The Thanatos Syndrome

and, though even atop it, one can’t see it. Even so, it is locked. With surprising agility the uncle has the boat in the water in no time, hops in it, and works it around to a tiny beach.
    â€œUncle,” I tell him, “why don’t I row? I feel like it. You sit in the stern and tell me where to go.”
    We’re in Lake Mary almost at once. What a beneficence, popping out of the bayou funky with anise and root rot into warm sunshine and open water. Believe it or not, this quiet, almost clear stretch of water, peaceable as a Wisconsin lake, was once Grand Mer, the great muddy sea where the river came booming down into a curve, carving a broad gulf from the mealy loess hills, the roiling water teeming with packets and showboats, loading cotton and indigo and offloading grand pianos, Sheraton furniture, Sheffield silver, Scots whiskey, port wine, cases of English fowling pieces, and even a book or two—Shakespeare, John Bunyan, and later Sir Walter Scott by the hundreds, Sir Walter in every plantation house as inevitable as the King James Bible and the Audubon prints; Sir Walter sending all these English-Americans to war against the Yankees as if they were the Catholic knights in Ivanhoe gone off to fight the infidel.
    Now it’s empty and quiet as Lake Champlain: old canny Natty Bumppo facing me in the stern and behind me Vergil Bon, the sure-enough Hawkeye of this age, one foot in the past with his old quadroon beauty and wisdom, yet smart as Georgia Tech; the other foot in the future, a creature of the nuclear age, the best of black and white. But is he? Good as he is, the best of black or white, does he know which he is? And who am I? the last of the Mohicans? the fag end of the English Catholics here, queer birds indeed in these parts.
    It feels good pulling the oars, the sun on my back.
    The uncle thinks he’s going fishing. He’s telling me about his rig.
    â€œYou see this little Omega spinning reel?”
    â€œLooks like a toy.”
    â€œThat’s right! That’s why it’s light enough to cast a fly. This little sucker cost me two hundred dollars. You see this?” Tied to the line is a crude-looking wet fly weighted with a single shot.
    â€œWhat kind of a fly is that?”
    â€œThat’s a no-name fly. You want one? I’ll make you one. I showed Verge, his daddy, this, and he said you can’t cast a fly on spinning tackle and I said the shit you can’t. So I thowed it out like this—but it’s got to be this light Omega reel—and he said, Well, I be dog. He thought he knew it all about fishing.” Vergil Junior behind me is silent. The uncle and Vergil Senior were fishing companions. “You see that gum tree there that’s fallen down in the water?”
    â€œI see it.”
    â€œYou know what’s up under there, don’t you?”
    â€œSac au lait.”
    â€œYou right! White perch. You know what you do, you take and hold us off with a paddle about this far out, circle the tree, and I thow this little sucker right to the edge of the leaves and let it sink. It never misses. I ain’t had nobody to do that since his daddy got sick. We’d take turns holding each other off just right. You got to have another man with the paddle. You talk about sac au lait! But you got to have two. I mean shit, it’s hard to do it by yourself. You want to hold up here a little bit and let me hold you off and you try this little sucker?”
    â€œHe goes out fishing by himself now,” says Vergil behind me. “Ever’ day.”
    The uncle’s only sorrow these days, I see, is that he has no one to go hunting and fishing with.
    â€œWe can’t stop now, Uncle. Maybe later. I’d like to go later. Right now I want you to show me that substation.”
    â€œShitfire,” says the uncle, disappointed, “and save matches. What in hail for?”
    â€œI just want to see it. It’s important.”
    â€œAll right,” says the uncle, pretending to be grudging but in fact glad enough to be going anywhere with anybody. “Just go on up the lake to the narrows.”
    A breeze springs up. The lake sparkles. It’s good to pull the heavy skiff against the wavelets. The lake narrows. I watch the uncle for directions, and presently we duck and slide under the fence which used to cross dry land before the old blind end of the lake, fed by the rainy years, began to creep back toward the