The Thanatos Syndrome

by Walker Percy

  “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 d
ry 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.”