The Thanatos Syndrome

in the last few minutes about the behavioral effects of the sodium additive struck you as socially undesirable?”
    â€œNot offhand, though it’s hard to say. I’ll have to think it over.”
    â€œThere you go!” Again the soft congratulatory fist on my knee. “That’s the answer we’re looking for. Be hard on us! Be our Dutch uncle!”
    â€œWhat about the cases of gratuitous violence—Mickey LaFaye shooting all her horses—the rogue violence of that postal worker in St. Francisville who shot everybody in the post office?”
    Now he socks himself. “You’ve already put your finger on it!” he cries aloud. “That’s why we need you.”
    â€œI have?”
    â€œRogue. You said it. You know what happens once in a while with elephants, which, as you know, have the largest brain of all land mammals and the best memory scansion?”
    â€œRogue elephants?”
    â€œOnce in a great while. We don’t know why with them and we don’t know why with us. Oh, we got bugs, Tom. Why do you think we’re bothering with you?”
    â€œI understand.” I see my Caprice pulled off the road at the Ratliff gate. After the Mercedes it looks as if it had been junked and abandoned.
    We shake hands. “One last thing, Tom,” Bob says in a different voice, not letting go of my hand. “I know that you’ll respect the confidentiality of what we’ve been talking about. But there’s a little legal hook to it too.”
    â€œLegal?”
    â€œIt’s a formality, but by virtue of the fact that you know about Project Blue Boy, you are now in the Grade Three section of the National Security Act and are subject to the jurisdiction of the ATFA security guys.”
    â€œIt sounds like you’re reading me my rights.”
    â€œI am! That’s what comes from messing with feds.”
    â€œAre those the guys who busted us over there?” I nod toward Lake Mary.”
    â€œOh no. Those were county mounties. We’ve got a working arrangement with them. The ATFA guys keep a low profile. But I’m afraid they’ll be watching you—just as they watch me. It’s a small price, Tom.”
    â€œWhat is ATFA?”
    â€œAlcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Tom, those guys make the FBI look like Keystone Kops.”
    A final firm handshake. “Tomorrow morning nine o’clock, my office at Fedville. I want you to meet my colleagues in Blue Boy. Tom, they’re good guys. You’ll like them. They’re the best of two worlds.”
    â€œWhat two worlds?”
    â€œTry to imagine a Harvard and M.I.T. brain who is not an asshole and try to imagine a Texas Humana can-do surgeon who is not an airhead.”
    â€œI’ll try.”

9. ELLEN IS GONE . Margaret and Tommy are gone. Hudeen and Chandra are in an uproar. It is hard to get the story.
    A Cox Cable van is parked two blocks from The Quarters. A man in the cherry picker is working on the line. He and the driver pay no attention to me.
    Chandra has a new job and a car to go with it, a white compact with WOW-TV in large black letters. She’s the Feliciana correspondent and will do her first assignment this afternoon, the horse show at the Feliciana Free Fair. She’s full of it. She uses words like “major market,” “doing a remote,” “feature segment.”
    Where is Ellen?
    Hudeen, who long ago gave up ordinary talk except for exclamations and demurrers, can’t seem to relate the sequence of events.
    Chandra, excited and nervous about her new job, is not much better.
    I have to get the story by a series of questions, sitting facing Chandra at the breakfast table, Hudeen standing as usual at the sink, shelling peas and cooking greens, one eye cocked on the old Sony Trinitron. Watching As the World Turns, which has been on for fifty years. There’s young, now old, Chris Hughes. Over thirty years ago I was watching Grandpa Hughes counseling Ellen when the first bulletin came on that Kennedy had been plugged. Hudeen, sensing my alarm, is willing to turn down the sound and answer questions.
    Ellen, it seems, has gone to Fresno, after all.
    She left this morning.
    With Dr. Van Dorn?
    No, but he picked her up and took her to the Baton Rouge airport.
    Tommy and Margaret went to school as usual, right?
    Yes, he took them and they going to stay there as boarders while Miss Ellen gone.
    What? What do you mean