Mr. Brunette, standing, nattering, exposes himself, pulls down his mostly shot-away trousers, takes hold of himself, and starts for the stairs — looking for Mrs. Brunette? to become the new patriarch?
I grab Mr. Brunette, pull him toward the pantry, holler “Snickers!” to Coach as we pass. He follows willingly, loping along, stamping both feet.
The uncle has an armful of Snickers, having broken the glass of the dispenser.
The bachelors are content for the moment to gorge on Snickers in the pantry.
The women are quiet in the bathroom.
With the women out of sight, Van Dorn subsides, leaves off biting the sheriff, and instead cuffs him about in the showy, spurious, not unfriendly fashion of professional wrestlers. It is no problem to lure him away from the sheriff altogether with the Snickers. I tuck the candy in his coat pocket as one might do with a visiting child, head him for the pantry with a pat. Van is quite himself for an instant, noodles me around the neck with an ol’ boy hug. “Thanks for everything, Tom,” he says in husky, unironic, camaradic voice. “Thanks for everything, Tom.” But before I can answer, he’s clapping with his fingers, and off he goes, stooping and knuckling along to the pantry for more Snickers.
In no time at all, with the women out of sight, the sheriff is back in control, helped up and brushed off by his deputies, and has put on his hat to cover his bleeding head.
He too thanks me, shaking hands at length, with a sincerity which seems to preempt apologies. “I sho want to tell you, Doctor,” he says, keeping hold of my hand without embarrassment, “how much I apprishiate your professional input with this case. I mean, we got us some sick folks here! I may be able to handle criminal perpetrators of all kinds and some forensic cases — I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the subject, in fact — but when you get into real mental illness such as this”—he nods toward the deputies, who are keeping an eye on the pantry and bathroom, from which issue no longer roars and great thumps but smaller, happier sounds, squeals, clicks, and a few stomps—“I leave it to you, Doc.” He gives my hand a last pump.
“Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll leave them to you.”
“We’ll need you and Miss Lucy — all y’all, in fact — to come down and give affidavits.”
“Sure thing.”
We part as co-defenders of the medico-legal and criminal-justice system.
I am always amazed and not displeased by the human capacity — is it American? or is it merely Southern? — for escaping dishonor and humiliation, for turning an occasion of ill will not only into something less but into a kind of access of friendship. Both the sheriff and Van Dorn, as they pass, transmit to me by certain comradely nods, ducks of head, clucks of tongue, special unspoken radiations.
Handcuffs and restraints are not necessary. The faculty and staff of Belle Ame troop past in more or less good order, even a certain weary bonhomie all too commonplace after too-long, too-boring faculty meetings.
The uncle, Vergil, and I watch in the doorway as the squad cars leave.
“You want to know what I think of that bunch of preverts and those asshole redneck so-called lawmen — I mean, which is worse?” asks the uncle.
“No,” I say.
“Why don’t I make sure Lurine, Mrs. Cheney, gets home safe,” says the uncle.
“No.”
Vergil says nothing, gazes speculatively at the sky as if it were another day in the soybean harvest.
I look at my watch. “I have to go. Here’s what I suggest. I don’t think anybody feels like fooling with the pirogue. Let’s go to my car, take Claude and that other boy, Ricky, over to Pantherburn. I’ll drop you. Tell Lucy the situation so she can call the Welfare Department, state police — she’ll know — to take over out here until the parents can come get their children. Lucy can bring Vergil back to pick up his pirogue. Let’s go.”
There’s time enough after dropping them off to stop at the driveup window of Popeyes to pick up five drumsticks, spicy not mild, and a large chocolate frosty before heading up the Angola road.
V
1. NO TROUBLE GETTING BACK to Angola in time. No trouble with Bob Comeaux.
I simply retrace my steps, drive up the Angola road, chewing Popeyes drumsticks, park at old Tunica Landing, take jeep trail to levee, climb under fence, and stroll along hands in pockets like a Guatemalan ex-President returning from his exercise period. Two horse patrols pass me and pay no attention.
Back before two o’clock! Stretched out on my cot as if I’ve been locked up all morning, when Bob Comeaux and Max Gottlieb show up. (What a pleasure to steal time, to do a thing or two while appearing to be idle, even incarcerated!) I report to Elmo Jenkins, thank him for allowing me my “exercise period.” He asks no questions, thanks me again for my long-ago treatment of his auntee. Though he does not say so, I think he is really thanking me for not flying the coop. He has already heard from Sheriff Sharp, I can tell from his voice. We’re all on the same side now, I, warden and sheriff. “Your visitors just walked in, Doc.” What if I hadn’t been there! “I’ll send them up.”
One look at Bob Comeaux and I know that he knows. He’s still dressed in his white plantation tuxedo and he must have come straight from the wedding. But he gives me an odd, white-eyed look. Gone is his old Howard Keel assurance. For the first time he is at a loss. He doesn’t even seem to notice the hundreds of blacks picking cotton on the prison plantation, stooped over their long, collapsed sacks and singing mournful spirituals. What does he know? He knows about Belle Ame. How does he know? He could have called his office or Sheriff Sharp, been beeped, used the cellular phone in his Mercedes Duck.
Max Gottlieb doesn’t know. He only knows something is up. He’s frowning, hot and bothered, shaking his head dolefully, even more dismayed than usual (what have you gone and done now?).
I sit at my little student desk, they side by side on my cot, Bob Comeaux holding his wide-brimmed hat between his knees, tuxedo somewhat worse for wear, shirt ruffles wilted. Max is very neat in his new Oxford-gray vested suit, which his wife, Sophie, must have bought for him, but his shoes are the same dried-up Thom McAns he’s worn for twenty years. They are shoes no surgeon would be caught dead in.
“Well?” I say after a while.
Bob Comeaux jumps up and begins pacing back and forth as if it were he in prison. He explains he’d like to get back to the wedding reception. “Look, guys, let’s make this short. After all, this is only a routine hearing, for the book. Let’s spring our friend, the doctor here, sign the papers, vacate his parole status, and let’s all go about our business. I got to get back—” He looks at his gold wafer of a watch. “Jesus! Let’s get this show — So he’s had a couple of violations — but what’s a little kinkiness among shrinks, ha ha — right? Say, Tom—” He pulls up in front of me. “I was just wondering. Were the hell-raisin’ and hijinks at P&S as dumb in your day as they were in mine?”
“Well, I remember we dropped water bombs on pedestrians.”
“Hot damn! We did too!” He socks himself. “Can you believe it?” he asks Max, and instantly sobering: “Okay, guys, let’s get this show on the road”—and heads for the open door.
But Max, worried as usual, likes to have everything squared away and kosher. “Yeah, right. Hold it. Let’s just hold it. I never had any use for this parole foolishness, anyway. But what’s this business about some incident this morning—‘disturbance of the peace’?—out at Belle Ame involving Dr. Van Dorn? And some arrested? What is all that about?” Max opens his hands, first to Bob Comeaux, then to me.