor, does everything. Unfortunately, I have to pay him a fortune. Nobody gave him to me. Will you stay?”

“You mean tonight or—?”

“Speak of the devil.”

Vergil has come onto the gallery behind us.

I had known him as a child, but do not recognize him. His father, laid up in a mobile home by the gate and living on the Medicaid Lucy got him, I remember as a hale, golden-skinned Ezio Pinza, fisherman and trapper, hearty and big-chested, too big — he had emphysema even then. They, the Bons, are known hereabouts as freejacks, meaning free persons of color, freed, the story goes, by Andrew Jackson for services rendered in the Battle of New Orleans. More likely, they’re simply descendants of the quadroons and octoroons of New Orleans. A proud and reticent people, often blue-eyed and whiter than white, many could “pass” if they chose but mainly choose not to, choose, rather, to stay put in small contained bayou communities.

Vergil Bon, Jr., is another cup of tea. He’s got the off-white skin, black eyes, and straight black Indian hair of his mother, but he wears, somewhat oddly, a Tom Selleck mustache. His body is rounded, drawn in simple lines, as if he still had his baby fat, but he’s very strong. It was his large simple arm I saw lifting the silver tractor tank. When we shake hands, he smiles but doesn’t look at me. His hand is large and inert. He thinks he’s being polite by not squeezing. He speaks softly to Lucy, shows her a greasy machine part. Lucy says, “You can? Okay, fix it and I’ll get a new one tomorrow. Write down what it is.

“He can fix anything,” Lucy tells me when he’s gone. “I pay him a fortune, but he’s worth it. Do you know he’s going to finish up at L.S.U. next semester with two degrees in geology and chemical engineering? He worked on the rigs for years, made toolpusher at age twenty-three, at four thousand a month. He’s thirty-five now and is going to end up owning Texaco. He helps me as a favor. I take care of his father. How about it?”

“How about what?”

“Staying.”

“I’ll stay tonight. As a matter of fact, I need your help.”

“With your syndrome?”

“It’s not mine. I think I’m on to something. But you’re going to have to tell me whether I’m as crazy as our ancestor. Furthermore, you’re an epidemiologist and this is up your alley. You saw what I found in Mickey LaFaye’s case.”

“Yes,” says Lucy solemnly. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I saw Mrs. LaFaye. You’ve got something. Perhaps we could help each other. Did you bring a list of patients with their social security numbers?”

“Yes. Why do you need them?”

“You’ll see. I’ve got a little surprise for you. A couple, in fact.”

Half the toddy is gone. She is drinking with me, drink for drink, and shows no sign of it, save perhaps a widening of the pupils in her dark gold-flecked eyes. But that could be because the sun is behind the levee and no longer in our eyes. The sweet strong bourbon seems to fork in my throat, branching up the back of my head and sending a warm probe into my heart.

“Ahem,” I say.

“Yes indeed,” says Lucy, smiling.

“Tell me — ah — about the syndrome,” says Lucy, pulling up close.

“Yes, certainly.” I do, at length, all I know, and with the pleasure of telling her and of her close listening, head cocked, tapping her lips with two fingers, brown gold-flecked eyes fixed on me above plum-bruised cheeks. It is a pleasure telling her, talking easily, she listening, smoking, and plucking tobacco grains from her tongue, we ducking our heads just enough to set the rockers rocking. I take an hour. She fixes us another toddy. She drinks like a man and shows no sign of it except in her eyes. Her eyes change like the sunlight, now lively A-plus smart-doctor’s eyes, now a woman’s eyes. Beyond peradventure a woman’s eyes. Above us the uncle is calling the ducks home for feeding and now and then gives a high-ball, a loud drake’s honk. We don’t mind.

It is dusk dark. In the west a red light, probably atop the Grand Mer cooling tower, blinks in the mauve sky.

When I finish, Lucy stops rocking and watches me for a long time, fingers on her lips. She puts her hand lightly on my arm.

“I’ll tell you what. Here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s go have supper. I brought some Popeyes fried chicken and Carrie cooked us some of her own greens. Then I want to show you something upstairs. What do you say?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“By the way.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what Blue Boy means?”

“Blue Boy? No.”

“I heard someone at the Fedville hospital talking to Van Dorn about Blue Boy. I wasn’t supposed to hear. He looked annoyed.”

We finish our toddies and go inside. The old house is dim and cool. There is a smell in the hall as wrenching as memory, of last winter, a hundred winters, wet dogs, Octagon soap, scoured wood. The weak light in the crystal chandelier is lost in the darkness above. The uncle appears from nowhere, flanking us, slides back the twelve-foot-high doors. Light winks on the silver inset handles polished by two hundred years of use.

“Is it true, Uncle,” I ask him, “that all the hardware of the doors, even the hinges, are silver?”

“That’s true. The Yankees were too dumb to notice. They stole everything else, but missed the silver. You see those handles?”

“Yes.”

“Not a white hand touched those handles until the war.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so. All you had to do was walk to a door and it would open; go through and it would close.”

“Is that right?”

“The people around here were thick as fleas.”

Lucy makes a sound in her throat.

“You can’t hardly get one of them to do anything these days,” says the uncle.

We eat at one end of the long table in the dark dining room, taking fried chicken from the Popeyes bags. There is a pitcher of buttermilk, cornbread, and a tub of unsalted butter. The greens are thick and tender and strong as meat. The one light bulb winks red and violet in the beveled crystal of the chandelier. Dark paintings the size of a barn door are propped against the walls. They seem to be landscapes and bonneted French ladies swinging in a formal garden. They’ve been propped there since the war, too heavy to hang from the weakened molding. They must have been too big for the Yankees to steal.

I ask the uncle about different duck calls. Lucy makes a sound in her throat. He begins to tell me, but she interrupts him.

“You can have Dupre’s room,” says Lucy. “I cleaned all his stuff out.”

“Fine.”

“He had his own room here his last year here,” she adds without looking at me.

“I see.”

“Do you know who slept in that room?” asks the uncle.

“No.”

“General Earl Van Dorn.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right. You knew he was from Mississippi — right up the river. One of our people. You know what he did, don’t you?”

“What?”

“After those frogs in New Orleans and those coonasses in Baton Rouge gave up without a fight, the Yankees occupied this place. Beast Butler made his headquarters right here. Buck Van Dorn came in with the Second Cavalry from Texas and ran them off. He stayed here until they ordered him to Arkansas. He slept in that room. He was a fighting fool and the women were crazy about him. Miss Bett’s grandma, the one they called Aunt Bett, like to have run off with him.”

“That’s a lot of foolishness,” says Lucy absently. “Come on upstairs, I have something to show you,” says Lucy, and leaves abruptly.

But the uncle leans close and won’t let me go.

“You know what they’re always saying about war being hell?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He leans closer. “That’s a lot of horseshit.”

“Is that right?”

“Let me tell you something. I never had a better time in my life than in World War Two. When I was at Fort Benning I lived for six months in a trailer with the sweetest little woman in south Georgia. She was an armful of heaven. When I was at Fort Sill, I had two women, one a full-blooded Indian, a real wildcat. She like to have clawed me to death. Do you know who were the finest soldiers in the history of warfare?”

“No.”

“The Roman legionnaire, the Confederate, and the German. I read up on it. The Germans were like us. They beat the shit out of us at Kasserine. Don’t tell me, I was there. We shouldn’t have been fighting them. Patton gave me a field commission. I made colonel by the time we got to Trier. When I was at Trier I lived with a German girl for three weeks. They were putting out for anything you’d give them, but she was crazy about me. A fine woman! But Patton was a fighting fool. We whipped the Germans in the end, but it was because they’d rather us than the Russians. Patton took seven hundred thousand prisoners. I was in the 3d Armored Division of the Third Army. He wanted to take Berlin and Prague and drive to the Oder — the Germans would have helped us — but Roosevelt wouldn’t turn us loose. That son of a bitch Patton was a fighting fool. We could have gone to the Volga.”

“Tom!” Lucy calls angrily from the dim hall.

“If Roosevelt hadn’t stopped us, we’d have gone to the Volga and wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. We were fighting the wrong people.”

“Tom!”

Lucy takes me upstairs.

“How much of that was true?” I ask her.

“What? Oh, God, I don’t know. Very little. I stopped listening ten years ago. He made himself a colonel last year. But if I have to listen to that damn duck call another day, and then about Rommel and Patton and Buck Van Dorn another night, I’m going to shoot him. I’m so glad you’re here! Do you know what he’s done in the fifty years since that war?”

“No.”

“Nothing. I mean nothing. But shoot birds and animals and blow that duck call. The only thing he’s learned in fifty years is how to do it with your fingers.”

Upstairs in the hall Lucy hands me a pair of folded blue jeans, a light flannel L. L. Bean shirt, and pajamas. They’re new. The pajamas are still pinned.

“I got these for Uncle Hugh, but they’re too big.” For some reason she blushes.

“Thank you.”

“Get out of that smelly suit,” she says brusquely, gives the lapel a yank. “I’m going to burn it.”

There are four rooms upstairs and a wide hall, arranged exactly as below.

“You stay in here. Did you bring anything?”

“No.”

“I thought so. Tch.” She seizes my coat again between thumb and forefinger, gives it a hard tweak, brushes it back like somebody’s mamma. “Look at you. You look like a jailbird. Thin as a rake. I’ll fatten you up.” She begins to close the door. “You knock on my door right there in exactly fifteen minutes. That’s my office.”

“All right.”

The door closes. The room is empty of everything but a bed and an armoire, which is empty. Buddy Dupre has been cleaned out, all right.

I take a shower and put on my new jeans and Bean shirt. In exactly fifteen minutes I knock on her door. “Come in!” comes her cool hospital voice.

I blink at the fluorescent light. The room could be an office in Fedville. There are desks, data processors, terminals, keyboards, screens, cables, shelves of medical texts and journals, cabinets of discs and cassettes, the whole as brilliantly lit as a laboratory.

We sit side by side at a large particle-board table bare except for a keyboard, screen, black box, telephone.

“How do you like it?”

“It looks expensive.”

“It is, but it’s mostly federal equipment. As their epidemiologist I rate a terminal.”

“Does that mean you’re hooked up to—”

“Everything. All networks. To CDC in Atlanta, NIH in D.C., Bureau of the Census, State Department of Health in Baton Rouge, AT & T, GM, Joe Blow, you name it.”

“I see.”

The fluorescent light is unsuitable. I wish we were having a drink on the gallery.

“I think we have a lead.”

“What’s that?”

Lucy pushes a button. The room goes dusk dark.

“Well,” I say.

“We have to wait for our eyes. We have to read the screens.”

“All right.”

She has both hands on my arm. “You want to know something?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’re on to something.”

“I see.”

“And I think we have a lead.”

“Good.”

“Okay. Let’s boot up.”

“Okay. What’s the lead?”

“Correct me, but aren’t the symptoms you describe in your syndrome similar to the findings in your paper about the heavy-sodium accident at Tulane years ago?”

“Somewhat. I’ve thought of that, but—”

“Do you think your syndrome could be a form of heavy-sodium intoxication?”

“It had occurred to me, but there’s been no accident, no yellow cloud—”

“Did you know that thing over there”—she nods toward Grand Mer—“has a sodium reactor?”

“Sure, but there’s been no accident.”

“They call it an incident. Or an event. Or an unusual occurrence. An incident is worse than an event.”

“But there’s been no event.”

She smiles. “How do you know?”

“I don’t.”

“Would you like to find out?” We’re side by side on a piano bench. She settles herself, straightens her back, touches fingers to keys like a concert pianist getting to work.

“Sure.” I am pleased she remembers my paper, my last scientific article written perhaps ten years ago.

“Something occurs to me.” Now she’s settled back again, tapping fingernail to tooth. “Did you know that when Grand Mer was licensed, the EPA required as a condition of licensure the monitoring of blood levels of heavy sodium in both Feliciana Parish and Pointe Coupée across the river?”

“How would they go about that?”

She shrugs. “Whenever a routine blood workup was ordered in a hospital, heavy sodium and chloride levels were checked as routinely as blood sugar or NPN.”

“So?”

“So I’m wondering if they still do it.”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t ordered much lab work lately.”

“Let’s find out.”

“All right.”

“Come over here by me now.”

“I’m by you. Is that a terminal?”

“Yes. Now then—” She consults a little book, punches keys on the keyboard, punches other keys on a small black box, humming a tune, musing and busy. She reminds me of a chatelaine, the ole miss of Pantherburn. Red lights begin to blink on the black box.

The screen lights up with an arcane readout: LADPTPBH and a flashing question mark.

“Do you know what that is?” she asks me.

“Louisiana Department of Public Health?”

“Right, I use ’em all the time. Now”—humming—“let me get the access and user codes.”

“Aren’t they closed now?”

“They don’t close, dummy. I’m not talking to people. I’m talking to their data bank.” She’s hitting more keys. The bank must be pleased, lights up with a merry flashing ACCESSED.

“You’re in?”

“We’re in. Now to ask the question. What’s the question?”

“We want the mean plasma level of heavy sodium of hospital admissions in Feliciana Parish, say, for this year.”

“Well expressed, well—” she muses, hitting keys.

The computer utters a sour bleat, flashes SNERROR.

“What does that mean? That is, doesn’t know or won’t tell?”

“It means we asked a dumb question.”

“I feel like I flunked a test.”

“That particular bank has a personality.”

“Like Hal.”

“No no. It’s on our side. Hm. Tom, what did we do wrong?”

“How did you write heavy sodium?”

“As heavy sodium.”

“Try Na-24.”

“That’s the atomic weight?”

“Yes.”

“Smart.” She hits keys. The thing is pleased, flashes a smiling ACCESS ACCESS ACCESS, then, as if it were thinking things over, waits a second and reads out: 6 mmg., meaning 6 micrograms. The symbol is really 6 µ but I figure this was not practical typographically. We gaze at it blinking. “Jesus,” I say.

Lucy looks at me. “What does that mean?”

“Six micrograms. That is very little, but any is too much. I suppose it means the mean value of heavy-sodium levels in all hospital blood workups, including positives and negatives.”

“Is it too high?”

“Any number would be too high.”

“But that’s very little, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but too much.” I feel a prickling under the collar of my new Bean shirt. I look at her musing. “What else can we ask?”

“We can ask any terminal any question. It’s just a matter of framing the question.”

“Well?” She looks at me, hands on keyboard. She’s shifted now, from chatelaine to girl-Friday secretary, Della Street waiting for Perry to make up his mind.

“What we need is a control.”

“Right.” She waits, smiling.

“Let’s do yours and mine. Have you had a complete physical lately?”

“Sure. I had to get one to get this job.”

“You got it at Fedville?”

“Right. How about you?”

“Me too.”

“At Fedville?”

“Yes.”

“When was that?”

“When I was arrested by the feds.”

“Of course. I wanted to come see you.”

“It was not a good time. Can you talk to Fedville now?”

“Sure. I’m on intimate terms with their mainframe. Let’s see. Yours would be about two years ago, right?”

“Right.”

“Two years. What a waste.”

“Waste of what?”

“Give me your SS number.”

I give it. “Can we get individual readings?”

“We can get anything we ask for. I have Class One clearance.”

More black book, more punching out the big keyboard, little box, more queries, accesses, OKS. The thing doesn’t even pause to think it over this time. Back come the answers. I have the feeling the thing is sitting pleased, waiting to be patted.

LL NA24—O C137—O

TM NA24—O C137—O

We gaze and blink some more.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Lucy asks me.

“It means you and I are negative, zero levels of heavy sodium and chloride.”

“I don’t get it,” says Lucy at last. “We both live here.”

I look at her. “Have you heard anything about an accident over there? Or an incident? Or event?”

“Not a word.”

“Would you hear if there had been one?”

“I don’t know. But I live next to the damn thing. So if anybody got sick, it would be me, wouldn’t it?”

“One would think so. If, that is, it—” I fall silent. “You’re feeling all right, aren’t you?”

She cocks an eye. “Wouldn’t you have to test me to find out?”

“Test you for what?”

“Presenting rearward. Think about that.”

“That’s true,” I say, thinking about that.

“Okay,” she says, not smiling, but eyes round and risible. “How many patients in your series?”

“Maybe twenty or so.”

“How many were hospitalized or had blood work?”

“Maybe half a dozen.”

“Do you know who and where?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s try a couple.”

“Okay. How about Mickey LaFaye? Here’s her SS number. But her workup was done at the local hospital.”

“No problem. They have a terminal and I’ve got their number. Now, she’s the one who—”

“New England lady, married Durel LaFaye — you know him — high roller — ended up as a starveling Christina with free-floating anxiety, panic, unnamed longing—”

“Me too.”

“What? You don’t look much like Christina.”

“Aren’t you glad?”

“—now a complete turnaround: a voluptuous Duchess of Alba pigging out on Whitman’s Sampler, goes berserk, shoots half her thoroughbreds, perhaps fooling around with groom—”

“I got it!” She takes my arm in both hands, eyes bright. “Let’s run her! No, wait. Oh shoot. Their little terminal would be down. No, wait. They would have to report to Baton Rouge, wouldn’t they? Let’s try the mainframe again.”

“Just ask for sodium. It’s the active ion.”

Long colloquy, nixes, queries, Sn errors; then: okay, access; then: Na-24—18mmg.

“What do you know.” I am gazing at the screen. Again there’s a tingle under my Bean collar. There’s more. There’s the heavy, secret, lidded, almost sexual excitement of the scientific hit — like the chemist Kekule looking for the benzene ring and dreaming of six snakes eating one another’s tails — like: I’ve got you, benzene, I’m closing in on you.

Lucy feels the same excitement. She pulls up close, round-eyed. Her exultation gives her leave. She can say things, ask things she couldn’t ordinarily.

“We’ve got something big, Tom,” she says, pulling close.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry about Ellen,” she says, still holding my arm, flushed with six emotions, happy enough to afford sorrow.

“Thanks.”

“What are you going to do about—” She stops, eyes searching my face.

“About what?”

“About Ellen and—? About Ellen and — your life.”

I don’t say anything.

Another searching look, hands still on my arm, then a squeeze and a brisk yank at my sleeve, a brushing off. She lights up a cigarette, plucks a tobacco grain from her tongue.

“Let’s do another one, Tom.”

“All right. Donna S—. That’s Donna Stubbs. Fat girl.Molested by father. A romantic at heart, expected a certain someone—”

“Me too.”

“—did well in therapy, took up aerobic dancing, lost weight, dated, but when I saw her last week, she exhibited an unusual erotic response.”

“Unusual?” asks Lucy, hands on the keyboard. “How?”

“I told you about her. Presenting rearward — like estrus behavior in a pongid.”

“How would you know?”

“She also had the peculiar language response I told you about. Mention a place name, like her hometown Cut Off, and they seem to consult a map in their heads, a graphic like your computer here. They seem to look over my head as if they were following a cursor on a map.”

“Did you say Cut Off?”

“She’s gone back to Cut Off. I know she saw a doctor there and went to a hospital with symptoms of hypertension.”

“Hm,” I give her Donna’s number. “No hospital in Cut Off.”

“Try Golden Meadow.”

She found Donna in Golden Meadow: Na-24—12.

“Wow,” says Lucy.

“Right.”

“Give me another one.”

“Let’s try Frank Macon. You know him. Janitor at Highland Park, should be on employees’ health records. Old friend, ambivalent black, love-hate, we understood each other, very funny and wise about hunting dogs. Now talks like Bryant Gumbel: Have a nice day.”

“Number? Okay, easy. Got him.”

Frank: Na-24—7.

“Jesus.”

“Right.”

“Give me another one.”

“Let’s try Enrique Busch. Ex-Salvadoran. Married into one of the fourteen families. Probably involved in the death squads. Ferociously anti-Communist and anti-clerical. Now has only two interests: golf and getting his daughter into Gamma sorority.”

“I’ll take the death squads.”

“You can probably find him at East Feliciana Proctology Clinic. He has intractable large bowel complaints.”

“No wonder.”

She gets him.

Enrique: negative! Nominal! Normal!

Lucy looks at me. “What does that mean?” She’s more excited than I am.

I shrug. “Presumably that it’s normal, not a toxic reaction, for a rich Hispanic removed to this country to progress from death squads to golf and sororities.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Lucy, that we’ve got an epidemiological element here and that it’s up your alley and that I want to find it.”

“I know! I know!” Excited, she grabs me, with both hands again, then grabs Hal the computer. “We have to find a pattern. A vector. Another one?”

“Well, here’s Ella Murdoch Smith’s number. Classmate at East Feliciana High, diehard segregationist in the old days, yet intelligent, Ayn Rand type, left town when schools were integrated so her children wouldn’t be ruined, went to Outer Banks of Carolina, lived in a shack, taught school, educated her children, wrote poetry about spindrift and the winter beach. Returned last year, rages and Ayn Rand ideology gone, got menial cleaning job right here at Mitsy, came to me complaining of plots of fellow employees against her, particularly one Fat Alice. My impression: paranoia, until I talked to her supervisor and found out Fat Alice was a robot. My impression: though Fat Alice was programmed to ‘speak,’ Ella couldn’t tell that she was not human. She was responding to Fat Alice’s speech like another robot. No more poems about spindrift.”

Ella rolls out like a rug on the screen: Na-24—21, C-137—121.

“Are you writing these down?” I ask her.

“Honey, I’m doing better than that. I got them taped right here. If we get enough, we can run them through and see if we can come up with a vector, a commonality.”

“How many do we need?”

“The more the better. I’ll tell you what.” She grabs me and gives me a jerk.

“What?”

“Give me a few more, then I’ve got an idea. Tom, we’re missing something. It’s under our noses and we’re missing it!”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s see.” I’m looking at my list. “Well, there’s Kev and Debbie. Father Kev Kevin, ex-Jesuit, and Sister Thérèse, ex-Maryknoller, now Debbie Boudreaux. Both radicalized, joined Guatemalan guerrillas, Debbie radical feminist, used to talk about dialoguing, then began to talk tough, about having balls, cojones — now both retired to a sort of commune retreat house in pine trees, marital problems: Kev accusing Debbie of being into Wicca and having out-of-body experiences with a local guru which are not exactly out of body, Debbie accusing Kev of becoming overly active as participant therapist in a gay encounter group—”

“That’s enough. How do we get a handle on them?”

“Try American Society of Psychotherapists.”

“Got you. Give me the numbers. Okay. Okay. Got them.”

Kev: zero. Normal!

Debbie: zero. Normal!

Lucy: “I’m confused. Talk about flakes. What do you make of them?”

“One of three things. One, they’re acting like normal married couples. Two, they’re pathological, but the pathogen is not heavy sodium.”

“Three?”

“Father Smith would say the pathogen is demonic.”

“Demonic. I see. What do you say?”

“I say let’s run some more.”

We run a dozen more. We’ve got three negatives, the rest positive.

Lucy turns off all machines. Lights stop blinking. There are no sounds but the hum of lights. A screech owl’s whimpers. It is three o’clock.

“I’m going to bed,” I say. “Let’s sleep on it.”

“Wait wait wait.”

“All right.”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Okay.”

“Do you know where these people live?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’m going to give you a graphic, a map. Let’s see how many we can locate. Maybe we can get a pattern.”

“Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“It’ll only take a second. Watch this.”

She pops in a cassette and there’s old Louisiana herself, a satellite view, color-coded, with blue lakes and bayous, silver towns and cities, rust-red for plowed fields, greens for trees — and the great coiling snake of the Mississippi.

“Now watch this.”

The satellite zooms down. Here’s Feliciana, from the Mississippi to the Pearl, from the thirty-first parallel to the Crayola blue of Lake Pontchartrain. I can even see the Bogue Falaya and Bayou Pontchatolawa, where I fished yesterday — was it yesterday? — with John Van Dorn.

“Here’s your wand. Locate as many patients as you can.”

Like Tinker Bell, I can touch the screen and make a star. I make a constellation. We gaze at it. It has no shape. It is a skimpy, ill-formed star cluster.

“How many questions will this thing answer?” I ask finally, hoping to stump it so I can go to bed.

“Almost any. It is a matter of framing the question.”

“I can frame the question.”

“Well?”

“It is a preposterous question.”

“Ask it.”

“There is no way it can be answered.”

“Ask Hal. He’s good.”

“I want the computer to locate on this graphic every person in Feliciana Parish and adjoining parishes who has an elevated plasma level of heavy sodium — which is to say, any level of heavy sodium.”

“Good Lord,” says Lucy. She gazes at me. I seem to hear her own circuits firing away like Hal thinking things over. She taps her teeth with a pencil. She tugs absently at my Bean collar, brushes me off. She slaps the desk. “Well, why the hell not? It’s a challenge. There are data banks which have the information. It’s just a matter of latching on to it, right?”

“Right,” I say wearily. Why did I ask?

“As a matter of fact,” she muses, plucking a grain of tobacco from her tongue and taking my arm again, “there just might be a chance.”

“There might be?”

“Sure. We got a five-thousand-baud system here.”

“That ought to do it. What is a baud?”

“Never mind. There just might be a chance.”

“Good.”

“You know why?” She pulls close.

“Why?”

“Because. I seem to recall that when the Grand Mer unit was finished, it was after T.M.I. Then after Chernobyl NIH called for an EIS to placate the anti-nukes.”

“What’s an EIS?”

“Environmental Impact Study.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning a parish-wide sampling was done for radioactivity.”

“You mean people were tested?”

“Sure. Urinalyses almost certainly. And it’s just possible that they could have—” She jerks me. “Sodium would show up in the urine, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure.”

“It is just possible—” She searches my right eye, then my left. “Tell you what?”

“What?”

“Let’s hit the mainframe in Baton Rouge and ask it to do the work. By God, there is just a chance.”

“Let’s do that.”

She gazes, taps her teeth, plucks at her tongue. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll do some networking. We’ll use State Public Health and if necessary the Census Bureau and if necessary NIH in D.C. And we’ll ask the mainframe in Baton Rouge to do the asking. I’ve got the authority.”

“Okay.”

“Now understand this. It won’t be entirely accurate, because if there’s a John Hebert who’s positive, the census will give us half a dozen John Heberts right here in Feliciana. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“But we’ll get some sort of distribution.”

“Great.”

Another half hour of phone work, little-black-box work, page flipping, key hitting, user names, user codes, access codes, logging in, PIVs, Hal’s initial outrage, user authorization denied, SNERROR, QUERY QUERY QUERY, NIX — Hal relenting, until finally there is a single meek little green-for-go o?.

“Okay what?” I ask.

“Cross your fingers.”

“Okay.”

She takes a breath. “Here we go.”

“Well?”

“I’m afraid to hit the key,” says Lucy, grabbing me, eyes round.

“Show me the key and I’ll hit it.”

She shows me the key, turns her face. I hit the key. Something is wrong.

It looks like a weather map. It looks like what happens when the TV weatherman switches to his satellite map of Louisiana streaked with cold fronts, upper level clouds, clear black sunshine.

“I don’t get it, Lucy. What are we looking at?”

Lucy is laughing, eyes rounded, triumphant. She grabs me. “You don’t get it. Okay, let’s zoom in. What do you see now?”

“It looks like a weather front right on top of Feliciana. But there is no front.

“Look again.” Zooming closer.

There is Feliciana as before and there are the clouds, closer, grainier. Now I see it. But surely not. It can’t be. The clouds are particulate, galactic clouds of tiny twinkling stars, as if the screen had been hit by a handful of Christmas glitter. Part of Baton Rouge is a regular snowfield.

“Do you mean to tell me—” I begin, hardly believing what I see.

“I mean to tell you,” says Lucy, face close, big-eyed, holding on to me like a ten-year-old.

“—that each dot is—”

“—a case of heavy sodium. I only asked for sodium. Every dot on that graphic is a person. You’re looking at the actual geographical distribution of your syndrome.”

There is nothing to do but gaze. “That’s beautiful,” I say finally. “You’re beautiful.”

“I know! I know!” She hugs me. “Oh, I’m so sorry about— but I’m also so glad about—”

I say nothing, gaze at the screen.

“Zoom back.”

“Okay.”

A single rack of clouds hangs over Feliciana like a warm front backed up from the Gulf. Strange: the lakefront is mostly clear, even though it’s high-density population. Baton Rouge? Northwest quadrant of the city cloudy, central and south lightly speckled, a scattering of star clusters over Feliciana.

“What’s the factor?” I ask Lucy. “You’re the epidemiologist.”

“I know, I know. It’s under our noses. We’re looking right at it and can’t see it.”

“Look harder.”

“Look at that.” She points to Baton Rouge. “It’s a starry yin embracing a clear yang. It’s telling us. It’s practically shouting.”

“You listen.” I get up. The toddies and the time have caught up with me.

“You okay?” she asks, pulling me down, staring into one eye, then the other.

“I’m tired. Let’s sleep on it.”

“Don’t leave.” She takes my arm.

“I’m not going anywhere. See you in the morning. We’ll talk about this stuff. Interesting.”

“One thing,” she says. We’re standing in the dim hall.

“Yes?”

“I want you to take these.” She puts something in my hand. Two capsules.

“What are these?”

“Alanone.”

“Why should I take them?”

“Tom,” she says. “Do you trust me?”

“Sure.” I try to see her face, but the dim light of the chandelier is behind her.

“Would you trust me now and take those without asking whys and wherefores?”

“No.”

“Oh dear.” She sighs. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I think you’d better tell what this is about.”

“Oh my. Very well. I guess I have to.” She was touching me but now she’s moved away a little. Her face, in the light now, is tender and grave.

Another déjà vu. The tragic tingle of bad news, the sweet sorrow to come. Her hand is on my arm. It is like the touch of a friend at a funeral.

“It’s this.” It must have been in her pocket. She hands it to me, a slip of paper. Her eyes are in shadow. “You’ll hate my guts but I had no choice.”

“What’s this?”

I hold it up to the slit of light from her office. “A lab slip?”

She’s silent.

I read aloud. “A Schoen-Beck test? On who?”

She’s silent.

“On Ely Culbertson? Come on. What’s this? A joke?”

“Schoen-Beck is for Herpes IV antibodies.” She could be talking to the lab. “That’s the new one. Genito-urinary and neural.”

“I know, I know. So what?”

“The name is Ellie Culbertson, Tom.”

“He’s dead.’

“Ellie, Tom. Not Ely.”

“I see. So what?”

“That’s what Van Dorn calls Ellen, isn’t it, as a compliment to her bridge playing. You’ve told me yourself. She’s his Ellie Culbertson.”

“Yes, but—”

“Dear,” she says, taking my arm. “People don’t use their real names for this test.”

“True, but you still don’t know who this is.”

“Honey, George Cutrer told me.” Her voice is sorrowful.

“Who in the fuck is he to know?”

“Honey, he’s chief of ob-gyn. And he has to tell me. I’m the epidemiologist, remember?”

“Who else did he tell?”

“No one. I swear.”

“Let’s see the date. Where’s the date?” I can’t seem to read the date.

She’s beside me, reading past my shoulder in the slit of light.

“The date was six weeks ago.”

“How do you know it wasn’t me?”

She has another slip. She’s the good intern. “Here. Six months ago she was negative. Six months ago you were in prison in Alabama. Six weeks ago she’s positive. Six weeks ago you were still in prison in Alabama. Now, unless they allow conjugal visits in federal prisons—”

“That was uncalled for.”

“You’re right. Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“Good night.”

She plucks my sleeve.

“Do you hold it against me?”

“No.” I don’t.

“I feel rotten. But you see that I had to tell you. I’m sorry. I know you feel rotten too.”

“I don’t.” I don’t. I don’t feel anything. “Good night.”

“If there is anything at all you need. Anything.”

“Thanks. I think I’ll have a drink and go to bed.”

“I’ll get you one. You go on upstairs. I’ll bring you one.”

I remember where it’s always been kept. In the sideboard in the dining room.

“Thanks.”

She folds my hand on the capsules. “I’ll get you a drink to chase them.”

I don’t move.

“Tom—”

“Yes?”

“You see, I had no way of knowing whether you and Ellen— that is, since you got back — and I don’t intend to ask.”

“Good.”

“I think I’ll go on up. You remember where—”

“Yes, in the sideboard. I remember.”

“One more thing, Tom.” She’s half turned away.

“Yes?”

“I’ve taken two too.”

“Two too,” I repeat.

“There’s nothing wrong with me, Tom. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I say, not understanding.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“So I’ll say good night.”

“All right.”

She gives me a kiss on the mouth, eyes open, searching mine.

3. I HAVE A FEW drinks standing at the sideboard in the dim dark of the dining room. There is a single gleam from the hall chandelier on the polished table. It’s been twenty years since I stood here. Yet I remember exactly where the decanter is, an expensive silver-and-crystal affair, and the child’s silver cup Uncle Rylan used for a jigger, and that he filled it, the decanter, with a cheap bourbon named Two Natural. It’s the same bourbon and twenty years haven’t helped it. Several times I fill the cup, keeping a thumb at the rim to feel the cup fill. I stand in the dark.

Uncle Rylan would stand at the sideboard making a toddy for Miss Bett, first stirring sugar into three fingers of water. The silver spoon made a tinkling sound against the crystal. The stirring went on much longer than was required to dissolve the sugar. There was always talk of politics during the stirring.

Even here with the freshly polished furniture there is the old smell of the house, of scoured wood and bird dogs.

It is not bad standing in the dark drinking.

There is this to be said for drinking. It frees one from the necessities of time, like: now it is time to sit down, stand up. One would as soon do one thing as another.

Time passes, but one need not tell oneself: take heed, time is passing.

Lucy finds me either standing at the sideboard or sitting at the table.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure.”

She is wearing a heavy belted terry-cloth robe as short as a car coat. Her hair is wet.

She turns on the light and looks up at me. I’m not sitting. I’m still standing at the sideboard.

“You are all right, aren’t you? I can tell.”

“Sure.”

She looks at the decanter but she does not ask me: did you drink all that?

“Well?” she asks after a moment.

“Well what?”

“Wouldn’t you like to go to bed?”

“Sure.”

I take another drink from Uncle Rylan’s child’s cup. It was the sugar of the toddy which made this lousy bourbon tolerable.

“I’ll tell you what,” she says, looking down at me. I’m sitting.

“What?”

“I’ll help you up.”

“All right.”

I used to come here as a child for Christmas parties and blackberry hunts and later for the dove shoots at the opening of the season every November. It was a famous dove hunt.

The tinkle of spoon against glass was the occasion of a certain kind of talk. The talk was of bad news, even of approaching disaster — what Roosevelt was doing at Yalta, what Truman was doing at Potsdam, what Kennedy was doing at Oxford (Mississippi) — but there was a conviviality and a certain pleasure to be taken in the doom talk. As a child I associated the pleasure of doom with the tinkle of silver against crystal.

“I know how you feel,” says Lucy. “Did you ever know how I always felt about you?”

“No.”

She’s wrong. I don’t feel anything but the bird-dog reek of memory.

“I’ll tell you what,” says Lucy.

“What?”

“Put your arm around my shoulders.” She puts my arm around her shoulders. “Put your weight on me. I’m a strong girl.”

“All right.” She is a strong girl.

“God, you’re heavy.”

“Then I’ll not put my weight on you,” I say, not putting my weight on her.

She laughs. “Come on. Up the stairs.”

They, the English Lipscombs, must have spoken exactly the same way, with the same doomed conviviality and the same steady tinkle of silver against crystal, when the Americans came down the river two hundred years ago in 1796 and up the river with Silver Spoons Butler in 1862.

In the bedroom Lucy says, “Do you need any help?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You are, aren’t you?” She smiles, absently spits on her thumb, smooths my eyebrows. “But I’ll help you anyhow.”

“All right.”

“What’s the matter?” asks Lucy.

“Nothing.”

“You look uncomfortable.”

“It’s this collar. No doubt it’s the newness.”

We had to take pins out of the pajamas. “Maybe another pin.”

“Tch. My word. It’s the stupid price tag. Hold still.”

“All right.”

The mattress is new and hard but not uncomfortable. It used to be a feather bed. The bottom sheet is fitted and snapped on tight as a drum. The top sheet harbors trapped cold air. But the patchwork quilt is old and warm. The pillow slip is new, but the pillow is old and goose down.

The silence and darkness and smell of the house is like a presence.

“You’re okay,” says Lucy.

“Yes.”

“You seem all right but somewhat — distant.”

“I’m not distant.”

“You’re not even drunk.”

“That’s true.”

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m fine.”

“I think I’ll stay here for a while, if you don’t mind.”

“All right.”

In Freiburg they have feather beds too. But instead of a quilt comforter, they have something like a bolster, a long narrow pillow to cover the gap on top. I wake early in the morning to the sound of church bells, not like the solemn tolling of our church bells, but a high-pitched crystalline sound, eine Klingel, yes, almost a tinkling.

We were hiking out of Waldkirch in the Schwarzwald. Though we had just met, we were both from the South, she from Montgomery, far from home and lonely, a girl named Alice Pratt. This was before young Americans bummed around Europe free and easy, sleeping in tents and hostels. We both wanted the same thing, to touch, laugh, be easy with each other, kiss perhaps — who knows! — even love! Yet we were shy and didn’t know what to do. What to do? What to say? We made conversation. We thought of things to say. We spoke of mutual friends at Agnes Scott and Tulane. We were caught, trapped between the happy, safe, Wiener-waltz musical security of the Grand Tour of the 1870s and the shacked-up, stoned-out ease of the 1970s. What if we could not think of something to say?

“I’ll cover you up,” says Lucy.

“All right.”

“Better still, I’ll warm you up.”

“All right.”

What if I touched Alice Pratt? But how? We’re hiking along, brows furrowed, casting about for topics of conversation, when all of a sudden and dead ahead, rounding the bend of the narrow blacktop road not two hundred yards away, appears a Tiger tank leading a column of tanks, a Wehrmacht officer standing in the open forward hatch. Maneuvers! I don’t think we’re supposed to be here. I grab Alice Pratt and yank her into the dark fir forest. We lie on a soft bed of needles and watch an entire panzer division pass. I am Robert Jordan lying on the pine needles. I hold her. She wants me to. When the panzers are gone, we look at each other and laugh. We have been given leave by the German Army and Robert Jordan.

Her mouth is on mine. She, Alabama-German-Lucy-Alice, is under the comforter and I under her, she a sweet heavy incubus but not quite centered. Her hair is still damp. She needs centering.

Miss Bett reads from her grandmother’s journal:

Later we worked on a silken quilt comforter. Mr. Siegel, our new German tutor, went riding with us. We can’t stop giggling at him. Everyone was in stitches when he thanked us for our “horsepitality.”

For Christmas Daddy gave a little darky to all seven brothers, each to become a body servant. Rylan took his to Virginia.

We are kissing. Her short heavy hair tickles my cheek, first on one side then the other, as she turns to and fro in her kissing. She needs centering.

I move her a bit to center her. There is no not centering her.

Now.

“Now,” Lucy says.

The sweet heaviness and centeredness of her, I think, is no more or less than it should be.

Now.

Rylan Lipscomb, b. 1840, volunteered 1861 for the Crescent Rifles, Company B, Seventh Louisiana Regiment. Killed in Cross Keys, Virginia, 1862.

At Fort Pelham, Harry Epps, in for counterfeiting credit cards, knows how to beat the pay phone with a phony charge card. He knows a dial-a-girl number in Pensacola and how to get not a recording but a woman. “Now, why don’t we both relax and tell each other what we like. I have all the time in the world,” says a woman’s voice in a soft Alabama accent, softer and farther south than Birmingham, but not countrified like a waitress at an I-10 truck stop.

I recognize the Picayune taste.

“I remember this feather bed,” I tell her.

She pushes herself up to see me by straightening her elbows. “This is not a feather bed.”

“It used to be a feather bed.”

“It’s not now and I’m glad. It’s just fine.”

“Why?”

“You’re just fine too. Go to sleep.”

“All right, but not right now.”

“All right.”

The feather bed flows up and around me, but something is missing. The bolster? A cold bluish dark fills the room. It must be early morning. Colly is laying a fire in the grate. I can smell the fat pine kindling. His starched white coat creaks. The match scratches on the slate hearth. He starts a blaze of pine first. The pine is so fat it can be lit by a match. As he sets the coals from the scuttle one by one, he holds his breath, lets it out in a hiss after each coal is placed. His hand passes unhurriedly through the blue-yellow flame. Colly is said to be the great-grandson of the faithful slave and body servant of Rylan Lipscomb.

The uncle is walking up and down the gallery outside, blowing duck calls. It’s a high-ball, a bugling hoanh hoanh to get the attention of high-flying mallards so they’ll cock a green head and come circling down for a look. “That’s a lot of crap about war being hell,” he says. “I never had a better time in my life.”

Miss Bett reads from her grandmother’s journal:

I never saw men so happy as Rylan and his brothers when they marched off with the Crescent Rifles.

Finished Rob Roy. What a delight after Horace Greeley!

A couple is in for marriage counseling, facing me across the desk.

He to her: I like the explicit VCR in the bedroom, in 3-D and living color. We both get excited. You have to admit you do too. Doc, you ought to hear her.

She to him: Yes, but you’re really screwing her not me.

He to both of us: It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

I: (silent, flummoxed).

There is a honking on the gallery. The French doors are open. The uncle walks in. He has the flaps of his hunting cap down over his ears. “And I’ll tell you something else they’re wrong about. A little pussy never hurt anybody.”

“What?”

“Get up!”

It is Lucy for sure, shaking me.

“What?”

Alarmed, I’m up, having jumped clean out of bed.

“Are you all right?” asks Lucy, taking hold of me. She’s still wearing her terry-cloth car coat. The ceiling light is on. There is the disagreeable oh-no feel of a duck-hunting morning, dawn-dark, lights on, and leaving the warmth of a feather bed.

Lucy is eyeing me curiously, lip tucked. I am wearing pajama bottoms.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“You sure are.”

“Sure.”

“I’ve got something to show you.”

“What time is it?”

“Six.”

“Six.”

“Six. Get up. It’s important.” She’s excited.

“All right. Do you mind if I dress?”

“No.” She turns, pauses. “What?”

“What?”

“You were about to say something, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“I’ve never been in Germany.”

“Is that so. Well, it’s been a strange night all around. Wonderful, in fact. Please hurry. This is important.”

“All right.”

“I want to tell you something else too.”

“All right.”

“About you and me.”

“All right.”

I have never been to Germany.

There is no coal fire in the grate.

Colly has been dead for forty years.

Miss Bett has been dead for fifty years, Aunt Bett for a hundred years.

The uncle did not come in my room. The French windows are locked. But now he is walking up and down the gallery calling ducks.

There is a Picayune taste in my mouth.

4. WE SIT SIDE-BY-SIDE at her terminal, she still terry-clothed and bare-kneed. She’s been here awhile. The seat is warm from her. We are gazing at Feliciana on the screen twinkling away like a nebula crowded with stars.

Do you see what I see?”

“No.”

She pulls me close, her eye next to my eye, as if I could see better.

“I’ve been looking at it for two hours and all of a sudden it hit me. Don’t you see?”

“No.”

“Water.”

“Water,” I repeat.

“It’s the water supply, dummy. Don’t you see?”

“No.”

She spells it out. “Where does the water people drink come from now?”

I am silent for a long time. Water?

“Where does the water come from?” I say. “Well, now that the water table has fallen out of sight and the aquifer is low, it comes from deep wells and the river.”

“Right. And where in the river does it come from?”

“Well, there’s an intake around here. Between here and Baton Rouge.”

“Right here.” She puts a pencil point on a westerly loop of the river. “This is the Ratliff intake installed five years ago to be above the chemicals — you know, it’s the Ruhr Valley from here to New Orleans. It supplies most of western Feliciana and the northeast sector of Baton Rouge. Now watch closely, I’m going to show you something.”

“I’m watching.”

“Okay. Now what we’re looking at is the distribution of all known positives for heavy sodium or chloride, right?”

“Right.”

“Take a good look and remember the distribution — for example, here in northeast Baton Rouge, running across here in most of the smaller towns and countryside back of the lake. With clear areas here, here, and along the lake. Okay?

“Okay. Now I’m going to show you another graphic. Another brainstorm!” She rubs her hands together, pleased with herself, “I got this from the S and WB.”

“What’s that?”

“The state Sewerage and Water Board. All I had to do was ask them for a graphic showing the areas supplied by Ratliff number one, that’s what they call it. Now watch this.”

She hits a key. A pretty map rolls out, a Miró watercolor of red swatches, bands, and blocks. “You got it? You oriented?”

“I think.”

“Now watch.” She hits keys, back and forth from twinkling star-clustered Feliciana to Miró-red Feliciana. “What do you see?”

“They’re roughly the same.”

“Roughly, my foot. They’re almost exactly the same. Look. Same clear areas. Lakefront, small enclaves here, here, a town here and here. I don’t know why.”

I say slowly, “The lakefront condos and high-rises use treated lake water. These clear areas are large new developments with their own deep wells. Towns like these, Covington, Kentwood, Abita Springs, have their own deep wells.” I look at her curiously. “What do you drink here?”

“Would you believe cistern water?”

“Cistern? I knew this place had an old cistern, but—”

“Carrie and Vergil swear by it. Carrie says it’s softer and Vergil says it’s healthier. No metal ions. He had it analyzed. What about you?”

I recollect. “Ellen is a nut on bottled water. Abita Springs water for ordinary use and Perrier for parties. Wait a minute.”

“Yes?”

“You’re saying that stuff got into the main water supply.”

“Got into it or was put into it.”

“Put into it.” We look at each other.

“I think I’ll fix us some coffee,” says Lucy.

We drink black coffee from old cups the size of small soup bowls. The coffee is chicoried and strong as Turkish.

“Look,” I say at last. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

“What?”

“Put Feliciana back up there.”

“All right.”

“Now here we are here. A mile or so from the old river.”

“Right.”

“Here’s the Grand Mer facility on Tunica Island.”

“Right, and here’s the Ratliff intake here.”

“Not a mile from Grand Mer.”

“Right.”

“Lucy, you’re telling me that the drinking water from here is contaminated by heavy-sodium ions.”

“Obviously.”

“And I’m telling you that this facility here at Grand Mer has a heavy-sodium reactor.”

“I know.”

“Then clearly there is a leak from this source here to this intake here.”

“A leak or something.”

“Or something. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

“What?”

“If you can spare Vergil, he and I will go take a look.”

“And I. I’ll fix you some breakfast and—”

“Call in sick.”

“Call in sick. Let’s go back to bed. I’ll wake you at nine.”

I go back to bed dressed. I go back to ordinary sleep, as if I had dreamed the whole thing, panzers, nukes, bad water, Alice Pratt — but not Lucy.

5. BREAKFAST IN THE OLD dining room is a meal of quail, grits, beaten biscuits, fried apple rings, and the same bowl-size cups of chicoried coffee. I don’t know whether Lucy or the uncle or Carrie Bon cooked it. The uncle is proud of the quail— they’re his, he’s got a freezerful — half a dozen hot little heart-shaped morsels per plate, six tender-spicy, gamy-gladdening mouthfuls.

Lucy is half finished. She gives me a single quick look, head down, through her eyebrows. She and the uncle watch in silence while I eat. I am starved! Lucy smiles, smokes, and drinks her coffee. Satisfied, the uncle leaves.

We move to the other end of the table, where Lucy spreads out a geodetic survey map, weights the corners with cups and cellars. She summons Vergil.

When she stands, I see she’s wearing jeans too, worn and gray and soft as velvet. They fit her admirably. She sits at the head, Vergil and I flanking her; Vergil, arms folded on the table, eyes fixed on the map.

“I think we got trouble,” says Lucy, plucking tobacco from her tongue. “I think there’s been a Grade Two incident at Grand Mer. Either a spill or a leak. Vergil knows the plumbing — maybe he can help us. What I can’t understand is how in the hell it could get into the Ratliffe intake upriver. In any case, it’s my business. When people get sick, etiology unknown, it becomes my business. What do you think?”

Vergil and I look at each other, “One question, Lucy,” I say.

“What?”

“You know those queries you made of the data banks last night?” “Yes?”

“Do they know they’ve been queried by you?”

“Why?” She looks at me strangely.

“Just curious.”

“It’s routine epidemiology. I’m entitled. They wouldn’t red-flag it — as they might if the query were suspicious, some hacker fishing around. They know me. I did the same thing with the Jap encephalitis, though not on such a grand scale as last night.”

“I see. Lucy, are you going to notify the feds, EPA or NRC?”

“Of course. This is heavy-duty stuff — and you found it. We found it. We’ll both report it, okay? But before the stampede of bureaucrats, I’d like to have a look for myself. Want to come? I think you better come. You’re the guy that blew the whistle. I should think you’d be interested.”

“I’m interested.” She’s forgotten it is my idea.

“Vergil’s going to come. He knows the territory and the technology. He’s our resource person. Okay, Vergil?”

“Sure,” says Vergil without looking up.

“Okay, now look.” Lucy weights the map with more crystal goblets and salt cellars. “Here we are at Pantherburn. Here’s old Grand Mer, now a blind loop of the river, a lake. Up here is Angola, the state pen, a plantation with ten thousand inmates — which incidentally is supplied by the Ratliff number-one water district. Here’s Fedville—”

“Is that in the water district?” I ask.

“No, it’s not. They’ve got their own intake half a mile upriver.”

“I see.”

“You see what?”

“Nothing.”

“Here’s Tunica Island, not really an island, as you see, but part of the great Tunica Swamp. Here’s the Grand Mer facility, reactor and cooling tower. Here’s Raccourci Chute, the New River, and here upriver, less than a mile from the facility, is the Ratliff intake. And next to it, over the levee, is the pumping station which supplies the area of the occurrence of your syndrome. Here, not three hundred yards upriver, is Ratliff number-two intake, which supplies all of Fedville. Now here’s the question. You already know, don’t you?” She cocks an eye at me.

“Sure. The question is how what you call an incident can affect number-one intake, which is upriver, and not affect number two.”

“Right,” she says, eyeing me. “Why do you say ‘what you call an incident’?”

“That’s what you call it. I don’t know what it is.”

“Let’s go look.” She pushes back her chair.

“Do you just drive up to the gate and announce your business?”

“I sure as hell do. Because it is my business. And I’ve got both federal and state passes. I can go to the facility or the water district number-one station or the Fedville station. I can go anywhere. You, Tom, are coming along because it is also your business. You discovered it. What we don’t know and mean to find out is whether it is a one-shot spill and we’ve seen the worst or whether it’s an ongoing contamination. Vergil is coming because he knows pipes. What we’ve got here, both in the facility and in the water district, is essentially nothing more than a system of pipes. And Vergil is majoring in pipes, aren’t you, Vergil?”

Vergil smiles and nods.

“What we got here is a pipe problem,” Lucy tells us. “A busted pipe. Got to be. Let’s go.”

“Lucy,” I say, taking her arm, “before we go I’d like to check one more reading upstairs. Could Vergil meet us at the truck in, say, fifteen minutes?”

“No problem.” Vergil nods and is gone.

6. LUCY WAITS, SMILING, at her keyboard. “Who do you want to run?”

“Ellen.”

“Ellen.” One swift, hooded glance, but her voice doesn’t change. “Okay. How do we get a handle?”

“Easy. She’s a volunteer nurse at Belle Ame Academy. So she takes the same physical all schoolteachers and staff take. Try State Public Health.”

“Right. That’s — ah — Van Dorn’s outfit, isn’t it?” she asks carefully.

“Yes.”

“You got her SS number?”

“Yes.” It’s with mine in my wallet. I read it out to her.

She hits keys without comment.

The screen nixes. She looks at me neutrally.

“What name did you use?”

“Ellen More.”

“Try Ellen Oglethorpe. That’s her maiden name and tournament name.”

A nod, no comment, not an eye flicker. She hits keys. “There she is.”

NA-24—2.

We look in silence. “That’s not much, Tom.”

“No, not much. But too much. Let’s try Van Dorn. I don’t have his number.”

“No problem,” she says, as neutrally as I. “I can get it from Fedville file.”

She gets it, hits more keys. The screen answers laconically.

NA-24—O.

“How could that be?” I ask nobody in particular.

Lucy waits, like a stenographer, watching the keyboard. After a while she looks up at me. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Let’s go,” I say. “Vergil will be waiting.”

We pile into Lucy’s big pickup, Vergil standing aside so I’ll sit in the middle next to Lucy. The uncle is nowhere in sight. Maggie, the pointer, thinking she’s going hunting, jumps clear over the tailgate into the truck bed.

“We’re not going to have any trouble,” Vergil tells us in a soft voice. “There’s only one fellow at the intake gate. I know him. He used to fish with my daddy. He’s from Baton Rouge.” The only sign that Vergil is black is the way he pronounces Baton Rouge, with a rough g, Roodge.

He’s right. There is no trouble. We swing off the Angola road to a chain link gate, Lucy not even showing her pass to the uniformed guard in his booth, who probably recognizes her truck, out and over the Tunica flats between the high-rises of Fedville on the right and the barbed-wire chain link fence of the Grand Mer facility on the left. The gravel road slants up and over the levee. There across the still waters of old Grand Mer, now Lake Mary, and not half a mile away looms the great lopped-off cone of the cooling tower, looking for all the world like a child’s drawing of Mt. St. Helens after it blew its top. The thin flag of vapor flies from its crater. From the pumping station below a brace of great pipes strapped together like the blood vessels in the thigh humps directly up and over the levee, making an arch high enough for a truck to pass under. Across the upper blind end of Lake Mary is the old revetment, great mattresses of concrete, old, moldering, lichened, laid down years ago in a vain attempt to thwart the river’s capricious decision to jump the neck of the loop and take a shortcut south — to no avail. Ol’ Man River done made up his mind.

Lake Mary, once the broad gulf of the river where sternwheelers made their stops at plantation landings, stretches peaceably beyond the willows. Directly in front of us the new river booms past down Raccourci Chute as if it had just discovered the shortcut, half a mile wide, foam-flecked in excitement, sparkling brown wavelets crisscrossing in angry sucks and boils. A powerful towboat pushing an acre of barges labors upstream. There is no easy water here.

A short concrete L-shaped pier sticks out into the river. A privy-size guardhouse houses a guard not even uniformed and listening to his headset. He waves us past.

“I don’t know what we’re looking for,” says Lucy.

In fact, there is not much to see. The concrete ell encloses the intake, a grid of steel bars some twenty feet square. It is girded around by a protective strainer of steel fins like whale teeth in which is lodged river junk, driftwood, beer cans, chunks of Styrofoam, the whole mess coated in yellow froth.

We stand looking down. “Well, that’s it,” says Lucy. “The grossly strained water goes down there, then up there in that pipe — how big is that pipe, Vergil?”

“Seventy-two-inch diameter.”

“—then over to the pumping station and purification plant. Actually, it’s good water when you drink it. We’re above the big chemical plants. For the life of me”—she nods to the tower —”I don’t see how a spill down there could get into the water here.”

We gaze some more. There is nothing to see.

But as we drift up the levee and back to the truck, Vergil calls us aside. We’re on top of the levee. He is standing casually, hands in pockets, looking down as usual. “You want to see something?” he asks nobody in particular.

“Yes,” we say.

“Look over there.” He nods toward the south without looking up.

We look. There is nothing to see but the fence and, beyond, the batture which widens into the Tunica Swamp and is mostly grown up in willows.

“What do you see?” I ask Vergil finally.

“Look at the willows.”

“I’m looking at the willows.”

“Look at the color.”

“The color of willows is green,” says Lucy.

“That’s right. So what do you see. Look where I’m looking.” He looks.

We look. “Do you mean that couple of sick willows?” I ask at last.

“It’s a track,” says Vergil. “A faint yellowing which crosses the batture toward the tower.”

“I see!” cries Lucy. “Damned if it isn’t! But what does—”

“Let’s go,” I say. “We got company.”

A small white pickup is moseying along the narrow roadway atop the levee.

“That’s just the levee board patrol,” says Lucy. “Now what do you think that yellow means?”

“Let’s go, Lucy,” I say, taking her arm.

We walk slowly down the slanting gravel road. The white truck seems to pay us no attention, bumps across the access road, under the pipe arch, and goes its way.

“Now would you mind telling me—” begins Lucy when we are in the truck.

“Let’s wait till we get home,” I say. Vergil and I are looking straight ahead. “Drive the truck, Lucy.”

“Okay okay.”

7. FOR SOME REASON nobody says anything until we’re back at the dining-room table gazing down at the map.

“Now what’s all this about, Vergil?” asks Lucy.

“They have a line there.”

“A line?”

“A pipe.”

“Where?”

Vergil’s forefinger with its glossy nail and large half-moon rests on the green neck between the river and lake.

“How do you know?”

“I used to run leaks for Continental all the way from Golden Meadow to Tennessee. That’s how we spotted leaks by chopper.”

“How?”

“By yellowing. Grass and leaf yellowing over the pipeline. I got so I could spot the slightest off-green.”

We look hard at the map as if we could see it.

“I don’t understand,” says Lucy. “Couldn’t it be a gas pipeline supplying Grand Mer?”

“No. It wouldn’t be there. This runs from Grand Mer to Ratliff number one.”

Again we look at the map.

“Well, if there’s a pipeline there,” says Lucy slowly, “wouldn’t there be a cleared right-of-way with signs and so forth?”

Vergil smiles and shrugs. Ask me about pipes but don’t ask me why folks do what they do.

Lucy looks at me. “Am I being stupid? Ya’ll seem to know something I don’t know. What does he mean?”

“He means that there would be a right-of-way and signs only if they wanted you to know the pipeline was there.”

“What are you saying?”

“Vergil is suggesting that there is a pipeline there and that it is hidden.”

“I see. You mean that if there is contamination of the water supply, it is deliberate.”

“That’s right.”

She muses, eyes blinking and not leaving my face. “Why do I have the feeling that you are not only not surprised but that you know a lot more about this than you let on?”

I don’t say anything.

She looks back at Vergil. His face is blank.

“What kind of contaminant are we talking about?” asks Lucy.

I shrug and tap the pencil on the cone on Tunica Island. “This is an old heavy-sodium reactor, one of the first and, I believe, one of the few still around. Right, Vergil?”

“Right,” says Vergil, taking the pencil and warming to it. The subject is pipes. “Dr. More is right about the heavy sodium, but it’s not the core, the reactor, it’s the coolant. Okay?” He corrects me gently. He begins to sketch. “Okay, this is an old LMFBR, liquid metal fast breeder reactor. You’ve got your core here, a mixture of oxides of plutonium and uranium, and around it you’ve got your blanket of uranium, U-238. Now here’s your primary coolant loop of liquid Na-24, used because of its heat-transfer properties — it’s liquid over a large range of temperatures. Here is your secondary nonradioactive sodium loop, which cooks the steam, which in turn drives the turbines. And here is your water loop, which cools your condenser and turbine.” With an odd little deprecatory gesture, Vergil both offers the drawing and shakes his head at it.

We gaze at the loops and the small tidy blacked-in core.

“I still don’t get it,” says Lucy. “Are you telling me that stuff from here”—she taps the primary coolant loop—“gets over to here?” She taps the Ratliff intake an inch away.

Vergil is silent. His eyes are black and blank.

“How?” Lucy asks both of us.

“By a pipe,” I say, watching Vergil. He nods.

“But who—?” she begins.

We are silent.

“By a pipe, you say. But if that stuff was in a pipe in the willows here, it would be a liquid, wouldn’t it? So how—”

We’re back in Vergil’s territory. “That’s right. It would have to be treated, converted to a water-soluble salt, probably a chloride — like this.” He picks up a crystal cellar from a corner of the map.

“But somebody has to do this!” Lucy accuses him. Vergil cuts his eyes, passes her to me.

“That’s right, Lucy. Somebody designed it and built it.”

We think it over. Now Lucy has the import.

“You mean to tell me,” says Lucy in a measured voice, tapping pencil on table with each word, “that somebody has deliberately diverted heavy sodium from here, through a pipe, through the Tunica Swamp here, to put it in the water supply at Ratliff number one here?”

Vergil gazes at the map as if the answer were there.

“That’s what we mean to tell you, Lucy.”

“Does that mean it is something done officially, with NRC approval, perhaps by NRC, or could someone have done it surreptitiously?”

Lucy looks at me. I look at Vergil. Vergil shrugs.

Lucy puts her head down, raises a finger. “We’re talking about somebody official, right? Nobody could have slipped in there and done it.” We both shrug.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“A good question.”

“Now wait,” says Lucy.

We wait for her.

“Assuming there is a pipe there, why is it leaking? Why the yellowing?”

I look at Vergil — he shrugs. “It don’t take much of a leak— especially if somebody was doing the plumbing in secret without routine pipe checks.”

Lucy is gazing at me. “We don’t know this,” she says at last. “We’re guessing.”

“That’s right.”

“We need more to go on, Tom, Vergil. Hard evidence. A piece of pipe. Let’s go back and look. But look for what?”

Vergil clears his throat. “We could check out the pumping station.”

We both look at him.

“Pumping station?” I say.

“Right here.” He puts the point of the pencil on the stippled green of the Tunica Swamp between the tower and the intake.

“Pumping station?” says Lucy. “What for?”

Vergil is almost apologetic. “Well, your liquid here is not going to run by gravity upriver to your intake here.”

“It’s not going to run by gravity upriver,” Lucy tells me.

“That’s right, Lucy.”

“I don’t believe it. Who would put a pumping station there?”

Vergil smiles for the first time. “Ask him,” he says, nodding to the window. There’s the uncle, trudging across the overgrown yard, headed for the woods, down shoulder angled forward leading the way, the pointer at his heels. Vergil, smiling and good-humored, has allowed himself to lapse into local freejack talk. “He the one showed it to me. We went hunting birds last Christmas, you remember, Miss Lucy?”

“I remember,” says Lucy absently. “We still got some of those quail frozen. We had some this morning.”

“Mist’ Hugh think it’s an electric substation. I didn’t say nothing. But there no wires except a little line to run the pump, no insulators. No signs, except a radioactive warning. I told him it is not a substation. But you not going to tell Mist’ Hugh anything.”

“There is something I don’t understand,” I tell Vergil.

“What’s that, Doc-tor?” He almost said Doc.

“You say you and the uncle went quail hunting there.”

“Yes, suh. My daddy evermore love quail and my mamma can evermore cook them, idn’t that right, Miss Lucy?”

Lucy nods absently.

“Mist’ Hugh, he some kind of hunter. A dead shot. I’ve seen him shoot two birds crossing with one shot. He and old Maggie.” Vergil laughs.

We can see Maggie’s tail stiff and high moving through the Johnson grass like a periscope.

“He loan me his automatic and kept his old double-barreled.12 and got more birds than I did. The reason we went to the island was to get woodcock. He claims they like it there, but we didn’t see any. He say he can tell by the way Maggie points whether it’s birds or woodcock.”

“How did you get in there?”

“How you mean?”

“I mean whoever put in that pipeline and pumping station is not going to want people to see it — and there’s that eight-foot fence plus barbed wire up here next to the intake.”

“That’s right. But they don’t watch the other end of the island. Here.” He touches the lower blind end of Lake Mary. “The fence goes right across Lake Mary, but except at very high water you can ease right under it. They don’t care. Nobody bothered us.”

“How would you go about getting in there now?”

“Mist’ Hugh got an old skiff hid up in the willows by Bear Bayou here. You welcome to take it. He happy to take you. You just put into the lake here and ease up under the fence and put in here and walk half a mile on this old jeep trail, used to be a hog trail.”

“How about you?” I ask him.

“Me? I got to work. Ax Miss Lucy.”

“Ya’ll three go,” says Lucy testily. “I’ll get Uncle Hugh to be the guide. You two take a look and see if you can figure out what in the hell is going on.”

“Mist’ Hugh be happy,” says Vergil, laughing.

Lucy can’t or won’t go. She has to collect her thoughts — this is a different ball game; do you mean somebody is doing this on purpose? This calls for different queries, a different epidemiology.

“Tom,” she says, tapping her teeth, “I’m looking for effects, symptoms, a correlation between high Na-24 levels and the attendant symptoms. What are you looking for?”

“Actually it would be the abatement of symptoms — of such peculiarly human symptoms as anxiety, depression, stress, insomnia, suicidal tendencies, chemical dependence. Think of it as a regression from a stressful human existence to a peaceable animal existence.”

“That’s a big help. How in hell can I frame a question in those terms?”

“Try for cases of mindless violence — like a rogue elephant— like Mickey LaFaye shooting her horses — or a serial killer, the fellow who killed thirty Florida coeds. Theoretically the pharmacological effect of Na-24 on some cortices should produce cases of pure angelism-bestialism; that is, people who either consider themselves above conscience and the law or don’t care.”

“Hm. Then I might turn up something from criminal data banks.”

“Try it.”

She watches us, frowning thoughtfully from the great open front door of Pantherburn.

The uncle is delighted to take us. He’s got it into his head that it is some kind of fishing trip, for when we pile into my Caprice, he has a short casting rod with him.

Maggie thinks it’s a hunt and wants to go, nudges her iron head into my crotch, but is not allowed.

We take the Angola road south and at the uncle’s direction two or three turns onto gravel roads and dirt tracks, dip down out of the loess hills onto the flats of the Tunica Swamp. The willows here, often under water, still have dusty skirts from the dried mud of the spring rise.

The uncle leads the way through the willows, fishing pole trailing, right shoulder leading the way, creeper and potato vines singing and popping around his wide, sidling hips.

Bear Bayou is no more than a creek’s mouth. An old cypress skiff, hard and heavy but not waterlogged, is pulled up under bushes and, though even atop it, one can’t see it. Even so, it is locked. With surprising agility the uncle has the boat in the water in no time, hops in it, and works it around to a tiny beach.

“Uncle,” I tell him, “why don’t I row? I feel like it. You sit in the stern and tell me where to go.”

We’re in Lake Mary almost at once. What a beneficence, popping out of the bayou funky with anise and root rot into warm sunshine and open water. Believe it or not, this quiet, almost clear stretch of water, peaceable as a Wisconsin lake, was once Grand Mer, the great muddy sea where the river came booming down into a curve, carving a broad gulf from the mealy loess hills, the roiling water teeming with packets and showboats, loading cotton and indigo and offloading grand pianos, Sheraton furniture, Sheffield silver, Scots whiskey, port wine, cases of English fowling pieces, and even a book or two — Shakespeare, John Bunyan, and later Sir Walter Scott by the hundreds, Sir Walter in every plantation house as inevitable as the King James Bible and the Audubon prints; Sir Walter sending all these English-Americans to war against the Yankees as if they were the Catholic knights in Ivanhoe gone off to fight the infidel.

Now it’s empty and quiet as Lake Champlain: old canny Natty Bumppo facing me in the stern and behind me Vergil Bon, the sure-enough Hawkeye of this age, one foot in the past with his old quadroon beauty and wisdom, yet smart as Georgia Tech; the other foot in the future, a creature of the nuclear age, the best of black and white. But is he? Good as he is, the best of black or white, does he know which he is? And who am I? the last of the Mohicans? the fag end of the English Catholics here, queer birds indeed in these parts.

It feels good pulling the oars, the sun on my back.

The uncle thinks he’s going fishing. He’s telling me about his rig.

“You see this little Omega spinning reel?”

“Looks like a toy.”

“That’s right! That’s why it’s light enough to cast a fly. This little sucker cost me two hundred dollars. You see this?” Tied to the line is a crude-looking wet fly weighted with a single shot.

“What kind of a fly is that?”

“That’s a no-name fly. You want one? I’ll make you one. I showed Verge, his daddy, this, and he said you can’t cast a fly on spinning tackle and I said the shit you can’t. So I thowed it out like this — but it’s got to be this light Omega reel — and he said, Well, I be dog. He thought he knew it all about fishing.” Vergil Junior behind me is silent. The uncle and Vergil Senior were fishing companions. “You see that gum tree there that’s fallen down in the water?”

“I see it.”

“You know what’s up under there, don’t you?”

“Sac au lait.”

“You right! White perch. You know what you do, you take and hold us off with a paddle about this far out, circle the tree, and I thow this little sucker right to the edge of the leaves and let it sink. It never misses. I ain’t had nobody to do that since his daddy got sick. We’d take turns holding each other off just right. You got to have another man with the paddle. You talk about sac au lait! But you got to have two. I mean shit, it’s hard to do it by yourself. You want to hold up here a little bit and let me hold you off and you try this little sucker?”

“He goes out fishing by himself now,” says Vergil behind me. “Ever’ day.”

The uncle’s only sorrow these days, I see, is that he has no one to go hunting and fishing with.

“We can’t stop now, Uncle. Maybe later. I’d like to go later. Right now I want you to show me that substation.”

“Shitfire,” says the uncle, disappointed, “and save matches. What in hail for?”

“I just want to see it. It’s important.”

“All right,” says the uncle, pretending to be grudging but in fact glad enough to be going anywhere with anybody. “Just go on up the lake to the narrows.”

A breeze springs up. The lake sparkles. It’s good to pull the heavy skiff against the wavelets. The lake narrows. I watch the uncle for directions, and presently we duck and slide under the fence which used to cross dry land before the old blind end of the lake, fed by the rainy years, began to creep back toward the river. The river is not as low as we thought. The rise from the northern rains has begun.

The uncle goes on about his fishing with Vergil Senior in the old days and the great hunts. He decides to get irritated with Vergil Junior, who, however, has said nothing.

“I mean, shit,” says the uncle. “I can’t even get some folks to go woodcock hunting with me, even when they the one going to get the woodcock to take to their daddy, and I’m telling you it’s the best eating of all, and right here in Tunica Island is the center of all the woodcock in the world. He don’t even like to eat woodcock after we taken him with us. You know why? You remember, Vergil, when you was little I showed you the woodcock — I had just shot him and he had worms coming out of his mouth — they do that — the woodcock is not wormy, he’s been eating worms, he’s full of worms, they swallow worms whole, and when you shoot them, hell, the worms going to come out, why not. Well, this boy takes one look at the worms coming out of the woodcock and ain’t ever touched a woodcock since. Ain’t that right, Vergil?” There’s an edge in the uncle’s voice which embarrasses me.

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.

The uncle of course knows everyone. We are received and booked amiably. Some mistake must have been made, we are assured. It will soon be straightened out. The deputy and jailer stand about swinging their arms. They kid the uncle: “Looks like they finally caught up with you, Hugh Bob,” etc. Vergil is acutely embarrassed. He sees nothing amusing about jail.

There prevails the tolerable boredom and gossip of all police stations, tolerable because of the gossip. Something always turns up, the latest outrage and the headshaking, not without pleasure, of the cops who thought they’d seen it all and now here’s the latest. The uncle, who has just got it from the deputy, passes it along to Vergil and me in the same low voice quickened by interest: a crime against nature, many crimes against nature, against children, by none other than this same couple, it is alleged, who run some sort of day camp, the very sort of childcare business these people get into to get at children, you know — alleged because this couple is being sprung for lack of evidence, but the deputy says we’ll get them sooner or later, they always repeat. But children! The couple’s name I remember as the very byword of somber, sober caring: Mr. and Mrs. Brunette.

“That’s one thing I wouldn’t put up with, messing with children,” says the uncle cheerfully. “I’d cut their nuts out.”

Bob Comeaux is all rueful smiles, chaffing and headshaking. “You old booger, you jumped the gun on us,” he says in a low voice, pressing me toward the door. “Another twenty-four hours and you’d have been aboard and on the team.”

His hand is touching my back as he escorts us out to his car, a mud-spattered, high-mounted, big-wheeled Mercedes Duck, a forty-thousand-dollar amphibian good for bird hunting in the pines or duck hunting in the swamp. Bob is dressed, if not for hunting, at least for a weekend at his lodge, safari tans and low-quarter boots, cashmere turtleneck. The uncle is impressed. Vergil is impassive. Our truck, I tell Bob, is parked on the Angola road. No problem, he says, and he’s genial as can be, but I notice that he drops off Vergil and the uncle at Pantherburn first, even though it’s out of the way.

We’re sailing through the pines, the morning sun warm on our backs. There is a pleasant sense of openness and of riding high and seeing all around, so unlike being sunk in my old spavined Caprice. The Mercedes smells like leather and oiled wood.

“Now, do you think you can get home without getting in any more trouble,” says Bob, smiling at the road, “and make it to our meeting tomorrow when we’re going to wind up this parole foolishness, spring you for good, and then make you an offer you can’t refuse?”

“I haven’t forgotten. I thank you for getting us out of jail, but frankly I’m a little confused.”

“What’s the problem, Doctor?” he asks, cocking an attentive ear, but I notice he’s frowning at the wood dashboard, wipes the grain with his handkerchief.

“I don’t understand what’s going on at Grand Mer and the Ratliff intake and what your part in it is.”

Bob Comeaux shakes his head fondly, socks the wheel. “Same old Tom! You always did lay it right out, didn’t you?” All smiles, he goes suddenly serious. “Good question, Tom!” he says crisply.

To emphasize the seriousness — this is too important to talk about while sailing along in his Duck — we pull off at an overlook, the loess hills dropping away to a panorama of Grand Mer, the cooling tower with its single pennant of cloud, the river beyond, and upriver the monolith of Fedville.

Bob swings around to face me, so solemnly his smiling crowfeet are ironed out white. Again he socks the steering wheel softly. The windows of the Duck go down, the sunroof slides back without a sound, letting in sunlight and the fragrance of pines warming. But there is still the smell of leather, oiled wood, and pipe tobacco.

“You old rascal.” He’s shaking his head again. “You jumped the gun on us. I told those guys! I told them!”

“Told them what?”

“Take a look.” From his suede jacket he takes a paper and hands it to me. It is stationery folded letter-size.

“So?”

“Take a look at the date!”

I take a look at the date. “So?”

“The date is the day before yesterday. It’s already in your mail. The original, that is.”

“Do you want me to read it?”

“At your leisure. It’s a job offer — a proposition you can’t refuse — employment to begin in”—he consults his wafer-thin Patek-Philippe—“exactly twenty-six hours, contingent only upon your clearing the formality of probation tomorrow. It’s official. We even have the brass down from Bethesda, a couple of wheels from NIH. They want you aboard too.”

“Job offer?”

“Tom,” says Bob, his eyes both solemn and fond, “we want you aboard as senior consultant for NRC’s ACMUI.”

“What’s that?”

He smites my knee. “You’re right. That goddamn bureaucratese. Okay, try this. You’re being offered a position as senior consultant on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee for the Medical Uses of Isotopes.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because you know more about the brain pharmacology of isotopes than anyone else. You broke the ground. You’re our man. Starting tomorrow you’re on the team.”

“What team?” I notice a broken V of ibis lowering on Tunica Island.

“There.” He nods toward Fedville. “Your office is waiting for you. Your salary of $85,000—chickenshit, if you ask me, but it was the best I could do, so I went on the assumption that you’re like me and that the service counts for something — will be supplemented by local QLC funding, which is mostly foundation money — I’m in with those guys — so you’ll be making about $135,000—not up to a big-shot shrink, ha, but we figure it will free you up to do your own research, plus you’ll have all the facilities of the center rent-free, as they say.”

The wings of the ibis, not great flyers, are out of sync and flutter in the sunlight like confetti.

Bob pops in a cassette and soon the Mercedes is filled with Strauss waltzes coming from all directions.

“God, don’t you love that,” murmurs Bob, lilting along with “Artist’s Life.” “Doesn’t that take you back to P&S, where we’d catch the Philharmonic, then hoist a tad of bourbon and branch at the Ein und Zwanzig?”

“Actually I’d be more apt to catch the flicks at Loew’s State 175th Street and hoist a beer at Murray’s Bar and Grill.”

“Same old Tom,” says Bob absently, but adjusting the four speakers, ear cocked for the right balance, listening with a frown. Satisfied, he settles back.

I take a good look at him. He has aged well. In his safari jacket, he’s as handsome as Eric Sevareid, as mellow as Walter Cronkite. We two have come a long way, he as much as says, seen the follies of the world, and here we are. Like Eric and Walter he has grown both grave and amiable.

“Any questions, Tom?” asks Bob, moving his head in time with Strauss.

“What is that heavy-sodium shunt at Ratliff all about?”

Bob nods gravely, eyes going fine and gazing past me at the looming, lopped cone of Grand Mer.

“Good question. Very good question. And if you don’t mind, I’ll answer it in my own way with a couple of Socratic questions of my own, shrinkwise, you might say. Okay?”

“Okay.” The wings of the ibis flash like shook foil and drop into the willows.

Bob leans back, puts forefinger to lips. “I’m assuming, Tom,” he says, and pauses, as the strains of “Artist’s Life” die away, “that we live by the same lights, share certain basic assumptions and goals.”

“Yes?”

“Healing the sick, ministering to the suffering, improving the quality of life for the individual regardless of race, creed, or national origin. Right?”

“Right. But what does that have to do with heavy sodium in the water supply?”

“What does that have to do with heavy sodium in the water supply,” he repeats gravely. “Good question, Tom. One might have asked a similar question fifty years ago: What does it have to do with fluoride in the water supply? And if we’d asked it, we’d have gotten the same sort of flak from the Kluxers and knotheads — as you of all people know. Hence our little cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Frankly, I saw no need of it.”

“So?”

“What would you say, Tom—” Bob, who has been lilting along with Strauss, leans forward and, turning down the music, fixes me with a smiling, keen-eyed look. “What would you say if I gave you a magic wand you could wave over there”—he nods over his shoulder toward Baton Rouge and New Orleans —“and overnight you could reduce crime in the streets by eighty-five percent?”

I wait, knowing there is more.

“Child abuse by eighty-seven percent?”

“You mean you’ve done it by—”

He waves me off. “We’ve done it — the numbers will be out next month — but let me finish. Teenage suicide by ninety-five percent. Ninety-five percent, Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Wife battering by seventy-three percent.”

“Yes?”

“Teenage pregnancy by eighty-five percent.”

“Yes?”

“And here’s some bad news for us shrinks.” He winks at me. “Hospital admissions for depression, chemical dependence, anxiety reduced by seventy-nine percent.”

“Yes?”

“And get this.” He leans close. “AIDS by seventy-six percent.”

“You’ve reduced AIDS by a heavy-sodium additive?”

“Not directly, but the numbers are there.”

“How, if not directly?”

He sinks back, eyes me speculatively, turns up “Wiener Blut.” “I’ll give you the easy answer first.”

“All right.”

“By reducing anal intercourse and drug use, shooting up with needles. That’s how the LAV-HTLV–III virus is mainly transmitted, right?”

“Right. But—”

“Here comes the interesting part. Why we need you. Tom, hear this. We don’t have stats for obvious reasons, but in the sodium treatment areas we’ve mentioned, the incidence of homosexuality has declined dramatically.”

“How could you know such a thing?”

Bob shrugs. “Clinical impressions. How many homosexuals have you treated lately? And a couple of interesting items. The Gay and Lesbian Club at L.S.U. has disbanded. Voluntarily. Tom, every gay bar and bathhouse in Baton Rouge is out of business, and not from police pressure. And a tiny but telling little item: the sale of gay and S.M. video cassettes is down almost to zero. Not from censorship, Tom! From lack of interest.”

“How does that come to pass, Bob?”

He appraises me. “I think you might have an idea, Tom, but I’m asking the questions, remember?”

“Then ask.”

“Tom, how much do you know about chimpanzees?”

“Not much. Some. I did some work with them.”

I know. Tom, how many homosexual chimpanzees did you run across?”

“Then are you saying that you’re zapping homosexuals with heavy sodium and regressing them to lower primates?”

He shakes his head, wags a finger. “You know better, Doctor. That’s why we want you. For one thing, these same subjects have an average twenty percent increase in I.Q. — plus an almost total memory recall which makes you and me look like dummies. We ain’t talking chimps, Tom.”

“I know,” I say absently. “They can tell you where St. Louis and Cut Off are.”

“What?” he says sharply. “Oh, map and graphic recall. Yes, sir, they’ve got it. We’re not zapping them. No zombies here. Far from it.”

“Then what are you doing?”

He turns down “Wiener Blut.” “You know what?”

“What?”

“I have an idea you might know more than we.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so, but I’ll tell you how much we do know.”

“All right.”

“We know that the heavy ion inhibits dopamine production in the prefrontal cortex — which as you know is probably the chemical basis of schizophrenia. We know it increases endorphin production, which as you know gives you a drug-free natural high. We know it suppresses the cortical response to bombardment from the limbic system, which again you know is the main source of anxiety. Tom, we can see it! In a PETscanner! We can see the glucose metabolism of the limbic system raising all kinds of hell and getting turned off like a switch by the cortex. We can see the locus ceruleus and the hypothalamus kicking in, libido increasing — healthy heterosexual libido — and depression decreasing — we can see it! And here’s the damnedest thing, Tom! — here’s where we need your help — we need your help because of your expertise with the CORTscan, your baby — we know and you know that there are certain inhibitory functions in the cortex — you call it superego, Freudian forgetting — which wipe out most memory recall from the temporal lobe. Tom—!” He’s as exhilarated now as “Wiener Blut.” “Those suckers can remember everything. We can see it both on PET and SPECT. Ask them a question: What did you do on your fifth birthday? and, Tom, I’m telling you, it’s like watching the mainframe at NIH scanning its data bank. They retrieve it! If it’s in the neurones, they get it! What do you think?”

“I’m impressed.”

“Then be the devil’s advocate. Attack us from your own expertise. Name one thing wrong we’re doing.” Both Bob and “Wiener Blut” wind up with a triumphant chord.

“Well, there’s the technicality of civil rights. You’re assaulting the cortex of an individual without the knowledge or consent of the assaultee.”

“Assault!” He leans forward again, eyes blazing. “Let me tell you about assault and who’s assaulted!”

“All right.”

He points north, past Grand Mer. “Do you know what’s up the river fifteen miles or so?”

“Sure. Angola.”

“Right. Angola. The Louisiana State Prison Farm. Ten thousand murderers, rapists, armed robbers, society’s assholes, who would as soon kill you as spit on you. That’s where the assault comes from.”

“So?”

“So, two little numbers, Tom. One: The admissions to Angola for violent crime from the treatment area have declined seventy-two percent since Blue Boy began.”

“Blue Boy?”

“The name of our little pilot program.”

“I see.”

“Two: The incidence of murder, knifings, and homosexual rape in Angola, which is of course in the treatment area, has — declined — to — zero.” He pauses. “Zero,” he whispers.

“So why do you need me? It sounds like your pilot has succeeded.”

“I’ll tell you why we need you.” He turns over the cassette. Here comes “Tales from the Vienna Woods.” “First, you know as much about the action of radioactive isotopes on neurones as anyone — you’re the pioneer. But I need you for something else.”

“Yes?”

“Tom, as you intimated a moment ago, we’ve got an interesting philosophical question here. Both my colleagues and I need some dialoguing on the subject and we think you could contribute a very creative input.”

The Strauss is very lovely. The Feliciana woods here, bathed as they are in the gold autumn sunlight, are surely as lovely as the Vienna woods. “What creative input do you have in mind, Bob?”

“Okay, try this for size. What we have here is a philosophical question. Yes, you’re right, though your language was pejorative. Yes, we’re treating cortical neurones by a water-soluble additive, just as we treated dental enamel by fluoride in the water fifty years ago — without the permission or knowledge of the treated. The courts upheld us then, probably will again. But that’s not the question. The real, the fascinating, question is this. What do you think of this hypothesis, which is gaining ground among psychologists, anthropologists, neurologists, to mention a few disciplines — as well as among academics and in liberal-arts circles — even among our best novelists! — Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book setting forth this very thesis.” He eyes me. “You already know, don’t you?”

“Tell me.”

“The hypothesis, Tom,” says Bob, speaking slowly, “is that at least a segment of the human neocortex and of consciousness itself is not only an aberration of evolution but is also the scourge and curse of life on this earth, the source of wars, insanities, perversions — in short, those very pathologies which are peculiar to Homo sapiens. As Vonnegut put it”—his arm is on the back of the seat; I feel his pointy, jokey finger sticking into my shoulder —“the only trouble with Homo sapiens is that parts of our brains are too fucking big. What do you say to that?”

I don’t say anything. He has gone elegaic. We’re in the golden woods of old Vienna.

“Homo sapiens sapiens” he murmurs, lilting. “Or Homo sap sap.” Reviving, he pokes me again. “We’re not zapping the big brain, Tom. To put it in your terms, what we’re doing is cooling the superego which, as you of all people know, can make you pretty miserable, and strengthening the ego by increasing endorphin production. No drugs, Tom — except our own — we’re talking natural highs. Energies are freed up instead of being inhibited!” Here comes another poke. “News item: L.S.U. has not lost a football game in three years, has not had a point scored against them, and get this, old Tom, has not given up a single first down this season. As you well know, nobody talks in Louisiana about anything else.” A final poke. “News item, Tom — not as well known but quite as significant: L.S.U. engineering students no longer use calculators. They’re as obsolete as slide rules. They’ve got their own built-in calculators.”

I look at him. “Do you mean to tell me—”

“All I mean to tell you is that cortical control has unlimited possibilities, once cortical hang-ups are eliminated. Just imagine a team that is always psyched up but never psyched out.”

When Bob Comeaux says “hang-ups,” there is just a faint echo of his Long Island City origins in “hang-gups.”

“That is remarkable.”

“Any questions, Doctor?” He’s made his case and looks at his watch even as I’m looking at mine.

“Why don’t you use some?” I ask him.

He looks right and left for eavesdroppers. “Between you and me I have — in my own family, Tom.”

“I see.”

“You got it, Doc?”

“I was just wondering about the decline in teen pregnancies. The mechanism of that escapes me.”

He lights up. “Tom, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s so simple. All great scientific breakthroughs are simple. One change and presto, all the old hassles, twelve-year-olds getting knocked up, contraceptives in school, abortion, child abuse — all the old political and religious hassles are simply bypassed, left behind. Did you ever notice that the great controversies in history are never settled, that they are simply left behind? Somebody has a new idea and the old quarrels become irrelevant.”

“What’s the new idea?”

“It’s been under our nose, so close we couldn’t see it for looking. You’ll kick yourself for asking.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“We simply change cycles, Tom.”

“Change cycles.”

“Sure, from menstrual to estrus. Look, Tom—”

“Yes?”

He rattles off the answer like a talk-show guest who’s used to the question. “You know and I know the difference between a woman’s cycle and most of female mammals’.”

“Yes.”

“The human female can conceive during twenty of the twenty-eight days of her cycle. Any other female mammal can only conceive during estrus — say, eight days out of a hundred and eighty.”

“So?”

“As I like to say, our sister Homo saps, God bless them, are in heat seventy-five percent of the time, and what I say is hurray for them and hurray for us. But any other lady mammal is in heat, say, nine percent of the time. Tom, the numbers tell the story. All you have to do with the hypothalamus is lack it into the estrus cycle and you’ve got a marvelous built-in natural population control. Then it’s merely a matter of controlling a few days of estrus — hell, all you have to do is add one dose of progesterone twice a year to the school cafeteria diet and that’s the end of it — goodbye hassles, goodbye pills, rubbers, your friendly abortionist. Goodbye promiscuity, goodbye sex ed — who needs it? Mom and Dad love it, the kids love it, and the state saves millions. Family life is improved, Tom.”

“You mean you’ve tried it?”

“In one junior high school in Baton Rouge, five hundred black girls, year before last forty percent knocked up by age thirteen, last year one girl pregnant — one girl! — and why? because her mamma was packing her lunch box and she missed her progesterone during estrus. And, Tom, get this: a one hundred percent improvement in ACT scores in computation and memory recall in these very subjects.”

“How about language?”

“Language?”

“You know, reading and writing. Like reading a book. Like writing a sentence.”

“You son of a gun.” Bob gives me another poke. “You don’t miss much, do you? You’re quite right. And for a good reason, as you must also know. We’re in a different age of communication — out of McGuffey Readers and writing a theme on ‘what I did last summer.’ Tom, these kids are way past comic books and Star Wars. They’re into graphic and binary communication — which after all is a lot more accurate than once upon a time there lived a wicked queen.”

“You mean they use two-word sentences.”

“You got it. And using a two-word sentence, you know what you can get out of them?”

“What?”

“They can rattle off the total exports and imports of the port of Baton Rouge — like a spread sheet — or give ’em pencil and paper and they’ll give you a graphic of the tributaries of the Red River.”

“How about the drop in crime and unemployment?”

Bob smiles radiantly. “Tom, would you laugh at me if I told you what we’ve done is restore the best of the Southern Way of Life? Would you think that too corny?”

“Well—”

“Well, never mind. Just the facts, ma’am. Here are the facts: Instead of a thousand young punks hanging around the streets in northwest Baton Rouge, looking for trouble, stoned out, ready to mug you, break into your house, rape your daughter, packed off to Angola where they cost you twenty-five thousand a year, do you want to know what they’re doing? Doing not because somebody forces them — we ain’t talking Simon Legree here, boss — but doing of their own accord?”

“What?”

“Cottage industries, garden plots, but mainly apprenticeships.”

“Apprenticeships?”

“Plumber’s helpers, mechanic’s helpers, gardeners, cook’s helpers, waiters, handymen, fishermen — Tom, Baton Rouge is the only city in the U.S. where young blacks are outperforming the Vietnamese and Hispanics.”

“You’re not talking about vo-tech training.”

“I’m talking apprenticeship. What would you do if you’re running an Exxon station and a young man or woman shows up and makes himself useful for gratis, keeps the place clean, is obviously honest and industrious and willing. I’ll tell you what you’d do, because I know. You’d hire him. You want to know what we’re talking about?”

“What?”

“We’re not talking about old massa and his niggers. We’re not talking about Uncle Tom. We’re talking about Uncle Tom Jefferson and his yeoman farmer and yeoman craftsman. You wouldn’t believe what they can do with half an acre of no good batture land. And look at this.” He shows me the key chain of the Mercedes. It is made of finely wrought wooden links. “Carved from one piece of driftwood.”

“Very nice.”

“Nice! You try to do it! And, Tom—”

“Yes?”

“Have you driven by the old project in Baton Rouge lately?”

“No.”

“Well, you know what they were like — monuments of bare ugliness, excrement in the stairwells, and God knows what. You know what you’d see now?”

“No.”

“Green! Trees, shrubs, flowers, garden plots — one of the anthropologists on our board noted a striking resemblance to the decorative vegetation of the Masai tribesmen — and guess what they’ve done with the old cinder-block entrances?”

“What?”

“They’re now mosaics, bits of colored glass from Anacin bottles, taillights, whatever, for all the world like — can’t you guess?”

“No.”

“The African bower bird, Tom. Lovely!”

“I see.”

“Do you remember the colorful bottle trees darkies used to make in the old days?”

“Yes,” I say, wondering how Bob Como of Long Island City knows about bottle trees.

“We got some in the Desire project. Yes, Blue Boy’s there.”

“I see.”

“Would you deny that is superior to the old fuck-you graffiti?”

“No.” I look at my watch. “I’ve got to go home. Two questions.”

“Shoot. Make them hard questions.”

“Are you still disposing of infants and old people in your Qualitarian Centers?”

Bob Comeaux looks reproachful. “That’s unfair, Tom.”

“I didn’t say I disapproved. I was just asking.”

“Ah ha. All right! What you’re talking about is pedeuthanasia and gereuthanasia. What we’re doing, as you well know, is following the laws of the Supreme Court, respecting the rights of the family, the consensus of child psychologists, the rights of the unwanted child not to have to suffer a life of suffering and abuse, the right of the unwanted aged to a life with dignity and a death with dignity. Toward this end we — to use your word — dispose of those neonates and euthanates who are entitled to the Right to Death provision in the recent court decisions.”

“Neonate? Euthanate?”

“I think you’re having me on, Tom. We’ve spoken of this before. But I’ll answer you straight, anyhow. A neonate is a human infant who according to the American Psychological Association does not attain its individuality until the acquisition of language and according to the Supreme Court does not acquire its legal rights until the age of eighteen months — an arbitrary age to be sure, but one which, as you well know, is a good ballpark figure. You of all people know this. Consult your fellow shrinks.”

“I see.”

“Next question?”

“How does Van Dorn figure in this?”

He laughs. “Ah, Van. Van the man, the Renaissance man. I’ll tell you the truth. That guy makes me uncomfortable. I’m just an ordinary clinician, Tom. Just a guy out to improve a little bit the quality of life for all Americans. He does too many things well: tournament bridge, Olympic soccer, headmaster, computer hacker — he runs the computer division at Mitsy. In a word, he’s the Mitsy end of the sodium shunt and is a consultant to NRC besides. He’s to NRC what I am to NIH. He’s project manager of the coolant division at Grand Mer — which means it’s up to him to dispose of waste heavy sodium. No problem! Without him there’d be no goodies coming down the pipe. He not only set up the entire computer program for Mitsy but also the follow-up program for the beneficiaries of our little pilot program — some one hundred thousand or so subjects. We know how they’re performing as individuals and as a class. If you want to know the medical status of Joe Blow, a hairdresser in Denham Springs, he’ll hit a key and tell you. If you want to know the incidence of AIDS in all the hairdressers and interior decorators in the treatment area, he’ll hit a key and tell you. As a matter of fact, he mainly credits you with his success. He says you’re going down in history as the father of isotope brain pharmacology.”

“I see.”

“So for better or worse, Doctor, it appears you’re one of us.”

“So it seems.”

“Van Dorn.” He shakes his head. “What a character. I think he’s a bit of a spook myself, but he does think in large terms. This little project is small potatoes to him. He’s got bigger fish to fry.”

“What are they?”

“A little item which he calls the sexual liberation of Western civilization. According to Van, the entire Western world has been hung up on sex since St. Paul.”

“I see.”

“We call him our Dr. Ruth, Dr. Ruth of the bayous.”

“Dr. Ruth?”

“Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the good-sex lady. A little joke.”

“I see. Okay, would you mind taking me to my car?”

We’re sailing through the sunlit pines, “The Beautiful Blue Danube” all around us. Bob is enjoying himself. He puts a soft fist on my knee.

“Tom, we need you. We want you on the team. We need your old sour, sardonic savvy to keep us honest. You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, one thing. Tell me honestly. Don’t pull punches. Has anything you’ve heard in the last few minutes about the behavioral effects of the sodium additive struck you as socially undesirable?”

“Not offhand, though it’s hard to say. I’ll have to think it over.”

“There you go!” Again the soft congratulatory fist on my knee. “That’s the answer we’re looking for. Be hard on us! Be our Dutch uncle!”

“What about the cases of gratuitous violence — Mickey LaFaye shooting all her horses — the rogue violence of that postal worker in St. Francisville who shot everybody in the post office?”

Now he socks himself. “You’ve already put your finger on it!” he cries aloud. “That’s why we need you.”

“I have?”

“Rogue. You said it. You know what happens once in a while with elephants, which, as you know, have the largest brain of all land mammals and the best memory scansion?”

“Rogue elephants?”

“Once in a great while. We don’t know why with them and we don’t know why with us. Oh, we got bugs, Tom. Why do you think we’re bothering with you?”

“I understand.” I see my Caprice pulled off the road at the Ratliff gate. After the Mercedes it looks as if it had been junked and abandoned.

We shake hands. “One last thing, Tom,” Bob says in a different voice, not letting go of my hand. “I know that you’ll respect the confidentiality of what we’ve been talking about. But there’s a little legal hook to it too.”

“Legal?”

“It’s a formality, but by virtue of the fact that you know about Project Blue Boy, you are now in the Grade Three section of the National Security Act and are subject to the jurisdiction of the ATFA security guys.”

“It sounds like you’re reading me my rights.”

“I am! That’s what comes from messing with feds.”

“Are those the guys who busted us over there?” I nod toward Lake Mary.”

“Oh no. Those were county mounties. We’ve got a working arrangement with them. The ATFA guys keep a low profile. But I’m afraid they’ll be watching you — just as they watch me. It’s a small price, Tom.”

“What is ATFA?”

“Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Tom, those guys make the FBI look like Keystone Kops.”

A final firm handshake. “Tomorrow morning nine o’clock, my office at Fedville. I want you to meet my colleagues in Blue Boy. Tom, they’re good guys. You’ll like them. They’re the best of two worlds.”

“What two worlds?”

“Try to imagine a Harvard and M.I.T. brain who is not an asshole and try to imagine a Texas Humana can-do surgeon who is not an airhead.”

“I’ll try.”

9. ELLEN IS GONE. Margaret and Tommy are gone. Hudeen and Chandra are in an uproar. It is hard to get the story.

A Cox Cable van is parked two blocks from The Quarters. A man in the cherry picker is working on the line. He and the driver pay no attention to me.

Chandra has a new job and a car to go with it, a white compact with WOW-TV in large black letters. She’s the Feliciana correspondent and will do her first assignment this afternoon, the horse show at the Feliciana Free Fair. She’s full of it. She uses words like “major market,” “doing a remote,” “feature segment.”

Where is Ellen?

Hudeen, who long ago gave up ordinary talk except for exclamations and demurrers, can’t seem to relate the sequence of events.

Chandra, excited and nervous about her new job, is not much better.

I have to get the story by a series of questions, sitting facing Chandra at the breakfast table, Hudeen standing as usual at the sink, shelling peas and cooking greens, one eye cocked on the old Sony Trinitron. Watching As the World Turns, which has been on for fifty years. There’s young, now old, Chris Hughes. Over thirty years ago I was watching Grandpa Hughes counseling Ellen when the first bulletin came on that Kennedy had been plugged. Hudeen, sensing my alarm, is willing to turn down the sound and answer questions.

Ellen, it seems, has gone to Fresno, after all.

She left this morning.

With Dr. Van Dorn?

No, but he picked her up and took her to the Baton Rouge airport.

Tommy and Margaret went to school as usual, right?

Yes, he took them and they going to stay there as boarders while Miss Ellen gone.

What? What do you mean they’re staying there? Why aren’t they staying here?

Hudeen: I own no. Like I tole Miss Ellen, we take care them, ain’t that right, Chandra?

Chandra, sobering up from being a TV personality: Yes, that’s perfectly true. We’re perfectly capable of taking care of them. Hudeen is here during the afternoon and I’m here at night. In fact, I offered to take them to the fair and they wanted to go. But after Mr. Van Dorn talked to your wife, they decided it would be better if they stayed at the school with the boarders.

For the whole week?

Yes.

I see.

“He done give her a whole big box of Go Diver,” says Hudeen, hand on the volume control.

“What?”

Chandra: “After they talked in there,” Chandra nods toward the living room, “more like arguing at first, while we were keeping Tommy and Margaret in here. Yes, he did give her a five-pound box of Godiva chocolates, which she ate while I was packing for her and the children. And about that time I get my call from WOW—”

“You say she ate them all?”

“I mean all,” says Hudeen.

They get into a discussion of Godiva chocolates. “She already a little heavy, I tole her!” Hudeen exclaims into the sink. “And I had her breakfast ready, her and the chirren, some fried grits and gravy, which don’t put no weight on nobody.”

Chandra is shaking her head at me and rolling her eyes up.

Hudeen, who doesn’t miss much, sees her.

“Don’t you mock me, girl!”

“I’m not mocking you.” Chandra turns to me. “It’s not the calories so much as the sugar metabolism and known carcinogens in chocolate.”

Sugar metabolism. Carcinogens. I’m not following this.

“Just a minute.” I hold out a hand to each. “Hold it. Let me get this straight. You, ya’ll, are saying that Ellen had an argument with Dr. Van Dorn, that he gave her a box of candy, that you had to pack for her and the children, that she’s gone to Fresno by herself, and that the children are going to stay at Belle Ame with the boarders?”

“Sho,” says Hudeen, keeping an eye on Chris Hughes’s granddaughter, a girl in deep trouble.

“She was quite upset about something,” explains Chandra, again shaking her head at Hudeen, “which was why I helped with the packing—”

“Wasn’t studyin’ any packing,” says Hudeen. “I tell her, I say, Miss Ellen, you got to pack.”

“But she was fine, don’t worry,” says Chandra, as sober and sensible as I could want. “She polishes off that box of candy, which would have polished me off, and is perfectly fine. I don’t like that man,” she adds thoughtfully.

“Who, Dr. Van Dorn? Why not?”

“He’s manipulative. I don’t trust him,” says Chandra.

“He biggety too,” says Hudeen.

“How do you mean?”

“Telling me to call Carrie Bon and tell her Claude he staying out there too. Didn’t ax, told, like I’m working for him.”

“Wait. You’re telling me that Dr. Van Dorn asked you to call Carrie Bon, Vergil and Claude’s mother, at Pantherburn and tell her that Claude was going to be staying at Belle Ame too?”

“That what I’m telling you.”

I look at Chandra. She shrugs. “That was after I left. I had got my call.”

“What did you do, Hudeen?” Hudeen doesn’t turn around but holds up both hands, pale salmon-colored palms turned up. “What I’m going to do, he standing right there holding out the phone. So I told her he be staying on with Tommy and Margaret and she say all right.”

“I see.”

“I sent him some clothes too, but he big.”

“I know.”

“I sent him your sweater and pajamas.”

“Good.”

“Dr. Tom—” For the first time Hudeen turns to face me, drying her hands with her apron, eyes almost meeting mine, then falling away. “I sho wish you’d — Ain’t no way I can—” She turns back to the sink.

I look at Chandra. She too opens her hands. “She means that Tommy and Margaret need more parenting and that Mrs. More is preoccupied with her bridge or with—” She too falls silent.

Parenting. True, I could use more parenting skills.

We all fall silent.

I’m thinking about the argument and the Godiva chocolates. Then I think of nothing. Then something occurs to me.

“Chandra, I want you to do me a favor.”

“Ask it.” There is something alarming about her new gravity, her attentiveness to me. I think I liked her smart-aleckness better. “I got a few minutes before I have to do this remote. I’m meeting the camera crew and the remote unit.”

“This won’t take long. I want you to make a phone call for me.”

“No problem.” She picks up the wall phone.

“No. Don’t you have a cellular phone in your car?”

“I surely do.” She looks both pleased and puzzled.

“Okay, but first hand me that phone and I’ll make a call.”

Hudeen and Chandra make an effort to appear not to listen as I make my call. But they don’t talk. Hudeen turns off the sink tap.

I call Belle Ame. A woman’s voice answers. I ask for Van Dorn. He’s not there.

“This is Dr. Thomas More. With whom am I speaking?”

“Oh, Dr. More! This is Mrs. Cheney from homeroom. You remember me!”

“I sure do.”

“Dr. Van Dorn will be back in a few minutes. He’s down at the soccer field.”

“Very good, Mrs. Cheney.” She has the sweet-lady voice of a sorority housemother. “I am calling to tell you I am picking up Tommy and Margaret and Claude Bon in about an hour. You can tell Dr. Van Dorn when he gets back.”

“Well surely, Doctor, but I thought—”

“Plans have been changed. I’m picking them up. Please have them ready, Mrs. Cheney.”

“I surely will, Doctor. But—”

But I’ve hung up. I pass the phone to Chandra. She looks at me.

“Chandra, I can’t explain now — we have to move fast — but will you make a call for me from your cellular phone in your car?”

“Of course.”

“You were leaving anyway.”

“Yes, I—”

“Can you leave this instant?”

“Sure.” She gets up. She hears something in my voice. “What’s the call?” She’s good. She doesn’t ask why.

“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.”

“It don’t?”

“You don’t keep up with politics, do you?”

“No.”

“The way it is in politics, Tom, is that if you’re head of an agency you generally like to keep your job.”

“I see.”

“Tom, may I give you a couple of elementary political facts?”

“Sure. You’ve got a couple of minutes.”

She speaks patiently, patting my thigh to make her points. “Number one: Tom, you are aware that the presidential election will occur next month?”

“I was aware of that.”

“You’re aware that the incumbent ticket is a shoo-in, almost certain winners?”

“I suppose.” I am thinking of all the political arguments at Fort Pelham, which were endless and boring and often inflamed to the point of fights.

“Tom, if this Blue Boy outfit can make it until November 7, they’ve got it made for good. Blue Boy can be presented as a fait accompli. They’ve got the clinical results, Tom, the numbers. And the numbers are going to be irresistible. And, Tom, they’re not only going to be authorized if they can make it by then, they’re going to be heavily funded. NIH can’t turn them down. You know that, don’t you?”

“Well—” I look at my watch. School is out.

This time Lucy’s hand stays on my thigh. “But there’s one fly in the ointment, Tom.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so. Guess who?”

“Who?”

“You.”

“Me.”

“Tom, you’re the one thing they’re worried about. You’re the danger. They even have a name for you — or what they’re afraid you might become.”

“What’s that?”

“An intervener. Which is to say, the deadliest sort of whistle- blower. Tom, they have to do something about you.”

“I know. They offered me a job. On the team.”

“Are you taking it?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Tom, for Christ’s sake, they can send you back to Alabama, or—”

“Or?”

“Nothing.”

“How could they send me back to Alabama?”

“Tom, you busted your parole when you crashed into the shunt site on Tunica Island. They have you.”

“I see. So?”

“He thinks you’ve already blown the whistle on them.”

“How’s that?”

“It seems the deal between your pal Bob and your Father Smith has fallen through. Father Smith is not only not going to sell his hospice to them, he called the wrath of God down on him. Bob thinks you told him about the pilot and that you’re going to turn loose the Catholics and fundamentalists on him. That would blow it.”

“I suppose.”

“Fortunately, you’ve got one thing going for you. No, two things.”

“Yes?”

“One, Father Smith is crazy as a jaybird and everyone knows it. He spoke to Bob through a bullhorn.”

“What’s the other?”

“The other is, you’re not exactly the type to get involved in religious crusades, and everybody knows that.”

“So?”

“Tom.” She has come close. There’s half the seat left beyond her. We’re spinning down River Road in the pickup like Louisiana lovers.

“Yes?”

“Bob Comeaux laid it out for me one, two, three. He was perfectly open and aboveboard and, Tom—”

“Yes?”

“He’s got a good case.”

“He has?”

“May I tell you?”

“Tell me later.” I can see the widow’s walk of Belle Ame over a cypress break.

“We’re here. Let’s get the kids.” We’re through the great iron gates of Belle Ame and into an English park.

Nothing could look less sinister than the gentle golden light of Louisiana autumn, which is both sociable and sad, casting shadows from humpy oaks across a peopled park, boys and girls in running suits gold and green, a bus loading up with day students, and the playing fields beyond, youth in all the rinsing sadness of its happiness, bare-legged pep-squad girls flourishing in sync banners as big as Camelot, boys in a pickup game of touch coming close to the girls both heedless and mindful.

Lucy speaks quickly, one hand creasing the flesh of my thigh to fold the words in.

“Take the job with Comeaux. You have no choice.”

“I probably will. Look out for a couple named Brunette, a Mr. and Mrs. Brunette.”

“Okay. You and the kids better spend the night at Pantherburn.”

“Why?”

“Your phone’s bugged, for one thing. Hal told me.”

“So is yours, probably.”

“Not now.”

“Why not?”

“I fixed a device on my modem.”

“You have a lovely one.”

“What?”

“I said you have a lovely modem.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Come back in half an hour. Head for the rec room over there.”

I’m not looking at her now but at Van Dorn. He’s coming down the outside staircase of Belle Ame, which hangs like a necklace from this lovely old lady of a house. Belle Ame, lovely lady. He’s smiling, his arms outstretched. He’s expecting us.

11. BELLE AME IS nestled under the levee in a magnolia grove, which hides most of the tank farm which surrounds it on three sides and the towers and pipery of the refinery which used to hum night and day like twenty dynamos before the oil wells dried up.

This is no hard-used, working plantation house like Pantherburn. There are no Sears freezers on the gallery, no bird dogs scrabbling in the hall. Belle Ame has been restored to its 1857 splendor, a slightly vulgar splendor, showy and ritzy even then, with its florid Corinthian columns from late rich Rome and the late rich South. It is even more showy and ritzy now, as much now the creature of Texaco and Hollywood as of King Cotton then. Texaco, which owned it, wanted to do something “cultural” to show they were not despoiling the state. Hollywood wanted its own dream palace of the South. More movies have been made here than on Paramount’s back lot. Susan Hayward and John Carroll are its proper tenants. Clint Eastwood, a Yankee deserter, unshaven but not ungallant, was hidden out here by Southern belles, a bevy of hoopskirted starlets from Sunset Boulevard …

Outside, between its far-flung wings, its famous twin staircases rise and curve as delicately as filigree between the columns of its slightly vulgar, thrusting Roman portico. The grounds are scattered with no less pretentious structures, garçonnières, pigeonnières, slave quarters, and even a columned Greek-revival privy.

Texaco, which didn’t need it, gave the place to a private school, which had been founded to revive the traditional Southern academy founded on Greek ideals of virtue and to avoid the integration of the public schools.

Van Dorn holds out a hand to each of us. “Old Br’er Possum Tom! Cud’n Lucy!” He gives her a kiss, pulls us close, holds us off. “Look at you two. I like. Splendid. Aren’t y’all kissin’ cousins too?” Van Dorn looks good, his gray-green eyes glittering, his heavy handsome pocked face not pale but slightly flushed as if he had just waked. He’s wearing old air force coveralls with knee pockets and loops for tools. He extracts a big Stillson wrench. “Pardon the mess but guess who’s the number-one handyman here. Have you tried to hire a plumber lately, Lucy? I’ve been up to my ass in cellar water. Come on in. Excuse me,” he says, bowing to Lucy. “Not Cud’n but Dr. Lipscomb, I believe. Nurse Cheney is expecting you.”

“I’ve come to pick up the kids, Van,” I say, feeling better about him. “I called Mrs. Cheney.”

“Sho now. Okay, come on in and I’ll have ’em rounded up from the dorm or more likely from the stables.”

“Y’all go on in,” says Lucy. “I’ll just go on over there to the rec room. I know the way.” “Sho now. Tom—” He opens a hand to me and the house.

Van Dorn doesn’t mind Lucy striking out on her own. Inside, he fixes his half-drunk drink and offers me one. I shake my head. We’re in a splendid room, what I remember as an old-style living room but now turned into a sort of gaming room with a large round mahogany-and-rosewood poker table with red-leather inlay and slots for the chips, a Bokhara rug, a severe Derby mantel on which, however, are scattered half a dozen teal and pintail decoys. The plantation desk, stomach-high, so the busy squire, on the run between hunts, could write checks standing, has become a dry bar, with crystal decanters of whiskey and toddy glasses.

We are sitting at the poker table, Van Dorn gazing down at his bourbon, face grave. “I owe you an apology. I thought to be doing ya’ll a favor, keeping the kids.”

“Yes?”

“With Ellen headed for Fresno and you busy as a bird dog with your practice, I told her the kids were perfectly welcome to stay with us. She seemed quite worried. And she couldn’t locate you.”

“Thanks. I understand. But I’ve got Chandra to help me look after them. Is something wrong with Ellen?”

“I’m glad you asked, Tom.” Van Dorn, still gazing at his drink, pulls back his upper lip. “I’m really glad you asked. Frankly I’ve been concerned, Tom.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s the mood swings, Tom”—he looks up, fine eyes glittering even in the soft light of the room— “which I’m sure you’ve noticed and which you certainly know more about than I do. But I’ve got news for you.”

“Yes?”

“This trip is going to help her!”

“Is that right?”

“You better believe it.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you how. She and Sheri are going to win the non-master pairs, she’s going to go over one hundred MPs, become a master in her own right, and come home feeling great!”

“Oh, is Sheri going with her?” I feel better.

“I insisted on it. Sheri’ll look after her. And Ellen will carry Sheri in the non-master pairs. Sheri’s competent enough, though no super-lady like Ellen. Hell, Ellen would win it even with you, ha ha!”

“How do you know?”

“Like I told you, Tom, remember? She somehow knows the cards.”

“How do you mean?”

“Tom.” Van Dorn leans toward me, cradling his drink in both hands, elbows propped on the green baize. “I’ve tested her. After three rounds of play or two rounds of bidding, she knows the exact probability of distribution. I checked the math of it. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she knows.”

“How do you think she knows, Van?” I watch him curiously. He’s exhilarated. He’s still grave, but there’s a fondness and a thrill in his gravity.

“I — don’t — know, Tom! I’ve ruled out ESP. It’s nothing supernatural. What she’s doing is high-order math without knowing how she does it.”

“Like an idiot savant.”

Van Dorn gives me a single, steely look. “Don’t hand me that, old buddy. That lady is not only not an idiot, as you well know, but is a great lady in her own right.”

“Right. Is she on heavy sodium, Van?” I ask in the same voice.

He sets down his drink, eyes level, lips thin. “I’m glad you asked, Tom. Now that you’re part of the team. If she is, old buddy, she ain’t getting it here. You see that?” Picking up his drink, he holds it toward the French window. Beyond it, beyond the magnolias rises a silver bullet of a water tower. “You know where our water comes from? A ten-inch flow well, artesian water fifteen hundred feet straight down. More to the point, Doctor, where does yours come from?” He sits back, drinks his drink. “I knew you knew about Blue Boy. Seriously, where does your water come from?”

“Same as yours. The town has an artesian well.”

We look at each other. He smiles for the first time. “You’re a sly one. You didn’t suppose, did you, that I didn’t know that you knew about the boys’ little Hadacol juice in the water?”

“I supposed that you knew. I talked to Bob Comeaux and he told me you were on the ACMUI team.”

Van Dorn snorts and pushes back in his poker chair. “Me with those Rover boys? No way. No, I’m only a visiting fireman, consultant, no, those guys wanted some coolant — I’m the project engineer — I got the go-ahead from the guys at NRC. They had medical spread sheets from NIH, which looked promising to me. Hell, that’s down your alley, Tom. You’re the expert on the pharmacology of radioactive isotopes, especially sodium. You tell me.”

“What do you think of that pilot, Van?” I ask, watching him.

“Blue Boy? Shit.” He clucks, makes a face, pulls up close. “You really want to know what I think of those guys?”

“Yes.”

“I think they’re a bunch of Rover boys, eagle-scout mid-level bureaucrats, Humana airheads, Texas cowboys — hell, that’s where I made my money, Texas, remember? I know those types — who ride into town and shoot up the rustlers and have a ball doing it.”

“You don’t approve of what they’re doing?”

He gives a great open-hand Texas shrug. “Well, who’s going to argue about knocking back crime, suicide, AIDS, and improving your sex life — any more than you’d argue about knocking back dental caries by putting fluoride in the water. But that’s not the point.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is, you don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You don’t treat human ills by creaming the human cortex. That’s a technologist for you. Give a technologist a new technique and he’ll run with it like a special-team scatback.”

“Are you talking about Dr. Comeaux and Dr. Gottlieb and their colleagues?”

Van Dorn makes a face. “Max Gottlieb is unhappy with them too. He’s a reluctant conspirator. But he’s locked in — by his position at Fedville. But the rest of those guys, you want to know what they are?”

Not really. “What?”

“Those guys are a bunch of ham-fisted social engineers, barnyard technicians, small-time Washington functionaries, long-distance reformers — you know who they remind me of? They remind me of the New England abolitionists, that bunch of guilt-ridden Puritan transcendentalist assholes who wanted to save their souls by freeing the slaves and castrating the planters. These guys — you know how they produce Olympic weight lifters in the U.S.S.R.? By steroids and testosterone — the same way they do football players and racehorses in Texas. These guys are running a barnyard. That’s no way to treat social ills or to treat people. Those damn cowboys are killing flies with sledgehammers. Do you know the latest they’re up to?”

“No.”

“Okay, so we’ve got a problem with teen pregnancy, children getting knocked up by the thousands right here. Plus a mean, demoralized, criminal black underclass. A real problem, right? But you don’t cure it by knocking back all women in the pilot area into a pre-primate estrus cycle, do you? You don’t treat depression by lobotomizing the patient anymore, do you? You don’t treat homosexuals by dumping stuff in their water supply and turning them into zombies, do you?”

“What do you do, Van?”

But he doesn’t need an answer. He’s jumped up to fix another drink and is pacing up and down. He stops above me. “You don’t treat the ills of society by dumping stuff in the water supply, Tom.”

“Then why did you participate in the project? It was you who gave them the sodium isotope.”

“I’ll tell you why, Tom.” He’s brooding now, eyes as brilliant as agates. “Because it’s war. In time of war and in time of plague you have to be Draconian.”

“Plague? War? What war?”

“Tom, we have, as you damn well know, three social plagues which are going to wreck us just as surely as the bubonic plague wrecked fourteenth-century Europe. If you’d been in London in 1350, wouldn’t you have dumped penicillin in the water supply, even if it meant a lot of toxic reactions? Wouldn’t you have quarantined the infected?”

“What three plagues are we talking about, Van?”

He counts them off with big referee arm strokes. “One: crime. We can’t go out in our own streets, Tom. Murder, rape, armed robbery, up eighty percent. We don’t have to tolerate that. Two: teenage suicide and drug abuse, the number-one and — two killers of our youth. Number three: AIDS. Now we’re talking plague, Tom, five million infected, a quarter million dead.

“So why are you complaining about this pilot project?”

“Tom, I have no quarrel with their short-term goals. Every society has the right to protect itself — even if it means temporary loss of civil liberties. But those cowboys — hell, they like what they’re doing, and I think they want to keep on doing it. You want to know what their trouble is?” He leans over me. I can smell breathed bourbon.

“What?”

“Goals, Tom. They have no ultimate goals. They don’t know what in the hell they’re trying to accomplish. They’re treating everything in sight, curing symptoms and wiping out goals. It’s like treating a headache with a lobotomy. Tom, we have to leave the patient human enough to achieve the ultimate goals of being human.”

“What are the ultimate goals of being human, Van?” I look at my watch. I’m already sorry I asked. Where is Lucy?

Now Van is half-sitting on the poker table, swinging a leg, arms folded, at his ease, well-clad and graceful in his coveralls and — yes, exhilarated. He’s nodding, eyes gone fine and faraway.

“I’ll answer that by telling you what I tell the boys and girls out there. Incidentally, it’s no accident, Tom, that since we took over this seg academy, we’ve got the highest SAT scores in the state and the most National Merit scholars. You know what the answer is, Tom, the only answer? Excellence? We give them the tough old European Gymnasium-Hochschule treatment. We work their little asses—”

“Right. Look, Van. I have to find Lucy. We have an appointment—

“Sure, sure.” He goes on but we’re moving toward the door.

We’re walking in the magnolia alley toward the parking lot, Van taking measured steps, sauntering planter-style, hands in pockets, gazing down at the fine pea gravel. No sign of Lucy.

“Tom, would you like to hear my own private theory of the nature of man?”

The nature of man. I can’t stand theories about the nature of man. I’d rather listen to Robin Leach and watch Barnaby Jones.

“Well, actually I think we’d better track down Lucy—”

But he’s got going on his theory of the nature of man. It has something to do with science and sexuality, how the highest achievements of man, Mozart’s music, Einstein’s theory, derive from sexual energy, and so on. “Didn’t old Dr. Freud say it?” he says triumphantly, stopping me and swinging around to face me.

“Well, not exactly—”

There are times when you can’t listen to someone utter another sentence. This is one of them. Even shrinks run out of patience. Where is Lucy? I find myself looking attentive, either by frowning down at the pea gravel and presenting an ear or by maintaining a lively understanding eye contact meanwhile shifting around a bit so I can catch sight of Lucy, who, I calculate, should appear just beyond Van Dorn’s ear.

Van Dorn is saying something about Don Giovanni, not the opera but the old Don himself being, in his opinion, a member of this company of sexual geniuses. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Actually—” I catch sight of Lucy behind the boxwood. She’s converging on the alley from the service drive. I do not at first see the children but then, just above the hedge, two heads bob. She’s in a hurry. She doesn’t see me.

Van Dorn is talking but I’m not listening. I’m watching Lucy. There is something odd — She is perhaps two hundred yards away and could easily see us but she doesn’t look. Her eyes are straight ahead. She walks with a curious stiff rapid gait.

“One thing,” I interrupt Van Dorn.

“Yes?”

“You didn’t know that Ellen had gotten a dose of heavy sodium?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Van Dorn looks at me level-eyed. “If I had known it, would I have been so curious about her amazing talent for computing probabilities in bridge?”

“Well — no.” He’s right.

Van Dorn has seen Lucy. Her cheek is hard and high. I think she’s seen us.

Van Dorn grabs me and pulls me playfully close — in men’s style of talking at the approach of women and before they come within earshot. “Just suppose, Tom, we could combine the high sexuality of the Don and Einstein without the frivolity of the Don or the repressed Jewish sexuality of Einstein — who needs heavy sodium?”

“Right,” I say. “Where’s Claude Bon?”

Van Dorn turns. We watch the three approach. Lucy, Tommy and Margaret, the children moseying along rapt, regardless, normal; Lucy stone-faced and stiff, headed straight for the truck without looking at us though we’re fifty feet away.

“Oh. I forgot to tell you. Claude’s varsity now and they’re playing Baton Rouge High, the state champs, and I kid you not, B.R. is in for the surprise of the year.”

We meet Lucy at the truck. Van Dorn opens the door for her.

“Howdy, Miss Lucy.”

She doesn’t answer, but Van Dorn calls to me over the cab of the truck. “You can pick up Claude later tonight. Or I’ll send him over. Let me know, folks.”

I catch sight of Lucy’s face as she stoops to get in. It is welted, almost ugly. A rope of muscle twists her black eyebrows. Her cheek is pulled back, freckles dark plum against pale skin. She says only, “Get in,” to Tommy and Margaret, pushing them ahead of her, then backs up to let them in the middle, then gets in and slams the door. She’s driving.

We leave. She looks straight ahead, face set. The pickup is old and big. There is room for the four of us on the broad front seat. In the rearview mirror I catch sight of Van Dorn. He has resumed his head-ducking, hands-in-pockets sauntering.

12. WE DRIVE DOWN the River Road in silence. The Ranger four-door pickup passes, but the driver and passenger don’t seem to notice us.

“Well,” I say at last.

Lucy is still looking straight ahead. “Where are we going?” she says.

“To Popeyes to get my car.”

“Could we get some drumsticks?” asks Margaret.

“I want a Happy Meal,” says Tommy. “You get a baby transformer in it.”

“Okay. Well, Lucy?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“I think you’d better tell me now.”

“Why?”

“I think we might be having company soon.” I am watching the Ranger pickup.

“Yes, but—”

“There is not much time,”

“How do you mean?”

“Did you see that pickup that just passed?”

“Sure. They were locals, a couple of good old boys, complete with gun rack.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“How do you know?”

“Good old Louisiana boys don’t wear business suits like the driver or bib overalls like the passenger. And they wouldn’t be caught dead with an under-and-over in the gun rack.”

“An under-and-over?”

“That was a new.410 shotgun with a.22 on top. It’s a prop.”

“You must have seen them before.”

“I have. Locals might have a 12-gauge or a.30-.30 deer rifle, but not that.”

“I see.” She’s gripping the wheel, frowning, knuckles white.

“I think you’d better tell me now.”

“I can’t in present company.” Lucy is relaxing a bit, but her face is still heavy and she has not looked at me.

“I want a Coke-cola too,” says Tommy.

“They don’t have Cokes at Popeyes, but you can get a diet Sprite,” says Margaret.

“I don’t want a diet Sprite,” says Tommy.

“You’re going to have to tell me. Tell me medically,” I say. “Did you examine some kids?”

“Yes.”

“How about this pair?”

“No, but I think they’re all right.”

“The others?”

“Yes, the others.”

“Lucy, how many children did you examine?” She wants me to ask questions. She seems to be having trouble concentrating.

“Ah, about six. Yes, six.” Again she falls silent.

“You shouldn’t drink regular Sprite because it has sugar,” says Margaret.

“Lucy, tell me about the examinations,” I say patiently. “Tell me medically. Now. Do you hear me? Now.”

“It was easy, since I had to do fecal smears for salmonella.”

“I understand.”

Silence.

“Well,” I say.

She is gripping the wheel tightly, sighting the road, chin up, like a novice driver. Her voice is not steady.

“Well, it was in a sort of rec room that had a bathroom. I examined them in the bathroom. There was a Mrs. Cheney there, and a spooky couple named Brunette came in later. And somebody they called Coach, an oafish type with a whistle who looked as though he’d gone to summer camp for ten years and finally made counselor.”

“The children, Lucy?”

“Yes, the children. I examined six children.”

“A perineal examination, Lucy?”

“Yes, because I was taking smears for salmonella.”

“I understand. Your findings?”

“Yes. Two girls, perhaps ten and twelve. One with recent hymeneal rupture, the other with marital introitus. You understand?”

“Yes. Any histories?”

“No time for histories.”

“The boys?”

“Two had anal lesions. One, a recent laceration; the other, a fissure of some duration.”

“I see.”

“History?”

“No histories there either, but—”

“Yes?” Lucy’s voice is more focused. She is using her doctoring to catch hold.

“There were two behavioral items.” She has found her medical voice.

“Yes?”

“One of the girls made an oral advance to me.”

“Oral to oral?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“It was as if she thought it was expected of her — in the bathroom, that is.”

“I understand. And the other item?”

“One of the boys gave an unmistakable pelvic response to my digital examination, from the knee-chest position. It was quite startling. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

Lucy looks at me for the first time. “Tom, they were lined up. They wanted to be examined. I could have examined twenty.”

“I see.”

“Tom, do you know what they reminded me of?”

“No.”

“Do you remember that scene in the Alexandria Quartet where the child prostitutes were all reaching for him, clinging?”

“Yes.”

We are silent. The road runs through a loess cut, twilit, worn deep as the Natchez Trace.

I look down at Margaret and Tommy. They are picking at each other and seem fine, Margaret her prim prissy self, Tommy pesky normal.

“Lucy, do you have any idea who was — culpable?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Brunette, who just happened to come in, seemed very agitated. They left, and then Coach What’s-his-name came in—”

“Coach Matthews,” says Margaret.

“Right,” says Lucy. “I think the Brunettes called Coach Matthews to come over. He too seemed nervous.”

“How do you like Belle Ame?” I ask the children.

“It’s all right,” says Tommy. “I like the horses but not treat-a-treat.”

“Why don’t you like treat-a-treat?”

“They play too hard.”

“Who?”

“Coach. And I don’t like sardines.”

“What’s wrong with sardines?”

“They play it wrong.”

“How do they play it wrong?”

“When you’re it and then somebody finds you in the attic, they’re not supposed to close off the place with a trunk.”

“Who closed off the place?”

“Mrs. Brunette.”

“Did they do that to you?”

“No, I wasn’t it. But Claude told me.”

“What did you do?”

“I told Uncle Van.”

“Uncle Van? What did Uncle Van say?”

“He said it was okay, that was the rule.”

“Was Claude it?”

“Once, but he wouldn’t play anymore.”

“I see.”

“What’s treat-a-treat?” asks Lucy.

“You know,” says Margaret. “First you go treat-a-treat on your knee, then gallop-a-trot, then hobbledehoy. It’s all right for little kids, but later on it’s dumb.”

Lucy looks at me.

I explain. “You hold a kid on your knee and say, This is the way the ladies ride, treat-a-treat, starting off easy.”

“I see,” says Lucy.

Margaret cranes up to whisper something to me. She whispers the way children whisper, cupping my ear with her hand and not gauging her breath correctly. “They play it wrong. When you come to hobbledehoy you’re not supposed to take off your panties, are you? That’s dumb.”

“Yes, it is. Did you do that?”

“No way, José!”

“Who wanted to play treat-a-treat that way?”

“Coach, Mr. Brunette, Mrs. Cheney.”

“I see.” After a moment I ask her, “Meg, where did you get your water when you wanted a drink?”

“Oh, Belle Ame has a deep well, Tom,” says Lucy, quite herself now.

“I know that, but I was still wondering.”

“You just get it out of the faucets, except in the rec room,” says Margaret, losing interest.

“Where do you get it in the rec room?”

“They have a big upside-down bottle we have to drink from.”

“Why do you have to drink from that bottle?”

“It’s not from the bottle. The bottle is upside down and there is a little faucet.”

“I understand, but why do you have to drink that water?”

“To get our Olympic vitamins.”

“Sure,” says Margaret, little Miss Smart. “The concentrated vitamins are up on the second floor with a little tube coming down. I’ve seen them change the bottles and put in a little from the tube.”

“I see.” I feel Lucy’s eyes on my face.

We’re at Popeyes. I back in under the live oak next to my Caprice.

Lucy and I look at each other. “Well?” says Lucy.

“Let’s do this,” I tell her. “Would you take the kids in and feed them. They’re hungry. Meanwhile, may I use your cellular phone right here? I want to call Chandra to come pick up Tommy and Margaret.”

“Yay!” says Margaret.

“Sure,” says Lucy briskly. “Then we’ve got to get back to Pantherburn, remember?”

“Yes.”

“I think you better get Claude as soon as you can,” says Lucy.

“I will.”

“I mean it. It is serious, I think.”

“I will.”

13. AFTER MAKING THE phone call, I wait in my car for Chandra. I can see a stretch of highway. It is getting on to early dusk. Lucy and the children take a long time in Popeyes. There are some tiny yellow birds high in the live oak. The last of the sunlight catches them. They blaze like fireflies in the dark rooms of the oak.

Lucy comes out at the same time Chandra drives up in her WOW-TV car. Tommy and Margaret are glad to see Chandra and like the idea of getting in a TV car.

Chandra relays my medical calls, briskly, efficiently. I thank her and tell her I will call her later. She looks at me round-eyed and alert. There’s something going on, isn’t there, she seems to say, head cocked, but I’ll go along with it.

I can count on her.

Lucy is waiting for me in the Caprice. I get in front at the wheel.

Lucy looks at her watch. “Let’s get over to Pantherburn right away. I’ll leave the truck.”

“Why?”

“I want a word with you on the way.”

“Maybe you’d better take the truck. I’ll be there later.”

She sits up and turns around to face me. “What do you mean, later?”

“I have a call to make. Then I’ll come over.”

“A call! What do you mean a call?”

“It’s a medical emergency. There is something wrong with Father Smith. His friend Milton Guidry has been calling me all day. Chandra took the message. He thinks Father Smith is dying. I have no choice.”

“For God’s sake. I mean, my stars, what can you — Look, Tom, I–I’m afraid. Don’t go. Look, wouldn’t it be better for Father Smith if we called an ambulance and got him to the emergency room?”

“I’ll be going along.” The shaft of sunlight turns off in the oak like a light in a room. “This won’t take long. I’ll call you in an hour.”

Lucy peers at me. “What’s the matter with you? Are you sleepy?”

“No.”

“Don’t you know they can’t afford to have you on the loose?”

“Who? Oh yes. Don’t worry.”

Silence. There’s a clatter of pots from Popeyes. Lucy sinks back, hands shoved into the pockets of her lab coat, into the already sunken Chevy seat. It would be difficult for anyone to see us, or even the car, from the highway.

“What about Belle Ame?” she asks presently.

“What about it?”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“You’re the public-health officer. What are you going to do about it?”

“I somehow have the feeling it’s up to you.”

“First, I’m going to get Claude. Tonight.”

“I can send Vergil for him,” says Lucy quickly. “There’s no immediate worry.”

“Why is that?”

“I learned from Margaret — what a dear! — that he really did go to Baton Rouge for a soccer game. She saw him leave on the bus. He’s okay. We can go get him later tonight.”

I don’t reply.

Again she’s up and turned around and looking back at me. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re acting strange.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

She’s nodding. “Yeah. What are we going to do about Belle Ame?”

“You saw the children.”

“You want to know what I think?”

“What?”

“I don’t think Van Dorn even knew about it.”

I am silent.

“Well?” she says.

“Well what?”

“What are you going to do?”

I am gazing at her. “What do you suggest?”

“I think we’ve got some sickos out there. I think they’re in need of drastic treatment. What do you think?” She shakes me. “Well?”

“Right. We’ll treat them. Starting tomorrow. We’re going to the sheriff. You’re going to report your findings and we’re going to close them down. To begin with.”

“Okay, Tom, okay. I’m on your side, remember.”

“I have to go.”

“Tom.” She puts a hand on my arm.

“Yes?”

If you don’t come back with me now, they’re going to be looking for you on the road.”

“How do you know?”

She takes hold of my arm. “I called Carrie while the children were eating. Max and Comeaux are there. Waiting for you.”

It is dusk-dark. A van passes on the road. Its headlights are on.

“Tom, listen! I think they know.”

“I see.”

“They can’t afford to have you on the loose. Not now. If you don’t come back with me, they’ll be looking for you.”

“Did you tell them I was here?”

“No. I told them you were coming from your office.”

“Good. Don’t worry about it. I know the roads around here and they don’t. And they don’t know where I’m going. Tell them the truth. I’m making a call.”

“Tom, Max is on your side.”

“Good.”

“I don’t know about Comeaux.”

“Maybe you’d better go along now. May I borrow your bag?”

“What?”

“Your medical bag.”

“Oh, sure.” She turns to me, puts both hands on my arm, squeezes hard. “May I say one thing before you leave?”

“Sure.”

“Two things. Here they are. First, Max and I agree on this. You ought to take Comeaux up on his job offer. Okay, so he’s an asshole. But your best chance to change the system is to work within the system. Max’s words! You and Max can be very effective. He needs you. And it will free you up for research. And guess what? Max wants you to move your office to his at Northshore Tulane and practice together. You both need each other. You belong in a research-academic setting, not in that jerkwater town. Max is worried about you, Tom.”

She pauses, eyes on my face. I am watching the highway.

“Okay, Tom. Number two, and I’m going to tell it like it is. Ellen is in trouble, Tom. You know that. Max took it upon himself to tell me that he’s seeing her professionally. He could not break confidentiality, but I did gather that he thought there was not much future in your and Ellen’s relationship. I’m sorry. Ellen is a remarkable, gifted woman and we’re all devoted to her, but she needs all the help she can get. I’m telling it like it is, whether you like it or not. Max of course thinks you’re some kind of genius and that you’ve done remarkably well, but that you need a little space just now. What do I think? I’ll tell you what I think. I think first of your kids — God, they’re lovely kids, and believe me they’re okay — ain’t nothing wrong with those kids! So Max and I want the best for you and yours, but I’ve got news for you. I want something else. I want you around. I’m a selfish woman and I need — Sh!” She puts a finger to my lips. “All right. You better come on out to Panther- burn tonight.”

She grabs my arm.

“What?” I look at her.

She’s smiling.

“I think all of you better come on out to Pantherburn tonight.”

“Well—”

“It seems natural, Tom.”

“Well—”

“Like last night.” She’s smiling but serious.

“All right.”

She touches my lips. “Don’t say anything. You’d better get going. Be careful. Just be sure you get back to Pantherburn tonight. Your room is ready. Those guys mean business, Tom — I mean Comeaux and company. They’re vulnerable and they don’t know what you’re going to do. Now get going. It’ll soon be dark.”

Dark is what I’m waiting for.

14. I TAKE OLD La. 963 through Slaughter, Olive Branch, through St. Helena Parish, past the Fluker fire tower, over I-55 and into the piney woods, to Waldheim and the old fire-tower road to St. Margaret’s. Not a car in sight until the interstate.

The shed at the foot of the tower is dark. There is a full moon. I cannot make out if there is a light in the tower.

Milton Guidry has come up behind me. Now he too gazes up companionably.

“What’s the matter with him, Milton?” I move around so I can see Milton’s face in the moonlight.

“He had a spell yesterday and hasn’t moved since.” Milton describes Father Smith’s symptoms in a lively fashion. He is worried, but he is glad to have company and takes pleasure in talking about it. “He is stiff as a board. When I helped him to the commode, his flesh was hard-like. Like that.” He raps the shed. “What is that, Doc?”

“What happened? What kind of spell?”

“A spasm-like. He was sitting talking yesterday just as natural as you and me. Then he stopped and his hand went like this.” Milton shows me, flexing his arm and curling his hand inward. “Since then he hasn’t moved or done anything. I mean nothing.” Milton cocks his head and watches me with a pleasant expression.

“What do you mean he hasn’t moved?”

“I mean, he hasn’t moved. He doesn’t eat or drink or say a word.”

“Did he fall down?”

“No, he just sits and looks at the woods.”

“You mean he sat there at the table all last night and did not lie down in his bedroll?”

“You got it, Doc.”

“How do you know?”

“I checked him every hour. You know how you can get worried about somebody.”

“He doesn’t talk to you?”

“He doesn’t feel like talking.”

“What do you mean?”

“He spots and I report on the phone.”

“I see.” I don’t see.

Milton looks down. “I see you brought your little bag.”

“Yes. I’m going up now. You stick around in case I need you. I’m going to have to take him to the hospital. I’ll need your help to get him down.”

“I be right here, Doc, don’t you worry! You want me to help you with the trapdoor?”

“No thanks.” I could use some help but don’t want to fool with Milton.

Father Smith is sitting at the high table, temple propped on three fingers. He seems to be studying the azimuth. On a corner of the table, an old-fashioned kerosene lamp with a glass chimney casts a weak yellow light. Beside the lamp there is an open can of Campbell’s chicken soup and a melted bowl of Jell-O.

“Hello, Father.”

He seems to be looking at me, but his eye sockets are in deep shadow.

“Milton told me you were ill.”

He is looking at me, I am sure, under his brow.

I sit on the stool opposite him. We gaze at each other.

“Milton said you had some kind of attack yesterday.”

The priest says nothing. His head moves. Is it a nod? I try to make out whether his expression is ironic, but I can’t be sure. I move the lamp beside me so I can see his eyes better. I like to see patients’ eyes, unlike Freud, who looked at the back of their heads.

“He told me you had not eaten or slept.”

No answer, but he is attentive. His eyes follow me.

“You’ve been sitting in that chair since yesterday?”

No answer, but his gaze is equable.

“How do you get over there to the toilet? Does Milton help you?”

A deprecatory pursing of lips, almost a shrug: no big deal.

“Milton also said you had some sort of spell.”

Another near-shrug: You know Milton.

I set Lucy’s medical bag on the table. His eyes follow it.

“Do you mind if I have a look at you?”

He doesn’t mind.

“Give me your right hand. All right, squeeze. Your left. All right.”

Milton is right. When I move his arm, there is a waxiness in the motion, like a stiff doll. But when I let go of his hand, it doesn’t stay in the air like a catatonic but comes slowly back to the table.

“Can you stand?” He looks at me but doesn’t move. Am I mistaken or are his eyes slightly rounded, even risible? I give him my hands. He stands. “Right leg. Okay. Left leg. Okay.”

“I want to have a look.” I open Lucy’s bag, fish around, find her ophthalmoscope and reflex hammer. I look at his eyegrounds, tap a few tendons.

We sit in silence, the azimuth between us, like two diners at a lazy Susan.

I am beginning to get on to him. He knows it. He watches me with a lively expression, eyes rounded.

“I see that you are not moving around or talking or eating because you don’t choose to.”

He shrugs.

“I imagine that you feel depressed, that it doesn’t seem worthwhile to talk, eat, get up.”

A half-shrug, a downpull of lip.

“I’m half right? There’s more to it?”

A nod.

“You chose to do this for other reasons?”

A nod.

“All right. Examination over. You don’t need any help from me. I believe you are depressed. But if you have undertaken a fast for religious reasons, that is your affair. I don’t have to tell you about the medical consequences. I need help from you, however, a bit of advice. But if you wish me to leave, tell me or otherwise signify. I do not wish to disturb you. Milton called me.”

Long ago I discovered that the best way to get in touch with withdrawn patients is to ask their help. It is even better if you actually need their help. They can tell. They may be dumb but they are not stupid. Once, in trouble myself, I fell down in front of a catatonic patient who had not uttered a word for seven years. “You shouldn’t be down there,” he said in an ordinary voice. “Let me help you up.” He helped me up.

“All right, Tom,” says Father Smith in his ordinary voice.

“I’m not disturbing you?”

“No. What’s the trouble? Would you get rid of those?” He nods toward the soup and the Jell-O.

“Sure. How?”

“Open the trapdoor and set them on the top step.”

I do so.

I talk to him as if we were having an ordinary conversation, two fellows sitting at the lazy Susan in the Dinner Bell restaurant in Magnolia, as if there were nothing unusual about him perched on a stool like a wax doll atop a hundred-foot tower, not stirring for a day and a half. I tell him about my latest discoveries about Dr. Comeaux’s and Dr. Van Dorn’s Blue Boy project, about their offer of a job, about their threats if I don’t take it to send me back to Alabama for parole violation. I mention the incidents of sexual molestation at Belle Ame Academy, but also tell him of Bob Comeaux’s impressive evidence of social betterment through the action of the additive heavy sodium. “I’m not sure what I should do,” I tell him, frowning, troubled, but keeping an eye on him. As a matter of fact, I do not know what to do. So I am doing my best therapy, killing two birds with one stone, asking for help and helping by asking. He may be depressed, but I’m in a fix too.

The priest listens attentively, his temple propped on three fingers. At first I fear he has lapsed into silence again. Finally he says in a low voice, as if musing to himself, “Social betterment”; then to me, “What kind of social betterment?”

“Well, for example, the effect on the catastrophic problem of social decay in the inner city, in the black areas of Baton Rouge and the poor rural whites of St. Helena Parish.” I give him Bob Comeaux’s figures on the dramatic reduction of street crime, teen pregnancies, suicides, drug abuse. “You must admit there is something to be said for his results, even if he’s treating symptoms, not causes. And for his rationale.”

“His rationale,” repeats the priest.

I look at him steadily. “That every society has a right to protect itself against its enemies. That a society like an organism has a right to survive. Lucy agrees. So do I. My problem is—”

The priest is watching me with his peculiar, round-eyed, almost risible expression. “Society,” he murmurs, and then, as if to himself, something I don’t quite catch: “Volk—” Volk something. Volkswagen?

“What?” I lean forward, cock an ear.

With his free hand he is turning the azimuth slowly, inattentively, until the sights line up on me. He appears sunk in thought and I fear I’ve lost him again. But he looks up and says, “May I ask you a question?”

“Sure. You want to know what I think, right? Well, I must confess—”

But he is shaking his head. “No no,” he says. “Not that.” Wearily he rubs both eyes with the heels of his hands. “Could I ask you a professional question, a psychological question?”

“Sure sure,” I say, but I fear I showed my irritation. He sounds like priests often do when they talk to psychiatrists about ”psychological questions.”

“Something wrong, Tom?” the priest asks, eyeing me gravely.

I have risen. Suddenly I don’t want to talk or listen. I am worried about Belle Ame. “I’m sorry, but if there’s nothing more I can do for you, I’d better be going. You eat something and you’ll be all right. I have to pick up Claude Bon. Drs. Comeaux and Gottlieb are waiting for me.” Besides, I feel a rising irritation. Did I come all the way over here to have a conversation about a “psychological question”?

“I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t send for you.”

“That’s all right. What’s the question?”

“Something happened to me yesterday after you left.” He is turning the azimuth. “No doubt it is a psychological phenomenon with which you are familiar. I know that you work with dreams. What I want to ask you is this: Is there something which is not a dream or even a daydream but the memory of an experience which is a thousand times more vivid than a dream but which happens in broad daylight when you are wide awake?”

“Yes.” I am thinking of his “spell.” It could be a temporallobe epilepsy — which often is accompanied by extraordinary hallucinations.

“It was not a dream but a complete return of an experience which was real in every detail — as if I were experiencing it again.”

“Yes?”

“Is it possible for the brain to recapture a long-forgotten experience, an insignificant event which was not worth remembering but which is captured in every detail, sight, sound — even smell?”

“Yes, but I would question whether it was insignificant.”

“Yes, I expect you would. But it was absolutely insignificant.”

He speaks with some effort, in an odd, flat voice and in measured syllables, like a person awakened from a deep sleep. “Yes, I expect you would,” he says again, rubbing his eyes. Now he moves the kerosene lamp, tries to focus on me.

“Well?” I say after a pause, feeling irritation rise in my chest like a held breath.

“I was dreaming of Germany. Germany! Why Germany? No, not dreaming. It happened. I was wide awake. I was lying down after you left yesterday. It was getting dark but the sky was still bright against the dark pines. It reminded me of — what? the Schwarzwald with its dark firs? I’ve told you about it before. I don’t know. Anyhow, it was as if I were back in Tübingen, where I’d been as a boy. I was lying in bed in my cousin’s house. It was so vivid I could have been there. I stayed with them a year. I would wake every morning to the sound of church bells.”

He moves the kerosene lamp again, leans forward.

“Have I spoken to you about this?”

“About Germany? Yes.”

“But not about—” He stops, rubs his forehead with both hands. “Yes, the church bells. They had a special quality, completely different from our church bells, a high-pitched, silvery sound, almost like crystal struck against crystal. Even the air was different. It was thin and clear and silvery and high-pitched too, if you know what I mean. It had a different — smell. Or was it lack of smell? Anyhow, nothing like our old funky, fertile South. No, it was a smell, a high-pitched sweet smell, almost chemical, yet sweet too, something like the cutting room of a florist’s shop — like old geraniums? Of course it is impossible to describe a smell. But it came back! I would wake in the morning to that high silvery ringing and the chemical geranium smell. I slept in a narrow bed covered not by a blanket or a quilt but by a soft goose-down bolster, like a light mattress. It was like an old-fashioned Southern feather bed with the mattress upside down. There was also the vague but certain sense that something was about to happen.”

He stops. I say nothing. Now he’s back propping temple on his three fingers, looking at me sideways, almost slyly. “How is such a memory possible? Many things have happened to me, but in this case nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. A boy lying in bed.”

I look at him for a while. The kerosene lamp seems to drizzle, sending out sprays of weak yellow light.

Presently I ask him, “Was it about then that you had your— ah — spell?”

“What spell? I didn’t have a spell. Do you mean seizure? a fit? a convulsion? I didn’t have a convulsion. Why do you ask?”

“Milton said you had a — what he called a spasm.”

“No. It is true I have spells of dizziness, but what I had was this peculiar dream which was not a dream.”

“Was Milton up here at the time?”

“Well, yes. He brought me something to eat.”

“Was that before or after your—” I pause.

“My what? Go ahead and say it.”

“I was about to say hallucination, because as you describe it, it was that vivid.”

He’s still eyeing me sideways, but now through almost closed lids. “Hallucinations are generally abnormal, aren’t they? I mean, like a symptom of mental illness or something in the brain?”

“Sometimes.” I rise and repack Lucy’s bag. “I have to go now. I’m worried about the children, especially Claude Bon. I’d like you to come in for an ECG and a scan. I think you’d better come into the hospital for a general checkup. But if not, please call me or have Milton call me if you need anything.” I look at his hand, which is still on the azimuth. It is as withered as Don Quixote’s, yet, when he clasped mine, as strong as the Don’s too. “As your physician I am obliged to advise you to resume eating and drinking. You’re already dehydrated. Frankly, I cannot tell how much of your — ah — inactivity is due to depression and how much to a religious commitment. The latter is out of my territory. But you have my medical advice. Don’t hesitate to call on me, even though I’m not certain I will be here tomorrow. If I’m not available, call Dr. Gottlieb. He’s a good man.”

He watches me with the same expression as I snap the bag and move past him to the trapdoor.

As I pass, he seizes my arm. I wait, expecting an affectionate goodbye squeeze, perhaps by way of thanks. But he doesn’t squeeze and doesn’t let go.

“Yes?”

He tilts his head even more, to see me. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“Something happened to me in Germany. I have never told anyone.”

“I’m sure it’s interesting. But I have to go. I’m worried about Claude Bon. I’m going to pick—”

“I’m afraid this concerns you. I didn’t want to tell you, but I’m afraid I have to. There is something you need to know.”

Father Smith’s dry talon of a hand is still on my arm. Something stirs in the back of my head. For some reason I think of the time a priest came to get me out of a classroom to tell me my father was dead. There is in his voice and in the feel of his hand on my arm the same grave pressure, the same sweet urgency.

Then he gives a shudder, just exactly as one might for no reason at all, or as Negroes used to say, because a rabbit just ran over your grave. But then, to my alarm, the hand supporting his head falls away, pronates, the fingers bunching. It curls inward like a burning leaf. His head falls to one side. Fearing he might fall off the stool — his body slumps a little toward me, but not alarmingly — I catch him, ease him off and down to the floor. He makes no objection. I lay him out diagonally — the only way— prop his head on the bedroll. I sit beside him, watching him. No use to examine him. Mainly I’m casting about, wondering how best to get him down from the tower and to the hospital. Why didn’t I get him down when I could? What a place to have a stroke. I hope it is a seizure. The moonlight falls on his cheek and forehead, leaving his deep eye sockets in shadow. One eyelid, the right, twitches, I think. Best to call for Milton to give me a hand. I could let him down — I begin to rise, but the old man is saying something. I lean close. His voice is different. Right hand bunched, I’m thinking, the geranium smell. A petitmal seizure? Some seizures, especially in temporal-lobe epilepsy, are preceded by an aura, a strong resurgence of memory, of time, place, smell. But right eye twitch, speech altered? Left brain vascular accident, speech center affected?

But his speech is clear. His voice is thin and dry as dead leaves, but clear. He speaks in a rapid, dry monotone such as one might use in giving a legal deposition, not having much time.

“No no. Wait,” he says, almost whispering. “Wait.”

FATHER SMITH’S CONFESSION

In the 1930s I found myself visiting distant cousins in Germany. My father took me. They lived in the university town of Tübingen, where my cousin Dr. Hans Jäger was professor of psychiatry. He had two sons. One, Helmut, at eighteen, was older than I but became my friend. The other, Lothar, was a good deal older. I didn’t like him. He was some sort of minor civil servant, perhaps a postal clerk, and also a member of the Sturmabteilung, the SA, the brownshirts. Not even his own family had much use for him. In fact, as best as I could tell, the entire SA had fallen into some sort of disfavor at the time. Sitting around in his sloppy uniform, he reminded me of a certain kind of American lodge member, perhaps a Good Fellow or Order of Moose dressed up for a lodge meeting. Helmut was something else. He had finished the Hitler Jugend and had just been admitted to the Junkerschule, the officer-training school for the Schutzstaffel, the SS. The one great thing he looked forward to was taking his oath at Marienberg, the ancient castle of the Teutonic knights. He already had his field cap with the death’s-head and his lightning-bolt shoulder patch. What he hoped to do was to become not a military policeman like many of the SS but a member of an SS division and incorporated into the Wehrmacht, the German Army. Dr. Jäger had nothing to do with the Nazis. He was a distinguished child psychiatrist — did I ever tell you that at one time I was considering going into your profession? — a music lover, and, I remember, a dog lover — he had two dachshunds, Sigmund and Sieglinde, whom he was extremely fond of. When I think of him, I think of him as the “good German” as portrayed in Hollywood, say by Maximilian Schell or earlier by Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine—you know, sensitive, lover of freedom, hater of tyranny, and so on, certainly the courageous foe of the Nazis. Dr. Jäger was a composite of the two, better than both, not only a brilliant child psychiatrist but a fine musician — he had just played the Bruch concerto with the university orchestra, the ultimate expression of romantic German feeling—Gefühl! Gefühl! Toward Lothar, the brownshirt, he displayed an open contempt. But he was silent about Helmut. I could never make out what he thought of Helmut.

What were we, my father and I, doing there? I had just finished high school. My mother had died the year before and my sister had got married. My father decided it would be good for both of us if we went abroad. He had never been abroad. But he liked to say that we were both entitled to a Wanderjahr, as he called it. He was a romantic and a lover of music. In fact, he taught piano at the music school at Nicholls State Junior College. If you want to know the truth, he was second-rate, not really first-class at playing, not really first-class at teaching, not really a scholar. He was a certain type, quite common in the South, a lover of culture, books, the lofty things in life. Music of a certain sort moved him to the point of tears. In short, he was a romantic. His great ambition for years had been to make the grand tour of Europe, to see the cathedrals, above all to go to Bayreuth. It was natural that we should visit our cousins. The Rhine, the Lorelei, the cathedral at Cologne — they were as much a part of his dream of Europe as Chartres and Mont-Saint-Michel and Florence. I think he thought of Tübingen and Heidelberg as a sort of backdrop for The Student Prince. Do you recall that being a student at Heidelberg was as much a part of the Southern tradition as reading Sir Walter Scott?

It is important to understand that in the 1930s most Americans didn’t have two thoughts about the Third Reich and Hitler. We were still in the grip of the Depression. Mussolini, in fact, was the object of more curiosity than Hitler. I remember my mother presenting a paper at her literary club entitled something like “Mussolini, the New Caesar.” Mussolini, the strong man who made Italy work. Fascism was then thought of as a bundle of sticks, fasces, stronger than one stick and not necessarily a bad thing. Hitler seemed to be a German version of the same, another strong man whom the Germans had in fact elected, a matter of some, though not much, interest.

There was certainly no reason not to go to Germany then, if one was going to Chartres and Florence.

I must tell you how I felt about my father and mother, though it does me little credit. My father was, as I say, a type familiar in the South, not successful in life but an upholder of culture, lofty ideals, and the higher things. He was a practitioner of the arts, by turns a painter and a musician. And an author: he wrote occasional articles for the New Orleans newspaper about old Creole days, perhaps a humorous anecdote about Père Antoine or a historical sketch about a romantic encounter between a plantation belle and a handsome Yankee captain. As a young man he wrote poetry and was named poet laureate of Thibodaux by the mayor’s proclamation. But he settled on music and gave piano recitals at places like Knights of Columbus halls or the Jewish Community Center. Later he became assistant professor of music at Tulane, not the university proper, but in the university college, which was a sort of night school for adults. As I’ve said, not first-rate.

We come from old Alsatian German stock who two hundred years ago were lured here by the thousands by a real-estate swindler named John Law who promised an idyllic life in a Louisiana paradise. So they landed in the swamps next to the west bank of the river, which is still known as the Côte des Allemands, the German coast, where they were engulfed by mosquitoes, malaria, yellow fever, and the French. My father’s family, the Schmidts, became Smith. My mother’s family, the Zweigs, became Labranche.

My grandfather had a hardware store in Thibodaux, but my father moved to New Orleans, where he lived in the French Quarter, wore a beret, and painted a bit, like an American on the Left Bank. He claimed to have been a confidant of Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson and Frances Parkinson Keyes.

My mother was a thin, hypertensive woman, perpetually worried by my father’s airy improvidence, by his playing at la vie de bohème—I can still see him at the piano on students’ nights-at-home, playing and singing “Che gelida manina” not quite accurately, fingernails clicking on the keys, head swaying, eyes closed at Puccini’s melting melodies. But my mother had to make ends meet and keep up with New Orleans social life. She was both pious and hostile. She had it both ways. If someone offended her, she sent them holy cards, notices of Masses for their “intentions.” What she was really saying was: Even though you’ve done this rotten thing, I’m having a Mass said for you. She had a mail-order hookup with some obscure order — I think it was the Palatine Fathers of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin — so that if, say, her own parish priest offended her by having a black altar boy, he would get a card of acknowledgment from the Palatine Fathers of Fond du Lac that thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Simon R. Smith ten Masses were going to be said for him. How to argue with that? The more somebody offended her, the more Masses he got. Once, an acquaintance of hers mortally offended her by contriving to have her daughter named queen of the Lorelei Carnival Ball — not one of the major balls, to be sure — when my sister was the obvious choice, what with my father being one of the founders of the Krewe of Lorelei. But money won out and my sister had to settle for being a maid in the court. My mother, white-lipped, blood pressure kiting over three hundred, of course said nothing. But after the ball both the queen and her mother received cards of acknowledgment from the Palatine Fathers of Fond du Lac that thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Simon R. Smith, thirty Masses were to be said for each, sixty Masses in all.

Honor thy father and mother. I didn’t exactly. I am not proud of it. It sounds as if I’m saying that my father was a phony and my mother a shrew. Well, yes. On the other hand, no. To be truthful, I didn’t exactly honor my father and mother. But no, it was sadder than that. I felt sorry for them. How many other people, I wondered, were messed up for life? Most, I later discovered. But yes, it’s true, I was an ingrate. To tell the whole truth, I was a spiteful boy. I couldn’t stand what my mother called religion. I couldn’t stand my father’s fecklessness and his everlasting talk about the loftier things in life, Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Art, the Soaring of the Spirit in the Realm of Music. Would you believe I couldn’t stand all that Catholic business, holy cards, candles, rosaries, my mother’s flying novenas and Nine First Fridays. I couldn’t stand Holy Cross High School — except for football. I played tackle and we beat Jesuit, who thought they were the hottest stuff in town. I liked to hit, as they say. And I liked the science courses — no bull, just the facts and verifiable theory, no praying for anyone’s “intentions,” no swooning over Puccini. Actually, I couldn’t stand Louisiana, and New Orleans, with its self-conscious cultivation of being the Big Easy, its unbuttoned y’all-come bonhomie, good eats and phony French laissez le bon temps rouler, let the good times roll, which masked a cold-blooded marriage of moneymaking and social climbing, rotten politics and self-indulgence. Don’t misunderstand me. If I was anti-Catholic, I was also anti-Protestant. They were, if anything, worse. Actually there was not much left of Protestantism except a dislike for Catholics and a fondness for their festival. For, though they had nothing to do with Ash Wednesday, indeed had not the faintest notion of what it was about, they took to Fat Tuesday like ducks to water, in fact took it over. Worst of all were the local village atheists, professor-philosophers, ACLU zealots, educated Episcopal-type unbelievers, media types, NBC anchormen, New York Times pundits, show-biz gurus. If one can imagine anything worse than Jerry Falwell governing the country, how about Norman Lear? Love your fellow man, the Lord said. That’s asking a lot. Frankly, I found my fellow man, with few exceptions, either victims or assholes. I did not exclude myself. The only people I got along with were bums, outcasts, pariahs, family skeletons, and the dying.

What a background for a priest-to-be, you say. You say charitably, Well, at least you changed, became a priest, and ran the hospice here. I didn’t change. Does anyone really change? I am still a spiteful man. The Lord puts up with all types. Look at his disciples. A sorry crew, mostly office seekers and social climbers. They could all have come from New Orleans’s Ninth Ward. Down there in the world I had no use for my fellow priests or parishioners. I had use for the bottle. As one alcoholic to another, I’m sure I’m not telling you a secret — the secret of all alcoholics — when I tell you that the bottle enabled me to enjoy my spite. I despised TV, stereo-V, yet I watched it by the hour. Do you know how I spent my evenings? Not exactly like St. Francis praising Brother Night. Watching reruns of Dallas, which I despised, despised every minute of it, despising myself, having six drinks and enjoying my spite. At every commercial I’d jump up and have a stiff drink — to stand Dallas and my fellow priests.

You’re shaking your head: But you did run the hospice, you’re saying, didn’t you, and did a good job, before they took it away from you. You took in the dying and the unwanted, like Mother Teresa.

Don’t kid yourself. I don’t know about Mother Teresa, but I did it because I liked it, not for love of the wretched. Didn’t your mentor Dr. Freud say that we all have our own peculiar ways of gratifying ourselves? Don’t knock it. Yes, I took in the dying. Do you want to know why? Because dying people were the only people I could stand. They were my kind. Do you know the one thing dying people can’t stand? It’s not the fact they’re going to die. It’s other people, the undying, so-called healthy people. Their loved ones. And after a while of course their loved ones can’t stand the sight of them, haven’t a word to say to them, and they can’t stand the sight of their loved ones. They liked me because I liked them and they knew it. You can’t fool children and you can’t fool dying people. We were in the same boat. They knew I was a drunk, a failed priest. Dying people, suffering people, don’t lie. They tell the truth. Death makes honest men of all of us. Everyone else lies. Everyone else is dying too and spending their entire lives lying to themselves. I’ll tell you a peculiar thing: It makes people happy to tell the truth after a lifetime of lying. The best thing I ever did for the living was, in a few cases, to make it possible for them to speak with truth and love to their dying father or mother — which of course no one ever does.

In the end, all they would send me out here were AIDS patients — God knows what they did with the others — because not even the Qualitarian Centers wanted to handle them. Now of course they’ve started the quarantine, so they can’t come here. Do you think I’m setting up as another St. Francis or Mother Teresa kissing lepers’ sores? Certainly not. I liked them. They knew it. They told the absolute truth. So did I. I was at home with them. Did I try to convert them? Certainly not. Religion was never mentioned. Only if they asked. I knew I belonged with them, because I didn’t have to drink. When they died or got quarantined, I came up here.

Germany. Let me tell you what happened to me. Well, my father of course was in a transport of delight. First, France: Notre Dame! Chartres! Mont-Saint-Michel! Then Germany: the Rhine! Beethoven! Das Rheingold! Heidelberg!

Well, he was half right, I thought. Right about Germany, wrong about France. Let me make a confession. I did not like the French. It took me years to discover their virtues. It was a prejudice, I admit, but for a fact France in the 1930s was fairly putrid and mean-spirited. Even I could tell. We stayed with my mother’s cousins in Lyons. Our cousin was in the dyeing business. I recognized them on the spot. They were like my mother’s family in Thibodaux. They knew nothing, cared about nothing except business and eating and politics — the latter with a passion which I could not quite fathom. They had their political party and favorite newspaper, which represented their views. I gathered there were many such parties and newspapers all over France, because our cousins spoke of them at length and with venomous passion. They only came alive in their hatreds. The French hated each other’s guts. Only later did I realize that our cousins were what Flaubert called the bourgeoisie.

The Germans were a different cup of tea. I liked them. Dr. Jäger and his friends were charming and cultivated. They were accomplished amateur musicians. They invited my father to join their chamber-music group, welcomed him as Der Herr Musik Professor from New Orleans. I remember them playing Brahms and Schubert quintets, my father at the piano — and not doing badly. So happy he had tears in his eyes!

There were many distinguished German and Austrian psychiatrists in Tübingen that summer. It was some sort of meeting or convention — I can remember the exact name, isn’t that strange? — the Reich Commission for the Scientific Registration of Hereditary and Constitutional Disorders. They were not Nazis, quite the contrary, had in fact been famous as psychiatrists and eugenicists in the old Weimar Republic. I remember them well! There was Dr. Werner Heyde from the University of Würzburg and director of the famous psychiatric clinic there — which had been famous for its humane care of the insane going back to the sixteenth century. Dr. Heyde, I remember, even mentioned Cervantes’s description of the mental hospital in Seville, also noted for its humane treatment of patients. There was Dr. Karl Brandt, a great admirer of Albert Schweitzer, who had even planned at one time to work with him in Lambaréné. There was Dr. Max de Crinis, a charming Austrian, a very cultivated man, yet full of high spirits, who, I see I don’t have to tell you, is still well known for his work on the social difficulties of children — he was even decorated by the West German government in 1950, came to Washington later, and participated in the White House conference on youth. And Dr. Carl Schneider, professor of psychiatry at the University of Heidelberg, successor to Dr. Kraepelin, founder, as you know, of modern psychiatry, and author of a pioneer work on schizophrenia — I see you recognize the name. And Dr. Paul Nitsche, director of the famous Sonnenstein hospital in Saxony, who, I learned later, wrote the best textbook on prison psychoses. And finally Dr. C. G. Jung, whom everybody admired and was supposed to come but couldn’t — he was busy working as editor of the Journal for Psychotherapy with his co-editor, Dr. M. H. Goering, brother of Marshal Hermann Goering.

There was much lively discussion in Dr. Jäger’s house after the meetings, laughter, music, jokes, drinking, horseplay, and some real arguments. They were excited about a book, a small book I had never heard of, not by your Dr. Freud, but by a couple of fellows I never heard of, Drs. Hoche and Binding. I still have the copy Dr. Jäger gave me. It was called The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value. I couldn’t follow the heated argument very well, but it seemed to be between those who believed in the elimination of people who were useless, useless to anyone, to themselves, the state, and those who believed in euthanasia only for those who suffered from hopeless diseases or defects like mongolism, severe epilepsy, encephalitis, progressive neurological diseases, mental defectives, arteriosclerosis, hopeless schizophrenics, and so on. Dr. Jäger took the more humane side. Dr. Brandt, I recall, as much as he admired Dr. Schweitzer, maintained that “reverence for nation” preceded “reverence for life.” Their arguments made considerable sense to me.

I must confess to you that I didn’t warm up to those fellows, distinguished as they were. But I must also confess that I was not repelled by their theories and practice of eugenics — why prolong the life of the genetically unfit or the hopelessly ill? But I did admire German science — after all, it had been the best around for a hundred years — and in fact I was thinking of staying in Germany and going to the university at Tübingen and later to medical school. My father was all for it. And after all, none of these guys were Nazis, far from it — they joked about the louts. They might speak of Goethe but never of Hitler. And the little book they were excited about had been written in 1920, before anyone had heard of Hitler. Why didn’t I like them better? Because they, like my father, were professors of a certain sort, and though they were certainly more successful than he, they had the Heidelberg smell about them, the romantic stink of The Student Prince. They even recited Schiller and Rilke, and sang student drinking songs—Trink, trink, trink—one of them even had saber scars on his cheek from student dueling and was very proud of them. Of course, my poor father was out of his mind with delight. Imagine: Saber scars! Musik!

One night in particular, I remember, was an occasion for celebration. Our cousin Dr. Jäger had just received news of his appointment to the famous hospital in Munich, the Eglfing-Haar, and there were congratulations all around, a great musical evening, piano quintets, much toasting of Dr. Jäger. Helmut even sang Schubert lieder with a wonderful voice.

Helmut and I became good friends. Imagine a friendship between two American boys of a certain sort, say, a sixteen-year-old starter on the varsity team being befriended by the eighteen-year-old all-state quarterback. It was like that but different, different because I was aware of a serious and absolute dedication in him which I had never encountered before. He was extremely handsome and strongly built. He showed me his SS officer’s cap with its German eagle and death’s-head. It dawned on me that he meant it. He was ready to die. I had never met anyone ready to die for a belief. His plan was to become an SS officer and then, as I told you, he hoped, not to become a military policeman, but to join an SS division and to be incorporated into the Wehrmacht — which in fact did happen. He was planning for war even then. Who can I compare him to? An American Eagle Scout? No, because even a serious Eagle Scout is doing scouting on the side, planning a career in law, insurance, whatever. Certainly death is the farthest thing from his mind. I can only think — and this may seem strange — of the young Jesuits of the seventeenth century who were also soldiers knowing they were probably going to die in some place like India, England, Japan, Canada. Or perhaps a young English Crusader signing up with Richard to rescue the holy places from the infidel.

He let me come with him to his last exercise in the Hitler Jugend before going to the Junkerschule, the SS officer school. It was a Mutprobe, a test of courage. He and the rest of the troop jumped in full battle gear from a sort of scaffold twenty feet high. Then they marched — and sang. The singing—! It made your blood run cold. I remember the Fahnenlied:

Wir marschieren, wir marschieren,

Durch Nacht und durch Not

Mit der Fahne für Freiheit und Brot

Unsere Fahne ist mehr für uns als der Tod

The flag and death.

After the Mutprobe and the ceremony, he took me aside and told me with that special gravity of his, “You are leaving tomorrow. I wish you well. I think I know you. We are comrades. I wish to give you something.” He gave me his bayonet! It was the same as a Wehrmacht bayonet but smaller, small enough to be worn on the belt in a scabbard. He withdrew the bayonet from its sheath and handed it to me in a kind of ceremony, with both hands. On the shining blade was etched Blut und Ehre. I took it in silence. We shook hands. I left.

So what? you seem to say. A valuable souvenir, the sort of Nazi artifact any G.I., any collector, would be glad to have.

No, that is not my confession. This is my confession. If I had been German not American, I would have joined him. I would not have joined the distinguished Weimar professors. I would not have joined the ruffian Sturmabteilung. I would not have matriculated at the University of Tübingen or Heidelberg. I would not have matriculated at Tulane, as I did, and joined the D.K.E.s. I would have gone to the Junkerschule, sworn the solemn oath of the Teutonic knights at Marienberg, and joined the Schutzstaffel. Listen. Do you hear me? I would have joined him.

(At that point the old priest took hold of my arm and pulled me close. Through some illusion, no doubt a trick of shadow and light from the weak kerosene lamp above us, his withered face seemed to go lean and smooth, his eyes sardonic under lowered lids.)

I would have joined him. Do you find that peculiar? Then try to guess who uttered these words about them, the SS, that very year: There is nothing they would not do or dare; no sacrifice of life, limb or liberty they would not do for love of country. You do not know who said that? It was one Winston Churchill.

The Jews? How do the Jews come in, you ask. Believe it or not, they didn’t. Not then. The Jägers never mentioned the Jews. The distinguished professors didn’t mention the Jews. Not even Werner, who looked like a brown-shirted Kluxer, mentioned the Jews. This was before Kristallnacht when it became official policy to beat up Jews. I’m sure Werner did his part. But at the time it was bad taste. I remember one night when Hitler spoke on the radio. I watched the family as they listened. Hitler of course was a maniac and was rabid about the Jews even then. But extremely effective, even hypnotic. I understood enough German to understand such words as alien, decadent, foreign body in the pure organism of the Volk. It was always Das Volk. Werner was all ears, nodding, buying it all. Dr. Jäger was ironic, almost contemptuous — just exactly as my father had been listening to Huey Long. Mrs. Jäger was smiling and starry-eyed. The women loved Hitler! Helmut’s face was expressionless, absolutely inscrutable. I asked him about the Jews later. He was not much interested. He shrugged and said only that there had been Jewish applicants to the HJ — Hitler Jugend — but they had been turned down. He added that anti-Semitic activities were forbidden in the HJ. Believe it or not, this was true at the time. I checked it. Then I asked him about Catholics. The Jägers were not Catholic, but there were many Catholics in the South and the Nazis were not as strong as they were in Prussia and Saxony. In fact, when I was there, the Catholic Center Party was the only opposition to the Nazis. He said only that the Catholic Church was part of the “Judaic conspiracy” and let it go at that. He was not interested.

I? I let it go at that too — though I didn’t know what he meant. Catholics part of the “Judaic conspiracy”? I could not translate that into American or New Orleans terms, where there is, as you know, a kind of tacit, almost tolerant, anti-Semitism from Catholics and a species of ironic anti-Catholicism from Jews. Catholics and Jews go to a lot of trouble pretending there is no such thing, behaving toward each other with a sort of Southern Protestant joshing and jollification, like good old boys from Mississippi. But it’s there. I remember a fellow telling me in the Lorelei Club that he had been bested in a business deal. By whom? somebody asked. By Manny Ginsberg. Nods, winks, looks all around, that’s all. You know exactly what I mean.

Or: once, before I became a priest, one night I was attending a symphony concert in New Orleans. I was talking to a friend of the family, a splendid old lady from a noble Jewish family and president of the symphony board — New Orleans Jews, God bless them, keep the arts alive. She was telling me about her recent trip to Italy. She’d been to Rome, where she’d seen the pope carried aloft around the square in a throne. She too winked. It was the way she said the word pope that was in itself outlandish. It made him sound like some grand panjandrum borne aloft by a bunch of loony Hottentots. As a matter of fact, she was right. I never did see why they hauled the pope around in that sedia—and I’m glad John XXIII put a stop to it. But it was the way she said the word pope—it made me think he was absurd too.

But Catholics as part of the Judaic conspiracy? Helmut said it. He took it as a matter of course. I couldn’t make head or tail of it — then. Imagine hearing that from a young SS cadet, with his German eagle and death’s-head on his cap and lightning bolts on his shoulder patch. Of course, in his own mad way he was right, but not quite in the way he meant.

I am ashamed to say that I did not question him or argue with him, at the time not having much more use for Catholics than he did. I thought of them as a lot of things but never as part of the “Judaic conspiracy.” In defense I can only say that the expression would also have amazed both New Orleans Jews and Holy Name parishioners.

My father and I went on to Bayreuth. I remember hearing Tristan and Isolde with him. He had graduated from Puccini to Wagner. His eyes were closed during the entire second act. I confess I felt contempt for him and admiration for Helmut.

Do you know that I don’t think he ever noticed the Nazis or Hitler or the SA or the SS that entire summer — any more than he noticed Huey Long when we got home?

I decided not to stay in Germany, after all. I came home and went to Tulane, tuition-free because of my father’s academic connection.

15. DURING THIS STRANGE, rambling account, I noticed with surprise that the old priest’s voice grew stronger. Toward the end he pushed himself up to a sitting position and began gesturing vigorously — for example, holding out both hands, palms up, to show how Helmut had presented him with a bayonet inscribed with Blut und Ehre.

Now he is struggling to get up.

“Why don’t you just stay here, Father,” I suggest. “You need a good night’s sleep.”

“I’m fine! I’m fine!”

“But you suffered some sort of attack and I’m not sure what—”

“Oh, I’ve had those before. It’s an allergic reaction.”

“Allergic reaction? Maybe, but it may be something more serious.” Like temporal-lobe epilepsy. Hence the vivid recall of smell, place, memory of Germany in the 1930s.

But he insists on getting up, back to his post, as he puts it, as firewatcher. I help him onto the stool, on condition that he come in for a CORTscan and an ECG. He agrees.

I am anxious to leave. I am worried about Claude Bon.

“One question, Tom.”

“Yes?”

“What do you think?”

“Of what? The Nazis?”

“No. Your colleagues. The Louisiana Weimar psychiatrists,” he says ironically.

“I don’t understand.”

“Never mind,” he says quietly. “What do you think of my experience in Germany?”

There is nothing to do but answer truthfully, without saying that I was more interested in his story as a symptom of a possible brain disorder than in the actual events which he related.

“Well, I see your German experience as a very vivid recollection of a youthful experience, not an uncommon phenomenon actually. It has happened to me.”

“Is that all you see?”

“Very well. So you were attracted by Helmut and the esprit of the SS. You were very young. Many people were attracted, even Churchill, as you mentioned. I don’t doubt you. As a matter of fact, I am familiar with some of the German doctors and eugenicists you mentioned. Very interesting, but—”

I must have shrugged. He shakes his head, makes a face, rounding his eyes in his earlier rueful-risible expression. He is fiddling with the azimuth.

“Okay,” he says suddenly. “Except for—”

“Then I’ll be going along.”

“—one thing. A footnote.”

I sigh but don’t sit opposite him this time. I snap Lucy’s bag shut.

FATHER SMITH’S FOOTNOTE

I’ll make it short and sweet. You should pick up Claude as soon as possible. Believe me.

I did not stay in Germany. I came back to New Orleans with my father.

I went to Tulane for four years. I played some football.

The war came. I took OCS in Jackson, became a ninety-day wonder.

I ended up as an infantry lieutenant in the Seventh Army, General Patch commanding. Nothing very dashing about us, nothing like Patton’s Third Army. I wasn’t exactly a dashing lieutenant either, though I liked the army well enough. To tell you the truth, I was scared all the time. Scared of what? Of getting killed. To tell the truth, I never got shot at.

We were in the XV Corps that crossed the Rhine on the Mannheim bridge and took part in the final thrust in April of ’45, down the Danube first, then struck south to Munich, which we captured on the thirtieth of April. Not much resistance. A single SS division tried to block our advance without success, but we lost a few. Our captain — we were in the 3d Division — got himself killed, and I was acting captain for a few weeks, my highest rank in the military.

No, we didn’t see Tübingen, but we liberated Eglfing-Haar, the famous hospital outside Munich. No, we didn’t liberate Dachau, but I saw it later. There was no opposition at Eglfing-Haar, nobody in fact but the nurses and patients. Most of the doctors were gone. I asked about Dr. Jäger. The nurses knew him but said he had been “transferred” a few days before. But one nurse showed me where he worked. It was the Kinderhaw, the children’s division, a rather cheerful place which had a hundred and fifty beds for child psychiatric cases. There were only twenty children there, most in bad shape, though nothing like what I saw at Dachau. I asked the nurse what had happened to the others. She didn’t say anything, but she took me to a small room off the main ward. She said it was a “special department.” It was a very pleasant sunny room with a large window, but completely bare except for a small white-tiled table only long enough to accommodate a child. What was notable about the room was a large geranium plant in a pot on the windowsill to catch the sunlight. It was a beautiful plant, luxuriant, full of bloom, obviously very carefully tended. The nurse said it was watered every day.

She was very very nervous, obviously anxious to tell me something, but either she was afraid to or didn’t know how.

I asked her what the room was used for. She said that five or six times a month a doctor and a nurse would take a child into the room. After a while the doctor and nurse would come out alone. The “special department” room had an outside door.

It took me a little while to understand what she was saying. Then, as if I had understood all along, I asked her casually what they used. She said many drugs, Luminal, morphine, scopolamine, Zyklon B through a face mask. It was then a new gas manufactured by I. G. Farben which upon exposure to air turned to cyanide.

I asked her if she had ever gone in the room with the children.

“Oh no,” she said. She would only see the doctor and nurse go in with the children and come out alone. She did not seem horrified, but only anxious that I get it straight. I couldn’t be sure she was telling the truth, but she probably was, because she didn’t have to tell me about the “special department.”

“Was Dr. Jäger one of the doctors who went in the room?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “It was usually Dr. Jäger.”

That’s all, Tom. End of footnote. As a matter of psychological interest, I still don’t know whether the smell I remember — part of the hallucination or whatever — is the smell of the geranium or a trace of the Zyklon B. I should add that there seemed nothing particularly horrifying about her showing me the “special department”—that is, she was not horrified nor was I, at the time. It was a matter of some interest. Soldiers are interested, not horrified. Only later was I horrified. We’ve got it wrong about horror. It doesn’t come naturally but takes some effort.

But I’ve kept you long enough. Thank you for coming. I’m all right.

16. I LOOK DOWN at him curiously.

“What happened to Dr. Jäger?”

The priest, unsurprised, answers in the same flat, dry voice. “He disappeared. He was thought to have gotten across the Bodensee to Switzerland and eventually to Portugal and to Paraguay.”

“What happened to the others you met?”

“Oh, that’s a matter of record. You can look it up.” He recites rapidly, as if he were a clerk reading the record. “Dr. Max de Crinis, the ‘charming Austrian,’ who was responsible for sending retarded children to Goerden, one of the murder institutions, could not get out of the Russian encirclement of Berlin in 1945. He committed suicide with a government-supplied capsule of cyanide. Dr. Villinger, the eugenicist, was indicted in the euthanasia trial in Limburg. After questioning by the prosecution he went to the mountains near Innsbruck before the trial and committed suicide. Dr. Carl Schneider, respected successor to Kraepelin at Heidelberg, worked with the SS commission at Bethel and selected candidates for extermination. When he was put on trial after the war, he committed suicide. Dr. Paul Nitsche, author of the authoritative Handbook of Psychiatry during the Weimar Republic, was tried in Dresden for the murder of mental patients, sentenced to death, and executed in 1947. Dr. Werner Heyde, director of the clinic at Würzburg, where patients had been treated humanely since the sixteenth century, was also put on trial at Limburg for euthanasia. He committed suicide in his cell five days before the trial. He approved carbon monoxide as the drug of choice in euthanasia. At the time he was head of the Reich Society for Mental Illness Institution. Dr. C. G. Jung, co-editor with Dr. M. H. Goering of the Nazi-coordinated Journal for Psychotherapy, after the war became, I understand, a well-known psychiatrist.”

After he finishes, we sit for a while in silence. The moon is overhead. The sea of pines, without shadows, looks calm and silvery as water. There is a sliver of light in the south where the moonlight reflects from Lake Pontchartrain.

“No fires tonight,” says the priest.

“No,” I say absently.

“Would you do me a favor, Tom?”

“Sure.”

“Get me that soup and Jell-O. I’m hungry.”

He spoons up chicken soup from the can and drinks the melted Jell-O from the bowl.

“You seem to feel better, Father.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you have these episodes often?”

“Mostly in winter. I think it’s an allergy to the dampness.”

“How long have you had them?”

“Since last year when we had all that rain.”

“I see.” I reach for the ring of the trapdoor, hesitate. “There is something I don’t understand.”

“Yes?” He turns up the wick of the kerosene lamp.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to tell me — about your memory of — about Germany.”

“What is there to understand?”

“Are you trying to tell me that the Nazis were not to blame?”

“No. They were to blame. Everything you’ve ever heard about them is true. I saw Dachau.”

“Are you suggesting that it was the psychiatrists who were the villains?”

“No. Only that they taught the Nazis a thing or two.”

“Scientists in general?”

“No.”

“Then is it the Germans? Are you saying that there is a fatal flaw peculiar to the Germans, something demonic?”

“Demonic?” The priest laughs. “I think you’re pulling my leg, Tom.” He looks at me slyly, then narrows his eyes as if he is sizing me up. “Could I ask you a question, Tom?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think we’re different from the Germans?”

“I couldn’t say. I hope so.”

“Do you think present-day Soviet psychiatrists are any different from Dr. Jäger and that crowd?”

“I couldn’t say. But what is the point, Father?”

Again the priest’s eyes seem to glitter. Is it malice or a secret hilarity? “Of my little déjà vu? Just a tale. Perhaps a hallucination, as you suggest. I thought you would be interested from a professional point of view. It was such a vivid experience, my remembering it in every detail, even the florist-shop smell of geraniums — much more vivid than a dream. Some psychological phenomenon, I’m sure.”

I look at him. There is a sly expression in his yes. Is he being ironic? “No doubt.” I rise. “I’m going to pick up Claude. Come in tomorrow for a CORTscan. If you don’t feel well, call me or have Milton call me. I’ll come for you.”

We shake hands. Something occurs to me. “May I ask you a somewhat personal question?” His last question about the Germans irritated me enough that I feel free to ask him.

“Sure.”

“Why did you become a priest?”

“Why did I become a priest.” The priest at first seems surprised. Then he ruminates.

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“What else what?”

“That’s all.”

He shrugs, appearing to lose interest. “In the end one must choose — given the chance.”

“Choose what?”

“Life or death. What else?”

What else. I’m thinking of the smell of geraniums and of the temporal lobe where smells are registered and, in some cases of epilepsy or brain tumor, replay, come back with all the haunting force of memory. And play one false too. I don’t recall geraniums having a smell.

17. THE IRON GATE at Belle Ame is closed. I get out to open it, hoping it is not locked. It unlocks and opens even as I reach for it. In the same instant headlights come on beyond the gate not ten feet away. They are double lights, on high beam but close enough and low enough not to blind me.

It is the Ranger four-door parked, waiting.

“Okay, Doctor. You can hold it right there. That’s fine.”

It’s the driver, the one dressed in the business suit. The other man is getting out of the Ranger. He is wearing a business jacket over the bib overalls.

“Please park your car over there, Doctor,” says number one, opening the gate and pointing past the Ranger. He’s Boston or Rhode Island, the park is almost pâk, the car almost but not quite câ. Not as broad as Boston. Probably Providence. Otherwise he’s Midwest Purvis, old-style FBI, hair: crewcut; suit: Michigan State collegiate.

Why?”

“We have a federal warrant, Doctor.”

“For what? What’s the charge?”

“We don’t need a charge.” He reaches for something under his jacket, behind him — cuffs? — but flips open a little pocket book, showing a badge. “ATFA, Doctor. Please park your car there.”

“Take it easy, Mel,” says number two. “The doctor’s not going anywhere, are you, Doc?” He’s upcountry Louisiana, strong-bellied, heavy-faced, not ill-natured, but sure, sheriff-sure. He could have been one of Huey Long’s bodyguards. He’s wearing a suit jacket over his overalls. Why bib overalls? Because he’s too fat for jeans? “Doc, we got orders to hold you for parole violation. I’ll park your car for you.” He says päk, cä. They are not unfriendly.

“Where’re we going?”

“Angola, right up the road.”

“That’s a state facility.”

“We have very good liaison with state and county officers, Doctor,” says Providence Purvis, picking up some Louisiana good manners. “I’m sure we can clear it up in no time. Don’t worry. You’re not going to the prison farm. We have a holding facility there, quite a decent place actually — for political detainees and suchlike.”

“He’s talking about parish, Doc,” says Louisiana Fats, pronouncing it pa-ish. “I’m out of the sheriff’s office in East Feliciana, on loan to the ATFA. It’s the feds have the holding facility.”

“Let’s go, Dr. More,” says Purvis.

“I want to pick up a patient here, one of the boys. It’s an urgent medical matter.”

“No way,” says Purvis, turning Yankee again. “Move it.”

18. THE FEDERAL HOLDING FACILITY is under the levee, outside the main gate, and not really part of the Angola Prison Farm. It is a nondescript, two-story frame building which in fact I remember. It used to be a residence for junior correction officers. It looks like a crewboat washed up from the Mississippi, which flows just beyond the levee and all but encircles Angola like a turbulent moat.

It is not yet midnight. But the place is brightly lit by a bank of stadium lights. There are two tiers of rooms and a boatlike rail running around both decks. A couple of men, not dressed like prisoners, are lounging at the upper rail like sailors marooned in a bad port.

It turns out I know the jailer. He’s a Jenkins, Elmo Jenkins, one of several hundred Jenkinses from upper St. Tammany Parish, sitting behind not even a desk but a folding metal picnic table in a passageway amidships which looks like the rec room of an oil rig with its old non-stereo TV, plastic couches, a card table, and a stack of old Playboys.

Officer Jenkins is uniformed but shirt-sleeved. When I knew him he was a deputy sheriff in Bogalusa. He is older than I and heavy. His thick gray hair, gone yellow, is creased into a shelf by his hatband.

He looks at me for a while. “How you doing, Doc,” says Elmo mournfully, holding out his hand and not looking at me. He is embarrassed. He’s expecting me. “What can I do for you fellows?” he asks the two federal officers in a different voice. He doesn’t have much use for them.

“Just sign this, Officer,” says Providence Purvis, taking a paper from his pocket, “and the doctor will be out of our jurisdiction and into yours.”

“He was never in yours,” says Elmo, an old states’-righter. He is speaking to Louisiana Fats, for whom he seems to have a special dislike.

“I beg your pardon, Officer,” says Purvis crisply, pronouncing it perrdon. Midwest after all? “If you will consult the federal statute for ATFA detainees, I think you will find you’re in error.” Errr.

“Come back tomorrow and see the warden,” says Elmo, not looking at either one of them.

“But—” begins Louisiana Fats.

“Let’s go,” says Purvis.

They leave.

“Doc,” says Elmo, “what in hail you doing here?”

“I don’t rightly know. I’m tired. What time is it?”

“You look like you been rid hard and put up wet.”

“You got a room, Elmo? I’m tired.”

“I got the V.I.P. room for you, Doc. The one we keep for political refugees. The last occupant was the ex-President of Guatemala. You think I’ll ever forget what you did for my auntee, Miss Maude from Enon? You cured her after the best doctors in New Orleans tried and couldn’t.”

I remember old Miss Maude Jenkins. She had shingles. I often get patients after medical doctors and chiropractors strike out. She was over the worst of the shingles but still had pain which, with shingles, can be pain indeed. I perceived that she was the sort of decent and credulous woman who believes what doctors tell her. The other doctors had not bothered to tell her anything. I did what I seldom do, used hypnosis and a placebo, gave her a sugar pill and told her that the pain would soon get better. It did. It might have, anyway.

“Here’s what is going to happen, Doc,” says Elmo. “It seems you’re being held for some sort of parole violation. Tomorrow morning a Dr. Comeaux and a Dr. Gottlieb will come to see you and you’ll be taken care of one way or another. That’s about all I know. You going back to Fort Pelham?”

“I don’t know. Could I go to bed?”

“Sho now.” He takes me upstairs.

My cell could be a dorm room at L.S.U., except for the steel door and barred window. There’s even a student-size desk with a phone on it.

“Can I use the phone?”

“Sho you can. I’ve authorized it. Just dial direct. If it’s long distance, call me and I’ll fix it up. There’s some pajamas under the pillow. Left by the President of Guatemala. Silk. How about that?”

“That’s fine.”

“He jumped ship in Baton Rouge. Before him we had six Haitians. They were as nice as they could be. Highest-class niggers I ever saw. Three of them spoke better English than you or me. All spoke French.”

“Thanks, Elmo.”

“If you need anything, call me. Here’s my number downstairs.”

“I’m fine. Thanks, Elmo.”

After Elmo leaves, I call Lucy

“My God, where are you?”

“At Angola.”

“My God, I thought so.”

“Don’t worry. It’s not bad. Are the children all right?”

“They’re fine.”

“Lucy, did you get Claude out of Belle Ame?”

“No. I tried. They’re not answering the phone and the gate is locked.”

“I see.”

“My God, where have you been all night?”

“Making a house call.”

“Bob Comeaux has been looking for you.”

“I know.”

“He’s been calling all evening. He wants to see you tomorrow. Before the wedding.”

“He knows where I am now. What wedding?”

“At Kenilworth next door. You know. That fellow from Las Vegas bought it — Romero? Romeo? He had in mind an English manor house, but it looks like Caesar’s Palace. His daughter is getting married at noon. But Comeaux is mighty anxious to see you. He’ll be there first thing.”

“I know.”

“What are they going to do with you?”

“Probably send me back to Alabama.”

“They can’t do that!”

“They can.”

A pause. “You sound funny. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I want you over here by me.”

“That may be possible later.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes. Can you be available tomorrow morning and have Vergil and your uncle available?”

“Sure. You mean—”

“I mean stay there. By the phone. We have to get Claude. It’s no good calling the police. Wait by the phone until you hear from me.”

“Sure. I will. Are you—”

“What?”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. A little tired.”

“You sound funny.”

“I’m fine.”

“Please—”

“What?”

“Take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

Sure enough, the pajamas are under the pillow. They are silk. The cot is hard but comfortable. The sheets and pillowcase are fresh.

I never slept better. There is something to be said for having no choice in what one does. I felt almost as good as I did in prison in Alabama.