“What?”
“Uncle Hugh, my car is parked by the front gate. Here are the keys. Why don’t you take these two boys out to the car and wait for us. We’ll be along in a minute.”
“Is that your car out there?” says Van Dorn, looking up in surprise. “For heaven’s sake.”
“But why—” Mrs. Cheney begins.
“But—” says the uncle, next to Mrs. Cheney.
“He’s the best duck caller in the state,” I tell Ricky. “He’ll show you how to call ducks, won’t you, Uncle Hugh?”
“Sure, but—”
“Get going.”
“It’s perfectly all right, boys,” says Van Dorn. “No sense in them sitting around listening to us old folks discussing the state of the world,” he explains to us. “Hold it, fellows. Let me give you a key to the front gate — I’m sure you understand my precautions, Tom.”
“They’re not going anywhere. Give it to me.”
“Sure thing!” He hands me a key. He watches fondly as the boys leave with the uncle. “Good boys, both of them. I’ll miss them. I’ll miss them all.”
After the door closes, Van Dorn claps his hands again. “Tell you what, Tom,” he says, rising. “Why don’t you and I walk over to my study and have a tad of bourbon by way of celebration.”
“No thanks.”
There is another silence. “Very well,” says Van Dorn presently, fetching his pipe from a pocket of his Norfolk jacket. “What’s your pleasure, Doctor? What can I do for you?”
“I’m curious about that water, Van.” I nod toward the cooler. Both Van Dorn and Vergil look relieved. It is, I think, social relief. Not talking makes people uneasy.
“The water?”
“Do you drink it, Van?”
“No, I’m not in training. But it’s no big deal.” With a flourish, Van Dorn takes a Styrofoam cup, fills it from the cooler, drains it off. “Want one, Tom?”
I rise, go to the cooler, take a cup. Van Dorn watches me with a lively expression. I unclamp the hemostat, fill the cup not from the fountain but from the tube.
I hear Van Dorn shuffle his feet, “You’re not going to drink that,” says Van Dorn with genuine alarm.
“Why not?”
“Come on, Tom. Knock it off. You know what the additive is — Christ, it’s no secret. And you’ve also seen what it does in minimal dosage — Ricky, for example. And his father does not object. But in micrograms, not molar. And as a matter of fact, I do drink a glass now and then. As a matter of fact, you could use a bit.”
“Did Ellen drink any?”
“Not to my knowledge. If she did,” says Van Dorn to Vergil for some reason, knocking out his pipe, “it was her choice. After all she’s one of our best volunteers and she may have seen me toss off a little cocktail.” Now he turns to me. “Ricky was flunking math before he came here. Interesting, don’t you think, Tom?”
“Then why not drink this?” I offer him the Styrofoam mug.
Van Dorn is embarrassed for me. He ventures a swift glance at the others. Vergil is embarrassed too, won’t meet his eyes.
“Tom, that is molar sodium 24.”
“I know.”
Now he’s stuffing his pipe from the leather pouch. “Tom, may I be frank?”
“Yes.”
“Are you quite all right?”
“Yes.”
“You seem — ah — not quite yourself. Mr. Bon, is our good friend here all right?” Pausing in his pipe-stuffing, he eyes Vergil shrewdly.
“He’s fine,” says Vergil, not looking up. He’s not sure I am all right.
“Then it must be some kind of joke. Because he knows as well as I do — better! — that that’s molar sodium 24. And he certainly knows what it would do to you.”
“I wasn’t intending to drink it,” I say.
“I see.” Van Dorn takes time to light his pipe. “Why don’t I stop this stupid smoking.” He appears to collect himself. “I see. Then who is going to drink it?”
“You.”
“Me,” says Van Dorn gravely, exchanging a glance with Vergil. “Anybody else?” No one replies. He shakes his head, rolls his eyes toward Vergil.
“Coach next, after you,” I tell him.
Coach, who has been cracking his knuckles in his lap, looks up.
“Then Mr. and Mrs. Brunette. Then Mrs. Cheney.”
“I see,” says Van Dorn, nodding. “And you’re not going to tell us what the scam is.” He’s nodding now.
“I would like for all of you to drink a cup of this.”
Van Dorn becomes patient. “We hear you, Tom. And I suppose it is a joke of sorts. In any case, we are not going to drink it.”
“I think it would be better if you drank it, Van.”
“Oh my,” says Van Dorn in a soft voice. “Well, that seems to leave us at an impasse, doesn’t it, Tom?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He doesn’t think so, Mr. Bon,” says Van Dorn in the same patient voice, the voice I might use with a young paranoid schizophrenic.
But Vergil doesn’t answer or look up.
I notice Coach, who is observing his knuckles. Looking at his head, which is covered by a thick growth of close-cropped blond hair, is like looking into the pile of a rug. At the proper angle one can see the scalp. His neck is as wide as his head, the sternocleidomastoid muscle so enlarged that it flares out the surprisingly fleshy lobe of his ear.
Mr. Brunette crosses his legs, not with ankle over knee but knee over knee, crossing leg dangling almost to the floor. His suit is not at all a preacher’s suit, I notice, but the new Italian drape style, of charcoal silk, loose in the hips, tight in the cuffs. But he wears the sort of short thin socks with clocks fashionable years ago and loafers with leather tassels.
“Okay, gang!” says Van Dorn briskly, and would have clapped his hands, I think, if he wasn’t holding his pipe. “I don’t know about y’all but I got a school to run. If there’s nothing else, Doctor?”—with a slight formal bow to me, eyes fond but distant.
The others are on their feet instantly, following Van Dorn to the door.
“Only these.” I spread the photos on the plywood table between the sofas.
Van Dorn and the others are looking down at the glossies on their way out, heads politely aslant to see them better, as one might look at the photos of a guest fresh from a trip to Disney World.
I too have the first good look at them.
There are six photographs.
There are details which I missed in my earlier, cursory glance. In the photograph of Mrs. Cheney on all fours, Coach at her from the rear, Mrs. Cheney’s head is partially hidden between the bare legs of a young person who is supine and whose head and chest are not in the picture. It is not clear whether the young person is a boy or a girl.
In the photograph of Mr. Brunette kneeling at a youth, the youth has both hands on Mr. Brunette’s carefully barbered head, as if he were steering it, and is gazing down at him with an expression which is both agreeable and incurious. Mr. Brunette’s bare shoulders are surprisingly frail, the skin untanned.
In the photograph of Van Dorn dandling the child, the child is shown to have been penetrated but only by Van Dorn’s glans and certainly not painfully, because the child, legs kicked up, is looking toward the camera with a demure, even prissy, expression. Her legs are kicking up in pleasure.
The fourth photograph depicts a complex scene: Coach penetrating, anally and evidently completely, a muscular youth, not Claude, upon whom Mrs. Brunette, supine, is also performing fellatio.
The fifth photograph depicts Van Dorn entering an older girl, perhaps eleven or twelve, again by holding her above him, again by no means completely. Again the girl is gazing at the camera, almost dutifully, like a cheerleader in a yearbook photo, as if to signify that all is well.
The sixth photograph, perhaps the oddest, depicts Van Dorn performing, it appears, cunnilingus upon Mrs. Brunette, he seated in a chair, she astraddle and borne high upon his folded arms, but not entirely unclothed, while on the floor behind them, sitting in a small semicircle, clothed, ankles crossed, arms around knees, faces blank — in the archaic pose of old group photographs — are half a dozen junior-high students. Two or three, instead of paying attention to the tableau, are mugging a bit for the camera, as if they were bored, yet withal polite.