The Thanatos Syndrome

by Walker Percy

  I look at him. “Do you mean to tell me—”

  “All I mean to tell you is that cortical control has unlimited possibilities, once cortical hang-ups are eliminated. Just imagine a team that is always psyched up but never psyched out.”

  When Bob Comeaux says “hang-ups,” there is just a faint echo of his Long Island City origins in “hang-gups.”

  “That is remarkable.”

  “Any questions, Doctor?” He’s made his case and looks at his watch even as I’m looking at mine.

  “Why don’t you use some?” I ask him.

  He looks right and left for eavesdroppers. “Between you and me I have—in my own family, Tom.”

  “I see.”

  “You got it, Doc?”

  “I was just wondering about the decline in teen pregnancies. The mechanism of that escapes me.”

  He lights up. “Tom, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s so simple. All great scientific breakthroughs are simple. One change and presto, all the old hassles, twelve-year-olds getting knocked up, contraceptives in school, abortion, child abuse—all the old political and religious hassles are simply bypassed, left behind. Did you ever notice that the great controversies in history are never settled, that they are simply left behind? Somebody has a new idea and the old quarrels become irrelevant.”

  “What’s the new idea?”

  “It’s been under our nose, so close we couldn’t see it for looking. You’ll kick yourself for asking.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “We simply change cycles, Tom.”

  “Change cycles.”

  “Sure, from menstrual to estrus. Look, Tom—”

  “Yes?”

  He rattles off the answer like a talk-show guest who’s used to the question. “You know and I know the difference between a woman’s cycle and most of female mammals’.”

  “Yes.”

  “The human female can conceive during twenty of the twenty-eight days of her cycle. Any other female mammal can only conceive during estrus—say, eight days out of a hundred and eighty.”

  “So?”

  “As I like to say, our sister Homo saps, God bless them, are in heat seventy-five percent of the time, and what I say is hurray for them and hurray for us. But any other lady mammal is in heat, say, nine percent of the time. Tom, the numbers tell the story. All you have to do with the hypothalamus is lack it into the estrus cycle and you’ve got a marvelous built-in natural population control. Then it’s merely a matter of controlling a few days of estrus—hell, all you have to do is add one dose of progesterone twice a year to the school cafeteria diet and that’s the end of it—goodbye hassles, goodbye pills, rubbers, your friendly abortionist. Goodbye promiscuity, goodbye sex ed—who needs it? Mom and Dad love it, the kids love it, and the state saves millions. Family life is improved, Tom.”

  “You mean you’ve tried it?”

  “In one junior high school in Baton Rouge, five hundred black girls, year before last forty percent knocked up by age thirteen, last year one girl pregnant—one girl!—and why? because her mamma was packing her lunch box and she missed her progesterone during estrus. And, Tom, get this: a one hundred percent improvement in ACT scores in computation and memory recall in these very subjects.”

  “How about language?”

  “Language?”

  “You know, reading and writing. Like reading a book. Like writing a sentence.”

  “You son of a gun.” Bob gives me another poke. “You don’t miss much, do you? You’re quite right. And for a good reason, as you must also know. We’re in a different age of communication—out of McGuffey Readers and writing a theme on ‘what I did last summer.’ Tom, these kids are way past comic books and Star Wars. They’re into graphic and binary communication—which after all is a lot more accurate than once upon a time there lived a wicked queen.”

  “You mean they use two-word sentences.”

  “You got it. And using a two-word sentence, you know what you can get out of them?”

  “What?”

  “They can rattle off the total exports and imports of the port of Baton Rouge—like a spread sheet—or give ’em pencil and paper and they’ll give you a graphic of the tributaries of the Red River.”

  “How about the drop in crime and unemployment?”

  Bob smiles radiantly. “Tom, would you laugh at me if I told you what we’ve done is restore the best of the Southern Way of Life? Would you think that too corny?”

  “Well—”

  “Well, never mind. Just the facts, ma’am. Here are the facts: Instead of a thousand young punks hanging around the streets in northwest Baton Rouge, looking for trouble, stoned out, ready to mug you, break into your house, rape your daughter, packed off to Angola where they cost you twenty-five thousand a year, do you want to know what they’re doing? Doing not because somebody forces them—we ain’t talking Simon Legree here, boss—but doing of their own accord?”

  “What?”

  “Cottage industries, garden plots, but mainly apprenticeships.”

  “Apprenticeships?”

  “Plumber’s helpers, mechanic’s helpers, gardeners, cook’s helpers, waiters, handymen, fishermen—Tom, Baton Rouge is the only city in the U.S. where young blacks are outperforming the Vietnamese and Hispanics.”

  “You’re not talking about vo-tech training.”

  “I’m talking apprenticeship. What would you do if you’re running an Exxon station and a young man or woman shows up and makes himself useful for gratis, keeps the place clean, is obviously honest and industrious and willing. I’ll tell you what you’d do, because I know. You’d hire him. You want to know what we’re talking about?”

  “What?”

  “We’re not talking about old massa and his niggers. We’re not talking about Uncle Tom. We’re talking about Uncle Tom Jefferson and his yeoman farmer and yeoman craftsman. You wouldn’t believe what they can do with half an acre of no good batture land. And look at this.” He shows me the key chain of the Mercedes. It is made of finely wrought wooden links. “Carved from one piece of driftwood.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Nice! You try to do it! And, Tom—”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you driven by the old project in Baton Rouge lately?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you know what they were like—monuments of bare ugliness, excrement in the stairwells, and God knows what. You know what you’d see now?”

  “No.”

  “Green! Trees, shrubs, flowers, garden plots—one of the anthropologists on our board noted a striking resemblance to the decorative vegetation of the Masai tribesmen—and guess what they’ve done with the old cinder-block entrances?”

  “What?”

  “They’re now mosaics, bits of colored glass from Anacin bottles, taillights, whatever, for all the world like—can’t you guess?”

  “No.”

  “The African bower bird, Tom. Lovely!”

  “I see.”

  “Do you remember the colorful bottle trees darkies used to make in the old days?”

  “Yes,” I say, wondering how Bob Como of Long Island City knows about bottle trees.

  “We got some in the Desire project. Yes, Blue Boy’s there.”

  “I see.”

  “Would you deny that is superior to the old fuck-you graffiti?”

  “No.” I look at my watch. “I’ve got to go home. Two questions.”

  “Shoot. Make them hard questions.”

  “Are you still disposing of infants and old people in your Qualitarian Centers?”

  Bob Comeaux looks reproachful. “That’s unfair, Tom.”

  “I didn’t say I disapproved. I was just asking.”

  “Ah ha. All right! What you’re talking about is pedeuthanasia and gereuthanasia. What we’re doing, as you well know, is following the laws of the Supreme Court, respecting the rights of the family, the consensus of child psychologists, the rights of the unwanted child not
to have to suffer a life of suffering and abuse, the right of the unwanted aged to a life with dignity and a death with dignity. Toward this end we—to use your word—dispose of those neonates and euthanates who are entitled to the Right to Death provision in the recent court decisions.”

  “Neonate? Euthanate?”

  “I think you’re having me on, Tom. We’ve spoken of this before. But I’ll answer you straight, anyhow. A neonate is a human infant who according to the American Psychological Association does not attain its individuality until the acquisition of language and according to the Supreme Court does not acquire its legal rights until the age of eighteen months—an arbitrary age to be sure, but one which, as you well know, is a good ballpark figure. You of all people know this. Consult your fellow shrinks.”

  “I see.”

  “Next question?”

  “How does Van Dorn figure in this?”

  He laughs. “Ah, Van. Van the man, the Renaissance man. I’ll tell you the truth. That guy makes me uncomfortable. I’m just an ordinary clinician, Tom. Just a guy out to improve a little bit the quality of life for all Americans. He does too many things well: tournament bridge, Olympic soccer, headmaster, computer hacker—he runs the computer division at Mitsy. In a word, he’s the Mitsy end of the sodium shunt and is a consultant to NRC besides. He’s to NRC what I am to NIH. He’s project manager of the coolant division at Grand Mer—which means it’s up to him to dispose of waste heavy sodium. No problem! Without him there’d be no goodies coming down the pipe. He not only set up the entire computer program for Mitsy but also the follow-up program for the beneficiaries of our little pilot program—some one hundred thousand or so subjects. We know how they’re performing as individuals and as a class. If you want to know the medical status of Joe Blow, a hairdresser in Denham Springs, he’ll hit a key and tell you. If you want to know the incidence of AIDS in all the hairdressers and interior decorators in the treatment area, he’ll hit a key and tell you. As a matter of fact, he mainly credits you with his success. He says you’re going down in history as the father of isotope brain pharmacology.”

  “I see.”

  “So for better or worse, Doctor, it appears you’re one of us.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Van Dorn.” He shakes his head. “What a character. I think he’s a bit of a spook myself, but he does think in large terms. This little project is small potatoes to him. He’s got bigger fish to fry.”

  “What are they?”

  “A little item which he calls the sexual liberation of Western civilization. According to Van, the entire Western world has been hung up on sex since St. Paul.”

  “I see.”

  “We call him our Dr. Ruth, Dr. Ruth of the bayous.”

  “Dr. Ruth?”

  “Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the good-sex lady. A little joke.”

  “I see. Okay, would you mind taking me to my car?”

  We’re sailing through the sunlit pines, “The Beautiful Blue Danube” all around us. Bob is enjoying himself. He puts a soft fist on my knee.

  “Tom, we need you. We want you on the team. We need your old sour, sardonic savvy to keep us honest. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, one thing. Tell me honestly. Don’t pull punches. Has anything you’ve heard in the last few minutes about the behavioral effects of the sodium additive struck you as socially undesirable?”

  “Not offhand, though it’s hard to say. I’ll have to think it over.”

  “There you go!” Again the soft congratulatory fist on my knee. “That’s the answer we’re looking for. Be hard on us! Be our Dutch uncle!”

  “What about the cases of gratuitous violence—Mickey LaFaye shooting all her horses—the rogue violence of that postal worker in St. Francisville who shot everybody in the post office?”

  Now he socks himself. “You’ve already put your finger on it!” he cries aloud. “That’s why we need you.”

  “I have?”

  “Rogue. You said it. You know what happens once in a while with elephants, which, as you know, have the largest brain of all land mammals and the best memory scansion?”

  “Rogue elephants?”

  “Once in a great while. We don’t know why with them and we don’t know why with us. Oh, we got bugs, Tom. Why do you think we’re bothering with you?”

  “I understand.” I see my Caprice pulled off the road at the Ratliff gate. After the Mercedes it looks as if it had been junked and abandoned.

  We shake hands. “One last thing, Tom,” Bob says in a different voice, not letting go of my hand. “I know that you’ll respect the confidentiality of what we’ve been talking about. But there’s a little legal hook to it too.”

  “Legal?”

  “It’s a formality, but by virtue of the fact that you know about Project Blue Boy, you are now in the Grade Three section of the National Security Act and are subject to the jurisdiction of the ATFA security guys.”

  “It sounds like you’re reading me my rights.”

  “I am! That’s what comes from messing with feds.”

  “Are those the guys who busted us over there?” I nod toward Lake Mary.”

  “Oh no. Those were county mounties. We’ve got a working arrangement with them. The ATFA guys keep a low profile. But I’m afraid they’ll be watching you—just as they watch me. It’s a small price, Tom.”

  “What is ATFA?”

  “Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Tom, those guys make the FBI look like Keystone Kops.”

  A final firm handshake. “Tomorrow morning nine o’clock, my office at Fedville. I want you to meet my colleagues in Blue Boy. Tom, they’re good guys. You’ll like them. They’re the best of two worlds.”

  “What two worlds?”

  “Try to imagine a Harvard and M.I.T. brain who is not an asshole and try to imagine a Texas Humana can-do surgeon who is not an airhead.”

  “I’ll try.”

  9. ELLEN IS GONE. Margaret and Tommy are gone. Hudeen and Chandra are in an uproar. It is hard to get the story.

  A Cox Cable van is parked two blocks from The Quarters. A man in the cherry picker is working on the line. He and the driver pay no attention to me.

  Chandra has a new job and a car to go with it, a white compact with WOW-TV in large black letters. She’s the Feliciana correspondent and will do her first assignment this afternoon, the horse show at the Feliciana Free Fair. She’s full of it. She uses words like “major market,” “doing a remote,” “feature segment.”

  Where is Ellen?

  Hudeen, who long ago gave up ordinary talk except for exclamations and demurrers, can’t seem to relate the sequence of events.

  Chandra, excited and nervous about her new job, is not much better.

  I have to get the story by a series of questions, sitting facing Chandra at the breakfast table, Hudeen standing as usual at the sink, shelling peas and cooking greens, one eye cocked on the old Sony Trinitron. Watching As the World Turns, which has been on for fifty years. There’s young, now old, Chris Hughes. Over thirty years ago I was watching Grandpa Hughes counseling Ellen when the first bulletin came on that Kennedy had been plugged. Hudeen, sensing my alarm, is willing to turn down the sound and answer questions.

  Ellen, it seems, has gone to Fresno, after all.

  She left this morning.

  With Dr. Van Dorn?

  No, but he picked her up and took her to the Baton Rouge airport.

  Tommy and Margaret went to school as usual, right?

  Yes, he took them and they going to stay there as boarders while Miss Ellen gone.

  What? What do you mean they’re staying there? Why aren’t they staying here?

  Hudeen: I own no. Like I tole Miss Ellen, we take care them, ain’t that right, Chandra?

  Chandra, sobering up from being a TV personality: Yes, that’s perfectly true. We’re perfectly capable of taking care of them. Hudeen is here during the afternoon and I’m here at night. In fact, I offered to t
ake them to the fair and they wanted to go. But after Mr. Van Dorn talked to your wife, they decided it would be better if they stayed at the school with the boarders.

  For the whole week?

  Yes.

  I see.

  “He done give her a whole big box of Go Diver,” says Hudeen, hand on the volume control.

  “What?”

  Chandra: “After they talked in there,” Chandra nods toward the living room, “more like arguing at first, while we were keeping Tommy and Margaret in here. Yes, he did give her a five-pound box of Godiva chocolates, which she ate while I was packing for her and the children. And about that time I get my call from WOW—”

  “You say she ate them all?”

  “I mean all,” says Hudeen.

  They get into a discussion of Godiva chocolates. “She already a little heavy, I tole her!” Hudeen exclaims into the sink. “And I had her breakfast ready, her and the chirren, some fried grits and gravy, which don’t put no weight on nobody.”

  Chandra is shaking her head at me and rolling her eyes up.

  Hudeen, who doesn’t miss much, sees her.

  “Don’t you mock me, girl!”

  “I’m not mocking you.” Chandra turns to me. “It’s not the calories so much as the sugar metabolism and known carcinogens in chocolate.”

  Sugar metabolism. Carcinogens. I’m not following this.

  “Just a minute.” I hold out a hand to each. “Hold it. Let me get this straight. You, ya’ll, are saying that Ellen had an argument with Dr. Van Dorn, that he gave her a box of candy, that you had to pack for her and the children, that she’s gone to Fresno by herself, and that the children are going to stay at Belle Ame with the boarders?”

  “Sho,” says Hudeen, keeping an eye on Chris Hughes’s granddaughter, a girl in deep trouble.

  “She was quite upset about something,” explains Chandra, again shaking her head at Hudeen, “which was why I helped with the packing—”

  “Wasn’t studyin’ any packing,” says Hudeen. “I tell her, I say, Miss Ellen, you got to pack.”

  “But she was fine, don’t worry,” says Chandra, as sober and sensible as I could want. “She polishes off that box of candy, which would have polished me off, and is perfectly fine. I don’t like that man,” she adds thoughtfully.