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

by Walker Percy

  “Possibly.”

  Sure enough, the mare takes out for the pines, straight across the plaza, head tossing around as if she meant to keep an eye on us.

  The firing begins when the mare reaches the drive-up window of the branch bank. Little geysers of tar erupt around her flying hoofs. Lola moans and claps her cheeks. “She’s made it,” I reassure her. Parting the grape leaves, I catch sight of the two Bantus, one kneeling and both firing, on the porch of the church. “Keep down.”

  But she’s whipped out her automatic again. “What—” I begin turning to see what she sees behind me.

  Its Victor!—standing in the doorway of the Pan-a-Vision screen structure. The screen is a slab thick enough to house offices.

  “Don’t shoot!” I jump in front of Lola.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s Victor.”

  “Why not shoot Victor? He’s got a gun.” But she lowers her automatic.

  “Here, Doc,” says Victor and tosses me my carbine. “This is so you can protect your mama. I know you not going to shoot people.”

  I catch the carbine like old Duke Wayne up yonder on the giant screen.

  “Thanks, Victor.”

  “Now you all get on out of here. Some people headed this way. Go to town. You take care this little lady too.”

  “O.K.”

  Lola can’t tell the difference between the real Victor and the fake Willard. She claps her hands with delight. “Isn’t Victor wonderful! Tom, let’s go to Tara!”

  “No.” I grab her hand.

  We run at a crouch through the geometrical forest of flowering speaker posts, past burnt-out Thunderbirds, spavined Cougars, broken-back Jaguars parked these five long years, ever since that fateful Christmas Eve, in front of the blank and silent screen. The lovers must have found the exit road blocked by guerrillas and had to abandon their cars and leave the drive-in by foot In some cases speakers are still hooked to windowsills and we must take care not to run into the wires.

  No more shots are fired, and when we reach the shelter of the weeds at the rear of the Howard Johnson restaurant, I feel fairly certain we’ve made our escape unobserved. But why take chances? Accordingly, we follow the easement between the motel and the fence. Directly below the bathroom window I take Lola’s arm and explain to her the circumstances that prompted me to fit out the motel room and stock it with provisions for months—all the circumstances, that is, except Moira. “There is some danger,” I tell her, “of a real disaster.”

  “Darling Tom!” cries Lola, throwing her arms around my neck. “Don’t worry! I don’t think we’ll be here that long but we can have a lovely time! Lola will do for you. We’ll make music and let the world crash about our ears. Twilight of the gods! Could I go get my cello?”

  “I’ve told you we can’t go back to Tara.”

  “No, I mean over at the center. I could be back in fifteen minutes.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Center. Don’t you remember? I played a recital yesterday before the students rioted. There was so much commotion I thought the best thing to do was leave it in a safe place over there.”

  “Yesterday?” I close my eyes and try to remember. “Where is it now?”

  “Ken told me he’d lock it up in his clinic.”

  “Ken?”

  “Ken Stryker, idiot. Think of it, Tommy. We’ll hole up for the duration and Lola will cook you West Texas chili marguerita and play Brahms every night.”

  “Very good. I’ll get the cello for you but not just now. Now I think we’d better go up and join the ah, others.”

  “Others?”

  “Yes. Other people have sought refuge here. I couldn’t turn them away.” Thank goodness there are two girls up yonder and not one.

  “Of course you couldn’t. Who are they?”

  “My nurse, Miss Oglethorpe, and a colleague, a Miss Schaffner.”

  “Ken’s research assistant?”

  “She was.”

  “Should be cozy.”

  “There are plenty of rooms.”

  “I should imagine.”

  “Are you ready to go up?”

  “Can’t wait.”

  I give the sign, a low towhee whistle. Above us the window opens.

  10

  The girls are badly out of sorts, from fright but even more, I expect, from the heat. After the rainstorm they did not dare turn on the air-conditioner, the sniper might be hanging around. The room is an oven.

  Moira is hot, damp, petulant, a nagging child.

  “Where have you been, Chico?” She tugs at my shirt. There are beads of dirt in the creases of her neck.

  Ellen sits straight up in the straight chair, drumming her fingers on the desk. Her eyes are as cool as Lake Geneva. The only sign of heat is the perspiration in the dark down of her lip.

  “I thought you were going to get your mother,” she says drily, not looking at Lola.

  “Yes. Mother. Right But Mother, you know, has her own ideas ha ha. No, Mother is in town and safe. Lola was at Tara and alone. I made her come.” I jump up and turn on the air-conditioner. “With all the racket at the church, I doubt if anyone could hear this.” Sinking down on the foot of the bed. “I could use a drink. I’ve been shot at, locked up, pushed around.”

  Ellen comes around instantly, sits behind me, begins probing my scalp with her rough mothering fingers. “Are you hurt, Chief?”

  “I’m all right,” I say, noticing that Lola is eyeing me ironically, thumbs hooked in her jean pockets.

  “Quite a place you have here, Tommy,” she says.

  “Yes. Well. Now here’s where we stand, girls,” I say, rising and pacing the floor wearily. I am in fact weary but there are also uses of weariness. “I’m afraid we’re in trouble,” I tell them seriously because it is true but also because there are uses of seriousness. The three girls make me nervous. “As I believe all of you know, there is a good chance of a catastrophe this afternoon, of national, perhaps even world proportions. You asked about my mother, Ellen. Here’s what has happened.”

  Everyone is feeling serious and better. The air-conditioner blows cold fogs into the room. Hands deep in pockets, I pace the floor, eyes on the carpet, and give them the bad news, reciting the events of the day in sentences as grave, articulate, apocalyptic, comforting as a CBS commentator. Now swinging a chair around, I sit on it backward and give the girls a long level-eyed look. “And that is by no means the worst of it. No,” I repeat as somberly as Arnold Toynbee taking the long view. “As I also believe each of you also know, the Bantu revolt may be the least of our troubles.”

  “You’re speaking, Chief,” says Ellen, “of the danger of your lapsometer falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid it’s already happened, Chief,” she says as gravely as I.

  “I’m afraid it has.”

  “And what you fear is both a physical reaction and a psychical reaction, physical from the Heavy Salt domes in the area and psychical from its effect on political extremists.”

  “That is correct, Ellen.”

  The room is silent save for the rattling of the air-conditioner. Outside, like distant artillery, I can hear The Drummer Boy again.

  Rumpa-pum-pum …

  Lola is sitting on the end of the other bed, cleaning her automatic. Moira lies behind her, flat, knees propped up, gazing at the ceiling.

  “I’ll fix you a drink, Tom. Where’s the fixings?” says Lola.

  “In there.” I nod toward the dressing room.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news too, Chief.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the last message I got from Dr. Immelmann. Just before you came. On the Anser-Phone. Chief, how could he use the Anser-Phone? He didn’t have a transmitter and he had no way of knowing our frequency.”

  “Never mind,” I say hurriedly. “What did he want?”

  “He said to tell you—now let me get this straight.” Ellen consults her
notebook. “To tell you that the program was third-generational and functional on both fronts; that he’s already gotten gratifying overt interactions between the two extremes of the political spectrum, and that you would soon have sufficient data for a convincing pilot. Does that make sense?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I say gloomily. “Is that all?”

  “I saved the good news, Chief,” says Ellen, frowning at Lola, who is at the bar fixing drinks. “He also said to tell you—and this I wrote down word for word—that he’s been in touch with the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm, each member of which he knows personally, apprising them of the nature of your work, and that they’re extremely excited about it. Chief, isn’t the Peace Prize the big one? Anyhow, he’s cabling them a summary of the present pilot and he closed with the cryptic remark that you should prepare yourself for some interesting news when the prize is announced in October. Does any of this make sense, Chief?”

  “Yes,” I say, frowning. “But October! What makes him think there’ll be anything left in October? The damn fool is going to destroy everything.” Then why is it I wonder, that a pleasant tingling sensation spreads down the backs of my thighs?

  “Here’s your favorite, Tom Tom.” Lola hands me a drink.

  “Did she say ‘Tom Tom’?” Moira asks Ellen.

  I’ve tossed off the whole drink somewhat nervously before it comes over me that it is a gin fizz. Oh well, I’ve got anti-allergy pills with me. The drink is deliciously cool and silky with albumen.

  “What are we going to do?” wails Moira, opening and closing her thighs on her hands, like a little girl holding wee-wee.

  “Why don’t you go to the bathroom?” suggests Ellen.

  “I will,” says Moira, jumping up. “No, I’ve just been. I have to go to the Center to get my things.”

  “Right,” Lola agrees instantly. “And I have to get my cello.”

  “No no,” I say hastily. “You can’t, Moira, you have everything here you need. I mean everyone has. I’ll get your cello for you, Lola.”

  “But my Cupid’s Qui—” says Moira, coming close.

  “Yes!” I exclaim, laughing, talking, hawking phlegm all at once.

  “Her Cupid’s what?” asks Lola.

  “Moira, like the rest of us,” I tell Lola, “didn’t know we’d be stuck here.”

  “And besides, I can’t wear the things you brought!” Moira is in tears and is apt to say anything.

  “What things?” asks Lola.

  “I, ah, laid in some supplies as soon as I had reason to suspect the worst.”

  “In a motel?” Lola’s fist disappears into her flank.

  “It’s a logical shelter for an emergency,” says Ellen, “because it’s convenient to town, Center, and Paradise.” Ellen is defending me!

  “Right,” I say, hawking and, for some reason, dancing like Ken Stryker. I hand my empty glass to Lola.

  “If I may make a suggestion, Chief,” says Ellen briskly, “I think we ought to find out exactly what is going on before we do anything.”

  “Absolutely right!” Ellen is a jewel.

  Ellen turns on the old Philco. “It’s a bad color and 2-D but it gets the local channel—the one over your house, Chief. In a minute they’ll have the news.”

  Lola takes my glass to the bar.

  No one ever had a better nurse than Ellen.

  11

  On comes the picture, flickering and herringboned, of green people in a green field under a green sky. There is a platform and bunting and a speaker. The speaker has a ghost. The crowd mills about restlessly. “Hm, a Fourth of July celebration,” I tell the girls—until all at once I recognize the place. It is the high school football field on the outskirts of town, not three miles from here!

  The camera pans among the crowd. I recognize faces here and there: a conservative proctologist, a chiropractor, a retired Air Force colonel, a disgruntled Boeing executive, a Texaco dealer, a knot of PTA mothers from the private school, an occasional Knothead Catholic, and a Baptist preacher sitting on the platform. The speaker is the governor, a well-known Knothead.

  Nearly everyone waves a little flag. The crowd is restive.

  A reporter is interviewing a deputy sheriff, a good old boy named Junior Trosclair.

  “We cain’t hold these folks much longer,” Junior is telling the reporter.

  “Hold them from doing what?”

  “They talking about marching on the federal complex.”

  “Why are they doing that, Deputy?” asks the reporter, already thinking of his next question.

  “I don’t know,” says Junior, shaking his head dolefully. “All I know is we cain’t hold them much longer.”

  “Sir,” says the reporter, stopping a passerby, a pleasant-looking green-faced man who is wearing two hats and carrying an old M-1 rifle. “Sir, can you tell me what the plans are here?”

  “What’s that?” calls out the man, cupping an ear to hear over the uproar. His face has the amiable but bemused expression of a convention delegate.

  The reporter repeats the question.

  “Oh yes. Well, we’re going to take a stand is the thing,” says the man somewhat absently and, catching sight of a friend, waves at him.

  “How is that, sir?” asks the reporter, holding microphone over and grimacing at the engineer.

  “What? Oh, we’re going over there and clean them out.”

  “Over where?”

  “Over to Fedville.” The man gesticulates to the unseen friend and drifts off, nodding and smiling.

  The reporter grabs his arm.

  “Clean out who, sir? Sir!”

  “What? Yes. Well, all of them.”

  “All of who?”

  “You know, commonists, atheistic scientists, Jews, perverts, dope fiends, coonasses—”

  The reporter drops the man’s arm as if it had turned into a snake. “Thank you for your comment,” he says, coming toward the camera. “Now I’ll return you to—”

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” says the man, who has warmed to the subject for the first time. He catches up with the fast-stepping reporter. “The niggers may be holed up over yonder in Paradise but you know where they’re getting their orders from?”

  “No sir. Now we’ll have a message from—”

  “From the White House, otherwise known as the Tel-a-Viv Hilton on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “Yes sir! Take it, David!”

  During the exchange I’ve been watching another reporter with transmitter and backpack passing with his ghost among the crowd. But no. It is—Art Immelmann, a green Art plus a green ghost of Art. No doubt about it. There’s the old-fashioned crewcut and widow’s peak. And he’s carrying not a microphone but my lapsometer. And he’s only pretending to do interviews: holding the device to people’s mouths only when they are looking at him, otherwise passing it over their heads or pressing it into the nape of their necks. “That’s Dr. Immelmann!” cries Ellen, jumping up and pointing to the flickering screen, but at that moment the newscast ends and the afternoon movie resumes, a rerun of a very clean film, which I recognize as The Ice Capades of 1981.

  “Did you see him, Chief?”

  “It did look like him.”

  “And he had your invention.”

  “It did appear so.”

  Moira comes out of the bathroom, face scrubbed.

  “I’m leaving,” she announces and strides for the door.

  “Wait!” I jump against the door, blocking her. “You can’t go out there!”

  “I’m going to get my Cupid’s Quiver and my own clothes. That is, if I come back.”

  “Get her what?” asks Lola.

  “You can’t leave just now. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I must get my own clothes.”

  “What does she mean, her own clothes?” asks Lola, frowning.

  “We may be here quite a while, Lola,” I explain earnestly.

  “Yes,” says Moira. “Chico and I had plans to stay only for
the weekend.”

  “Weekend? Chico?” Lola has risen slowly and stands, one fist on her hip, pelvis tilted menacingly. “Who is this Chico?”

  “Ha ha,” I laugh nervously. “I’m sure everybody’s plans for the Fourth were spoiled. I’ll tell you what,” I say quickly to Moira. “Give me your key and I’ll go for you.”

  Now it’s Lola who heads for the door. “Out of my way, Chico. I’m going too. I have to get my cello and look after my horses. A horse you can trust.”

  “I’ll get your cello too, Lola. It’s in Love, didn’t you tell me?”

  Both girls confront me.

  “Well? Are you moving out of the way, Tom?” Lola asks.

  I shrug and step aside.

  Out they go—“I may not be back,” says Moira over her shoulder—and back they come, reeling back as if blown in by a gale. They slam the door and stand, palms against the wood, eyes rolling up. Two girls they truly seem and very young.

  Lola swallows. “He’s there.”

  “Who?”

  “A Bantu.”

  I peep through the curtains. It is Ely in his kwunghali standing with his Sten gun in the shadow of the opposite balcony. I recognize the classy Duke Ellington forehead. He is looking right and left but not up.

  “I’ll go, O.K.?” I say wearily, holding out a hand for Moira’s key. “Lola, take out your automatic and sit here. Ellen, take my revolver and sit there.”

  Moira has collapsed on the bed, where she lies opening and closing her knees.

  “Why don’t you go to the bathroom, dear,” says Ellen.

  Moira obeys. She gives me her key without a word.

  When she comes out, I open the bathroom window. Lola follows me.

  “How are you going to get my cello through that window?”

  “I’ll put it in a safe place downstairs.”

  “What about the Bantu?”

  “If he comes up on the balcony, shoot him.”

  “Very well, Chico,” says Lola sarcastically. “You just be careful with my cello—Chico.”

  I switch off the air-conditioner. “Sorry, girls.”

  “Be careful, Chief,” whispers Ellen, helping me through the window. Absently wetting her fingertips with her tongue, she smooths out my eyebrows with strong mother-smoothings.