The Thanatos Syndrome

oddly, a Tom Selleck mustache. His body is rounded, drawn in simple lines, as if he still had his baby fat, but he’s very strong. It was his large simple arm I saw lifting the silver tractor tank. When we shake hands, he smiles but doesn’t look at me. His hand is large and inert. He thinks he’s being polite by not squeezing. He speaks softly to Lucy, shows her a greasy machine part. Lucy says, “You can? Okay, fix it and I’ll get a new one tomorrow. Write down what it is.
    â€œHe can fix anything,” Lucy tells me when he’s gone. “I pay him a fortune, but he’s worth it. Do you know he’s going to finish up at L.S.U. next semester with two degrees in geology and chemical engineering? He worked on the rigs for years, made toolpusher at age twenty-three, at four thousand a month. He’s thirty-five now and is going to end up owning Texaco. He helps me as a favor. I take care of his father. How about it?”
    â€œHow about what?”
    â€œStaying.”
    â€œI’ll stay tonight. As a matter of fact, I need your help.”
    â€œWith your syndrome?”
    â€œIt’s not mine. I think I’m on to something. But you’re going to have to tell me whether I’m as crazy as our ancestor. Furthermore, you’re an epidemiologist and this is up your alley. You saw what I found in Mickey LaFaye’s case.”
    â€œYes,” says Lucy solemnly. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I saw Mrs. LaFaye. You’ve got something. Perhaps we could help each other. Did you bring a list of patients with their social security numbers?”
    â€œYes. Why do you need them?”
    â€œYou’ll see. I’ve got a little surprise for you. A couple, in fact.”
    Half the toddy is gone. She is drinking with me, drink for drink, and shows no sign of it, save perhaps a widening of the pupils in her dark gold-flecked eyes . But that could be because the sun is behind the levee and no longer in our eyes. The sweet strong bourbon seems to fork in my throat, branching up the back of my head and sending a warm probe into my heart.
    â€œAhem,” I say.
    â€œYes indeed,” says Lucy, smiling.
    â€œTell me—ah—about the syndrome,” says Lucy, pulling up close.
    â€œYes, certainly.” I do, at length, all I know, and with the pleasure of telling her and of her close listening, head cocked, tapping her lips with two fingers, brown gold-flecked eyes fixed on me above plum-bruised cheeks. It is a pleasure telling her, talking easily, she listening, smoking, and plucking tobacco grains from her tongue, we ducking our heads just enough to set the rockers rocking. I take an hour. She fixes us another toddy. She drinks like a man and shows no sign of it except in her eyes. Her eyes change like the sunlight, now lively A-plus smart-doctor’s eyes, now a woman’s eyes. Beyond peradventure a woman’s eyes. Above us the uncle is calling the ducks home for feeding and now and then gives a high-ball, a loud drake’s honk. We don’t mind.
    It is dusk dark. In the west a red light, probably atop the Grand Mer cooling tower, blinks in the mauve sky.
    When I finish, Lucy stops rocking and watches me for a long time, fingers on her lips. She puts her hand lightly on my arm.
    â€œI’ll tell you what. Here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s go have supper. I brought some Popeyes fried chicken and Carrie cooked us some of her own greens. Then I want to show you something upstairs. What do you say?”
    â€œYes, certainly.”
    â€œBy the way.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œDo you know what Blue Boy means?”
    â€œBlue Boy? No.”
    â€œI heard someone at the Fedville hospital talking to Van Dorn about Blue Boy. I wasn’t supposed to hear. He looked annoyed.”
    We finish our toddies and go inside. The old house is dim and cool. There is a smell in the hall as wrenching as memory, of last winter, a hundred winters, wet dogs, Octagon soap, scoured wood. The weak light in the crystal chandelier is lost in the darkness above. The uncle appears from nowhere, flanking us, slides back the twelve-foot-high doors. Light winks on the silver inset handles polished by two hundred years of use.
    â€œIs it true, Uncle,” I ask him, “that all the hardware of the doors, even the hinges, are silver?”
    â€œThat’s true. The Yankees were too dumb to notice. They stole