The Thanatos Syndrome

bugling hoanh hoanh to get the attention of high-flying mallards so they’ll cock a green head and come circling down for a look. “That’s a lot of crap about war being hell,” he says. “I never had a better time in my life.”
    Miss Bett reads from her grandmother’s journal:
    I never saw men so happy as Rylan and his brothers when they marched off with the Crescent Rifles.
    Finished Rob Roy. What a delight after Horace Greeley!
    A couple is in for marriage counseling, facing me across the desk.
    He to her: I like the explicit VCR in the bedroom, in 3-D and living color. We both get excited. You have to admit you do too. Doc, you ought to hear her.
    She to him: Yes, but you’re really screwing her not me.
    He to both of us: It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?
    I: (silent, flummoxed).
    There is a honking on the gallery. The French doors are open. The uncle walks in. He has the flaps of his hunting cap down over his ears. “And I’ll tell you something else they’re wrong about. A little pussy never hurt anybody.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œGet up!”
    It is Lucy for sure, shaking me.
    â€œWhat?”
    Alarmed, I’m up, having jumped clean out of bed.
    â€œAre you all right?” asks Lucy, taking hold of me. She’s still wearing her terry-cloth car coat. The ceiling light is on. There is the disagreeable oh-no feel of a duck-hunting morning, dawn-dark, lights on, and leaving the warmth of a feather bed.
    Lucy is eyeing me curiously, lip tucked. I am wearing pajama bottoms.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou sure are.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œI’ve got something to show you.”
    â€œWhat time is it?”
    â€œSix.”
    â€œSix.”
    â€œSix. Get up. It’s important.” She’s excited.
    â€œAll right. Do you mind if I dress?”
    â€œNo.” She turns, pauses. “What?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou were about to say something, weren’t you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat was it?”
    â€œI’ve never been in Germany.”
    â€œIs that so. Well, it’s been a strange night all around. Wonderful, in fact. Please hurry. This is important.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œI want to tell you something else too.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œAbout you and me.”
    â€œAll right.”
    I have never been to Germany.
    There is no coal fire in the grate.
    Colly has been dead for forty years.
    Miss Bett has been dead for fifty years, Aunt Bett for a hundred years.
    The uncle did not come in my room. The French windows are locked. But now he is walking up and down the gallery calling ducks.
    There is a Picayune taste in my mouth.

4. WE SIT SIDE-BY-SIDE at her terminal, she still terry-clothed and bare-kneed. She’s been here awhile. The seat is warm from her. We are gazing at Feliciana on the screen twinkling away like a nebula crowded with stars.
    Do you see what I see?”
    â€œNo.”
    She pulls me close, her eye next to my eye, as if I could see better.
    â€œI’ve been looking at it for two hours and all of a sudden it hit me. Don’t you see?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWater.”
    â€œWater,” I repeat.
    â€œIt’s the water supply, dummy. Don’t you see?”
    â€œNo.”
    She spells it out. “Where does the water people drink come from now?”
    I am silent for a long time. Water?
    â€œWhere does the water come from?” I say. “Well, now that the water table has fallen out of sight and the aquifer is low, it comes from deep wells and the river.”
    â€œRight. And where in the river does it come from?”
    â€œWell, there’s an intake around here. Between here and Baton Rouge.”
    â€œRight here.” She puts a pencil point on a westerly loop of the river. “This is the Ratliff intake installed five years ago to be above the chemicals—you know, it’s the Ruhr Valley from here to New Orleans. It supplies most of western Feliciana and the northeast sector of Baton Rouge. Now watch closely, I’m going to show you something.”
    â€œI’m watching.”
    â€œOkay. Now what we’re looking at is the distribution of all known positives for heavy sodium or chloride, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œTake a good look and remember the distribution—for example, here in northeast Baton Rouge, running across here in most of