The feather bed flows up and around me, but something is missing. The bolster? A cold bluish dark fills the room. It must be early morning. Colly is laying a fire in the grate. I can smell the fat pine kindling. His starched white coat creaks. The match scratches on the slate hearth. He starts a blaze of pine first. The pine is so fat it can be lit by a match. As he sets the coals from the scuttle one by one, he holds his breath, lets it out in a hiss after each coal is placed. His hand passes unhurriedly through the blue-yellow flame. Colly is said to be the great-grandson of the faithful slave and body servant of Rylan Lipscomb.
The uncle is walking up and down the gallery outside, blowing duck calls. It’s a high-ball, a 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 journaclass="underline"
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.”
“What?”
“Get up!”
It is Lucy for sure, shaking me.
“What?”
Alarmed, I’m up, having jumped clean out of bed.
“Are 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.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“You sure are.”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got something to show you.”
“What time is it?”
“Six.”
“Six.”
“Six. Get up. It’s important.” She’s excited.
“All right. Do you mind if I dress?”
“No.” She turns, pauses. “What?”
“What?”
“You were about to say something, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“I’ve never been in Germany.”
“Is that so. Well, it’s been a strange night all around. Wonderful, in fact. Please hurry. This is important.”
“All right.”
“I want to tell you something else too.”
“All right.”
“About you and me.”
“All 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?”
“No.”
She pulls me close, her eye next to my eye, as if I could see better.
“I’ve been looking at it for two hours and all of a sudden it hit me. Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“Water.”
“Water,” I repeat.
“It’s the water supply, dummy. Don’t you see?”
“No.”
She spells it out. “Where does the water people drink come from now?”
I am silent for a long time. Water?
“Where 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.”
“Right. And where in the river does it come from?”
“Well, there’s an intake around here. Between here and Baton Rouge.”
“Right 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.”
“I’m watching.”
“Okay. Now what we’re looking at is the distribution of all known positives for heavy sodium or chloride, right?”
“Right.”
“Take a good look and remember the distribution — for example, here in northeast Baton Rouge, running across here in most of the smaller towns and countryside back of the lake. With clear areas here, here, and along the lake. Okay?
“Okay. Now I’m going to show you another graphic. Another brainstorm!” She rubs her hands together, pleased with herself, “I got this from the S and WB.”
“What’s that?”
“The state Sewerage and Water Board. All I had to do was ask them for a graphic showing the areas supplied by Ratliff number one, that’s what they call it. Now watch this.”
She hits a key. A pretty map rolls out, a Miró watercolor of red swatches, bands, and blocks. “You got it? You oriented?”
“I think.”
“Now watch.” She hits keys, back and forth from twinkling star-clustered Feliciana to Miró-red Feliciana. “What do you see?”
“They’re roughly the same.”
“Roughly, my foot. They’re almost exactly the same. Look. Same clear areas. Lakefront, small enclaves here, here, a town here and here. I don’t know why.”
I say slowly, “The lakefront condos and high-rises use treated lake water. These clear areas are large new developments with their own deep wells. Towns like these, Covington, Kentwood, Abita Springs, have their own deep wells.” I look at her curiously. “What do you drink here?”
“Would you believe cistern water?”
“Cistern? I knew this place had an old cistern, but—”
“Carrie and Vergil swear by it. Carrie says it’s softer and Vergil says it’s healthier. No metal ions. He had it analyzed. What about you?”
I recollect. “Ellen is a nut on bottled water. Abita Springs water for ordinary use and Perrier for parties. Wait a minute.”
“Yes?”
“You’re saying that stuff got into the main water supply.”
“Got into it or was put into it.”
“Put into it.” We look at each other.
“I think I’ll fix us some coffee,” says Lucy.
We drink black coffee from old cups the size of small soup bowls. The coffee is chicoried and strong as Turkish.
“Look,” I say at last. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“What?”
“Put Feliciana back up there.”
“All right.”
“Now here we are here. A mile or so from the old river.”
“Right.”
“Here’s the Grand Mer facility on Tunica Island.”
“Right, and here’s the Ratliff intake here.”
“Not a mile from Grand Mer.”
“Right.”
“Lucy, you’re telling me that the drinking water from here is contaminated by heavy-sodium ions.”
“Obviously.”
“And I’m telling you that this facility here at Grand Mer has a heavy-sodium reactor.”