“Don’t worry. Make your call. Nothing is going to happen.”
7. IN FACT NOTHING HAPPENS for several minutes. Everyone is sitting peaceably. I observe nothing untoward — except. Except that the persons present do not exhibit the usual presence of people waiting — the studied inwardness of patients in a doctor’s waiting room, the boredom, the page-flipping anxiety, the frowning sense of time building up — how much longer? — the monitoring of eyes — I-choose-not-to-look-at-you-and-get-into-all-that-business-of-looking — or the talkiness. None of that. Everyone simply sits, or rather lounges, out of time, as relaxed as lions on the Serengeti Plain.
Mrs. Cheney is still holding Coach’s head against her breast and twisting the towel.
“Let’s take a look, Mrs. Cheney. The bleeding should have stopped.”
The bleeding has stopped. “You did a good job, Mrs. Cheney.”
“Oh, thanks, Dr. More!” says Mrs. Cheney, holding Coach close, patting him.
Coach’s eyes follow me trustfully.
Mr. Brunette has got his pants up and is sitting at his ease, only slightly off center, next to Mrs. Brunette, giving no sign of his recent injury. Having got him dressed, zipped up, belted, Mrs. Brunette is busy straightening his clothes, smoothing his coat lapels, adjusting his tie. But now she is busy at his hair, not smoothing it but ruffling it against the grain and inspecting him, peering close, plucking at his scalp. I realize she is grooming him.
The uncle too is at his ease, having taken his place between door and shotgun, not out of time like the others, but passing time like a good hunter waiting, hunkered down, blowing a few soft feeding calls through his fingers.
Only Vergil is uneasy, shooting glances at me. I know that what worries him is not what the others have done but whether I know what I am doing. He takes to pacing. I motion him over.
“Vergil, why don’t you go check on Claude and Ricky. But come right back. I might need you.”
“Good idea!” he exclaims, as pleased to find me sensible as he is to leave.
To share his new confidence, he leans closer, almost whispering, yet not really whispering. Somehow he knows that overhearing is not a problem now. “Am I correct in assuming that you expect them to regress to a primitive primate sort of behavior as a result of the sodium 24?”
“Not primate. Pongid. Primate includes humans.”
“Right. I had that in Psych 101. Did you know I was a psych minor?”
“No.”
“So the reason you’re doing this is not punishment or revenge but rather because, though they have not themselves received the sodium 24 earlier and are therefore entirely responsible for these abuses”—he pats the pocket holding the photos—“the only way you could be sure of convincing the sheriff of their guilt is to dose them up and regress them to pongid behavior, for which they are not responsible but which will impress the sheriff?”
“You got it, Vergil,” I say gratefully. “The only thing is, we don’t know if it will work. Otherwise the sheriff is not going to be impressed by this peaceable scene. The photos are probably inadmissible.”
“That’s ironical, isn’t it?” muses Vergil, glancing around at our little group.
“Yes, it is, Vergil. But we don’t have much time. Do you think you could check on Claude and be back here in five minutes?”
“No problem,” says Vergil, and he’s gone.
“How’s Coach doing?” I ask Mrs. Cheney, who is sitting between me and Coach. Though she has removed the towel from Coach’s head, she has her arm around his neck, her hand against his ear, pulling him close.
“Fine, darling!” says Mrs. Cheney, pressing her knee against mine. “You boys can both come by me!” Mrs. Cheney has suddenly begun to talk in a New Orleans ninth-ward accent.
I lean out to take a look at Coach. He has stopped bleeding and seems in a good humor, smiling and pooching his lips in and out.
“How are you, Coach?”
He too leans out in an accommodating manner and seems on the point of replying, but instead takes an interest in the leather buttons on the front of Mrs. Cheney’s dress and begins plucking at them.
“Mrs. Brunette, how is Mr. Brunette?”
Mrs. Brunette says something not quite audible but pleasant and affirming. She is busy brushing Mr. Brunette’s hair against the grain and examining his scalp. Mr. Brunette, head bowed in Mrs. Brunette’s lap, is going through Mrs. Brunette’s purse, a satchel-size shoulder bag, which he has opened. He removes articles and lines them up on the game table.
A glance toward Van Dorn, who is nodding approvingly.
“Van, what were the casualties at Sharpsburg?” I ask him.
“Federals 14,756; Confederates 13,609,” he says instantly and without surprise.
There are two things to observe here. One: though we have both read the same book, Foote’s The Civil War, he can recall the numbers like a printout and I cannot; two: he does so without minding or even noticing the shifting context.
“What is the square root of 7,471?” I am curious to know how far he’ll go into decimals.
“Snickers,” says Van Dorn.
“Snickers?”
“Snickers.” He makes the motion of peeling and eating something.
“He’s talking about a Snickers bar,” says the uncle companionably from the door. “He evermore loves Snickers. You can get me one too.”
I get them both a Snickers bar from the vending machine in the pantry. “Eight six point four nine,” says Van Dorn, and begins peeling his from the top.
Mr. Brunette has removed, among other things, a good-size hand mirror from Mrs. Brunette’s shoulder bag.
I hold it up to him. He sees himself, looks behind the mirror, reaches behind it, grabs air.
Van Dorn makes a noise in his throat. He has noticed something that makes him forget the Snickers.
Mrs. Cheney has risen from the sofa and is presenting to Coach, that is, has backed up to him between his knees. Coach, who is showing signs of excitement, pooching his lips in and out faster than ever and uttering a sound something like boo boo boo, takes hold of Mrs. Cheney. But he seems not to know what else to do. He begins smacking his lips loudly. Mrs. Cheney is on all fours.
“Now you just hold it, boy,” says the uncle, rising, both outraged and confused. “That’s Miz Cheney you messing with. A fine lady. You cut that out, boy. You want me to shoot your other ear off?”
But Coach is not messing with Mrs. Cheney but only smacking his lips.
Before anyone knows what has happened, before the uncle can even begin to reach for his shotgun, Van Dorn has in a single punctuated movement leaped onto the game table, evidently bitten Coach’s hand — for Coach cries out and puts his fingers in his mouth — and in another bound landed on the bottom step of the spiral staircase. Van Dorn mounts swiftly, using the handrails mostly, swinging up with powerful arm movements. There on the top step he hunkers down, one elbow crooked over his head.
I wave the uncle off — he has his shotgun by now. “Hold it!” What he doesn’t realize is that Van Dorn is only assuming his patriarchal role, establishing his dominance by cowing the young ”bachelors,” who do in fact respond appropriately: Coach flinging both arms over his head, palms turned submissively out. Mr. Brunette is smacking his lips and “clapping,” that is, not clapping palms to make a noise, but clapping his fingers noiselessly. Both movements are signs of submission.
I glance at my watch. Where in hell is Vergil? Things could get out of hand. I know all too well that the uncle and I are no match for the new pongid arm strength of Van Dorn, and we can’t shoot him.
“That’s the damnedest thing I ever saw,” says the uncle, not so much to me as to Mrs. Cheney, who, now sitting demurely, is casting an admiring eye in his direction. “Oh, Jesus, here he comes again,” he says, eyes rolled back, and picks up the shotgun.