The Thanatos Syndrome

that.”
    â€œDid you know Durel and I own the biggest hunter-jumper ranch in the parish?”
    â€œYes, I knew that. Then why—”
    â€œWe got it made. You want to know the name?”
    â€œThe name?”
    â€œBar-in-Circle Ranch.” She released my hand and showed me the bar and circle with her fingers. She winked at me, like a schoolchild who’s just learned a dirty joke. “You like that?”
    â€œSure.” I’m reading her chart. “Mickey, it doesn’t seem that things are so fine here. It seems there was an incident at the ranch with a groom, a fire, your prize stallion destroyed in the fire.”
    â€œHe was coming on to me,” said Mickey idly.
    â€œAccording to this, he was a thirteen-year-old boy and the complaint by his parents was that it was you coming on to him.”
    She shrugged, but was not really interested enough to argue. Am I mistaken or is there not a sort of horsewoman’s swagger as she moves her legs under the covers? “That stallion was a killer, Doc. Now. How about you?”
    â€œWhat about me?”
    â€œYou know where the ranch is.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd you got your troubles.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo you come on out by me. Durel likes you too.”
    As I listen to her and flip through the chart, something pops into my head. For some reason—perhaps it is her disconnectedness—she reminds me of my daughter as a four-year-old. It is the age when children have caught on to language, do not stick to one subject, are open to any subject, would as soon be asked any question as long as one keeps playing the language game. A child does not need a context like you and me. Mickey LaFaye, like four-year-old Meg, is out of context.
    â€œMickey, what is today?”
    â€œMonday,” she says, unsurprised. I am right. She gives me the day and the date willingly.
    Then it was that I had my wild idea, my piece of luck—perhaps it was part of my own nuttiness—which first put me on the track of this strange business.
    â€œMickey,” I asked her, “what date will Easter fall on next year?”
    Again no surprise, no shifting of gears from one context to another. There is no context. What I do notice is that for a split second her eyes go up into her eyebrows, as if she were reading a printout.
    She gives me the date. I wouldn’t know, of course. Later I looked it up. She was right.
    She gives me other dates. They were right. I ask her where St. Louis is. She tells me where St. Louis is. Now everybody knows where St. Louis is, but people generally don’t answer the question Where is St. Louis?, asked out of the blue, without wanting to know why you ask, unless they are playing Trivial Pursuit.
    Then is she an idiot savant, one of those people who don’t have sense enough to come out of the rain but can tell you what is 4,891 times 23,547 by reading off some computer inside their head? I did not know at the time, but I knew later. No, she was not.
    I gaze down at her, my arms folded over the chart. What has happened to her? How can she be at once as innocent as a four-year-old and as blowsy as the Duchess of Alba? At the time I had no idea.
    â€œMickey, what about the dream?”
    â€œDream?”
    â€œThe dream of Vermont, your grandmother’s cellar, the smell of winter apples, the visitor who was coming.”
    â€œThe dream.” For a moment she seemed to become her old self, to go deep, search inward. She seemed to reach for something, almost find it. She frowned and shrugged. “Dream of Jeannie, Doc. That’s what Bobby calls me. Jean’s my real name. Jeannie with the light brown hair. You like?”
    â€œYes. Bobby?”
    â€œBob Comeaux. Doctor Comeaux, Doc.”
    â€œI know.” I turn to leave.
    â€œDoc.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œYou call Bobby.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œBobby wants something.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œAnd what Bobby wants—”
    â€œAll right,” I say quickly, suddenly needing to leave. “So I ask Dr. Comeaux and he’ll tell me?”
    â€œYes.” Her legs thrash enthusiastically.
    I leave, knowing very little, not even who called me for a consultation or why. I will ask Dr. Comeaux.

2. A STRANGE CASE, yes, but nothing to write up for the JAMA. Indeed, I couldn’t make head or tail of it at the time, the bizarre business with the boy and the stallion, but