Bob Comeaux waves him off, speaks quickly to both of us.
In a word, Bob simply wants shut of me. He assures Max the ”incident” was not of my doing, is still willing to take me on at Fedville at consultant’s salary plus Ford grant money, is willing for me to do what I’m doing, or throw in with Max in Mandeville — whatever I want to do — but mainly move, move out from here, from him. Let’s go. He’s at the open door. “Come on, Tom, I’m signing you out, okay?”
But Max is scratching his head, one eye screwed up, trying to make head or tail of it. “Well. He sure doesn’t belong here.” Sighing, he’s pushing himself up from the cot. He can’t quite get hold of it.
Bob Comeaux, relieved, relaxes in the doorway and, gazing out at the prison plantation, shakes his head elegiacally. “God,” he says softly, “would you listen to those darkies!”
We listen.
Nobody knows the trouble I seen, Nobody knows but Jesus
“Well, Tom?” He holds out hand-with-hat to me. Let’s go.
I do not rise from my student desk.
Max gives me his quizzical eye. “Well?”
“There’re a couple of things,” I tell Max.
“What’s that?” asks Bob quickly, as if, what with the singing, he couldn’t hear.
“I think there’re a couple of things that need to be settled before we go any further.”
“Right,” says Max, still feeling unsettled.
“By all means,” says Bob, putting his hat on.
“Well?” says Max, giving me his curious eye.
“I think it would be a good idea to discontinue the Blue Boy pilot immediately, today.”
“What’s that?” asks Bob Comeaux, cupping an ear.
I repeat it.
“What do you mean?” Bob asks me. “What does he mean?” he asks Max.
“What do you mean, Tom?” Max asks me.
“I mean turn off the sodium shunt at the Ratliff intake and dismantle it, today.”
Max’s worries are back, worries now about me weighing him down. He sinks to the cot.
“Tom,” he says, screwing up an eye, “I was aware you knew about the sodium pilot. We’ve never discussed it, for obvious reasons — since it was Grade Four classified. But since you do — to tell you the truth, I’ve never been too happy with it — I prefer individual therapy, as you well know — to this sort of mass shotgun prophylaxis. But how can you argue with success? I mean, the numbers from NIH are damned impressive, Tom. I mean, it may not do much for our egos if they can reduce street crime, drug abuse, suicides, and suchlike by a simple sodium ion — but what are you going to do? We weren’t too happy with lithium either. But zero recidivism at Angola. How do you argue with success? If it ain’t broke—” He trails off.
“So I thought at first, but you don’t know, Max,” I tell him.
“I don’t know what?” he says absently, distracted. He’s worried, I know, less about Blue Boy than about me.
“Max, NIH doesn’t even know about Blue Boy, the heavy-sodium pilot program. They never heard of it. The FDA never heard of it. ACMUI never heard of it. Dr. Lipscomb even spoke to Jesse Land, the director whom she knows. He says it could only be what he calls an instance of ‘aberrant local initiative’— that is, some ambitious regional NIH people using their discretionary funding to run a pilot which might otherwise not be funded and then present them with a fait accompli which they can’t turn down. It’s been done before — and sometimes with good cause — to get around bureaucratic hassle — until the election next month.”
“Wait.” Max has risen again, this time with both hands out, palms up. “Hold it. Are you telling me that Dr. Comeaux here and Dr. Van Dorn cooked up this sodium additive without even telling—”
“Just as Dr. Fred McKay did with an equally simple ion, fluoridating water,” says Bob Comeaux from the doorway, facing us now, arms folded, eyes level and minatory. “If he’d waited for D.C. bureaucracy, children’s teeth would still be rotting out. And as both you doctors know, every kook and Kluxer in the country accused him of everything from mind control to Communist conspiracy.”
Silence. Max sighs. “Well—” He is speaking to me.
“Max, Blue Boy was not a pilot involving Angola. It covered the entire parish, in fact, all of Feliciana. Moreover, I’m afraid what we’ve got here are some side effects which in fact you are aware of and which I can show are related to the additive—”
“Such as? What do you mean, the whole parish?”
“Such as regression of some subjects, especially children, to pre-linguistic pongid levels of behavior, regression of some women from menses to estrus, the sexual abuse of children—”
Bob Comeaux has taken off his hat, placed his hand on his forehead, closed his eyes. “Dear God, do you hear?” He speaks softly. “Where have we heard this before? Do I hear echoes? Of men descended from apes? Who was accused of this? Of corrupting the youth of Athens? You know who was accused of that. But I will confess that tampering with the sexuality of women is a new one.” He’s shaking his head sorrowfully at me. “From the local yahoos I would have expected it. But from you? Et tu—” He turns to Max. “Well, I suppose it always happens in a scientific breakthrough—”
“I wasn’t speaking of science, Bob. I was speaking of you and Dr. Van Dorn. It was you who made the decision to enlarge the pilot to the entire Ratliff water district — exempting Fedville. And it was your colleague Van Dorn who used the additive on the students at Belle Ame for purposes of the sexual gratification of himself and his senior staff—”
“Hold it, Doctor!” Bob Comeaux now stands against the door, hands behind him on the knob. He has entirely recovered, not only himself and his old assurance, but his old anger. “Hear this, Doctor. In the first place, I put my money where my mouth was. I sanctioned a dosage of additive for my own son — and hear this: he is doing brilliantly. And finally, Doctor, you know damn well I’m not responsible for Van Dorn’s behavior. But apparently this is the way you want it.” From his pocket he takes a paper, slowly tears it once, and again, drops it into my student waste- basket. “That was your release. After what you pulled at Belle Ame this morning, what is going to happen is that we’re packing your ass right back to Alabama. I’m sorry, Doctor. I came up here to get you out of here. I had the door open. I did everything but pull you out bodily. Max,” he says.
I look at Max.
Max is standing over me, hands deep in his pockets, staring down at the curled-up toes of his Thorn McAns. “He can do it,” says Max softly. “Look, Tom. Here’s what’s let’s do. Why don’t you — and I’m sure Bob here would accept this — why don’t you and Ellen— Look, there’s no reason to, ah, go to Alabama — instead, why don’t you and Ellen do what I’ve been trying to get you to do, move down to Mandeville, into Beau Rivage with us — there’s a condo on 12 just below us available — and I need a partner — I’m tired of clinical work, want some time for writing. You know we always did well together, especially in group. I know you’ve had some problems, ah, at home, that is, adjusting. Tom, we could do well together, and economically too—” He breaks off suddenly, eyes widening.
While Max is talking I’m spreading the Belle Ame photos on the floor, plus Lucy’s printouts and graphics from the NIH and Public Health mainframe in Baton Rouge and the local Fedvile data bank showing not only the distribution of Louisianians dosed up on Na-24—the starry galaxy over Feliciana — but the procurement order from Fedville, signed by Dr. Comeaux, exempting Fedville from the Ratliff water district and ordering a second intake upstream from Ratliff. The photographs, I can’t help but notice again, exhibit the same Victorian propriety, the decorous expressions, every hair in place, bobbed in the women, old-fashioned 1930s high haircuts in the men, a British sort of nakedness, white-as-white skins and vulnerable backs, unlike tan-all-over U.S. California nakedness, and the children above alclass="underline" simpering, prudish, but, most of all, pleased. It is the proper pleased children—