6. FOR SOME MOMENTS the Belle Ame staff gaze down with the same polite interest.

Then someone—it is not clear who—says in a muted voice: “Uh oh.”

Someone else utters a low whistle.

The uncle is back. He whispers something to me about Claude and Ricky being in the car, playing cards, and all right.

“Jesus,” says the uncle, who has come all the way around the table, the better to see the photographs of Mrs. Cheney. “I mean what—!” he says, opening both hands, beseeching first me, then the world around.

“What in the world!” exclaims Mrs. Cheney in conventional outrage, touching her tight bun at her neck with one hand. “Who —what is that? Ex-cuse me!”

“That’s not you, Mrs. Cheney?” I ask her.

“Dr. More! You ought to be ashamed!” Her outrage, by no means excessive, seems conventional, almost perfunctory. Then she turns away from me and speaks, for some reason, to Vergil. “I for one do not appreciate being exposed to this material, do you?”

“Why no,” says Vergil politely. He can’t quite bring himself to look directly at the pictures on the table.

Van Dorn is still eyeing the photographs, face aslant one way, then the other, without expression.

Coach, who has been still until now, has put his hands on his hips and is moving lightly from the ball of one foot to the other. “This is a setup, chief,” he says softly to Van Dorn, then, when Van Dorn does not reply, says loudly to one and all, “I can tell you one damn thing,” he says to no one in particular. “I know a setup when I see it. And I for one am not about to stand for it. No way.” He leans over, I think, to pick up one or more photographs, then apparently changing his mind resumes his boxer’s stance. “This is rigged. I don’t know who is doing it or why, but I can tell you one damn thing, I’m not buying in. No way!”

“Let me just say this,” says Mr. Brunette calmly, shaking his head. His hands are in his pockets and he speaks with the assurance of one long used to handling disputes, perhaps a school principal or a minister. Though he is dressed like a TV evangelist and has a north Louisiana haircut, his voice is not countrified. Rather, he sounds like the moderator of an encounter group, reasonable, disinterested, but not uncaring. “I don’t know who is responsible for this foolishness—though I have my suspicions—” Does he look in Van Dorn’s direction? “It would not be the first time that photographs have been cooked for purposes of blackmail. Everyone here knows that photographs are as spliceable as tapes—and therefore signify nothing. In fact, this whole business could be a computer graphic. No, that’s not what interests me. What intrigues me is the motive, the mindset behind this. Frankly I have no idea what or who it is. Is it a joke? Or something more sinister? And who is behind it? One of us? Dr. More? I’ve no idea. But let me say this—and I think I speak for my wife too, don’t I, Henrietta?”

Surprised, Henrietta looks up quickly, nods. Her face is younger, more puddingish, less like a dragon lady than I thought.

“Just let me say this,” says Mr. Brunette, taking off his glasses and rubbing his nose bridge wearily with thumb and forefinger. “As the fellow says, Hear this. I am notifying my attorney in short order to do two things: one, to employ a forensic expert who can testify as to the fakery of these phony photos and tapes —and two, to bring charges of libel against anyone who undertakes to use them for malicious purposes. That includes you, Dr. More. Frankly though, I think it is somebody’s idea of a joke—a very bad joke and a very sick somebody.” Wearily he wipes his closed eyes. He puts his hands deep into the loose pockets of his drape trousers, clasps hands to knees, stands up briskly as if to leave.

“Did you say tapes, Mr. Brunette?” I ask.

Eyes still closed, he waves me off. “Tapes, photos, Whatever.”

“No one mentioned tapes,” I tell Mr. Brunette.

Vergil still can’t bring himself to look at the pictures or anybody. He sits perfectly symmetrically, hands planted on knees, eyes focused on a point above the photos, below the people.

The uncle, still on the prowl, stops behind my chair, gives me a nudge on the shoulder. “She’s still a damn fine-looking woman,” he actually whispers.

“Cut it out,” I tell him. “Sit down. No, stand by the door.”

“No problem,” says the uncle.

Coach, who can’t decide whether to go or stay, settles for a game of Star Wars 4.

Van Dorn sits comfortably on the sofa opposite me. He knocks out his pipe on the brick floor, settles back, sighs.

He makes a rueful face at Coach and the exploding satellites. “I sometimes think we belong to a different age, Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Did I ever tell you what I think of your good wife?”

“You spoke of her bridge-playing ability.”

“I know. But I didn’t mention the fact that she is a great lady.”

“Thank you, Van.”

The plantation bell rings. Van Dorn puts his hands on his knees, makes as if to push himself up, yawns. “Well, I’ll be on my way.”

“Not quite yet, Van.”

He pushes himself up. “What do you mean, Tom?” says Van, smiling.

“I mean you’re not leaving.”

“Ah me.” Van Dorn is shaking his head. “I’ll be frank with you, Tom. I don’t know whether you’re ill and, if so, what ails you. At this point I don’t much care. I bid you good day.” He starts for the door.

“I’m afraid not, Van.”

“Move, old man,” says Van Dorn to the uncle.

“No, Van,” I say.

Van Dorn turns back to me. Now he’s standing over me. “Do I have to spell it out for you?” he asks, shaking his head in wonderment.

“Sure. Spell it out for me.” For some reason my nose has begun to run. My eyes water. I take out a handkerchief.

“I think you’ve got some sort of systemic reaction, Tom.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You’ve been ill before.”

“I know.”

“You’ve harbored delusions before.”

“I know.”

“You want to know one reason I think you’re ill?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem to realize your position. Isn’t that what you shrinks call the breakdown on the Reality Principle?”

“Some of them might. What is my position?”

“Your position, Tom—which, as you know, is none of my doing—is that you either join the team—and as you yourself have admitted, you approve their goals, you just don’t have any more use for some of those NIH assholes like Comeaux, nor do I—or you go back to Alabama. You’re in violation of your parole. You know that, Tom. Come on! You don’t want that! I don’t want that. All I have to do is pick up that phone.”

“I thought you said the phones didn’t work.”

“They work now. As for those phony photos—”

“Yes?” I am blowing my nose and wiping my eyes with a soggy handkerchief.

“There are two theoretical possibilities— Let me give you some tissues, Tom.”

“Thanks. That’s better. What are the two possibilities?” During the great crises of my life, I am thinking, I, develop hay fever. There is a lack of style here—like John Wayne coming down with the sneezes during the great shootout in Stagecoach. Oh well.

“Consider, Tom,” says Van Dorn gently, even sorrowfully. “It’s a simple either/or. Either the photos are phony—which in fact they are—or they are not. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“If they are phony, which I’m sure a lab can demonstrate, then forget it. Right?”

“Right.”

“If they are genuine, ditto.”

“Ditto?”

“Sure, Tom. Once we get past the mental roadblocks of human relationships—namely, two thousand years of repressed sexuality—we see that what counts in the end is affection instead of cruelty, love instead of hate, right?”

“Yes.” He gives me another tissue.

“Look at the faces of those children—God knows where they come from—do you see any sign of pain and suffering, cruelty or abuse?”

“No.”

“Do you admit the possibility that those putative children—whether they’re real or cooked up—might be starved for human affection?”

“Yes.”

“Case closed,” says Van Dorn, sweeping up the photographs like a successful salesman. “Tom, we’re talking about caring.”

“I’ll just take those, Van,” I say, taking them.

“Okay, gang,” says Van Dorn, putting his pipe in his mouth and clapping his hands. “Let’s go.” He makes a sign to Coach, who has stopped playing Star Wars 4.

I nod to Vergil. Vergil understands, joins the uncle by the door.

Coach and Van Dorn face Vergil and the uncle.

“What’s this?” asks Van Dorn wearily, not turning around.

“Before you leave, I suggest that all of you drink a glass of the additive,” I say, blowing my nose. “Starting with Coach. You first, Coach.”

Coach winks at Van Dorn, steps up to the cooler.

“I don’t mind if I do.”

“Not from the cooler, coach. From the tube,”

“Shit, that’s molar.”

“That’s right.”

Coach looks to Van Dorn. “I can take them both.” Smiling, he starts for the uncle. His big hands are fists.

The uncle looks to me. I make a sign, touch my ear. The uncle understands, nods.

“If he tries it, shoot him,” I tell the uncle.

Coach looks quickly back at me, looks at the Purdy propped against the door behind the uncle, shrugs, and starts for the uncle. Meanwhile, the uncle, who has got the Woodsman from his inside coat pocket, shoots him.

A crack not loud but sharp as a buggy whip lashes the four walls of the room.

“You meant ear, didn’t you?” says the uncle, putting the Woodsman away.

I am watching Coach closely. Part of his right ear, the fleshy lobe flared out by the sternocleidomastoid muscle, disappears. There is an appreciable time, perhaps a quarter second, before the blood spurts.

Coach stops suddenly as if a thought had occurred to him. He holds up an admonishing finger.

“Oh, my God!” screams Coach, clapping one hand to his head, stretching out the other to Van Dorn. “I’m shot! Jesus, he’s shot me in the head—didn’t he?”—reaching out to Van Dorn not so much for help as for confirmation. “Didn’t he? Didn’t he?”

Van Dorn stands transfixed, mouth open.

“My God, he’s been shot!”

I look at Coach. There is an astonishing amount of blood coming between his fingers.

Coach turns to me. “Help me! For God’s sake, Doc, help me!”

“Sure, Coach. Don’t worry. Come over and sit right here by me. You’ll be fine.”

“You swear?”

“I swear,” I say. “Mrs. Cheney.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Mrs. Cheney, who has sat down twice and risen twice, rises quickly.

“Please bring us two towels from the bathroom. Don’t worry, Coach. We’re going to fix you up with a pressure bandage.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

“My God, my brain is damaged. He could have killed me.”

“I know.”

He turns to show me. The blood running through his fingers and down his arm drips on me. My nose is also dripping. Every time I fool with surgery, my nose runs. This doesn’t work in surgery. I think I might have chosen psychiatry for this reason.

I knot one towel, tie the other towel around his head, twist it as hard as I can. “Mrs. Cheney, you hold it here. Coach, you press against the knot as hard as you can.”

“I will!”

“Don’t worry, Dr. More!” cries Mrs. Cheney, taking hold of the towel.

“Meanwhile, drink this, Coach,” I tell him, holding the towel against his head. “Vergil, fix him a glass of additive.”

“Molar strength?” asks Vergil, still looking into his eyebrows.

“Right. Mrs. Cheney, twist the towel as hard as you can and he’ll be fine. The bleeding has about stopped.”

“I will!” cries Mrs. Cheney, twisting.

“Drink this, Coach.” I hand him the glass with my free hand.

“You’re sure?” asks the Coach, pressing the knot while Mrs. Cheney twists the towel. She is also pulling. Now his head is against her breast.

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll drink it if you say so.”

“I say so. Vergil?”

“Yes, Doc?”

“Give a glass to Mr. Brunette.”

“No problem.” He fills a glass and sets it on the table in front of Mr. Brunette.

Mr. Brunette looks at it. “Let me just say this,” he says, pushing up the bridge of his Harold Lloyd specs.

“All right.”

“First, you’re right about these people,” nodding toward Van Dorn. “Accordingly, let me make sure the photos are safe. I’ll just put them back in the file where they belong and where the proper authorities can find them.” He scoops up the photos in a businesslike way and starts for the staircase.

“I think you’d better bring those back, Mr. Brunette. How’re you doing, Coach?”

“I’m going to be fine, Doctor, since you said I would.”

“Keep twisting, Mrs. Cheney.”

“I am, Doctor!”

“There’s a balcony up there and an outside staircase,” says Vergil, taking notice for the first time.

“I really think you’d better come down, Mr. Brunette.” But he’s halfway up and gaining speed. He’s as nimble and youthful in his specs as Harold Lloyd and—do I imagine it?—grinning a wolfish little grin.

The uncle looks at me. I shrug and nod, but do not touch myself. Before I can think what has happened, the uncle has picked up the shotgun and shot him. I find that I am saying it to myself: The uncle has shot Mr. Brunette with a 12-gauge shotgun held at the hip. The room roars and whitens, percussion seeming to pass beyond the bounds of noise into white, the white-out silent and deafening until it comes back not as a loud noise but like thunder racketing around and dying away after a thunderclap.

My ears are ringing. Mrs. Brunette opens her mouth. I think I hear her say, no doubt shout, to everyone as if calling them to witness, “He’s killed my husband!”

Everyone is gazing at Mr. Brunette. The ringing seems to be in the room itself. Mr. Brunette, blown against the far rail, comes spinning down the staircase, as swiftly and silently as a message in a tube, hands still on the rails, specs knocked awry but not off.

“Uncle Hugh,” I say, but cannot hear my voice. Uncle Hugh has shot Mr. Brunette with a 12-gauge shotgun from the hip.

The room is filled with a familiar cordite Super-X smell I haven’t smelled for years.

Mrs. Brunette covers her ears and says something again. Mrs. Cheney does not let go of the towel but pulls Coach’s head close to hers, twisting the towel harder than ever.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” says the uncle beside me, and slaps at the seat of his pants. “I brushed him off right here is all. With number eight.” He turns to show me, again slapping at his pants.

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.”

“Don’t worry. Make your call. Nothing is going to happen.”