The Thanatos Syndrome

by Walker Percy

  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.