Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

by Walker Percy

  The trouble is that my grandfather set more store by Sir Walter Scott than he did by Thomas More.

  What would Thomas More have done? Undoubtedly he would have—

  “Hold it, Doc.”

  The voice, which is both conversational and tremulous, comes from close behind me.

  “All right.”

  “Just set the gun down real easy.”

  “I will.”

  “You wasn’t going to do it anyway, was you, Doc?”

  “I don’t know.’

  “You wasn’t. I been watching you. Now turn around.”

  “All right.”

  It is Victor Charles. He sighs and shakes his head. “Doc, you shouldn’t ought to of done this.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  Victor stands against one flap of the saloon doors, single-barrel shotgun held in one hand like a pistol. The weak light from the hall gleams on his white ducks and white interne shoes.

  The gun was aimed at my middle but now strays off. Victor, I know, will shoot me if he has to. But I perceive that an old etiquette requires that he not point his gun at me.

  “Doc Doc Doc. You sho done gone and done it this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doc, how come you didn’t do like I told you and move in with your mama and tend to your business?”

  “You didn’t tell me why.”

  “How come you had to come over here?”

  “That fellow in there has been trying to kill me.”

  “O.K., Doc. Now let’s us just move on out of here and up in the front.”

  It is odd: the main emotion between us is embarrassment. Each is embarrassed for the other. We cannot quite look at each other.

  As he waits for me to get in front Victor picks up the carbine and shoves it under the slatting!

  We walk around to the pro shop. At the door I hesitate, wondering if the inyanga will shoot me. Victor fathoms this and calls out: “It’s all right, Uru. It’s just me and Doc.”

  Uru has swung his chair around to face us. His rifle is still on the floor, his hands clasped behind his head. I notice with surprise that he is very youthful. His pleasant broad face has a sullen expression. A keloid, or welted scar, runs off one eyebrow, pulling the eyebrow down and giving him a Chinese look.

  “Well well well. The hunted walks in on the hunter.”

  “Then I was the hunted.” I look at him curiously, shifting my head a bit to get a fix on him. What sort of fellow is he?

  “Where did you find him, Victor?”

  “He was in there.” Victor nods toward the panel. “Fixing hisself a drink. Can’t you smell it?”

  I take some hope in Victor not mentioning my carbine and in Uru not picking his up. Perhaps they are not going to shoot me.

  “What were you doing in there, Doctor?” asks Uru, straining his clasped hands against his head.

  “Doc was picking up a couple of bottles,” says Victor, shaking his head. “Doc he like his little toddy.”

  “I didn’t ask you. I asked him.”

  Uru diphthongs his I’s broadly and curls his tongue in his R’s. I judge he is from Michigan. He sprawls in his chair exactly like a black athlete at Michigan State sprawling in the classroom and shooting insolent glances at his English instructor.

  “So Chuck here was going to have himself a party,” says Uru lazily. He turns to me. “Chuck, your party days are over.”

  “Is that right?”

  “All right, Victor. You found him. You take care of him.”

  “D-D-Doc’s all right!” cries Victor. Victor’s stammering worries me more than Uru’s malevolence. “When Doc give you his word, he keep it. Doc, tell Uru you leaving and not coming back.”

  “Leaving your house?” Uru asks.

  “As a matter of act, I have left. Moved out.”

  “So we’re taking Doc’s word now,” says Uru broadly, imitating Victor. He frowns. The chair legs hit the floor. “Victor, who are you taking orders from?”

  “You, but I’m going to tell you about Doc here,” says Victor, rushing his speech, a frightening thing. He is afraid for me. “Doc here the onliest one come to your house when you’re sick. He set up all night with my auntee.”

  Uru is smiling broadly—a very pleasant face, really. “So Chuck here set up all night with your auntee.” He rolls his eyes up, past Gene Sarazen, to the ceiling. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you something?” I ask Uru.

  “Make it quick, Chuck.”

  “Just what is it you all have in mind to do around here?”

  “Doc,” says Victor, sorrowful again. “You know we can’t tell you that.”

  “Why can’t we tell him? Chuck’s not going to tell anybody, are you, Chuck?”

  “Are you all taking over Paradise Estates?”

  “No, we all not,” says Uru, like any other Yankee.

  “Not in the beginning, Doc,” says Victor patiently. “All we wanted was the ridge houses since they were empty anyhow, all but yours and you wouldn’t leave. We had to have your house.”

  “Why?”

  “The TV tower, Doc.”

  “What?” I screw up an eye.

  “We had to have the transmitter, Chuck,” says Uru almost patiently.

  “And there you setting under it, Doc.” The pity of it comes over Victor. “How come you didn’t move in with Miss Marva?”

  “Then the shootings were to frighten me away?”

  Uru looks at Victor.

  “What about the kidnappings?” I ask.

  Victor shrugs. “That was just insurance. We just going to keep the little ladies out in Honey Island till y’all sign the papers with us. Ain’t nobody going to harm those little ladies, Doc! In fact, my other auntee out there looking after them right now. She raised half of them, like Miss Ruthie and Miss Ella Stone.”

  “I don’t know,” says Uru to Gene Sarazen. “I just don’t know. They told me about coming down here.” He shakes himself and looks at me with an effort. “Victor is right, Chuck. That’s all we wanted in the beginning. But now it looks like all the chucks and dudes have moved out. So: we can use the houses.”

  “It won’t work. How long do you think you can hold the place?”

  “Just as long as you value your womenfolk.”

  I am wondering: does he mean the moms and does he know the Kaydettes were not taken?

  The chair legs hit the floor again. Uru looks straight at me.

  “I’m going to tell you exactly how it is, Doctor. You chucks had your turn and you didn’t do right. You did bad, Doc, and now you’re through. It’s our turn now and we are going to show you. As Victor says, we sho going to move your ass out.”

  “I didn’t say no such of a thing,” says Victor. “I don’t talk nasty.”

  “It won’t work,” I say.

  “Doc, you don’t know who all we got out there,” says Victor. “And we holding enough folks so nobody’s going to give us any trouble.”

  “That’s not what he means,” says Uru grimly. “Is it, Doctor?”

  I am silent.

  “What he means, Victor, is that even if we win, it won’t work. Isn’t that right, Doctor?” Uru has a light in his eye.

  I keep silent.

  “He means we don’t have what it takes, Victor. Oh, he likes you and your auntee. You’re good and faithful and he’ll he’p you. Right Doctor? You don’t really think we got what it takes, do you?” Uru taps his temple.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Doctor, tell us the truth.”

  “Doc always tell the truth!”

  “Shut up, Victor. Doctor?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Do you always tell the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell it now.”

  “All right.”

  “You don’t really think we’re any good, do you?”

  “How do you mean, good?”

  �
��I’m talking about greatness, Doctor. Or what you call greatness. I’m talking about the Fifth Symphony, the Principia Mathematica, the Uranus guidance system. You know very well what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, you—”

  “And don’t tell me about music and rhythm and all.”

  “All right.” I fall silent.

  “Let me put it this way, Doctor. You know what we’re going to do. We’re going to build a new society right here. Right? Only you don’t think we can do it do you?”

  I shrug.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well—you haven’t.”

  “Haven’t what, Doctor?”

  “You haven’t done very well so far.”

  “Go on. Let’s hear what you mean.”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  “You’re not talking to Victor now. You’re talking to a Ph.D. in political science. Only I didn’t choose to be a black-ass pipe-smoking professor.”

  “Didn’t you used to play split-end for Detroit?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Aren’t you Elijah Washington?”

  “We have no Jew-Christian names, least of all Washington. I’m Uru. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What question?”

  “About us not doing very well.”

  “You’ve had Liberia a long time.”

  “So?”

  “Look at Liberia. You’ve had Haiti even longer.”

  “So?”

  “Look at Haiti.”

  “You know something, Chuck. You got a smart mouth. We’re liable to do to you what you did to the Indians.”

  “Do you mind if I have a drink?”

  “We don’t use it.”

  “I’ll fix you a drink, Doc,” says Victor.

  “No, you won’t,” says Uru, showing anger for the first time. “You’re not his goddamn houseboy.”

  “You know, my name’s Washington too,” Victor tells Uru. “After George Washington Carver.”

  “Jesus Christ,” says Uru to Gene Sarazen.

  “Blessed be Jesus,” says Victor.

  “Look what you done to him,” Uru says to me.

  “What he done to me!” cries Victor.

  “You did a good job, Doctor. It took you four hundred years but you really did a good job. Let me ask you something.”

  “All right.”

  “What would you do about it if you were me? I mean what with the four hundred years and Victor here.”

  “What’s wrong with Victor?”

  “You know what I mean. What would you do about the four hundred years?”

  “I’d stop worrying about it and get on with it. To tell you the truth, I’m tired of hearing about the four hundred years.”

  “You are.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if it were up to you?”

  “If it were up to me, I’d get on with it. I could do better than Haiti.”

  “That’s what we’re going to do, Doctor,” says Uru in a changed voice. He picks up his rifle and rises.

  Victor grabs my arm. “I’ll take care of him, Uru. Like you asked.” He gives me a yank, pulls me close. “Goddamn, Doc, ain’t you got any sense?”

  Uru seems to keep on getting up. He is at least six feet nine. “All right, Chuck. Let’s go.”

  “Very well, but please let me tell you one thing.”

  Quickly I tell them about my invention, about its falling into the wrong hands and the likelihood of a catastrophe. I describe the danger signs. “So even though your pigment may protect you to a degree, I’d advise you to take cover if you should sight such a cloud.”

  Uru laughs for the first time. “Doctor, Victor’s right. You something all right. What you telling us is the atom bomb is going to fall and we better get our black asses back to the swamp?”

  “Doc is not humbugging,” says Victor.

  Uru takes a step forward. “Take him, Victor. If you don’t, I will.”

  “Let’s go, Doc.”

  “Where’re we going?”

  “To headquarters.”

  “Man, don’t answer his questions,” says Uru furiously. “When did he answer your questions? He knows what he going to get.”

  Again Victor pulls me close. “Don’t worry, Doc. We holding you for ransom. Ain’t that right, Elij—, I mean Uru?”

  The two look at each other a long moment. “Doc’s worth a lot to us, Uru.”

  Uru nods ironically. “Very well. But I’m coming with you. I wouldn’t put it past you to turn him loose—after fixing him a toddy.”

  “I ain’t fixing Doc nothing, but I might pick me up a 286 bottle,” says Victor, disappearing into the hall. I look after him in surprise. Victor doesn’t drink.

  Uru waves me ahead of him with his rifle.

  Victor is waiting for us at the armored Cushman cart. He’s got a bottle under his arm. In the golf bag behind him, among the irons, are two gun barrels, his—and mine! Victor doesn’t look at me. Uru pays no attention.

  9

  They take me to “headquarters,” which is located in, of all places, the abandoned rectory of old Saint Michael’s in the plaza. A good choice: its construction is sturdy and there are no windows to defend.

  We drive through Paradise in the armored golf cart, I squatting behind Uru and Victor in the bag well. Victor drives. Uru keeps an eye on me.

  Uru is feeling good. “Chuck, you have to admit that Victor here is a remarkable man. He still thinks he can get along with you chucks, sit down and talk things over.”

  “That’s right!” says Victor sententiously. “You can talk to folks! Most folks want to do what’s right!”

  “Uh huh,” says Uru. “They really did right by you, Victor. Here you are fifty years old and still shoveling dog shit. And Willard. Ten years with the U.S. Army in Ecuador and they’re nice enough to put him on as busboy at the club. I’ll tell you where right comes from—they know it, Chuck knows it, only you don’t.” Uru swings the muzzle of the M-32 into Victor’s neck.

  “Ain’t nobody going to hold no gun on me,” says Victor, frowning and knocking down the barrel.

  “That’s where they’re smarter than you, Victor. They don’t need a gun. They made you do what they want without a gun and even made you like it. Like Doc here, being so nice, sitting with your auntee. That’s where they beat you, Victor, with sweet Jesus.”

  “What you talking about?”

  “These chucks been fooling you for years with Jehovah God and sweet Jesus.”

  “Nobody’s fooling me.”

  “And what’s so damn funny is that you out-Jesused them.”

  “What you mean?”

  Uru winks at me. “Doc here knows what I mean, don’t you, Doc?”

  “No.”

  “He knows the joke all right and the joke’s on you, Victor. All these years you either been in trouble or else got nothing to your name, they been telling you about sweet Jesus. Now damned if you don’t holler sweet Jesus louder than they do. What’s so funny is they don’t even believe it any more. Ask Doc. You out-Jesused them, Victor, that’s what’s so funny. And Doc knows it.”

  “Now Doc here is a Catholic,” says Victor. “But that don’t matter to me. I never had anything against Catholics like some folks.”

  “I’m sure glad to hear that you and Doc have composed your religious differences,” says Uru, grinning.

  “I don’t see how a man can say he doesn’t believe in God,” says Victor. “The fool says in his heart there is no God. Myself, I been a deacon at Starlight Baptist for twenty years.”

  “Christ, what a revolution,” mutters Uru, eyeing a burning house.

  While he and Victor argue religion, I notice something: a horse and rider, glimpsed now and then through the side yards of houses. The horse must be on the bridle path that runs along the margin of the links behind the houses. His easy trot just keeps pace with the ca
rt. It is—!

  —Lola! on her sorrel mare Yellow Rose. She could be out for her morning ride, erect in her saddle, hand on her thigh, face hidden in her auburn hair. Foolish impetuous gallant girl! Beyond a doubt she’s trailing me, out to rescue me and apt to get herself caught or killed or worse. Something else to worry about, yet worry or not and despite my sorry predicament I can’t but experience a pang of love for this splendid Texas girl.

  As we leave the pines and head straight out across the deserted plaza, I sigh with relief. Lola is nowhere in sight. At least she has sense enough not to show herself. But what is she up to?

  The Anser-Phone buzzes on my chest. Feigning a fit of coughing, I switch it off. Uru doesn’t seem to notice. Ellen is calling! Somehow I must reach her. At least she is well And Moira, my love! Pray to God the Bantus don’t search me and take my Anser-Phone. My heart melts with love and my brain sings in the musical-erotic sulcus when I think of Lola and Moira. How lovely are the daughters of men! If I live and love Moira, who’s to love Lola and how can I tolerate it? Same with Lola-Moira. And will Ellen stand for it in either case? Only one solution: I must live with all three.

  Victor parks at the cloistered walk between church and rectory. Up the steps past the Bantu guard in a dirty white belted kwunghali stationed behind the concrete openwork (has he been here for weeks?) who salutes Uru with respect. He carries a Sten gun propped in his waist.

  Time for one quick glance toward Howard Johnson’s: all quiet. The balcony is deserted.

  Down the front hall of the rectory and through the parlor with its ancient horsehair nose-itching furniture. From his izinkhonkwani Uru takes out a key chain, unlocks the door to Monsignor Schleifkopf’s office and without further ado bumps me inside—with a basketball player’s hip-bump.

  “Sweat it, Chuck,” says Uru, closing the door.

  “Sorry, Doc,” says Victor as the latch clicks.

  Try the switch. No lights, of course. No windows either, but a row of glass bricks under the ceiling mutes the July sun to a weak watery light like a cellar window.

  The trouble is the room is as hot and breathless as an attic.

  While my eyes are getting used to the gloom, I call in to Ellen. She and Moira are still in the motel, safe and sound but nervous.

  “Chief,” says Ellen in a controlled voice. “The news is bad. We watched on TV. There is fighting on the highway.”