Love in the Ruins

by Walker Percy

He stops. It is no stranger. But do I want to see friends now? I get along with everybody except people. Psychiatrist, heal—

  It is Dr. George “Dusty” Rhoades in his new electric Toyota bubbletop, a great black saucer of a car and silent as a hearse.

  He’s waving me in. Hm, not exactly my choice for a companion. Why? Because he’s Lola’s father and he may believe I have injured him, though I have not. Shall I accept the lift? The question does not arise. The fierce usages of friendship take command. Dusty leans out waving and grinning. Before I know what I’m doing I’m grinning too and hopping around to the door with every appearance of delight.

  “There you go!” cries Dusty in an eccentric greeting that has evolved between us over the years. Renewed friendship sweeps all before it. We are like lovers after a quarrel.

  Dusty is a big surgeon with heavy freckled hands that like to feel your bones and a red rooster shock of hair gone straw-colored in middle age. It is his manner to pay terrific attention to the controls of his car, the dials of the dashboard, while shouting eccentric offhand remarks. So does he also shout, I know, at his operating nurse, not to be answered or even to be heard but to make an occupational sound, so to speak.

  “Fine, fine,” I say, settling myself. He nods and keeps on nodding.

  Dusty Rhoades is a conservative proctologist, though he does other surgery as well, from Tyler, Texas. He played tackle for Texas A & M, is a reserve Air Force colonel. An excellent surgeon, he works fourteen hours a day, caring nought for his own comfort, and owns a chain of Chicken Delight stands. The money rolls in faster than he can spend it even though he bought Tara, the showplace of Paradise, and an $80,000 Guarnerius cello for his daughter Lola.

  Like saints of old, Dusty spends himself tirelessly for other men, not for love, he would surely say, or even for money, for he has no use for it, but because people need him and call him and what else would he do with himself? His waking hours are spent in a dream of work, nodding, smiling, groping for you, not really listening. Instead, his big freckled hands feel your bones like a blind man’s. He’s conservative and patriotic too, but in the same buzzing, tune-humming way. His office is stacked with pamphlets of the Liberty Lobby. In you come with a large-bowel complaint, over you go upside down on the rack, in goes the scope, ech! and Dusty humming away somewhere above. “Hm, a diverticulum opening here. The real enemy is within, don’t you think?” Within me or the U.S.A., you are wondering, gazing at the floor three inches from your nose, and in goes the long scope. “You know as well as I do who’s really causing the trouble, don’t you?” “Do you mean—?” “I mean the Lefts and Commonists, right?” “Yes, but on the other hand—” In goes the scope the full twenty-six inches up to your spleen. “Oof, yessir!”

  “Am I glad to see you, you rascal!” cries Dusty, coming out of his trance and looking over at me. His hand, going its own way, explores the crevices of my knee.

  I blink back the beginning of a tear. He’s forgiven me! Why do I forget there is such a thing as friends?

  He’s forgiven what he could only have understood as my misconduct with his daughter Lola, and misconduct it was, though in another sense it was not. Lola and I were discovered by him lying in one another’s arms in the deep canyon-size bunker of the eighteenth hole. Though Lola is twenty-six, single, and presumably had the right to embrace whomever she chose, I fancied nevertheless that Dusty took offense. Though he was careful not to let me know it and I was careful not to find out. Certainly no offense was intended. Lola is a big, beautiful, talented girl who teaches cello at Texas A & M. We fell in love for a few hours last Christmas Eve, literally fell, came upon each other like strangers in a forest and fell to the ground in one another’s arms, and the next day went our separate ways, she back to Texas and I to the nuthouse broken out with giant hives and quaking with morning terror and night exaltations.

  The consequences of this misbehavior in Paradise, where everyone else behaves very well, were muted by my self-commitment to the mental hospital. Thus, it is possible that I have been expelled from the local medical society: no notices have come in the mail—but on the other hand, perhaps notices were suspended because of my illness. I dare not inquire. One consequence was certain: an anonymous communication did come in the mail, a copy of the Hippocratic oath with that passage underlined which admonishes physicians about their relations with female patients. But Lola was not, at the time, my patient

  “You making house calls, Doctor!’ Dusty shouts.

  I jump. “No no. I was … I felt like walking to town.” For some reason I do not wish to speak of the sniper.

  Dusty nods vigorously, as if my stepping out of the woods with my medical bag was no more or less than he expected. But even as he speaks, his eyes caress the mahogany dashboard and brass knobs and dials. These days it is the fashion to do car interiors in wood and brass like Jules Verne vehicles.

  When we shake hands, he opens his meaty hand to me in his old tentative way like a porter taking a tip.

  “I wish I could work like you!” he shouts at the rushing pines. “It must take discipline to cut down hack work and make time for research and writing.”

  How graceful and kind of him. Though Dusty knows all there is to know about me, my family troubles, my cuckoldry, my irregular life, my alcoholism—he connives at the best available myth about me, that I am “smart” but unlucky. People are kind. They find it easy to forgive you in the name of tragedy or insanity and most of all if you are smart. Certain mythic sayings come easily to the lips of my doctor friends when they wish to speak well of me, and lately they do since they know I’ve had a bad time of it. They’ll speak of a mythic, storied diagnosis I made ten years ago… .

  “No, I’m not working today,” I tell Dusty. “I have a few errands to run, then I’m going down to my office and fix myself a little drink and listen to the opera.”

  “Yes! Right! Absolutely!” cries Dusty joyfully and strikes himself eccentrically in several places.

  He fiddles with the controls. All of a sudden a hundred-piece orchestra is blasting away on the back seat, playing Viennese Waltz Favorites. The hot glistening pines fall away as the road climbs along the ridge. The dry refrigerated air evaporates my sweat. Strains of Wienerblut lilt us over the pines. We might be drifting along in a Jules Verne gondola over happy old Austria.

  I feel better. There are no ruins here. We are beginning to pass sparkling new houses with well-kept lawns. What a lovely silent car. What lovely things money can buy. I have money. Why not spend it? Until this moment it has never occurred to me to spend a penny of Doris’s two million on myself. I look down at my frayed cuffs, grubby fingernails. Why not dress well, groom myself, buy a good car, meet friends for lunch, good fellows like Dusty, chaff with them, take up golf? Money is splendid!

  But today I have other fish to fry.

  “Would you mind dropping me off at the plaza?”

  “What in hell for?” asks Dusty, frowning. But his freckled hand continues to browse among the knobs and dials.

  “I have a date.”

  When I left the hospital, I resolved not to lie. Lying cuts one off. Lying to someone is like blindfolding him: you cannot see the other’s eyes to see how he sees you and so you do not know how it stands with yourself.

  “Like the fellow says, that’s a hell of a place to take a woman. All those tramps, outlaws …”

  “Yes, well … I think it’s safe.”

  “Is that why you’re wearing your handgun?”

  “What?” I had forgotten my pistol and didn’t see Dusty look at it. The gun had worked its way around to my belt buckle where it sticks out like Billy the Kid’s six-shooter. “The fact is somebody took a shot at me this morning.”

  “That a fact?” says Dusty with routine astonishment expressing both incredulity and affection. “I tell you the truth, nothing would surprise me nowadays.”

  “It was probably a wild shot from some nut in the swamp,” I say, shoving the pistol out of sight. I
ndeed, is anything less likely than a sniper on this lovely old-fashioned Viennese morning?

  “I happened to notice it is all. You’re not going to the club?”

  “The club?”

  “For the Pro-Am.”

  “Oh, of course!” I laugh heartily. How could I have forgotten the most important event of the year, the Paradise Moonlight Pro-Am tournament played every Fourth of July weekend under the arcs? “But the champs don’t tee off till tonight, do they?”

  “Right I thought you might be going to the Bible Brunch.”

  “No. No, I have to go to the Center.”

  “O.K. I’ll take you over to the plaza.”

  “No no! Go on to the club. I’ll walk from there. I need to walk.”

  “O.K.,” says Dusty, frowning thoughtfully. The freckled hand browses like a small animal patrolling its burrow. “You know, it’s something my running into you like this. It’s really something.”

  “It is?”

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “You have?” I look at him with interest “Did you read my paper?”

  “Paper? Well, I haven’t finished it.”

  I sent Dusty a copy of my breakthrough article. He is president-elect of the American Christian Proctological Society and could be useful when I apply for N.I.M.H. funds. Dusty is highly regarded, both in Knothead and Left circles.

  “As a matter of fact, I have one of the new models here,” I say, taking out a lapsometer and putting it on the seat between us.

  Dusty moves away an inch.

  “Tom,” says Dusty as we go lilting along to Wine, Women, and Song. “I want you to take my clinic for me.”

  Dusty holds a fat clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays, dispensing thousands of pills to women and encouraging them in their dieting.

  We’ve stopped at a gate and sentry box where a red-faced colonel of Security gives us the once-over before admitting us to the inner circle of Paradise. He’s dressed like General Patton, in helmet, jacket, and pearl-handle revolvers.

  “O.K., Doc,” says Colonel Ringo, stooping down to the window. “Two docs! Ha ha.” He waves us on.

  Now we’ve stopped again, this time in front of Tara, Dusty’s house. Thinking he’s dropping me off, I open the door to go my way. But Dusty’s browsing hand finds my knee and holds me fast.

  “You know, life is funny, Tom.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You a brilliant professor and you losing your wife and all.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Lola coming home.”

  “Coming home?”

  “Coming here, that is.”

  “I see.”

  “She’s come to stay.”

  Tara is on the right, and to see it, Dusty leans over me. He makes himself surprisingly free of my person, coming much closer than men, American men, usually do. His strong breath, smelling of breakfast, breathes on me. An artery socks away at his huge lion-head causing it to make tiny rhythmic nods as if he were affirming this view of his beautiful house, Tara.

  “Tom,” says Dusty, taking his hand off my knee and fingering the tape deck. A Victor Herbert medley comes on.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “O.K., I’ll get out.”

  But the knuckle of his hand turns hard into my knee, detaining me.

  “No, I mean I’m going back to Texas.”

  “I see.”

  “No, my old daddy died and I’m going back to the ranch outside of Tyler.”

  “You mean you’re retiring?”

  “Oh I reckon I’ll work some—”

  “I reckon you’ll have to.”

  “Right!” Dusty laughs. “But I’m slacking off before I kill myself.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” But I’m also concerned about the knuckle turning hard into my knee.

  “Lola is not leaving. She’s staying here. This is what she wants. So I’m giving her Tara,” muses Dusty, gazing past me. The huge head is in my lap, so to speak, nodding as the artery socks away.

  “Is that right? You mean she’s going to live here by herself?”

  “Yep. She’s home for good.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You know, this is home to her. And she’s got her Eastern gaited horses here, why I don’t know.”

  “Yes.”

  “And to tell you the damn truth,” Dusty goes on in exactly the same voice, lidded eyes peering past me at the white columns of Tara, breathing his breakfast breath on me, “that girl is ever more crazy about you, Tom.”

  “She is? Well, she is a wonderful girl and I am extremely—”

  “In fact, your mother was only saying yesterday,” Dusty breaks in, and his head swivels a few degrees, nodding now at the hipped roof of my mother’s cozy saltbox next door. “She said: you know Tom and Lola are a match if ever I saw one. You know your mother.”

  “Yes.” I know my mother and I can hear her say it in her trite exclamatory style: they’re a match if ever I saw one!

  For some reason I am nodding too, in time with Dusty. From the point where Dusty’s knuckle is turning into my knee, waves of prickling spread out in all directions.

  Now the hand lets go my knee and settles in a soft fist on my shoulder.

  “I’m giving Tara to Lola, Tom.”

  “You are?”

  “You want to know the reason she’s staying?”

  “No. That is, yes.”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “She thinks the world of you.”

  “And I of her.”

  “She can’t live here by herself.”

  “No?”

  “No way. Tom, you see this place?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m putting it and my little girl in your hands.”

  “You are?”

  “Ha ha, that will give you something to think about, won’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew, neither one a y’all got good sense.”

  “No?”

  “You laying up in the bed with a bottle, shooting rats, out in the woods by yourself, talking about snipers and all. Lola taking long rides by herself in the backcountry where some crazy nigger’s going to knock her in the head. I’m counting on you to take care of her.” Dusty gazes attentively at the kingbird sitting on the white Kentucky fence.

  “All right.”

  “Both a y’all can damn well straighten up and fly right! That’s what I told your mama I was going to tell you and now I done told you.” For some reason Dusty begins to talk in a broad Texas accent. He gives a final jokey-serious nod with his big head. “You reading me, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s settled then.” Dusty settles back with a sigh. “I told your mama you would.”

  “Would what?”

  “Do the right thing.”

  I sigh, relieved at least to have Dusty’s great lion-head off my chest. Again the car drifts along, a silent gondola. With a sudden inspiration, Dusty presses a button and a thousand violins play Hills of Home, the Tara theme.

  “That’s my favorite music,” muses Dusty.

  “Very nice.”

  “I’ll tell Lola.”

  “Tell her what?”

  “About our understanding.”

  “What understanding?”

  “Ha ha, you’re a card, Tom. I always thought you had the most wonderful sense of humor.”

  As we approach the clubhouse, more people are abroad. The Christian Kaydettes are practicing in the schoolyard. Suntanned golfers ply the fairways in quaint surrey-like carts, householders bestride tiny tractors, children splash in pools, their brown bodies flashing like minnows.

  “Will you also take my Tuesday clinic?”

  Also? Does that mean that I’ve agreed to take Tara and Lola?

  “Thanks, Dusty. But I’m using all my spare time developing my lapsometer. I’m applying for an N.I.M.H. grant. You could help.”

  “Use
it in the clinic!” cries Dusty, socking himself eccentrically in several places. He’s in the best of humors. “Read their frontal lobes with your gadget and they’ll believe you! They’ll believe you anyhow! You know, Tom, you’re the best diagnostician around here. If you wanted to, you could be—” Dusty shrugs and falls silent.

  Then he did read my paper! Dusty’s nobody’s fool. Though he pretends to be a country boy, his mind can devour a scientific article with one snap of its jaws.

  “Since you’ve read my paper, you know that my lapsometer has more important uses than treating fat women.”

  “Sho now. But is there anything wrong with treating fat women?”

  “In fact,” I tell Dusty earnestly, “with this device in hand any physician can make early diagnoses of potential suicides, paranoiacs, impotence, stroke, anxiety, and angelism-bestialism. Think of the significance of it!”

  “Chk.” Dusty winks and clucks tongue against teeth, signifying both a marveling and an unseriousness.

  “This country is in deep trouble, Dusty.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “This device could be decisive.”

  “Well, I’m just a country doctor.”

  “Did you read about the atrocity last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think?”

  “The work of a madman.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a reason.”

  “Reason? You mean you’re going to cure all the crazy niggers?”

  “And crazy whites, crazy Lefts, and crazy Knotheads.”

  “I don’t know about you, but me I see very few Lefts and no niggers at all.”

  We’ve reached the clubhouse. Pennants stream from the twin copper peaks of the roof, like a castle at tournament time. Gaily colored pavilions are scattered through the pines. A few pros and ams, early arrivals, enter the clubhouse for the Bible Brunch. A banner strung the length of the eaves announces: Jesus Christ, the Greatest Pro of Them All.

  “Come on in with me,” says Dusty impulsively.

  “Thank you, but I’ve got to be going.”

  “Many devout Catholics are coming.”

  “I’m not a devout Catholic.”

  “Cliff Barrow Junior is preaching.”

  “Good.”

  “Lola and I will be looking for you at the fish fry tonight.”