Mr. Brunette is struggling to get up. He gets up. It is true. The seat of Mr. Brunette’s Italian drape suit, which is slack around the hips, has been shot out. There is no blood.
“But I mean, Uncle Hugh, even so, number-eight birdshot.”
“Wasn’t birdshot!” says the uncle triumphantly, lunging past me back to his post at the door, right shoulder leading. “Not even number ten. What that was what they call a granular load, little bitty specks of rubber like pepper, like if you wanted to run off some old hound dogs without hurting them. You remember, I told you I don’t like to hurt a good dog.”
“Yes.”
“Here, I’ll show you the shell.”
“That’s all right.”
“Please help us, Doctor,” says Mrs. Brunette, who has got Mr. Brunette to the couch, where he is kneeling, head in her lap.
“Certainly,” I say. “Now let him lie across you, like that.”
I examine him. The seat of his charcoal silk trousers has been shot away along with the bottom inch or so of his coattail. The exposed sky-blue jockey shorts of a tight-fitting stretch nylon are by and large intact, save for a dozen or so dark striae, as if they had been heavily scored by a Marks-A-Lot. Several of the scorings have ripped nylon and skin, and there is some oozing of blood,
Mr. Brunette adjusts his glasses, feels behind him, looks at his fingers. “My God,” he says evenly, but not badly frightened.
“Don’t worry. We’ll fix you up.” I turn to Vergil, who is picking up the photographs. “Would you see if you can find a washcloth and dampen it with soap and water. Uncle Hugh, lend me your knife.”
They do. I cut off the back of Mr. Brunette’s jockey shorts, using the uncle’s Bowie knife, which is honed down to a sliver of steel, clean him up, and instruct Mrs. Brunette to apply pressure to the two lacerations. Mr. Brunette is lying across her lap. She does so but in a curious manner, holding out one hand, face turned away, as if she were controlling a fractious child.
Van Dorn, I notice, is sitting back on the sofa, drumming his fingers on the cane armrest and by turns nodding and shaking his head. “Oh boy,” he murmurs to no one in particular.
“Vergil, give everybody a glass of additive. There’s a stack right there.” The “glasses” are Styrofoam, Big Mac’s jumbo size.
“Molar?” asks Vergil.
“Molar.”
“All right.”
“Very good. Drink up, everybody.”
“Oh boy,” says Van Dorn, shaking his head and murmuring something.
“What was that, Van?”
“I was just saying that I abhor violence of any kind.”
“Right.”
“The whole point of conflict resolution is to accomplish one’s objective without violence. Conflict resolution by means of violence is a contradiction in terms.”
“That’s true. Drink up, folks.”
Van Dorn is nodding over his drink. “Tom,” he says in his old, fine-eyed, musing way, “can you assure us that the pharmacological effect of these heavy ions is reversible.”
“I have every reason to believe it is.”
A final nod, as if the old scientific camaraderie had been reestablished between us.
“The bottom-line question, Tom.”
“Yes?”
“Knowing your respect as a physician for the Hippocratic oath, I put you on the spot and ask you if any harmful pharmacological effect can occur?”
“None that you would not want.”
“Done!” he says in his old “Buck” Van Dorn style, and drains the glass as if he were chugalugging beer back in the fraternity house.
Mrs. Brunette drinks and helps Mr. Brunette to drink, holding his glass.
Mrs. Cheney, still twisting the towel on Coach’s head, leans toward me, her pleasant face gone solemn.
“Mrs. Cheney, you can let go now,” I tell her. “He won’t bleed.” She accepts the glass from Vergil. Coach keeps his head on her breast.
“Dr. More, you and I have been friends for many a year, haven’t we?”
“Yes, we have, Mrs. Cheney.”
“You’re a fine doctor and a fine man.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cheney.”
“I knew your first wife and your second wife, and both of them were just as nice as they could be. Lovely people. Many’s the night when you trusted me with your children of both ladies and yourself.”
“That’s true.”
“And you know I trust you.”
“I’m glad you do, Mrs. Cheney.”
“All in the world you have to do is tell me that drinking this medicine or vitamin-plus or whatever it is is the thing to do and I’ll do it.”
“It’s the thing to do, Mrs. Cheney.”
“That’s good enough for me. Hold the towel, Coach.”
“You can take the towel off, Coach,” I assure him. Mrs. Cheney raises the glass and, with the other pressed against her chest in a girlish gesture, drinks.
Van Dorn puts a finger on my knee. “You want to know something, Tom?”
“Sure.”
“I feel better already.”
“Good.”
“Listen,” he says, tapping my knee. “Do you mind if I add a footnote to history?”
“No.”
“It has to do with the Battle of Pea Ridge and our kinsman, General Earl Van Dorn. I can prove this, Tom. I have the letters of Price and Curtis. He had pulled off the most brilliant flanking movement of the war — except possibly Chancellorsville. It could have changed the war, Tom. If only it hadn’t been for those goddamn crazy Indians. Tom, I can prove it. Do you know what he had in mind to take and would have taken?”
“No.”
“St. Louis!”
“St. Louis?”
“I’m telling you. Old Buck would have taken St. Louis. Except for those fucking Indians. St. Louis, Tom.”
“Let me see. Just where was St. Louis in relation to Pea Ridge?”
“Hell, man, not as far as you think. Let me see.” He closes his eyes. “Three hundred miles northeast — and nothing between him and it.”
“What did the Indians do, Van?”
“Indians? Crazy. Whoops. Dance.”
“I see. Uncle Hugh.”
“Yeah, son.”
I get the uncle in a little pantry where the phone is.
“Uncle Hugh, I think we better call the sheriff.”
“You damn right. I’ve seen some white trash but I ain’t never seen nothing like this. I mean, we all do some messing around”—he gives me a wink and a poke—“but we talking about children. I brought my gelding knife.” He holds out the skirt of his hunting jacket to show me his Bowie knife.
“We won’t need that now. The thing is, Uncle Hugh Bob, this charge has been made before and dropped and Sheriff Sharp is not going to be impressed by us registering the same complaint.”
“Don’t you worry about it. He’ll come out. I know him. I’ll call him.”
“I know you know him. I know him too. He will come out, but he’ll take his time. It could be a couple of hours. Or tomorrow. He talks about lack of evidence. We want him out here when there is evidence — I mean unmistakable evidence.”
“When will that be, son?” The uncle’s dark hatchet face juts close.
“It’s beginning now. I’d want him and his men out here in no more than half an hour. It might get out of hand after that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Hand me the phone.”
“How are you going to get Sheriff Sharp out here?”
“Who, Cooter? Don’t worry about it. I’ve known that old bastard all his life. He first got rich on the Longs. Now it’s the Eyetalians running cocaine from the gambling boats in the river. Shit, don’t tell me. We still hunt a lot. Actually he’s not a bad old boy.”
“How soon can you get him out here?”
“How about twenty minutes?”
“That will be fine.”
The uncle picks up the phone, cocks an eye at me. “What’s going to happen between now and then? Maybe you better go over to the door by my gun.”