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

“Thank you again.”

“You’re welcome.” Victor presses against the table and fingers his coins.

“I’ve got to go.”

“You ought to take better care yourself, Doc. And be more careful where you takes a nap.”

“Why?”

“Crazy folks everywhere now, Doc.”

“Folks? What folks?”

“Folks. You know.”

“You ought to be more careful too, Victor.”

“How’s that, Doc?” Victor, who has been pushing himself off the table with his stomach, stays off.

“I mean who you meet and where you meet, though it’s none of my business.”

“What you talking ‘bout, Doc?”

For some reason all three tiers of dogs start barking.

Presently Victor shouts, “You’ll be all right, Doc. Just rest here a while. You know what you need? Somebody to take care you. Why don’t you move in with your mama, Miss Marva? She be glad to do for you.”

I wait for the dogs to subside.

“You were there at number 11 on the old 18. This morning.”

“What you talking ’bout, Doc?”

“I was there, Victor. On the island. In the pagoda.”

“Oh, you talking about—” Victor begins to shake a loose hand toward the east as if he just remembered.

“What the hell is going on, Victor?”

“Like I told you, Doc—”

“Like you told me! You haven’t told me anything. I saw you, I saw Willard Amadie. Who was the third man?”

“Willard bringing meat for the swamp. Folks going hungry out there, Doc.”

“I saw the deer. Was that all?”

“All? How you say, all?”

“Victor, I heard you. I was sitting in the pagoda.”

“Oh, you talking about—” Again Victor salutes the east.

“Yes. Who was the third man?”

“Him? Doc, they say he mean ,” says Victor, laughing.

“They?”

“Everybody. You talk about mean and lowdown!”

“Then what are you laughing about?”

“You, Doc. You something else.”

“Victor, is Willard trying to shoot me?”

“Shoot you! Willard!” Victor falls back.

“You mean somebody else is trying to shoot me?”

“Doc, why in the world anybody want to shoot you? You help folks. Like I tell people, you set up with my auntee when other doctors wouldn’t even come out.”

“You mean somebody is trying to shoot me and you tried to talk them out of it?”

“Doc, look. How long me and you known each other?”

“All our lives.”

“How long did I work for y’all, first for Big Doc, then for Miss Marva clearing land?”

“I don’t know. Twenty years.”

“And didn’t you set up with my auntee many a night before she died?”

“Yes.”

“You think I wouldn’t do the same for you?”

“I think you would. But—”

“Wasn’t I working as a orderly in the hospital last year when they brought you in and didn’t I take care you?”

“Yes, you did.”

“When you said to me, Victor, there’s something crawling on the wall, get it out of here, didn’t I make out like I was throwing it out?”

“Yes.”

Victor is laughing in such a way that I have to smile.

“I couldn’t see but I threw it out anyhow.”

“Yes, you did.”

“You think I wouldn’t tell you right?”

“I think you would.”

“Then, Doc, listen.” Victor comes close again, presses stomach against metal table. “Move in with Miss Marva. She’ll do for you. Miss Marva, she’d love nothing better. I help you move over there, Doc.”

“How come you want me out of my house?”

“I’m worried about you, Doc Look at you. Fainting and falling out in a ditch.”

“Victor, who were you waiting for in the pagoda?”

“Waiting?”

“I heard Willard say: Looks like he’s not coming.”

“Oh yeah. Willard.”

“Was he waiting for me?”

Victor is silent

“Did he or the third man intend to shoot me?”

“Shoot you! Lord, Doc. We just want to talk to you.”

“Well, here I am.”

“That’s what I’m telling you. Move in with your mama.”

“What’s she got to do with it?”

Silence.

“What about that other stuff?”

“What other stuff?”

“All that stuff about the Kaydettes, the doctors, and the school.”

“Doc, all in the world I want to do is help you. You say to me, do this, that, or the other, and I’ll do it.”

Victor’s his old self, good-natured, reserved, with just the faintest risibility agleam in his muddy eyes.

“How you feeling, Doc?”

“I think I can make it.”

But when I stand up, one knee jumps out

“Whoa, look out now. Why don’t you stay here till you are stronger? Ain’t nobody going to bother you here.”

“I got to get on up the hill.”

“I was going up there too. I’ll carry your bag — no wonder, Lord, what you got in here? Just hang on to Victor.”

We are near the top. Victor wants me to hang on to him, but I don’t feel like it.

“You never did like anybody to help you, did you, Doc?”

I stop, irritated with Victor and because the faintness is coming back. Flowers of darkness begin to bloom on the sidewalk.

We sit on the wooden steps of an abandoned Chinese grocery angled into the hill. Again I invite Victor to go back — I know he’s along just to help me. He refuses.

“You’ve been away, haven’t you, Victor?” I say to hide my irritation.

“I been back for two years, Doc.”

“Where did you go?”

“I lived in Boston and worked in the shipyard. I made seven fifty an hour.”

“Why did you come back?”

“You know something, Doc? You don’t trust anybody, do you?”

I look at Victor with astonishment.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, Doc. I know that when you ask me a question like that you really want to know.”

I blink. “You’re humbugging me, aren’t you, Victor?”

“No, Doc. You know what I remember? You asked me why I came back. I don’t know. But I remember something. I remembered in Boston and when I did, you were in it. You remember the shrimp jubilees?”

“Yes.”

“The word would come that the shrimp were running and everybody would go to the coast at night and as far as you could see up and down the coast there were gas lamps of people catching shrimp, setting up all night with their chirren running around and their picnics, you remember? And long before that me and you learned to throw a cast-net holding it in your teeth.”

“Yes. Those were the days.”

“Not for you, Doc.”

I, who am seldom astonished, am astonished twice in a minute. “What do you mean?”

“You never did like — you didn’t even like the jubilees. You were always … to yourself.”

I shrug. “Are you telling me you came back because of the jubilees?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to come back. You know, I been a deacon at Starlight Baptist for twenty years.”

“I know.”

“Mr. Leroy, though, he used to love the jubilees.”

“So you and Leroy Ledbetter like the jubilees and that’s why you came back?”

“Not exactly. But I remember when everybody used to come to the jubilees. I mean everybody. You and Mr. Leroy came one night, you and your family on one side of me and he on the other.”

“In the first place the shrimp don’t run any more. In the second place, even if they did, Leroy Ledbetter wouldn’t be next to you now.”

“That’s right, but you know something, Doc?”

“What?”

“You ought to trust people more. You ought to trust in the good Lord, pick yourself out a nice lady like Miss Doris, have chirren and a fireside bright and take up with your old friends and enjoy yourself in the summertime.”