6. THE EFFECTS OF the heavy-sodium additive are gradually wearing off in Feliciana.

In the universities, for example, one sees fewer students lying about the campus grooming each other.

There are fewer complaints from parents about “human fly” professors scaling the walls of the women’s dormitories. Fewer professors complain of women students presenting rearward during tutorials.

L.S.U. football had a losing season.

Writers-in-residence, as well as local poets who for years have been writing two-word sentences like the chimp Washoe and during readings uttering exclamations, howls, and routinely exposing themselves, have begun writing understandable novels and genuine poetry in the style of Robert Penn Warren, formerly of Feliciana.

But my practice is still dormant. Still, no one complains of depression, anxiety, guilt, obsessions, or phobias. People hereabouts still suffer from physical illnesses, mainly liver damage and arterial clogging, but, mentally speaking, appear to have subsided into a pleasant funk, saying very little, drinking Dixie beer, fishing, hunting, watching sports on stereo-V, eating crawfish and sucking the heads thoughtfully.

I report this state of affairs to Leroy Ledbetter at the Little Napoleon over a drink of Early Times. Taking his invisible drink during a wipe, he replies only, “So what else is new, Doc?”