The Thanatos Syndrome

IV

1. WEDNESDAY MORNING.

Bob Comeaux is striding up and down my cell. He is shaking his head mournfully.

“Son, you blew it. You really blew it.”

“How is that, Bob?”

He is on his way to the wedding at Kenilworth and is dressed in a kind of plantation tuxedo, a formal white linen suit with a long-skirted jacket, scarlet cummerbund, ruffled shirt, and scarlet bow tie. He carries a broad-brimmed panama hat. His sideburns seem longer. He looks like an old Howard Keel in a revival of Showboat.

I am sitting at my little desk. He sets his hat on the desk and brushes back his sideburns. He stands over me, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“Tom, you’ve not only violated your parole — by trespassing on the shunt compound. Hell, like I told you, we can live with that. But now you’ve blown your security.”

“How is that?”

“We know that you and your friend, Mrs. Lipscomb — Dr. Lipscomb? — have accessed the NIH data bank on Blue Boy. We can’t have the cover blown on Blue Boy until we’re ready. Think of it as another Manhattan Project.”

“All right.”

“Now we have reason to believe you’re trying to shoot down John Van Dorn. Tom, we can’t afford to lose him. He’s a bit eccentric, but he’s our resident genius.”

“He’s a pedophile.”

“Look, Tom”—Bob Comeaux picks up his hat and, spreading the skirt of his jacket, rests a haunch on my desk— “I know there’ve been some reports of irregularities in the staff out there. But I’ve got some news for you.”

“Yes?”

“Belle Ame is closing down. Van is on his way to M.I.T. within the month. I knew we couldn’t keep him. But we picked his brain while he was here and we’ve got Blue Boy on track. Exit Dr. Van Dorn. End of chapter. End of problem.” He clears his throat. “I would think you of all people, Tom, would be glad of that.”

“I am.”

“Tell me one thing, Tom.” Bob Comeaux puts a hand on my shoulder.

“What?”

“Were your kids molested in any way?”

“No.”

“O — kay.” He stands up briskly. “Look. I think I see a simple way out of this silly business.”

“Yes?”

“Just to show you what we think of you, you old turkey, we’re going to convene a little ad hoc meeting of the med-ethics parole board right here, today, in this room, and get this dumb-ass business squared away for once and all.”

“Where is Gottlieb?”

“He’ll be here. Two o’clock. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“We’re going to make you a proposition you can’t refuse, ha ha.”

“What?”

“You know, I think. We want you aboard. We’re losing Van Dorn, but if we can sign you on as senior consultant in cortex pharmacology, we’ll be ahead of the game.”

“And if I don’t?”

Bob is holding the panama at arm’s length, eyeing it, evening up the brim. “That would be your choice. It would be out of our hands.”

“Back to Fort Pelham.”

“Look, Tom. Tom, please turn around and look at me.”

I turn my chair around and look at him. He has put his hat on and is standing, feet wide apart, hands clasped behind his back.

“Hear this, Tom. I’ll make it short and sweet. We’re not talking about some bush-league medical project — fluoridating water to cure tooth decay. We’re not even talking about curing AIDS. We’re not even talking medicine, Tom. We’re talking about the decay of the social fabric. The American social fabric. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know — all the way from the destruction of the cities, crime in the streets, demoralization of the underclass, to the collapse of the family. I don’t have to tell you this, because you already know. What I’m telling you is that we’ll be here at two o’clock and that we need you.”

“All right. I’ll be here.”

He gazes at me, eyes going fine, then laughs. “Well, I’ll be damned. Gottlieb said you’d give me static.”

“No static. I’ll be here.”

He looks at me curiously. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You seem—”

“I’m fine.”

“Terrific!” He actually claps his hands. “I’ll be on my way. A wedding of the daughter of an old friend right down the road. At Kenilworth. Tom, I got news for you. There is still grace, style, beauty, manners, civility left in the world. It’s not all gone with the wind. You know who’s coming up for the reception? Pete Fountain and his Half Fast Band. And Al Hirt. Both are personal friends of mine. I wish you could join me.”

“So do I.”

He taps on the door for the guard. When the door opens, he steps out, but then, bethinking himself, steps back and waves me toward him.

“Tom, I want you to see something. Okay, Officer? It’s okay, Tom. Just step out here for a second.”

Standing on the top deck of the stranded crewboat, we look out over the vast prison farm. Rows of cotton, mostly picked, stretch away into the bright morning sunlight. Hundreds of black men and women, the men bare-chested, the women kerchiefed, bend over the rows, dragging their long sacks collapsed like parachutes. Armed horsemen patrol the levee.

“Listen, Tom,” says Bob Comeaux softly.

From all around, as murmurous as the morning breeze, comes the singing.

Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home,

“Isn’t that something?” Bob Comeaux almost whispers.

“Yes, it is.”

“It beats Attica and Sing Sing, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Why do you think they’re so content with their lot?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Yes, you could, if you thought of it — you of all people, with your knowledge.”

“I see.”

“They’re not only making restitution for their crimes, paying their victims, they’re enjoying it. Can you force anyone to sing like that?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you another little secret of our success.”

“What’s that?”

“We allow — ahem — conjugal visits.”

“Good.”

“Would you believe that some of them don’t want to leave and go back to the streets of New Orleans and Baton Rouge when they’ve served their time?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you love those colorful kerchiefs the women wear?”

“Yes.”

We shake hands. He holds my hand in a firm grip for a second, gives me a final level-eyed look. He’s quite handsome with his long sideburns, handsomer than Howard Keel. “Glad to have you aboard, Doctor. Guard!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lock this fellow up. He’s a dangerous character.”

2. I CALL ELMO on the desk phone.

“How you doing, Doc?”

“I’m fine, Elmo.”

“What can I do for you, Doc?”

“Elmo, I need to get out of here.”

Elmo sighs. “I’d like nothing better, Doc. But you know as well as I do we got to hold you for the ATFA. Doc, all you got to do is clear it with that doctor dude from Fedville and he can clear it with the feds.”

“I know that. I’m meeting with them this afternoon. But I need to get out now for a while.”

“Oh, I got you. No problem, Doc. We got exercise period coming up in a few minutes. You can walk the levee. No problem. It’ll do you good.”

“Thanks, Elmo. I appreciate it, but here’s my problem.” I tell him about Belle Ame, the Brunettes, and the sexual abuse, giving him all the technical details. I tell him dryly, as one professional to another, one cop to another cop. “The thing is, Elmo, I have a kid there and I think I’d better get him out. Now.” I don’t tell him the kid is Claude Bon.

There is a silence. I can hear the chair creak as he leans back.

“Goddamn, Doc.” The chair creaks again. There is a soft whistling. “You know, I heard something about that from the sheriff over at Clinton. I thought they had turned them loose for lack of evidence.”

“They did. But now Dr. Lipscomb has the evidence.”

Another whistling of breath through teeth. “Well, I mean shitfire, Doc. Why don’t I call Cooter Sharp over at Clinton and tell him to bust the whole gang? I mean all. I mean, when it comes to messing with chirren—”

“You can do that if you want. But they’ve tried that. And it will take time. And they’ll probably be looking for you, ready with their lawyers, and you’re going to run into problems of federal jurisdiction.”

“Yeah.”

“Elmo, I want to get the kid out of there. Now. We, you, whoever, can bring charges later.”

“Yeah.” The creaking becomes rhythmic. He’s rocking. “Yeah,” he says again and in a different voice. “Tell you what, Doc,” he says in a musing voice. He’s leaning back in his chair. “Tell you what. You go ahead and take your exercise. I’ll send up an officer to let you out the back gate. That will put you on the levee and batture, which is fenced off. What we got here, Doc, is a minimum-security holding facility — for illegals, politicals, suchlike. We’re not part of the high-security prison farm, you understand.”

“I understand.”

“Thing is, Doc, the fence is a joke. Anybody can get over it, under it. But the thing is, even the hard-timers know that nobody but a fool would try to make it out by the river. That’s the Raccourci Chute out there, and ain’t nobody, I mean nobody, ever made it out that way to live to tell about it. You understand.”

“I understand.”

“Now, what we got here, Doc, is a fenced-off exercise area for our detainees, about a quarter mile of levee. Just so you’ll know where you’ll be walking, the downriver end is fenced off. The patrol’s not going to bother you — they know the people here are mostly politicals. The willows begin down there at the batture corner of the fence. You might recall an old jeep road that deer hunters use that runs up from old Tunica Landing. I know you know where that is.”

“Yes.”

“That’s about all I can tell you, Doc.”

“I understand. Thanks, Elmo.”

“For what? Enjoy your walk, Doc, but you be back here by two or my ass is in a sling. What I’m going to do now is send you up some breakfast. It’s staff breakfast. After all, you been up here before on forensic business and are entitled to staff. You also looking a little poorly, Doc.”

“I’m fine. Thank you, Elmo. Give my best to Miss Maude when you see her.”

“I’ll surely do that. She thinks the world and all of you.”

“One last thing, Doc.”

“Yes?”

“If you ain’t back here by two, it’s my ass.”

“I’ll be back.”

“It’s your ass, too.”

“I understand.”

Breakfast is at least four scrambled eggs, fried ham, a mountain of grits — the “big hominy” kind, which I haven’t seen for years — and hot chicoried coffee.

I eat it all. There is a glass of water. It reminds me of something. I call Elmo.

“One little question, Elmo. I’ll explain later.”

“Sho, Doc.”

“The breakfast was delicious. Where does the water come from?”

Elmo Jenkins laughs. “You noticed. Don’t worry about it, Doc. You not drinking river water. That’s Abita Springs water, right from our back yard, the best in the world, as you know.”

“I know. What do the prisoners on the farm drink?”

“That’s river water, treated so it’s safe, but I can taste the chemicals.”

“You mean from the Ratliff intake?”

“Right, Doc. Seems like you know this country around here.”

“A little.”

“Enjoy your walk, Doc.”

I call Lucy. She picks it up on the first ring. “Yes?” she says breathlessly. She’s ready. “Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“You all right?”

“I’m fine. Is Vergil there?”

“Right here.”

“Doc?” says Vergil.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“What are we going to do, Doc?”

“We’re going to get Claude.”

“Fine. How are we going to do that? I already tried. They’re all locked up and don’t answer the phone. You think we ought to call the police again?”

“No. Here’s what we’re going to do. You know where Tunica Landing is?”

“I surely do. That’s where my daddy used to put in to cross over to Raccourci Island.”

“Good. I want you to meet me there in forty minutes.”

Pause. “Doc, you in Angola. How we going to do that?”

“Don’t worry. I have a — like a pass. Does your daddy still have his pirogue?”

“No, sir. He got a new one, a light fiberglass one, just before he got sick. He only could use it once or twice. It’s good as new.”

“Will it hold three people?”

“Three people. Well, it will hold me and my daddy and two hundred pounds of nutria.”

“Can you get it in Lucy’s truck?”

“With one hand.”

“Good. Is Uncle Hugh Bob there?”

“Yes, sir. You want to talk to him?”

“No, that’s not necessary. Just tell him to come with you. He’ll be glad to. And tell him one more thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know that old long-barrel Colt Woodsman he’s got?”

“I sure do.”

“Tell him to bring it.”

“Tell him to bring it,” Vergil repeats.

“For dogs.”

“For dogs,” Vergil repeats.

“They might have guard dogs at Belle Ame.”

“All right, Doc.” He seems relieved.

“We not going to kill them. We probably won’t even need it.”

“Right Doc.”

“I figure it will take you forty-five minutes or so to get up to Tunica Landing. I’ll probably be there by then. If not, wait.”

“We’ll be there.”

“And Vergil.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t worry about Claude. I feel sure he’s all right. But I don’t want my kids in that place and I’m sure you feel the same way.”

“I sure do. But what—”

“We’re just going to ease down the river to the old landing at Belle Ame and pick up Claude and maybe have a little talk with those folks. Later we’ll call the police. But I want Claude out first. We can’t go by car because the gate’s locked and they’d be expecting us. They’re not going to be expecting anybody from the landing. So we’ll have a look around, and a little surprise won’t hurt them. They can’t lock the landing. But there might be some dogs.”

“We’ll be there in thirty minutes, Doc.”

“Good. Let me talk to Lucy.”

Lucy’s voice is constricted and high in her throat. “What in the world—!”

I tell her the plan.

“Are you crazy? Don’t fool around with those people. Let me call the police.”

“We will. But I want to get Claude out now and there’s something I need to find out.”

“Yes, but they’ll—”

“They’ll what? Shoot me? No no. Van Dorn doesn’t know what we have on him. He’s mainly worried about the heavy-sodium connection. He’ll want to explain, talk me into something. He’s the one that’s worried. They don’t even know about your clinical findings with the children. You didn’t tell anybody, did you?”

“No, but—”

“But what?”

“Promise me that—”

“That I won’t shoot anybody? I promise I won’t shoot anybody.”

“Promise me that you’ll take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

“Good God.”

“Now listen, Lucy.”

“Yes?”

“Where is your truck?”

“Here. I’ve been here with the children, either on the phone trying to reach Gottlieb or waiting to hear from you.”

“All right. Give the keys to Vergil. When we finish our business at Belle Ame, we’ll either take my car if it’s still there, or we’ll drop on down to Pantherburn in the pirogue. I have to get back here by two. You can drive me up.”

“After you finish your business.” She’s calmed down, is breathing easier. “And what do I do if you don’t show up or I don’t hear from you?”

“If we don’t show up by midnight, call the cops.”

“Call the cops,” she repeats. “Why do you need Hugh?”

“He knows the river.”

“He knows the river.”

“See you later.”

“Sure,” she says absently.

3. THERE’S A DIRT TRACK atop the levee beyond the chain link fence. You can’t see the river through the willows of the batture. There’s another fence in the willows. The morning sun is already warm. A south wind from the gulf is already pushing up a dark, flat-headed cloud. It is like late summer. My nose has stopped running. Walking the levee in flatlands has the pleasant feel of traveling a level track between earth and sky.

There is no horse patrol in sight, only guard towers on the prison farm, but I’d as soon get off the levee and into the willows. The batture here has been cleared down to the fence. I quicken my stride. The smudge ahead under the cloud must be the loess hills. And here’s the crossing fence, crossing the levee and squaring off the two fences running on each side. Beyond the fence a shell road angles up one side of the levee and down the other. The fence is maybe eight feet high, but it is not a good idea to climb it. I’m still in clear view of the near tower. Elmo mentioned the downriver corner. I see why. There’s a washout just upriver from the corner, grown up in weeds, but a washout nonetheless, a space gullied under the fence. It is not hard to see. It can only mean that the fence is symbolic and the detainees have no reason to escape, or that the guards, both mounted and in the towers, keep them in sight. Or both.

I make my turn, look back toward Angola, see no one, widen the turn to carry over the brow of the levee to its shoulder, moseying along, hands in pockets like the bored ex-President of Guatemala, down and out of sight of the guard tower. The grass is ankle high, but the footing is good and it is easy to angle down the levee. On the steeper shoulder of the levee at the washout I roll down and under the fence the way you roll down the levee when you’re a boy, elbows held in tight, hands over your face.

The willows of the batture are thick. It is good to be in the willows and out of sight. I figure to hit the shell road, which angles away from me, by keeping parallel to the river. The going is heavy, but after a hundred yards or so I hit not shells but a dirt track, hardly wider than a path. This must be Elmo’s jeep trail. The soft dirt has three tire tracks, which puzzle me until I remember that deer hunters hereabouts use three-wheelers more than jeeps.

The trail angles toward the river. The batture is dropping away. The dirt is quiet underfoot, but presently there is a roaring. The top of a poplar moves fitfully as if it were being jerked by a human hand. It must be the river, high now and ripping through the batture.

I break out into a junkyard of rusty steel hawsers with caches of trapped driftwood cemented by dried whitened mud, chunks of Styrofoam, tires, Clorox bottles. A rusting hulk of a barge fitted with a crane conveyor is toppled and half sunk. This must have been a transfer facility, no doubt a soybean depot.

The river is on the boom. It’s been dry here. They must have had late summer rains in the Dakotas or the Midwest. This stretch is the Raccourci Chute, which goes ripping past Angola even at low water. But now it’s up in the willows and a mile wide, roaring and sucking and jerking the willows and blowing a cool, foul breath. A felon might imagine that if he could get over the levee and into the willows he could make it, but no. He’d get caught in the sucks and boils. There’s nothing out there but roiled, racing, sulphur-colored water flecked by dirty foam from Dakota farms, Illinois toilets, and ten million boxes of Tide. Angola could just as well be Alcatraz. Looking across toward Raccourci Island, I could swear the river swells, curved up like a watchglass by the boil of a giant spring.

Old Tunica Landing is nothing but a rotten piece of wharf. The raised walk of creosoted planks is solid enough and high enough to clear the rising water in the batture. There’s nobody here and the gravel road from Tunica is grown up in weeds. I pick out a dry piling I can sit against and from which I can see up the road without being seen. The landing was used first by the Tunica Indians and then to service the indigo plantations. I came here once to see the Tunica Treasure, a graveyard which somebody dug up and then found, not gold, but glass beads which the English, my ancestors, had given them for their land two hundred years ago. It is nine-thirty.

A little upriver and a ways out is Fancy Point Towhead, an island of willows almost submerged but long enough and angled out enough to deflect the main current and make a backwater. Foam drifts under me upstream. There’s another noise above the racket of the current in the batture downstream. It’s a towboat pushing fifteen or twenty rafted-up barges upstream. There’s not enough room inside the island for him to use the dead water. He has to buck straight up the Chute and he’s having a time of it. The current is maybe eight knots, and with his diesels flat out he’s maybe making twelve. He sounds like five freight engines going upgrade, drive wheels spinning.

I watch him. There is so much noise that I don’t hear Vergil Bon until the plank moves under me. He’s carrying a pirogue by its gunwale in one hand, two paddles in the other. The uncle is right behind him, face narrow and dark under his hunting cap. He’s carrying his old double-barrel 12-gauge Purdy in the crook of his arm and ambling along in his sprung splayed walk as if he were on his way to a duck blind. They both seem serious but not displeased.

“How you doing, Vergil, Uncle Hugh Bob?” The towboat is noisy.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

We shake hands. They gaze around, not at me, equably. They are Louisianians, at ease out-of-doors. The uncle nods and pops his fingers. We could be meeting here every day.

“Did you bust out of there?” asks the uncle companionably, flanking me.

“I have permission. Don’t worry about it.”

We watch the towboat make the bend, creep past the concrete of the Hog Point revetment, which looks like a gray quilt dropped on the far levee.

“Uncle Hugh Bob, what are you doing with that shotgun?”

“You asked him about that little Woodsman.” He nods toward Vergil as if he didn’t know him well. “We brought it. But I didn’t know what kind of trouble you’re in.” He’s jealous because I asked Vergil.

“We’re not going to have any trouble — beyond maybe a mean dog or a snake.”

“I’m not going to shoot no dog with a.22. This won’t kill him.” He pats the shotgun. “What we going to do?”

“We’re going to drop down to Belle Ame and pick up Claude. After that you and Claude can take the pirogue on down to Pantherburn. My car is at Belle Ame. I’ll bring Vergil back up here to get the truck. We’ll see.”

That seems to satisfy him. “I brought along my spinning tackle, right here.” He pats his game pocket. “Claude can go fishing with me.” Then he thinks of something. “What you doing at Angola?” He screws up a milky eye at me.

“It was a misunderstanding. Some federal officers thought I was a parole violator. I have to be back up here at two to straighten it out. Nothing to worry about.”

“They not looking for you?”

“No. It’s like having a pass.”

He nods, not listening. But Vergil is watching me closely. He says nothing.

“Vergil, how long will it take to get down to Belle Ame?”

He answers easily, gauging the current, without changing his expression. “It’s not all that far. Just past the hills and where the levee begins again. And in that current — half an hour.”

“Twenty minutes,” says Uncle Hugh, willing to argue about the river.

“Do they still have a landing?”

Vergil and the uncle laugh. “A landing?” says Vergil. “Doc, that’s where the new Tennessee Belle and the Robert E. Lee tie up when they bring tourists up from New Orleans for the Azalea Festival and the Plantation Parade in the spring.”

“Do you think that pirogue will hold the three of us out in all that?”

“It took me and my daddy and two hundred pounds of nutria.”

“Not out in that,” says the uncle. He’s offended because I didn’t ask him.

“Yes, sir, out in that,” says Vergil, telling me. I wish he would pay attention to the uncle. “Right over there on Raccourci Island is where my daddy used to run his traps.”

“What do you think, Uncle Hugh Bob?”

The uncle considers, breaks the breech of the Purdy, sights through it. “Well, the trash will be going with us. All we got to worry about is getting run over or hit by a wake like that.” The last of the towboat’s wake is slapping and sucking under us.

“I tell you what let’s do, Doc, Mr. Hugh,” says Vergil, appearing to muse. “Mr. Hugh knows more about the river than anybody around here. Anybody can paddle. So why don’t we put Mr. Hugh in the middle so he can judge the river, look out for snags, and tell us which way to go if something big is coming down on us. You know those sapsuckers will see you and still run over you.”

Thank you, Vergil, for your tact.

“They will,” says the uncle, mollified. “But what’s he talking about, paddling in that thing? Y’all just worry about steering, ne’ mind paddling.”

“How much freeboard you reckon we going to have?” I am eyeing the pirogue, still in Vergil’s hand. A pirogue is designed for one Cajun in a swamp, kneeling and balancing with a load of muskrat, nutria, or alligator. It can navigate in an inch of water and slide over a hummock of wet grass. It was not designed for three men in the Mississippi River.

“Enough,” says Vergil.

“Two inches,” says the uncle. “That thing supposed to be in a swamp.”

“Not to worry,” says Vergil absently, looking on either side of the wharf for a place to launch, and as absently: “What’s going on at Belle Ame, Doc?”

“Did Lucy tell you anything?”

“She just said there was some humbug over there and that was why you took Tommy and Margaret out and why we ought to get Claude out.” He appears to be inspecting the river intently.

“I don’t think we have to worry about Claude, but I thought it better not to take any chances. We’ll go get him. I also want to get a line on Dr. Van Dorn. As you know, he’s involved in that sodium shunt and maybe in something else.”

Vergil says nothing, after a moment nods. “All right, then.”

“Something wrong with that fellow,” says the uncle.

“Who’s that?”

“That Dr. Van.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a little on the sweet side.”

“Sweet? How do you mean?”

“He’s slick behind the ears.”

“Let’s go,” says Vergil. “Over here.”

It’s a trick getting into the pirogue. The water’s a couple of feet below the planking. Vergil has no trouble, holding it steady with one foot and letting himself down, balancing like a cat. He holds fast to the wharf while I get in. We both hold for the uncle.

It’s not bad in the dead water behind the towhead. The pirogue is new-style light fiberglass with two seats like a canoe. The uncle sits comfortably on the bottom amidships, arms resting on the gunwales, back against a thwart, like an easy chair. It’s a big pirogue. There are perhaps three inches of freeboard.

The going is easy in the dead water, even downriver from the towhead. But there’s a noise ahead like the suck of floodwater in a storm drain.

Then it takes us, the current of the Chute. Something grabs the bow at my knee. It’s like starting out from the siding in a roller coaster car and being jerked by the big cable. A sluice of brown water ships over my paddle hand and catches the uncle. “Shit!” breathes the uncle. This isn’t going to work, I’m thinking. But as soon as we’re airborne, caught up in the current, it’s better. We could be standing still if you didn’t notice the green shapes of the batture slipping by like stage scenery.

It comes down to Vergil steering from the stern and me paddling some, mainly to keep heading up. Dark shapes, logs, scraps of dunnage nuzzle up, drift off, as friendly as dolphins.

“Look out for snags, Doc,” says Vergil.

“The snags are going faster than we are.”

“Shit, those are not snags,” says the uncle at my ear. “Those are stumps, whole trees. Don’t worry about them. Do what the man says.”

We’re settling down. It’s even quiet out here. The current carries us close to the Pointe Coupée bank. The pale quilted concrete of a revetment shoots past like railroad cars.

The river turns. Sunlight glitters in the boils and eddies of the current. We’re around Tunica Bend and at the foot of Raccourci Island. The levee runs out and the Chute slams straight into the dark hills of Feliciana. We find easier water near the inside of the bend. Now we’re gliding along a pencil-size strip of beach on the Pointe Coupée bank. There is a break in the treeline and, beyond, what looks like a tufted lake. It’s a hummocky swamp. We’re out of the Chute. The racket is behind us. Now it’s as quiet here as a bayou, but we’re still making good time.

“You know what that is, Mr. Hugh Bob?” asks Vergil behind me. He must be pointing with his paddle.

“I ought to,” says the uncle to me. “I been there enough. That’s Paul’s Slough.”

“That’s right,” says Vergil. “It’s also the western end of the Tuscaloosa Trend.”

“I know that,” says the uncle.

“You go another ten miles west and you got to drill forty thousand feet just to hit gas. This is where the Devonian fault takes a dip.”

“That’s right,” says the uncle to me. “And that ain’t all. I’ll tell you something else about that piece of water that some folks don’t know. I’m talking about that steamboat. Some people don’t know about, but his daddy knows about it.” His voice went away behind me. He must have jerked his head toward Vergil.

Vergil doesn’t answer. We’ve got crossways of the current and are busy heading up.

The uncle, piqued by Vergil’s showing off his geological knowledge, enlists me by tapping my shoulder. He knows some stuff too. “We heard it many a time when we were running our traps. Vergil Senior, his daddy, told me he heard it when he used to spend the night over there before a duck hunt.”

“Heard what?” I say, thinking about Belle Ame. “How much farther to Belle Ame, Uncle?”

“Not all that far. Well, you know right here is where the old river used to come in. Right here. You know the Raccourci Cut happened one night during a June rise just like this. All it takes is one little trickle across the neck, then another little rise, a little more water, and before you know it, here comes the whole river piling across and ain’t nothing in the world is going to stop it, not the U.S. engineers, nothing. If this river wants to go, it’s going to go. Look out! The old river is still over there, you know, about twenty miles of the old river still looping around Raccourci Island, right there, blocked off, right across that neck where the swamp is. You can walk across to it in ten minutes. What happened was this. The night the river decided to come down the Chute, a stern-wheeler was working up the old river. They had a river pilot of course, and he was cussing. I mean, what with the fog and the rain and him fighting the current, he couldn’t see bee-idly. It was taking him all night. Then he noticed the water was getting low. He began scraping over sandbars. He’d run aground. And he’d cuss. He didn’t know the river had already made the cut across the neck and he was stranded. And he’d back off and head upriver and he’d run aground again. And he cussed. He couldn’t get out. He cussed the river, the boat, the captain. He swore an oath. He swore: ‘I swear by Jesus Christ I hope this son-of-a-bitching boat never gets out of this goddamn river.’ And he never did. What he didn’t know was that he was sealed off — the river had already come busting down the Chute. He couldn’t get out. But the thing is, they couldn’t find the boat. So they thought it had sunk in the storm. They never did find that boat. But I’m here to tell you that there’s people, people I know, who have seen that boat in the old river on a foggy night during the June rise.”

“Have you seen it, Mr. Hugh?” Vergil asks him.

“I’ve heard it!” the uncle shouts. “And so has many another. Vergil, his daddy, and I heard it! We was camping out right over there across the slough by Moon Lake and the Old River and you could hear that sapsucker beating up the river through the fog, that old stern-wheel slapping the water like whang whang whang. Vergil Senior claimed he could even hear the pilot cursing. But we heard it!”

“I’ve heard that story,” says Vergil behind him and talking to me past him. “It’s part of the folklore of the river. You can hear the same story up and down the river wherever there’s been a cutoff. In fact, I’ve heard the same story from Mr. Clemens.”

Don’t argue, Vergil.

“What I’m telling you is, I heard it,” says the uncle, still talking to me. They argue through me. I half listen. Here’s a switch. Here’s Vergil, the scientist, skeptic, the new logical positivist, and here’s the uncle, defender of old legends, ghost ships, specters.

Let it alone, Vergil.

“The thing is,” says Vergil, “either that steamboat is there or it isn’t. If it is there, then how come nobody has seen it in daylight or seen the wreck? If it was there and it sank, there would be some sign of it — the Old River is no more than twenty feet deep anywhere. The pilot house would be sticking out. It all reminds me a little bit of modern UFO sightings.”

“I’m here to tell you I heard that sucker,” cries the uncle.

“Okay. Let me ask you both something.” I’m not interested in hearing them try to upstage each other and don’t like Vergil patronizing the uncle by talking about Mr. Clemens. To get them off it, I ask them where New Roads is, knowing it is off to the west and that we all have relatives there.

“You see right over there, over that cypress,” says Vergil, his paddle coming out of the water. “That’s False River and just past it is New Roads and over there is Chevron Parlange Number One, the most famous gas well in history, twenty thousand feet, the discovery well of the whole Tuscaloosa Trend, came in August of ’77, a hundred and forty thousand cubic feet per second, that’s a million dollars a day. So big, in fact, it blew out.”

“You talking about Miss Lucy Parlange’s place,” says the uncle. “And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer lady.”

“My auntee lives there too,” says Vergil. “She still lives in the same little house on False River. But she had a piece of land over by Parlange when they hit that big well. My auntee leased her place for a hundred thousand.”

“That old Parlange house been in the same family for two hundred and fifty years,” says the uncle. “Through thick and thin. They never gave up.”

“My auntee neither,” says Vergil.

They tell stories about the big oil strike at False River, who got rich, how money ruined some.

“Blood will tell ever’ time,” says the uncle. “You take the Parlanges. They were aristocrats when they didn’t have it, and when they got it, it made no difference.”

“My auntee too,” says Vergil. “She raised my daddy when his mamma got consumption and had to go to Greenwell Spring.”

“How far is it?” I ask him.

“What?” asks the uncle.

“Belle Ame?”

“Around the bend. Watch out for the old oil fields and the tank farm.”

We’re back in the current, booming along past the great Tunica Swamp.

There is a double sun. The second sun reflects from a monolith mirror. It is the great glass pyramid of Fedville downriver. Beyond, in its shadow, the Grand Mer cooling tower looms as dark and spectral as the uncle’s ghost ship.

We smell the old oil field before we see it. The loess hills have dropped away and the levee begins. Beyond are the tops of the tanks, which over the straight line of the levee gleam like steel marbles in a box. The scaffolding of the refinery, which used to hum and blaze away like the Ruhr Valley, is now gaunt and dark.

We ease into dead water behind a towhead of cottonwoods and there it is, the landing as fancy as ever it was in the great days of steamboats, three-tiered with heavy lashed piling, tire-bumpered, a heavy winched-up gangplank suspended in midair, ready for lowering onto the Robert E. Lee. A cotton bale stands at each end of the upper dock. The river laps over the lowest level and we slide right in.

“Upend it over that pile, out of sight, keep it quiet and we’ll have a look,” I tell Vergil.

There’s a gazebo atop the levee with a booth where I reckon tickets are sold to tourists on the Plantation Parade. We sit on a bench inside the gazebo, in shadow and behind the booth.

Except for a man riding a gang mower, the grounds of Belle Ame are empty. The quarters, garçonnières, and carriage houses are dark. But there are movements at a window. The oaks look as dense and lobuled as green cabbages. Their shadows are short. Except for two lit carriage lanterns, the great house seems deserted. The soccer fields and tennis courts are empty. The flag hangs limply from its pole. A door slams. A black woman, long-skirted, kerchiefed, comes out on the upper gallery with a bucket and a mop. We sit for a while.

The uncle breaks the breech of his Purdy, sniffs it, closes it with a click.

Presently the uncle says to Vergil, “What are we waiting for?”

They’ve made up.

“What we waiting for, Doc?” Vergil asks me.

“Just to have a look. What time is it?” I feel fixed-eyed.

“Ten-forty.”

“Good.” I am silent.

Vergil and the uncle look at each other.

“I want to see classes change. It should be at eleven.”

At eleven the plantation bell rings, a solid peal of heavy metal. Classes change. Most of the children change from one room in the quarters to another. Some come and go from the rear of the big house. Nobody enters or leaves the garçonnière.

As we gaze, the dark green of the oaks seems to grow even darker, even though the sun is shining brightly. Then the dark whitens, just as if you had closed your eyes, the retinal image reversing, light going dark, dark light.

Vergil is watching me without expression, thumbnail touching his teeth.

“Well,” says the uncle, opening and closing the shotgun.

“Let’s go over there.” I nod toward the garçonnière. “I think you better leave the shotgun here, Uncle Hugh.”

“You think I’m going to leave a five-thousand-dollar Purdy out here for any white trash that comes along?” He snaps the breech a last time and hikes out.

We look at him. With his oversize hunting coat flapping around his knees, duck cap hugging his narrow skull, flaps down, seeming to sidle as he walks, one foot slinging, the barrel of the shotgun in the crook of his arm, he looks as loony as Ichabod Crane.

4. WE STOP IN THE SHADOW of an oak near the garçonnière. There is a movement in the window. It is a woman, standing, arms folded, looking out, but not at us. She seems to be smiling, but perhaps it is a shadow. No, it is Mrs. Cheney. I recognize the heavy dark eyebrows, rimless glasses, oval face still young-looking despite the heavy iron-colored hair pulled down tight.

Presently she turns away.

Several minutes pass. The uncle is as still as if we were in a duck blind. Vergil is watching me.

“Let’s go over here.” I move closer, into the shadow of the porch. Now we can see what Mrs. Cheney is doing. She is standing, arms still folded under her breasts, watching a boy playing cards on the floor. She is still smiling. She is often described as having a “sweet face” and she does. She has always been a sitter hereabouts, babysitter, sitter for old people. She is one of those women who have no other qualification than pleasantness and reliability. She used to sit with Meg and Tommy. Her best feature is her skin, which is like satin, smooth and dusky as a gypsy’s. She has gained some weight. Her forearms under her breasts are still firm-fleshed, but there is a groove along the bone separating the swell of pale underflesh pressed against her body from the dark outer arm.

“Well?” says Vergil, still watching me. He is worried about me, my silence. Do I know what I’m doing?

“Let’s go say hello to Mrs. Cheney. Uncle, you’re going to have to leave the shotgun by the door.”

“There is no way—” he begins.

“Put it behind that sweet olive. You don’t want to frighten Mrs. Cheney.”

We knock and go in. Mrs. Cheney looks up, smiling. She seems no more than mildly surprised.

“Dr. More!”

“Hello, Mrs. Cheney. You know my uncle, Hugh Bob Lipscomb, and Vergil Bon, Claude’s father.”

“I surely do, and that’s a fine boy. Hugh, that bluebird never came back. Hugh made me a bluebird box,” she explains to me.

“That was a while ago,” says the uncle, eyes somewhat rolled back. He’s embarrassed and feels obliged to explain. “She had a bluebird nesting in her paper tube. I gave her the box but told her it would be better not to mess with the bird that season. But something ran it off.”

“Is that right?”

“I first knew Mrs. Cheney when she used to sit with Lucy,” the uncle explains to Vergil.

“They were all lovely people,” says Mrs. Cheney. “All of y’all.” Mrs. Cheney is nodding and smiling, eyeglasses flashing, as if nothing could be more natural than that the three of us should have appeared at this very moment.

While we talk, we are gazing down at the child. He is a boy, seven or eight. He looks familiar. He is picking up playing cards which are scattered face down on the floor. He is a very serious little boy, very thin, dressed in khaki pants and matching shirt like a school uniform. His narrow little butt waggles as he crawls around picking up cards. When he picks up four cards, hardly looking at them, he stacks them awkwardly against his chest and makes a separate pile.

“Ricky, you speak to these nice gentlemen.”

“Aren’t you Ricky Comeaux?” I ask him. Ricky doesn’t speak, but he sits around to see us, large head balanced on the delicate stem of his neck. Finally he nods.

“What game are you playing, Ricky?” I ask him.

Mrs. Cheney answers for him. “Concentration. Y’all remember. I put all the cards on the floor face up. He takes one look. Then I turn them face down. You know. Then you’re supposed to pick them up by pairs. You make mistakes, but you begin to remember where the cards are.”

“I remember that,” says the uncle.

“You know what Ricky does?” He picks them up by fours and in order, you know, four aces first, deuces, and so forth. And he doesn’t make mistakes.”

“I got to see that,” says the uncle, eyes still somewhat rolled back.

“Do you want to see him do it, Dr. More?” Mrs. Cheney asks me.

“Yes.”

Vergil looks at me: Why are we watching this child play cards?

Mrs. Cheney shuffles the cards expertly. Now she is on her hands and knees putting the cards down face up. She is agile and quick. A stretch of firm dusky thigh shows above the old- fashioned stockings secured in a tight roll above her knee. Ricky watches her but does not appear to be concentrating on the cards.

“Where are the others?” I ask Mrs. Cheney.

“Who? Oh, the children. Some are in class, some in rec. They’re all over at Belle Ame.”

“What are they doing in rec?”

“Oh, some watch the picture show, some play in the attic.”

“Why isn’t Ricky with them?”

“Ricky just came last week. He’s still in our little boot camp, getting strong on vitamins in mind and body so he can join the teams. And he’s doing so well!”

“We came to pick up Claude Bon. Do you know where he is?”

“Pick him up? What a shame! He’s one of our stars. What a fine big boy. He’s probably watching the movies or playing sardines.”

“Where do they have the movies?”

Mrs. Cheney doesn’t mind telling me. “They show the regular movies for the children in the ballroom and the staff watches the videos up there.”

“You mean upstairs here?”

“You know, they take videos of the children and the staff sees them to check on their progress, you know, like home movies.” Mrs. Cheney has turned the cards face down and now stands up, face flushed. “All right, Ricky.”

Ricky starts picking up cards, first four aces, shows them to us in his perfunctory way, stacks them against his stomach, then four deuces.

“Well, I be dog,” says the uncle. “That’s the smartest thing I ever saw.”

“Where does he get his vitamins, Mrs. Cheney?” I ask.

“Right there.” She nods to the bank of water coolers. “They all do. It’s enriched Abita Springs water, for little growing brains and strong little bodies. You can see what it does.”

“Enriched by what?”

“Vitamins and all. You know, Doctor.”

“How much do they drink?”

“Eight glasses a day. And I mean eight, not seven.”

Ricky picks up four sixes, shows them, stacks them.

“Do you drink it too?”

“Me? Lord, Doc, what’s the use? It’s too late for me. We are too old and beat-up.”

“Why, you’re a fine-looking woman,” says the uncle, his face keen, and begins blowing a few soft duck calls through his fingers.

Is Mrs. Cheney winking at me?

“Mrs. Cheney, call the big house and get Claude. Ask for Dr. Van Dorn or whoever, but I want Claude. Now.”

“What, and interrupt sardines up in the attic. They would have a fit.”

“I see. I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Cheney,” I say, changing my voice.

“What’s that, Doctor?”

“I want you to go over to the big house and find Claude Bon and bring him back here.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Doc!” cries Mrs. Cheney.

“Why not?”

“I’m not supposed to leave Ricky.”

“We’ll look after him.”

“No, I’m not allowed to do that.”

“Mrs. Cheney, get going. Now.”

Both Vergil and the uncle look at me when my voice changes.

“All right, Doctor!” says Mrs. Cheney, smile gone, but not angry so much as resigned. “As long as you take the responsibility.”

“I take it.”

“It may take a while to find him.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage.”

“All right!” Her voice is minatory, but she leaves.

“How can you talk that way to Mrs. Cheney?” the uncle asks me. “I mean she’s one fine-looking woman.”

I don’t answer. We are watching Ricky pick up cards. Vergil is frowning.

“If that ain’t the damnedest thing I ever saw,” says the uncle. “That boy ain’t even concentrating.”

“He doesn’t have to,” I say. Somehow it is difficult to take my eyes from the back of Ricky’s slender neck.

Ricky picks up kings, shows them, sits around cross-legged, evens up the cards against his chest to make a neat deck.

“Ricky.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come over here and sit by me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ricky sits on the plastic sofa close to me, legs sticking straight out. He’s got a seven-year-old’s guarded affection: You may be all right, I think you are, but— He hands me the deck, looking up, big head doddering a little. I flip through the deck, showing Vergil and the uncle. “That’s very good, Ricky. Say, Vergil—”

“Yes, Doc.”

“You notice anything unusual about the water fountains?”

“There’s that tube coming down from the ceiling behind the drinking fountains.”

“Yeah. It’s clamped off with a hemostat, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll tell you what let’s do. You listening, Uncle?”

“Sho I’m listening. But you tell me how in the hell that boy did that. I don’t think he knows himself, do you, Ricky?”

Ricky looks up at me but doesn’t reply.

“Vergil, you go upstairs and take a look around. Look for the source of whatever is coming down that tube. Look for tapes, video cassettes, photos, transparencies, anything like that. Books, comics, and such.”

“Okay.” He starts for the iron stairs.

I look at my watch. “I think we’ve got about five minutes. Mrs. Cheney will bring Claude, all right, but the others will be coming too. Ricky and I are going to talk a little bit, maybe play a card game. Uncle, I think it would be a good idea for you to stand outside. When you see the others coming, give a couple of knocks, okay?”

“Don’t worry about a damn thing,” says the uncle, not quite sure what is going on but glad to do something.

“All right, Uncle. Do this. Keep your eye peeled on the big house. When you see anyone come out and head this way, knock twice.”

“No problem,” says the uncle, glad to get back to his shotgun.

“Ricky, where is Greenville, Mississippi?”

“That’s”—Ricky is practicing some trick of ducking his big head rhythmically to make the sofa creak—“one hundred and thirty miles south of Memphis, one hundred miles north of Vicksburg, on the river.”

“Where’s Wichita, Kansas?”

He doesn’t stop ducking, but I notice that he closes his eyes and frowns as if he is reading the back of his thin veined eyelids. “About a hundred and twenty-five miles southwest of Kansas City.”

“Do you know your multiplication tables?”

He shrugs, goes on ducking.

“How about your sevens?”

“You mean going by the tables?”

“Yes.”

“Sure.” But he strikes out, doesn’t know seven times three.

“What’s the biggest sunfish you’ve caught?”

He shows me.

“What’s eighty-seven times sixty-one?”

He doesn’t stop ducking but closes his eyes. “Five thousand three hundred and seven.”

“Do you know how to play War?”

“Sure. You want to play?”

“Sure.”

We play War on the sofa. War is the dumbest of all card games, requiring no skill. High card wins. If there is a tie, it is a war. You put three cards face down and the next high card wins.

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

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

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

“Your turn,” says Ricky.

I am looking at Vergil.

“Come on,” says Ricky.

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

“Star Wars 4? It costs fifty cents.”

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

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

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

“Okay.”

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

“Well?” I say to Vergil.

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

“Vergil?”

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

“A rocking horse?”

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

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

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

“And?” I ask, irritated with him.

“It was pornography.”

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

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

“What did you see?”

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

“Vergil?”

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

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

“You mean boys and girls having intercourse?”

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

“And?”

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

“I see. What grown people?”

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

“Okay. What grown people?”

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

“Mrs. Cheney?”

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

“What were they doing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I see. And Dr. Van Dorn?”

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

“Stills?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Concentration?”

“Molar.”

“I see.”

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

“I see.”

After a while Vergil stirs uneasily.

“I wonder where they are.”

“What?”

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

“Don’t worry. They’ll be here.”

“You all right, Doc?”

“Sure.”

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

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

“Doc, what you got in mind?”

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

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

Van Dorn, who has taken my hand in both of his, is shaking his head in mock outrage. “You old scoundrel beast,” he says, and coming close: “I got some great news for you.” He notices the uncle’s shotgun propped by the door. “How do you like these guys?” he says to nobody in particular. “Probably poaching and shooting Belle Ame deer out of season. Mr. Hugh Bob, why don’t you show the folks that Purdy? He’s a hard man, Tom. Did you know I offered him five thousand for it?”

“I been offered ten thousand,” says the uncle, who, however, is glad to show off his shotgun, walking from one person to another. They look politely.

“When you going to take me to Lake Arthur, Mr. Hugh Bob?” asks Van Dorn.

“Like I told you,” says the uncle, “there ain’t no ducks there. We’ll have to go to Tigre au Chenier.”

“You got a deal.”

The uncle, pleased, blows a few feeding calls.

“How about that guy?” Van Dorn is still shaking my hand. “I don’t know how you fellows got in here, but I’m delighted to see you.”

“We came by the river. The gate is locked. We came to pick up Claude. His father was anxious about him.”

Van Dorn lets go of my hand, grows instantly sober, paces.

“I know, I know. Would you believe we’ve had threats from some locals, Kluxers, fundamentalists, fundamentalist Kluxers; I mean, God knows. But we’re not going to let a couple of rednecks scare us, are we, Claude?”

Claude says nothing, stands at ease, gazing at a middle distance.

“Mr. Bon,” says Van Dorn to Vergil, “I understand your anxiety, but I can assure you we’re delighted to have him and he’s perfectly safe here.”

“I think we’ll be on our way,” says Vergil.

“No problem,” says Van Dorn. “A fine boy,” he adds absently. “Make a world-class goalie.”

Now we’re sitting on the two bamboo lounges, with a scarred plywood table between marked out as a checkerboard and a Parcheesi game.

There follows a period of social unease, like a silence at a dinner party. But Van Dorn goes on nodding good-naturedly, as if agreeing with something. Vergil, hands on knees, shoots a glance at me. I am silent. The uncle, restless, stands at Mrs. Cheney’s end of the couch, eyes rolled back.

Vergil opens his hands to me: What—?

Van Dorn claps his hands once. “Two pieces of news, Tom,” he says in a crisp voice. “And I see no reason to keep either secret, since we’re all friends here. As a matter of fact, it is serendipitous that you should have dropped by, since I couldn’t call you — it seems the yahoos have cut my line. Number one: I’m going to be moving on. To a little piece of work at M.I.T., Tom,” he says in a sober yet cordial voice. “I’ve paid my dues here. But the time comes — The school will be in good hands — in fact, no doubt better off without me — like my friend Oppie at Los Alamos, I seem to arouse controversy. Number two,” he counts, leaning toward me across the table. “You’re in, Doctor. You’ve got your grant from Ford: $125,000 per. Not great, not adequate compensation for your contribution, but you’ll have time for your practice plus research access to Fedville — you can name it. They just want you aboard.”

Ricky has left the Star Wars 4 game and is kneeling at the half-finished game of War, evening up the deck against his stomach and eyeing me impatiently.

I do not reply. As all shrinks know, it is useful sometimes to say nothing if you want to find out something. In the silence that follows, it is Vergil with his sense of social propriety who feels the awkwardness most. His expression as he looks not quite at me is worried and irritable.

“We’ll finish the game later, Ricky,” I tell him. “I’ll tell you what let’s do.”

“What?”

“Uncle Hugh, my car is parked by the front gate. Here are the keys. Why don’t you take these two boys out to the car and wait for us. We’ll be along in a minute.”

“Is that your car out there?” says Van Dorn, looking up in surprise. “For heaven’s sake.”

“But why—” Mrs. Cheney begins.

“But—” says the uncle, next to Mrs. Cheney.

“He’s the best duck caller in the state,” I tell Ricky. “He’ll show you how to call ducks, won’t you, Uncle Hugh?”

“Sure, but—”

“Get going.”

“It’s perfectly all right, boys,” says Van Dorn. “No sense in them sitting around listening to us old folks discussing the state of the world,” he explains to us. “Hold it, fellows. Let me give you a key to the front gate — I’m sure you understand my precautions, Tom.”

“They’re not going anywhere. Give it to me.”

“Sure thing!” He hands me a key. He watches fondly as the boys leave with the uncle. “Good boys, both of them. I’ll miss them. I’ll miss them all.”

After the door closes, Van Dorn claps his hands again. “Tell you what, Tom,” he says, rising. “Why don’t you and I walk over to my study and have a tad of bourbon by way of celebration.”

“No thanks.”

There is another silence. “Very well,” says Van Dorn presently, fetching his pipe from a pocket of his Norfolk jacket. “What’s your pleasure, Doctor? What can I do for you?”

“I’m curious about that water, Van.” I nod toward the cooler. Both Van Dorn and Vergil look relieved. It is, I think, social relief. Not talking makes people uneasy.

“The water?”

“Do you drink it, Van?”

“No, I’m not in training. But it’s no big deal.” With a flourish, Van Dorn takes a Styrofoam cup, fills it from the cooler, drains it off. “Want one, Tom?”

I rise, go to the cooler, take a cup. Van Dorn watches me with a lively expression. I unclamp the hemostat, fill the cup not from the fountain but from the tube.

I hear Van Dorn shuffle his feet, “You’re not going to drink that,” says Van Dorn with genuine alarm.

“Why not?”

“Come on, Tom. Knock it off. You know what the additive is — Christ, it’s no secret. And you’ve also seen what it does in minimal dosage — Ricky, for example. And his father does not object. But in micrograms, not molar. And as a matter of fact, I do drink a glass now and then. As a matter of fact, you could use a bit.”

“Did Ellen drink any?”

“Not to my knowledge. If she did,” says Van Dorn to Vergil for some reason, knocking out his pipe, “it was her choice. After all she’s one of our best volunteers and she may have seen me toss off a little cocktail.” Now he turns to me. “Ricky was flunking math before he came here. Interesting, don’t you think, Tom?”

“Then why not drink this?” I offer him the Styrofoam mug.

Van Dorn is embarrassed for me. He ventures a swift glance at the others. Vergil is embarrassed too, won’t meet his eyes.

“Tom, that is molar sodium 24.”

“I know.”

Now he’s stuffing his pipe from the leather pouch. “Tom, may I be frank?”

“Yes.”

“Are you quite all right?”

“Yes.”

“You seem — ah — not quite yourself. Mr. Bon, is our good friend here all right?” Pausing in his pipe-stuffing, he eyes Vergil shrewdly.

“He’s fine,” says Vergil, not looking up. He’s not sure I am all right.

“Then it must be some kind of joke. Because he knows as well as I do — better! — that that’s molar sodium 24. And he certainly knows what it would do to you.”

“I wasn’t intending to drink it,” I say.

“I see.” Van Dorn takes time to light his pipe. “Why don’t I stop this stupid smoking.” He appears to collect himself. “I see. Then who is going to drink it?”

“You.”

“Me,” says Van Dorn gravely, exchanging a glance with Vergil. “Anybody else?” No one replies. He shakes his head, rolls his eyes toward Vergil.

“Coach next, after you,” I tell him.

Coach, who has been cracking his knuckles in his lap, looks up.

“Then Mr. and Mrs. Brunette. Then Mrs. Cheney.”

“I see,” says Van Dorn, nodding. “And you’re not going to tell us what the scam is.” He’s nodding now.

“I would like for all of you to drink a cup of this.”

Van Dorn becomes patient. “We hear you, Tom. And I suppose it is a joke of sorts. In any case, we are not going to drink it.”

“I think it would be better if you drank it, Van.”

“Oh my,” says Van Dorn in a soft voice. “Well, that seems to leave us at an impasse, doesn’t it, Tom?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He doesn’t think so, Mr. Bon,” says Van Dorn in the same patient voice, the voice I might use with a young paranoid schizophrenic.

But Vergil doesn’t answer or look up.

I notice Coach, who is observing his knuckles. Looking at his head, which is covered by a thick growth of close-cropped blond hair, is like looking into the pile of a rug. At the proper angle one can see the scalp. His neck is as wide as his head, the sternocleidomastoid muscle so enlarged that it flares out the surprisingly fleshy lobe of his ear.

Mr. Brunette crosses his legs, not with ankle over knee but knee over knee, crossing leg dangling almost to the floor. His suit is not at all a preacher’s suit, I notice, but the new Italian drape style, of charcoal silk, loose in the hips, tight in the cuffs. But he wears the sort of short thin socks with clocks fashionable years ago and loafers with leather tassels.

“Okay, gang!” says Van Dorn briskly, and would have clapped his hands, I think, if he wasn’t holding his pipe. “I don’t know about y’all but I got a school to run. If there’s nothing else, Doctor?”—with a slight formal bow to me, eyes fond but distant.

The others are on their feet instantly, following Van Dorn to the door.

“Only these.” I spread the photos on the plywood table between the sofas.

Van Dorn and the others are looking down at the glossies on their way out, heads politely aslant to see them better, as one might look at the photos of a guest fresh from a trip to Disney World.

I too have the first good look at them.

There are six photographs.

There are details which I missed in my earlier, cursory glance. In the photograph of Mrs. Cheney on all fours, Coach at her from the rear, Mrs. Cheney’s head is partially hidden between the bare legs of a young person who is supine and whose head and chest are not in the picture. It is not clear whether the young person is a boy or a girl.

In the photograph of Mr. Brunette kneeling at a youth, the youth has both hands on Mr. Brunette’s carefully barbered head, as if he were steering it, and is gazing down at him with an expression which is both agreeable and incurious. Mr. Brunette’s bare shoulders are surprisingly frail, the skin untanned.

In the photograph of Van Dorn dandling the child, the child is shown to have been penetrated but only by Van Dorn’s glans and certainly not painfully, because the child, legs kicked up, is looking toward the camera with a demure, even prissy, expression. Her legs are kicking up in pleasure.

The fourth photograph depicts a complex scene: Coach penetrating, anally and evidently completely, a muscular youth, not Claude, upon whom Mrs. Brunette, supine, is also performing fellatio.

The fifth photograph depicts Van Dorn entering an older girl, perhaps eleven or twelve, again by holding her above him, again by no means completely. Again the girl is gazing at the camera, almost dutifully, like a cheerleader in a yearbook photo, as if to signify that all is well.

The sixth photograph, perhaps the oddest, depicts Van Dorn performing, it appears, cunnilingus upon Mrs. Brunette, he seated in a chair, she astraddle and borne high upon his folded arms, but not entirely unclothed, while on the floor behind them, sitting in a small semicircle, clothed, ankles crossed, arms around knees, faces blank — in the archaic pose of old group photographs — are half a dozen junior-high students. Two or three, instead of paying attention to the tableau, are mugging a bit for the camera, as if they were bored, yet withal polite.

6. FOR SOME MOMENTS the Belle Ame staff gaze down with the same polite interest.

Then someone — it is not clear who — says in a muted voice: “Uh oh.”

Someone else utters a low whistle.

The uncle is back. He whispers something to me about Claude and Ricky being in the car, playing cards, and all right.

“Jesus,” says the uncle, who has come all the way around the table, the better to see the photographs of Mrs. Cheney. “I mean what—!” he says, opening both hands, beseeching first me, then the world around.

“What in the world!” exclaims Mrs. Cheney in conventional outrage, touching her tight bun at her neck with one hand. “Who — what is that? Ex-cuse me!”

“That’s not you, Mrs. Cheney?” I ask her.

“Dr. More! You ought to be ashamed!” Her outrage, by no means excessive, seems conventional, almost perfunctory. Then she turns away from me and speaks, for some reason, to Vergil. “I for one do not appreciate being exposed to this material, do you?”

“Why no,” says Vergil politely. He can’t quite bring himself to look directly at the pictures on the table.

Van Dorn is still eyeing the photographs, face aslant one way, then the other, without expression.

Coach, who has been still until now, has put his hands on his hips and is moving lightly from the ball of one foot to the other. “This is a setup, chief,” he says softly to Van Dorn, then, when Van Dorn does not reply, says loudly to one and all, “I can tell you one damn thing,” he says to no one in particular. “I know a setup when I see it. And I for one am not about to stand for it. No way.” He leans over, I think, to pick up one or more photographs, then apparently changing his mind resumes his boxer’s stance. “This is rigged. I don’t know who is doing it or why, but I can tell you one damn thing, I’m not buying in. No way!”

“Let me just say this,” says Mr. Brunette calmly, shaking his head. His hands are in his pockets and he speaks with the assurance of one long used to handling disputes, perhaps a school principal or a minister. Though he is dressed like a TV evangelist and has a north Louisiana haircut, his voice is not countrified. Rather, he sounds like the moderator of an encounter group, reasonable, disinterested, but not uncaring. “I don’t know who is responsible for this foolishness — though I have my suspicions—” Does he look in Van Dorn’s direction? “It would not be the first time that photographs have been cooked for purposes of blackmail. Everyone here knows that photographs are as spliceable as tapes — and therefore signify nothing. In fact, this whole business could be a computer graphic. No, that’s not what interests me. What intrigues me is the motive, the mindset behind this. Frankly I have no idea what or who it is. Is it a joke? Or something more sinister? And who is behind it? One of us? Dr. More? I’ve no idea. But let me say this — and I think I speak for my wife too, don’t I, Henrietta?”

Surprised, Henrietta looks up quickly, nods. Her face is younger, more puddingish, less like a dragon lady than I thought.

“Just let me say this,” says Mr. Brunette, taking off his glasses and rubbing his nose bridge wearily with thumb and forefinger. “As the fellow says, Hear this. I am notifying my attorney in short order to do two things: one, to employ a forensic expert who can testify as to the fakery of these phony photos and tapes — and two, to bring charges of libel against anyone who undertakes to use them for malicious purposes. That includes you, Dr. More. Frankly though, I think it is somebody’s idea of a joke — a very bad joke and a very sick somebody.” Wearily he wipes his closed eyes. He puts his hands deep into the loose pockets of his drape trousers, clasps hands to knees, stands up briskly as if to leave.

“Did you say tapes, Mr. Brunette?” I ask.

Eyes still closed, he waves me off. “Tapes, photos, Whatever.”

“No one mentioned tapes,” I tell Mr. Brunette.

Vergil still can’t bring himself to look at the pictures or anybody. He sits perfectly symmetrically, hands planted on knees, eyes focused on a point above the photos, below the people.

The uncle, still on the prowl, stops behind my chair, gives me a nudge on the shoulder. “She’s still a damn fine-looking woman,” he actually whispers.

“Cut it out,” I tell him. “Sit down. No, stand by the door.”

“No problem,” says the uncle.

Coach, who can’t decide whether to go or stay, settles for a game of Star Wars 4.

Van Dorn sits comfortably on the sofa opposite me. He knocks out his pipe on the brick floor, settles back, sighs.

He makes a rueful face at Coach and the exploding satellites. “I sometimes think we belong to a different age, Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Did I ever tell you what I think of your good wife?”

“You spoke of her bridge-playing ability.”

“I know. But I didn’t mention the fact that she is a great lady.”

“Thank you, Van.”

The plantation bell rings. Van Dorn puts his hands on his knees, makes as if to push himself up, yawns. “Well, I’ll be on my way.”

“Not quite yet, Van.”

He pushes himself up. “What do you mean, Tom?” says Van, smiling.

“I mean you’re not leaving.”

“Ah me.” Van Dorn is shaking his head. “I’ll be frank with you, Tom. I don’t know whether you’re ill and, if so, what ails you. At this point I don’t much care. I bid you good day.” He starts for the door.

“I’m afraid not, Van.”

“Move, old man,” says Van Dorn to the uncle.

“No, Van,” I say.

Van Dorn turns back to me. Now he’s standing over me. “Do I have to spell it out for you?” he asks, shaking his head in wonderment.

“Sure. Spell it out for me.” For some reason my nose has begun to run. My eyes water. I take out a handkerchief.

“I think you’ve got some sort of systemic reaction, Tom.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You’ve been ill before.”

“I know.”

“You’ve harbored delusions before.”

“I know.”

“You want to know one reason I think you’re ill?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem to realize your position. Isn’t that what you shrinks call the breakdown on the Reality Principle?”

“Some of them might. What is my position?”

“Your position, Tom — which, as you know, is none of my doing — is that you either join the team — and as you yourself have admitted, you approve their goals, you just don’t have any more use for some of those NIH assholes like Comeaux, nor do I — or you go back to Alabama. You’re in violation of your parole. You know that, Tom. Come on! You don’t want that! I don’t want that. All I have to do is pick up that phone.”

“I thought you said the phones didn’t work.”

“They work now. As for those phony photos—”

“Yes?” I am blowing my nose and wiping my eyes with a soggy handkerchief.

“There are two theoretical possibilities— Let me give you some tissues, Tom.”

“Thanks. That’s better. What are the two possibilities?” During the great crises of my life, I am thinking, I, develop hay fever. There is a lack of style here — like John Wayne coming down with the sneezes during the great shootout in Stagecoach. Oh well.

“Consider, Tom,” says Van Dorn gently, even sorrowfully. “It’s a simple either/or. Either the photos are phony — which in fact they are — or they are not. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“If they are phony, which I’m sure a lab can demonstrate, then forget it. Right?”

“Right.”

“If they are genuine, ditto.”

“Ditto?”

“Sure, Tom. Once we get past the mental roadblocks of human relationships — namely, two thousand years of repressed sexuality — we see that what counts in the end is affection instead of cruelty, love instead of hate, right?”

“Yes.” He gives me another tissue.

“Look at the faces of those children — God knows where they come from — do you see any sign of pain and suffering, cruelty or abuse?”

“No.”

“Do you admit the possibility that those putative children — whether they’re real or cooked up — might be starved for human affection?”

“Yes.”

“Case closed,” says Van Dorn, sweeping up the photographs like a successful salesman. “Tom, we’re talking about caring.”

“I’ll just take those, Van,” I say, taking them.

“Okay, gang,” says Van Dorn, putting his pipe in his mouth and clapping his hands. “Let’s go.” He makes a sign to Coach, who has stopped playing Star Wars 4.

I nod to Vergil. Vergil understands, joins the uncle by the door.

Coach and Van Dorn face Vergil and the uncle.

“What’s this?” asks Van Dorn wearily, not turning around.

“Before you leave, I suggest that all of you drink a glass of the additive,” I say, blowing my nose. “Starting with Coach. You first, Coach.”

Coach winks at Van Dorn, steps up to the cooler.

“I don’t mind if I do.”

“Not from the cooler, coach. From the tube,”

“Shit, that’s molar.”

“That’s right.”

Coach looks to Van Dorn. “I can take them both.” Smiling, he starts for the uncle. His big hands are fists.

The uncle looks to me. I make a sign, touch my ear. The uncle understands, nods.

“If he tries it, shoot him,” I tell the uncle.

Coach looks quickly back at me, looks at the Purdy propped against the door behind the uncle, shrugs, and starts for the uncle. Meanwhile, the uncle, who has got the Woodsman from his inside coat pocket, shoots him.

A crack not loud but sharp as a buggy whip lashes the four walls of the room.

“You meant ear, didn’t you?” says the uncle, putting the Woodsman away.

I am watching Coach closely. Part of his right ear, the fleshy lobe flared out by the sternocleidomastoid muscle, disappears. There is an appreciable time, perhaps a quarter second, before the blood spurts.

Coach stops suddenly as if a thought had occurred to him. He holds up an admonishing finger.

“Oh, my God!” screams Coach, clapping one hand to his head, stretching out the other to Van Dorn. “I’m shot! Jesus, he’s shot me in the head — didn’t he?”—reaching out to Van Dorn not so much for help as for confirmation. “Didn’t he? Didn’t he?”

Van Dorn stands transfixed, mouth open.

“My God, he’s been shot!”

I look at Coach. There is an astonishing amount of blood coming between his fingers.

Coach turns to me. “Help me! For God’s sake, Doc, help me!”

“Sure, Coach. Don’t worry. Come over and sit right here by me. You’ll be fine.”

“You swear?”

“I swear,” I say. “Mrs. Cheney.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Mrs. Cheney, who has sat down twice and risen twice, rises quickly.

“Please bring us two towels from the bathroom. Don’t worry, Coach. We’re going to fix you up with a pressure bandage.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

“My God, my brain is damaged. He could have killed me.”

“I know.”

He turns to show me. The blood running through his fingers and down his arm drips on me. My nose is also dripping. Every time I fool with surgery, my nose runs. This doesn’t work in surgery. I think I might have chosen psychiatry for this reason.

I knot one towel, tie the other towel around his head, twist it as hard as I can. “Mrs. Cheney, you hold it here. Coach, you press against the knot as hard as you can.”

“I will!”

“Don’t worry, Dr. More!” cries Mrs. Cheney, taking hold of the towel.

“Meanwhile, drink this, Coach,” I tell him, holding the towel against his head. “Vergil, fix him a glass of additive.”

“Molar strength?” asks Vergil, still looking into his eyebrows.

“Right. Mrs. Cheney, twist the towel as hard as you can and he’ll be fine. The bleeding has about stopped.”

“I will!” cries Mrs. Cheney, twisting.

“Drink this, Coach.” I hand him the glass with my free hand.

“You’re sure?” asks the Coach, pressing the knot while Mrs. Cheney twists the towel. She is also pulling. Now his head is against her breast.

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll drink it if you say so.”

“I say so. Vergil?”

“Yes, Doc?”

“Give a glass to Mr. Brunette.”

“No problem.” He fills a glass and sets it on the table in front of Mr. Brunette.

Mr. Brunette looks at it. “Let me just say this,” he says, pushing up the bridge of his Harold Lloyd specs.

“All right.”

“First, you’re right about these people,” nodding toward Van Dorn. “Accordingly, let me make sure the photos are safe. I’ll just put them back in the file where they belong and where the proper authorities can find them.” He scoops up the photos in a businesslike way and starts for the staircase.

“I think you’d better bring those back, Mr. Brunette. How’re you doing, Coach?”

“I’m going to be fine, Doctor, since you said I would.”

“Keep twisting, Mrs. Cheney.”

“I am, Doctor!”

“There’s a balcony up there and an outside staircase,” says Vergil, taking notice for the first time.

“I really think you’d better come down, Mr. Brunette.” But he’s halfway up and gaining speed. He’s as nimble and youthful in his specs as Harold Lloyd and — do I imagine it? — grinning a wolfish little grin.

The uncle looks at me. I shrug and nod, but do not touch myself. Before I can think what has happened, the uncle has picked up the shotgun and shot him. I find that I am saying it to myself: The uncle has shot Mr. Brunette with a 12-gauge shotgun held at the hip. The room roars and whitens, percussion seeming to pass beyond the bounds of noise into white, the white-out silent and deafening until it comes back not as a loud noise but like thunder racketing around and dying away after a thunderclap.

My ears are ringing. Mrs. Brunette opens her mouth. I think I hear her say, no doubt shout, to everyone as if calling them to witness, “He’s killed my husband!”

Everyone is gazing at Mr. Brunette. The ringing seems to be in the room itself. Mr. Brunette, blown against the far rail, comes spinning down the staircase, as swiftly and silently as a message in a tube, hands still on the rails, specs knocked awry but not off.

“Uncle Hugh,” I say, but cannot hear my voice. Uncle Hugh has shot Mr. Brunette with a 12-gauge shotgun from the hip.

The room is filled with a familiar cordite Super-X smell I haven’t smelled for years.

Mrs. Brunette covers her ears and says something again. Mrs. Cheney does not let go of the towel but pulls Coach’s head close to hers, twisting the towel harder than ever.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” says the uncle beside me, and slaps at the seat of his pants. “I brushed him off right here is all. With number eight.” He turns to show me, again slapping at his pants.

Mr. Brunette is struggling to get up. He gets up. It is true. The seat of Mr. Brunette’s Italian drape suit, which is slack around the hips, has been shot out. There is no blood.

“But I mean, Uncle Hugh, even so, number-eight birdshot.”

“Wasn’t birdshot!” says the uncle triumphantly, lunging past me back to his post at the door, right shoulder leading. “Not even number ten. What that was what they call a granular load, little bitty specks of rubber like pepper, like if you wanted to run off some old hound dogs without hurting them. You remember, I told you I don’t like to hurt a good dog.”

“Yes.”

“Here, I’ll show you the shell.”

“That’s all right.”

“Please help us, Doctor,” says Mrs. Brunette, who has got Mr. Brunette to the couch, where he is kneeling, head in her lap.

“Certainly,” I say. “Now let him lie across you, like that.”

I examine him. The seat of his charcoal silk trousers has been shot away along with the bottom inch or so of his coattail. The exposed sky-blue jockey shorts of a tight-fitting stretch nylon are by and large intact, save for a dozen or so dark striae, as if they had been heavily scored by a Marks-A-Lot. Several of the scorings have ripped nylon and skin, and there is some oozing of blood,

Mr. Brunette adjusts his glasses, feels behind him, looks at his fingers. “My God,” he says evenly, but not badly frightened.

“Don’t worry. We’ll fix you up.” I turn to Vergil, who is picking up the photographs. “Would you see if you can find a washcloth and dampen it with soap and water. Uncle Hugh, lend me your knife.”

They do. I cut off the back of Mr. Brunette’s jockey shorts, using the uncle’s Bowie knife, which is honed down to a sliver of steel, clean him up, and instruct Mrs. Brunette to apply pressure to the two lacerations. Mr. Brunette is lying across her lap. She does so but in a curious manner, holding out one hand, face turned away, as if she were controlling a fractious child.

Van Dorn, I notice, is sitting back on the sofa, drumming his fingers on the cane armrest and by turns nodding and shaking his head. “Oh boy,” he murmurs to no one in particular.

“Vergil, give everybody a glass of additive. There’s a stack right there.” The “glasses” are Styrofoam, Big Mac’s jumbo size.

“Molar?” asks Vergil.

“Molar.”

“All right.”

“Very good. Drink up, everybody.”

“Oh boy,” says Van Dorn, shaking his head and murmuring something.

“What was that, Van?”

“I was just saying that I abhor violence of any kind.”

“Right.”

“The whole point of conflict resolution is to accomplish one’s objective without violence. Conflict resolution by means of violence is a contradiction in terms.”

“That’s true. Drink up, folks.”

Van Dorn is nodding over his drink. “Tom,” he says in his old, fine-eyed, musing way, “can you assure us that the pharmacological effect of these heavy ions is reversible.”

“I have every reason to believe it is.”

A final nod, as if the old scientific camaraderie had been reestablished between us.

“The bottom-line question, Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Knowing your respect as a physician for the Hippocratic oath, I put you on the spot and ask you if any harmful pharmacological effect can occur?”

“None that you would not want.”

“Done!” he says in his old “Buck” Van Dorn style, and drains the glass as if he were chugalugging beer back in the fraternity house.

Mrs. Brunette drinks and helps Mr. Brunette to drink, holding his glass.

Mrs. Cheney, still twisting the towel on Coach’s head, leans toward me, her pleasant face gone solemn.

“Mrs. Cheney, you can let go now,” I tell her. “He won’t bleed.” She accepts the glass from Vergil. Coach keeps his head on her breast.

“Dr. More, you and I have been friends for many a year, haven’t we?”

“Yes, we have, Mrs. Cheney.”

“You’re a fine doctor and a fine man.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cheney.”

“I knew your first wife and your second wife, and both of them were just as nice as they could be. Lovely people. Many’s the night when you trusted me with your children of both ladies and yourself.”

“That’s true.”

“And you know I trust you.”

“I’m glad you do, Mrs. Cheney.”

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

“It’s the thing to do, Mrs. Cheney.”

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

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

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

“Sure.”

“I feel better already.”

“Good.”

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

“No.”

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

“No.”

“St. Louis!”

“St. Louis?”

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

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

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

“What did the Indians do, Van?”

“Indians? Crazy. Whoops. Dance.”

“I see. Uncle Hugh.”

“Yeah, son.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How soon can you get him out here?”

“How about twenty minutes?”

“That will be fine.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coach’s eyes follow me trustfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not primate. Pongid. Primate includes humans.”

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How are you, Coach?”

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

“Mrs. Brunette, how is Mr. Brunette?”

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

A glance toward Van Dorn, who is nodding approvingly.

“Van, what were the casualties at Sharpsburg?” I ask him.

“Federals 14,756; Confederates 13,609,” he says instantly and without surprise.

There are two things to observe here. One: though we have both read the same book, Foote’s The Civil War, he can recall the numbers like a printout and I cannot; two: he does so without minding or even noticing the shifting context.

“What is the square root of 7,471?” I am curious to know how far he’ll go into decimals.

“Snickers,” says Van Dorn.

“Snickers?”

“Snickers.” He makes the motion of peeling and eating something.

“He’s talking about a Snickers bar,” says the uncle companionably from the door. “He evermore loves Snickers. You can get me one too.”

I get them both a Snickers bar from the vending machine in the pantry. “Eight six point four nine,” says Van Dorn, and begins peeling his from the top.

Mr. Brunette has removed, among other things, a good-size hand mirror from Mrs. Brunette’s shoulder bag.

I hold it up to him. He sees himself, looks behind the mirror, reaches behind it, grabs air.

Van Dorn makes a noise in his throat. He has noticed something that makes him forget the Snickers.

Mrs. Cheney has risen from the sofa and is presenting to Coach, that is, has backed up to him between his knees. Coach, who is showing signs of excitement, pooching his lips in and out faster than ever and uttering a sound something like boo boo boo, takes hold of Mrs. Cheney. But he seems not to know what else to do. He begins smacking his lips loudly. Mrs. Cheney is on all fours.

“Now you just hold it, boy,” says the uncle, rising, both outraged and confused. “That’s Miz Cheney you messing with. A fine lady. You cut that out, boy. You want me to shoot your other ear off?”

But Coach is not messing with Mrs. Cheney but only smacking his lips.

Before anyone knows what has happened, before the uncle can even begin to reach for his shotgun, Van Dorn has in a single punctuated movement leaped onto the game table, evidently bitten Coach’s hand — for Coach cries out and puts his fingers in his mouth — and in another bound landed on the bottom step of the spiral staircase. Van Dorn mounts swiftly, using the handrails mostly, swinging up with powerful arm movements. There on the top step he hunkers down, one elbow crooked over his head.

I wave the uncle off — he has his shotgun by now. “Hold it!” What he doesn’t realize is that Van Dorn is only assuming his patriarchal role, establishing his dominance by cowing the young ”bachelors,” who do in fact respond appropriately: Coach flinging both arms over his head, palms turned submissively out. Mr. Brunette is smacking his lips and “clapping,” that is, not clapping palms to make a noise, but clapping his fingers noiselessly. Both movements are signs of submission.

I glance at my watch. Where in hell is Vergil? Things could get out of hand. I know all too well that the uncle and I are no match for the new pongid arm strength of Van Dorn, and we can’t shoot him.

“That’s the damnedest thing I ever saw,” says the uncle, not so much to me as to Mrs. Cheney, who, now sitting demurely, is casting an admiring eye in his direction. “Oh, Jesus, here he comes again,” he says, eyes rolled back, and picks up the shotgun.

“Hold it, Uncle Hugh Bob!” Van Dorn has swung lightly over the rail. I pitch him the rest of his Snickers bar. He catches it without seeming to try, resumes his perch. “Throw him yours, Uncle Hugh Bob.”

“What?”

“Throw him your Snickers.”

“Shit, he’s got his own Snickers.”

“Throw him your Snickers.”

“Oh, all right.” He does so.

Where is—

The uncle has replaced his shotgun and is opening the door.

“Where do you think—” I begin.

In walks Vergil and the sheriff, followed by two young deputies.

I experience both relief and misgivings.

The scene which confronts the sheriff is as peaceful as a tableau.

Coach is sitting aslant, one arm looped over his head, but no more hangdog than any coach who has lost a game. He is not even pooching his lips.

Mrs. Cheney, next to him, is plucking at one of her own buttons, eyes modestly cast down in the same sweet-faced, madonna-haired expression she is known for.

Mrs. Brunette is busy putting articles back in her purse, Mr. Brunette helping her with one hand, the other fiddling with her hive hairdo — just as any faculty husband-and-wife team might behave at any faculty meeting.

Van Dorn, seated on the top step, surveys his staff with a demeanor both equable and magisterial, a good-natured and informal headmaster munching on a Snickers bar, but headmaster nevertheless.

Sheriff Vernon “Cooter” Sharp is a genial, high-stomached, vigorous man who affects Western garb, Stetson, Lizard-print-and-cowhide boots, bolo tie with a green stone, cinch-size belt and silver conch buckle, and a holstered revolver on a low-slung belt like Matt Dillon. He is noted for his posse of handsome quarter-horses from his own ranch, which parade every year in a good cause with the Shriners, clowns, and hijinks rearing cars to raise money for the Shriners’ hospital. He and his posse are famous statewide and are invited to many events, including Mardi Gras parades.

Now he’s taken off his hat again to wipe his forehead with his sleeve, but left on his amber aviation glasses, and is looking around, surveying the peaceful scene with the same queer, for him, expression of gravity and solemnity and here-we-go-again rue. He’s shaking his head, mainly at me.

“What we got here, Doc?” he asks, not offering to shake hands.

The two young deputies are standing at ease, hands clasped behind them, pudding-faced and bored.

“Sheriff Sharp, I want you to arrest Dr. Van Dorn, Mr. and Mrs. Brunette, Coach Matthews, and Mrs. Cheney for the molestation and sexual abuse of children.”

“Oh me.” The sheriff sighs and, nodding mournfully, catches sight of Mrs. Cheney. “Doc, we been that route.”

“Do it, anyway.”

“Hi, Lurine,” he says to Mrs. Cheney, giving a little wave, hand at pistol level. “How you doing?”

“Hi, Cooter,” says Mrs. Cheney, fingering buttons, eyes still downcast.

“We have evidence, Sheriff. Vergil, did you—”

“I showed him the pictures, Doc, but he wouldn’t hardly look at them because he says they are not admissible.” Vergil is taking the photographs out to show them again.

Sheriff Sharp waves him off. “They neither here or there. Y’all know we’ve had a regular epidemic of pictures like that all over the pa-ish. It’s terrible. I hate to think of little children seeing stuff like that. But I’m here to tell you we’re cracking down. On drugs too. And minority crime.”

“You don’t understand, Sheriff,” I say patiently. “That’s not the problem here. What we’re talking about here are criminal molestation and photographic evidence.”

“The thing is, Doc,” he says, turning to face me but not looking at me, looking anywhere but at me — he can’t stand the sight of me! — “we got a problem here.” I’m the problem.

“What’s the problem?”

“Doc, as I told you, we been this route before,” he says wearily, pushing up his amber glasses and rubbing his eyes. “The same charges have been brought before against those same folks before—” He nods toward the Brunettes, a loving couple. “They were dismissed then for lack of evidence and they’ll be dismissed again — those pictures ain’t worth a dime, and now you’re also wanting to charge Dr. Van Dorn here and Coach Matthews, who won state last year in triple-A — and even this little lady”—he stretches out a hand toward Mrs. Cheney—“who has done more to he’p people than anybody you can name, people you know, children, your children, Doc, old folks, Miss Lucy’s mamma — I don’t know, Doc.” He is shaking his head in genuine sorrow. “To tell you the truth, Doc, you the only one we got a warrant for. We got a pick-up order on you from Dr. Comeaux yesterday. Now I wasn’t going to bother you, Doc, since I been knowing you and your family for a long time. But it looks like you hell-bent on—”

“Now you listen here, Cooter,” says the uncle, who, I see with some dismay, is hopping from one foot to the other in a peculiar fashion, coat flapping open, “I was here so don’t tell me what I saw. These folks all crazy as hell. You know what that little lady and the Coach were—”

“You just hold it, Hugh Bob,” says the sheriff, holding out a hand but not bothering to look at the uncle. “You just watch your mouth when you talking about Lurine — Mrs. Cheney. Ever’body knows you were pestering her when she was staying out at Pantherburn with Miss Lucy’s mamma, your sister, before she died.”

The pudding-faced, flat-topped deputy leans over to say something to the sheriff.

“Weapon?” says the sheriff. “What you talking about, weapon? You got a weapon, Hugh Bob?”

The uncle opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, the deputy simply lifts the uncle’s coattails and extracts the Colt Woodsman from his jacket pocket.

The sheriff, again overcome with sorrow, accepts the gun, sniffs the muzzle.

“This weapon has just been fired, Hugh Bob.”

“It sho has.”

“Who at?”

“Him.” The uncle nods at Coach, who appears lost in thought, studying his palms, which are open on his knees. The sheriff walks around him, looking him over. The other side of his head is not bleeding but is encrusted with a maroon clot.

“Coach?” he says, peering down at him. He stands up, hands on hips. “What in the hell did you do to him, Hugh Bob, shoot him in the head?”

“Just his ear,” says the uncle, not displeased.

“What in the hell — check that shotgun, Huval,” he says to the younger, balder deputy.

Huval checks the Purdy. “Two shells, one recently fired.”

“Where else did you shoot him?” asks the sheriff, moving the game table back and stepping past Mrs. Cheney to get a good look at Coach.

“Hi, Cooter,” says Mrs. Cheney, giving him a pat as he passes.

“Did that man shoot you?” he asks Coach.

Coach pooches his lips in and out and says, “Hoo hoo hoo.”

“This sucker has brain damage,” muses the sheriff. “Thanks to you, Hugh.”

Across the table, Mr. Brunette begins to stamp with one foot.

“What in the hell did you do to him, Hugh Bob?”

“I had to shoot him,” says the uncle, beginning to hop again. “He was coming at me and he would have gotten away.”

“What — in — the — hell—” begins the sheriff, turning first to me, then, thinking better of it, beseeches Van Dorn, who is still sitting, rocking to and fro, on the top step.

“Sheriff Sharp,” I say, rising, “I can explain everything. But right now I really think it would be a good idea if you would arrest all these people, examine the evidence, both these photographs and Dr. Lipscomb’s medical evidence of abuse before any more children are harmed, in which case I hold you responsible. In fact, I insist on it.”

The sheriff slowly rounds on me, stepping clear of the table— Mrs. Cheney gives him another pat as he passes — plants feet apart, hand on hips. “You demand of me.” He cups an ear. “Doctor, did I hear you say that you demand of me?”

“I didn’t say demand.” Now he does look straight at me, all the Western cantering-posse geniality suddenly sloughed — we’re back to his old, flat-eyed, bulged-vein sheriff’s anger. He hates my guts! We’re back in the sixties, where we’ve always been, he the true Southerner, I the fake Southern liberal — the worst kind. He could be right.

“Let me just remind you, Doctor, of two little facts, one of which you may be aware of, the other you are evidently not.”

“All right.” Nothing is more menacing than an old-style, soft-voiced Southern sheriff.

“You’re the felon here, Doctor, not them, you heah me? You’re the one I arrested and convicted two years ago of selling drugs. You the one went to jail, not them. Two.” He holds two not fat but big and long fingers in my face. “I have a telex in my office as of last night from the ATFA people to pick you up on the parole violation. You heah me, Doctor?” The cold rage of lawmen is never not present and never less than astounding. I’ve never seen even enraged paranoiacs get as angry as policemen. Slowly he folds his fingers, making a fist with a Masonic ring as big as a brass knuckle. He could easily hit me. Slowly the fist descends until his thumb hooks on to his Texas belt. “So I tell you what let’s me and you do, Doctor. Let’s you and me go on out to my car and go up the road a piece to Angola. Then we’ll see about your old friend Hugh Bob here and take care these other good people — if I can find out what you done to them.”

“Sheriff, I ask you for the last time and in your own best interests to arrest these people and hold them at least for investigation. Otherwise I fear I know what is going to happen. As for the warrant to pick me up, I’ve already been to Angola and am presently out on a pass. If you like, please call Warden Elmo Jenkins in the federal detention unit.”

“If I like — You fear — You mocking me?” Smiling, he comes close. He hates everything I do. He hates my seriousness more than sass, the hatefulness translating into a kind of familiarity. He comes up close as a lover, actually touching me with his stomach, like an enraged coach bumping an umpire — but more erotically. “If I like — I’ll tell you what I like, Doctor. I’d like it if you would get going right through that door.” He reaches for the door.

“Whoa!” says the uncle, not attempting to block the sheriff at the door but craning past him. “Look ahere, Cooter,” says the uncle, hopping from one foot to the other. “Let me tell you—”

The sheriff, aware of a commotion behind him, slowly turns, holding out a staying hand to me.

Mrs. Cheney has meanwhile risen from the couch and, approaching the sheriff, turned her back, lifted her skirt, and now in one quick practiced motion, or rather, several in rapid succession, lifted her skirt, snapped down her panties — teddies? they’re long, lavender, and loose-fitting — and presents to Sheriff Sharp, mooning him in the saucy way sorority girls do in certain film comedies, hands on knees, head cocked friskily around.

She backs into him.

“What?” says Sheriff Sharp, rearing a bit. “Hey!”

Mrs. Cheney reaches behind her and with a sure instinct and sense of direction takes hold of him. Then, finding him clothed, she seizes his hands in hers and places them on her hips, under hers, to assist her movements.

“What?” repeats the sheriff, looking right and left as if to call people to witness, but then thinks better of it, and in a lower voice, speaking to the top of Mrs. Cheney’s head, “Jesus, Lurine,” and in an even lower voice utters (I think): “Later, girl.”

There is a growling above.

Coach and Mr. Brunette are still in their “bachelor” postures of submission — Coach, head bowed, studying his palms, contenting himself with a single stomp of his running shoe; Mr. Brunette, one elbow crooked over his head, laying it over to allow Mrs. Brunette to groom him.

“Would you look at that woman,” whispers the uncle to Vergil, the uncle at first rapt, then hopping and poking an elbow into Vergil’s side.

But Vergil, arms crossed, eyes monitored, permits himself no more than a single, unsurprised shrug. There is no telling what white people—

The two deputies, trapped between amazement and stoicism, both advance and retreat, stretch forth hands to help, pull them back. They cannot bring themselves to look at each other.

Mr. Brunette is exploring Mrs. Brunette’s thigh with an un-lewd finger, simply poking up the fabric of her skirt along her stocking as a child might look under a curtain in hide-and-seek, Mrs. Brunette simply allowing it through a lack of attention. The skirt reaches her waist and Mr. Brunette takes an interest in what is indeed a complex business — not panty hose, as one might expect, but stockings suspended by garters from a girdle of scalloped black lace at her waist — garter belt? — this rigging of straps and lace overlaying a bikini, that is to say, a single transparent tape and a small snug triangle of black lace.

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

Mrs. Cheney presents to the sheriff again.

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

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

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

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

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

“Put the gun up.”

He puts the gun up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The women are quiet in the bathroom.

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

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

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

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

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

“Sure thing.”

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” I say.

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

“No.”

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

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

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