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

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.”

As he talks, Dusty picks up the new lapsometer on the seat between us. He hefts it.

“Very compact.”

“Yes.”

It is a lovely device, all brushed chrome, pointer and dial, and a jade oscilloscope screen the size of a half-dollar, the whole as solid as a good camera. Just the thing, I see now, to take Dusty’s fancy.

“You take readings?” says Dusty, turning it every which way. He’s all business now, buzzing away while his big fleshy hand hefts, balances, knows.

“That’s right.”

“What do you take readings of?”

I shrug. “You know. Local electrical activity in cortical and subcortical centers. It’s nothing but an EEG without wires, with a stereotactic device for triangulating.”

“Yeah, I see. Here you measure your micromillivolts.” The lizard scales have fallen from his blue eyes, which bear down like gimlets. His thumb rubs the jade screen as if it were a lucky piece. “And this here—”

“That’s your oscilloscope to display your wave patterns, with this, see? — a hold-and-stack device. You can stack ten patterns and flip back at will.”

“You take your readings, then what?”

“Like the article says, you correlate the readings with various personality traits, attitudes.”

“You mean, like emotions?” asks Dusty, frowning.

“Well, yes, among other things.”

“Isn’t that all rather … subjective?”

“Is a pointer reading subjective?”

“But there’s a lot of room for interpretation.”

“Isn’t there also in an electroencephalogram?” I turn it over. “Here on the back you’ve got your normal readings at key centers.”

“Yeah. Like a light meter.” He takes it back. The freckled hand can’t leave it alone. Again the thumb tests the grain of the brushed chrome, strokes the jade screen.

“How long does it take to do a, uh what? An examination?”

“A reading. I can do a standard profile in less than three minutes.” I look at my watch and open the door. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Do one on me.”

“What?”

“Couldn’t you do a reading right here and now?”

“Sure, but—”

“But what?”

“It’s not a play toy.”

“Well, damn it, does it work or doesn’t it?”

“It works.”

“Show me.”

“I’ve learned that it’s not to be used lightly.”

Dusty nods ironically. We’re both thinking of the same thing. It was using my first Brownie model on Lola that got me into trouble. That Christmas Eve six months ago I’d made my breakthrough and had the first inkling what I’d got hold of. I was abstracted, victorious, lonely, drunk, and full of love, and lo, there was Lola, also victorious (she’d had a triumphant concert in Tyler, Texas) and also lonely and full of love. My lapsometer revealed these things. But it was not the cause of our falling in love. Rather the occasion.

“You need controls for your series, don’t you?” Dusty asks shrewdly.

“Yes.”

“Then use me as a control.”

“You wouldn’t stick a proctoscope up me here in the car, would you?”

Dusty laughs, but his knuckle turns into my knee. “If you want my endorsement, I’d like to see how it works.”

“I see.” Why do I feel uneasy? “Oh very well. Take off your coat and lean over the steering wheel, like a sleepy truck driver.”

“O.K., Doctor.” Dusty says “Doctor” with exactly the same irony priests use in calling each other “Father.”

It takes two and a half minutes to clock seven readings.

There is one surprise. He registers good pineal selfhood, which I expected; an all but absent coeliac anxiety — he is, after all, an ex-fullback and hardworking surgeon, a man at home with himself and too busy to worry about it. That is to say: he may fear one thing or another but he’s not afraid of no-thing, which is the worst of fears. His abstractive index is not excessive — he lets his hands do the knowing and working. His red nucleus shows no vagal rage.

But—

His love-sex ratio is reversed.

That is to say: the reading from Brodmann Area 24, the locus of “higher” or interpersonal relations, is a tiny 0.5 mmv while the hypothalamus, seat of organic sexual activity, registers a whacking stud-level 7.9 mmv. The display wave of the latter is well developed. It is the wave of a powerful, frequently satisfied, but indiscriminate sexual appetite. Dusty is divorced.

“Well?” asks Dusty, buttoning his collar.

“No real pathology,” I say, pocketing the lapsometer and adjusting my six-gun. I seize the door handle.

“Hold it, son!” cries Dusty, laughing. “Don’t pull that!”

“What?”

“Tell me, you rascal!” Joyfully he socks me with a few eccentric blows.

“Very well,” I say doubtfully, remembering my vow to tell the truth.

I show him, clicking back over the wave-displays stacked in the oscilloscope circuit, and tell him, glossing over as best I can the love-sex reversal. But I have not reckoned with Dusty’s acuteness.

“I see,” he says at last, looking straight ahead, lizard scales lowering over his eyes. “What you’re saying is I’m messing around with my nurses.”

“I said no such thing. You asked for the readings. I gave them to you. Make your own interpretation.”

“Is that thing nonpartisan?” he asks in the same voice, yet somehow more ominously.

“How do you mean?”

“Does it also measure alcoholism, treachery, laziness, and white-trash morals?”

“If you like,” I reply in a low voice, but relieved to have him strike at me so hard.

The freckled hand browses. A switch clicks, locking the doors. It clicks again, unlocking, locking. Is Dusty thinking of beating me up?

“There’s the door, Doctor.” Click, unlock.

“Very well. Thanks for the ride.”