The Thanatos Syndrome

Purvis.
    â€œI want to pick up a patient here, one of the boys. It’s an urgent medical matter.”
    â€œNo way,” says Purvis, turning Yankee again. “Move it.”

18. THE FEDERAL HOLDING FACILITY is under the levee, outside the main gate, and not really part of the Angola Prison Farm. It is a nondescript, two-story frame building which in fact I remember. It used to be a residence for junior correction officers. It looks like a crewboat washed up from the Mississippi, which flows just beyond the levee and all but encircles Angola like a turbulent moat.
    It is not yet midnight. But the place is brightly lit by a bank of stadium lights. There are two tiers of rooms and a boatlike rail running around both decks. A couple of men, not dressed like prisoners, are lounging at the upper rail like sailors marooned in a bad port.
    It turns out I know the jailer. He’s a Jenkins, Elmo Jenkins, one of several hundred Jenkinses from upper St. Tammany Parish, sitting behind not even a desk but a folding metal picnic table in a passageway amidships which looks like the rec room of an oil rig with its old non-stereo TV, plastic couches, a card table, and a stack of old Playboys.
    Officer Jenkins is uniformed but shirt-sleeved. When I knew him he was a deputy sheriff in Bogalusa. He is older than I and heavy. His thick gray hair, gone yellow, is creased into a shelf by his hatband.
    He looks at me for a while. “How you doing, Doc,” says Elmo mournfully, holding out his hand and not looking at me. He is embarrassed. He’s expecting me. “What can I do for you fellows?” he asks the two federal officers in a different voice. He doesn’t have much use for them.
    â€œJust sign this, Officer,” says Providence Purvis, taking a paper from his pocket, “and the doctor will be out of our jurisdiction and into yours.”
    â€œHe was never in yours,” says Elmo, an old states’-righter. He is speaking to Louisiana Fats, for whom he seems to have a special dislike.
    â€œI beg your pardon, Officer,” says Purvis crisply, pronouncing it perrdon. Midwest after all? “If you will consult the federal statute for ATFA detainees, I think you will find you’re in error.” Errr.
    â€œCome back tomorrow and see the warden,” says Elmo, not looking at either one of them.
    â€œBut—” begins Louisiana Fats.
    â€œLet’s go,” says Purvis.
    They leave.
    â€œDoc,” says Elmo, “what in hail you doing here?”
    â€œI don’t rightly know. I’m tired. What time is it?”
    â€œYou look like you been rid hard and put up wet.”
    â€œYou got a room, Elmo? I’m tired.”
    â€œI got the V.I.P. room for you, Doc. The one we keep for political refugees. The last occupant was the ex-President of Guatemala. You think I’ll ever forget what you did for my auntee, Miss Maude from Enon? You cured her after the best doctors in New Orleans tried and couldn’t.”
    I remember old Miss Maude Jenkins. She had shingles. I often get patients after medical doctors and chiropractors strike out. She was over the worst of the shingles but still had pain which, with shingles, can be pain indeed. I perceived that she was the sort of decent and credulous woman who believes what doctors tell her. The other doctors had not bothered to tell her anything. I did what I seldom do, used hypnosis and a placebo, gave her a sugar pill and told her that the pain would soon get better. It did. It might have, anyway.
    â€œHere’s what is going to happen, Doc,” says Elmo. “It seems you’re being held for some sort of parole violation. Tomorrow morning a Dr. Comeaux and a Dr. Gottlieb will come to see you and you’ll be taken care of one way or another. That’s about all I know. You going back to Fort Pelham?”
    â€œI don’t know. Could I go to bed?”
    â€œSho now.” He takes me upstairs.
    My cell could be a dorm room at L.S.U., except for the steel door and barred window. There’s even a student-size desk with a phone on it.
    â€œCan I use the phone?”
    â€œSho you can. I’ve authorized it. Just dial direct. If it’s long distance, call me and I’ll fix it up. There’s some pajamas under the pillow. Left by the President of Guatemala. Silk. How about that?”
    â€œThat’s fine.”
    â€œHe jumped ship in Baton Rouge. Before him we had six