The Thanatos Syndrome

him.
    â€œWhat?” asks the uncle.
    â€œBelle Ame?”
    â€œAround 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.
    â€œUpend 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.
    â€œWhat we waiting for, Doc?” Vergil asks me.
    â€œJust to have a look. What time is it?” I feel fixed-eyed.
    â€œTen-forty.”
    â€œGood.” I am silent.
    Vergil and the uncle look at each other.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œWell,” says the uncle, opening and closing the shotgun.
    â€œLet’s go over there.” I nod toward the garçonnière. “I think you better leave the shotgun here, Uncle Hugh.”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œLet’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