Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins - The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

“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.