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

My chest buzzes away.

Clutching at my shirt in a great greasy cold sweat, I encounter it, the buzzing box. Whew! Well. It is not my heart after all but my Anser-Phone calling me, clipped to my shirt pocket and devised just for the purpose of reaching docs out on the golf links.

Whew. Lying back and closing my eyes, I let it buzz. If it wasn’t a heart attack, it’s enough to give you one.

It is Ellen Oglethorpe. Switch off the buzzer and move around to a shady quarter of the green cave to escape the heat of the fire.

Now resting in the corner and listening to Ellen and giving myself another brain massage. I could use an Early Times too.

“What is it, Ellen?”

“Oh, Chief, where have you been? I’ve been out of my mind! You just don’t know. Where’ve you been all night?” Comes the tiny insectile voice, an angry cricket in my pocket.

“What’s the trouble?”

“You’ve got to get down here right away, Chief.”

“Where are you?”

“At the office.”

“It’s the Fourth of July and I have an engagement.”

“Engagement my foot. You mean a date. You’re not fooling me.”

“O.K., I’m not fooling you.”

“I know who you have a date with and where, don’t worry about that.”

“All right, I won’t.”

“Chief—”

“Ellen, listen to me, I want you to call the fire department and send them out to Paradise. The Bledsoe house is on fire.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Eh? I can hardly hear you.” I incline my ear to my bosom.

“They’re not taking calls out there, not the police or anybody. That’s why I was so worried about you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s some sort of disturbance out there. Riffraff from the swamp, I believe.”

“Nonsense. There’s not a soul here.”

“Everybody out there has moved into town. It’s an armed camp here, Chief. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“What happened?”

“It started with the atrocity last night — right where you are. At the Bledsoes’.”

“Atrocity?”

“Mrs. Bledsoe was killed with that barbecue thing. Mr. Bledsoe has disappeared. No doubt he’s dead too. The work of madmen.”

Mrs. Bledsoe. Skewered with P.T.’s kebab skewer.

“Chief, you better get out of there!”

“There’s no one here,” I say absently.

“Oh, and we’ve got a roomful of patients.”

“On the Fourth of July?”

“Your new assistant is treating them.”

“Who? Speak up, Ellen, I can’t hear you.”

“I can’t talk any louder, Chief. I’m hiding in the EEG room. I said Dr. Immelmann has a roomful of patients and some very strange patients, I must say.”

“Dr. Immelmann! What the hell is he doing there?”

“Treating patients with your lapsometer. He said you would understand, that it was part of your partnership agreement. But, Chief, there’s something wrong here.”

“What?”

“They’re fighting. In your waiting room and in the street.”

“Who’s fighting?”

“Mr. Ledbetter and Mr. Tennis got in a fight, and—”

“Let me speak to Art Immelmann.”

“He just left. I can see him going down the street.”

“All right, Ellen, here’s what you do. Are the lapsometers still there?”

“Well, only half of them. And only because I hid them.”

“Where did you hide them?”

“In a crate of Bayonne-rayon training members.”

“Good girl. Now here’s what you do. Take the crate to your car. Lock it in the trunk. Go home. I’ll get back to you later.”

“When?”

“Shortly. I have something to attend to first.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what it is.”

“All right I won’t.”

Ellen begins to scold. I unclip the Anser-Phone and hang it in the rafters among the dirt-daubers. While Ellen buzzes away, I take a small knock of Early Times and administer a plus-four Sodium jolt to Brodmann 11, the zone of the musical-erotic.

Waltzing now to Wine, Women and Song while Ellen Oglethorpe chirrups away in the rafters, a tiny angry Presbyterian cricket.

“Chief,” says the insectile voice. “You’re not living up to the best that’s in you.”

“The best? Isn’t happiness better than misery?”

“Because the best that’s in you is so fine.”

“Thank you.” From the edge of the woods comes a winey smell where the fire’s heat strikes the scuppernongs.

“People like that, Chief, are not worthy of you.”

“People like what?” People pronounced by Ellen in that tone has a feminine gender. Female people.

“You know who I mean.”

“I’m not sure. Who?”

“People like that Miss Schaffner and Miss Rhoades.”

“Are you jealous?’

“Don’t flatter yourself, Doctor.”

“Very well.” I’m waltzing.

Wien Wien, du du allein

“Oh, Chief. Are you drinking?”

I must be singing out loud.

“Goodbye, Ellen. Go home and sit tight until you hear from me.”

I turn off the cricket in the rafters and snap the Anser-Phone in a side pocket, away from my heart.

Again the popping of firecrackers. The sound comes from the south. Taking cover in the gloom of the pines, I look between the trunks down number 5 fairway, 475 yards, par five. Beyond the green are the flat buildings of the private school. The firecrackers come from there. The grounds are deserted, but a spark of fire appears at a window, then a crack . Is somebody shooting? Two yellow school buses are parked in front. Now comes a regular fusillade, sparkings at every window, then a sputtering like a string of Chinese crackers. People run for the buses, majorettes and pom-pom girls for the first bus, their silver uniforms glittering in the sun. The moms bring up the rear, hustling along, one hand clamped to their hats, the other swinging big tote bags. A police car pulls ahead, the buses follow, a motorcycle brings up the rear. As soon as the little cavalcade disappears, the firing stops.

Was it fireworks or were people inside the building directing covering fire at an unseen enemy?

At Howard Johnson’s.

Moira gives me a passionate kiss tasting of Coppertone. She is sunbathing beside the scummy pool. Her perfect little body, clad in an old-fashioned two-piece bikini, lies prone on a plastic recliner. Though her shoulder straps have been slipped down, she makes much of her modesty, clutching bra to breast as, I perceive, she imagines girls used to in the old days.

“A kiss for the champ,” she says.

“For who?”

“You beat Buddy.”

“Oh.”

“Poor Buddy. Wow, what a bombshell you dropped. Total chaos. Did you plan it that way?”

“Chaos?”

“In The Pit, stupid.”

“Yes, The Pit. Yes. No, I didn’t plan it exactly that way.” I notice that she has a dimple at each corner of her sacrum, each whorled by down.

“I heard the Director tell Dr. Stryker to sign you up and keep you here at any cost.”

“What do you think that meant?”

“Before Harvard or M.I.T. grab you, silly.”

“I’m not so sure. What was going on over there when you left this morning?”

“Quiet as a tomb. Everyone’s gone to the beaches.”

The golden down on her forearm is surprisingly thick. I turn her arm over and kiss the sweet salty fossa where the blood beats like a thrush’s throat.

Spying two snakes beside the pool, I pick up a section of vacuum hose and run around the apron and chase them off, and sing Louisiana Lou to hear the echoes from the quadrangle.

“Are you going to take the job, Tom?” asks Moira, sitting up. The lounge leaves a pattern of diamonds on the front of her thighs.