The Thanatos Syndrome by Walker Percy

Author:Walker Percy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312243326
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1987-04-04T08:00:00+00:00

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 take 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.

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