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

“You like that horse, Doc? Take him,” said Vince with uncomplicated generosity.

Now the swing moves to and fro and in an almost flat arc on its long chains. We sit holding hands and watch the curtains of silvery rain. Lola smells of the fresh earth under her fingernails and of the faint ether-like vapors of woman’s sweat.

Her cello calluses whisper in my hand. At the end of each arc I can feel her strong back thrust against the slats of the swing.

“Now here’s what we’re going to do, Tom Tom,” says Lola, ducking her head to make the swing go. “Lola’s going to fix you a big drink. Then you’re going to sit right there and Lola will play for you.”

“For how long?”

“Until the trouble is over.”

“That might take weeks — if it’s over then.”

“O.K. Lola will do for you. We’ll work in the garden, and in the evenings we’ll sit here and drink and play music and watch the mad world go by. How does that sound?”

“Fine,” I say, pleased despite myself at the prospect of spending the evenings so, sipping toddies here in the swing while Lola plays Dvořák, clasping the cello between her noble knees.

“Tom Tom singing to Lola?” she asks and I become aware I am humming “Là ci darem” from Don Giovanni . My musical-erotic area, Brodmann 11, is still singing like a bird.

I pick up the 30.06. “There’s something I have to take care of first.”

Lola shoves her.45 into her jeans, “Lola will go with you.”

“No, Lola won’t.”

“I can shoot.”

Before I know what has happened, she takes out the.45 and, aiming like a man, arm extended laterally, shoots a green lizard off the column. I nearly jump out of the swing. In the bare gallery the shot is like a crack of lightning in a small valley. Thunder roars back and forth. Brick dust settles.

My ears are ringing when I stand up to leave.

“Darling Tom Tom,” whispers Lola, putting away the gun and giving me a hug, eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “Come back to Tara. Lola will be waiting. Come back and put down roots with Lola.”

“All right. Now listen. If anything happens — if there is an invasion by the Bantus or if you see a peculiar yellow cloud — I want you to do exactly what I tell you.”

“Tell Lola!”

“Come to the old plaza. To Howard Johnson’s. I’ll be there. You understand?”

“O.K.,” says Lola, hugging me and giving me some hard pats on the hip. “But don’t be surprised if you see Lola sooner than you think.” She winks.

I frown. “Don’t you follow me, Lola. I forbid it, goddamn it.”

“Tom Tom act masterful with Lola? Lola like that Howard Johnson’s. Wow.” She hands me my carbine. “Come back to Tara!”

Colonel Ringo’s distinguished head is outlined in the window of the guardhouse at the gates of Paradise. A reassuring sight. Hm, things cannot be too bad. The Colonel’s armored Datsun is parked behind the guardhouse.

“Halt! Who goes there!” yells the Colonel from a crouch in the doorway, his revolver pointed at me.

“It’s me, Colonel!” I hold the carbine over my head.

“What’s the password? Oh, it’s you, Dr. More.” The Colonel holsters his revolver and yanks me inside. “You’re in the line of fire.”

“What is the password?”

“Lurline, but get on in here, boy.”

“What’s up, Colonel?”

Now that I take a second look, I perceive that all is not well with him. His silvery eyebrows are awry and one eye, which has been subject for years to a lateral squint, has turned out ninety degrees. His scarlet and cream uniform is streaked with sweat.

“Rounds have been coming in for the past thirty minutes.” He nods toward the shattered glass of the far window.

“Rounds? From where, Colonel?”

“From the pro shop as best as I can determine,” he says, scanning the distant clubhouse through a pair of binoculars.

“Did you notice a golf cart pass here a while ago?”

“No, but I’ve only been here half an hour. That’s why I’m here, though.”

“Why?”

“To mount a rearguard action until they could get the golf carts and swim trophies out. I’m also worried about the molasses cakes and soybean meal in the barn yonder.” He looks at his watch. “The patrol is supposed to pick me up in fifteen minutes. You better get out too.”

“Colonel, what’s going on?”

“Son, the Bantu boogers have occupied Paradise Country Club.”

“But, Colonel, I haven’t seen any Bantus.”

“Then who in hell is shooting at me, the tennis committee?” The Colonel slumps against the wall. “What’s more, they got Rudy and Al.”

Noticing that the Colonel’s hands are shaking, I offer him a drink from my flask.

“I thank you, son,” says the Colonel gratefully. “Reach me a Seven-Up behind you. They cut the wires but the box is still cold.”

The Colonel knocks back a fair portion of my pint, chases it with Seven-Up, sighs. Presently he takes my arm, cheek gone dusky with emotion. One eye drifts out.

“Doc, what is the one thing you treasure above all else?”

“Well—” I begin, taking time off to fix my own drink.

“I’ll tell you what I cherish, Doc.”

“All right,” I say, taking a drink and feeling the good hot bosky bite of the bourbon.

“The Southern womanhood right here in Paradise! Right?”

“Yes,” I reply, even though 90 percent of the women in Paradise are from the Midwest.

“And I’ll tell you something else!”

“All right.”

“We may be talking about two gentlemen who may have laid down their lives for just that.”

“Who’s that?”

“Rudy and Al!”

“What happened to them?”

“Damnedest thing you ever saw,” says the Colonel, settling down in his canvas chair and putting his good eye to a crack that commands a view of the clubhouse.

I look at my watch impatiently and then study the shattered window. Could a bullet have done it? Perhaps, but the Colonel is a bit nutty today. Taking no chances, I sit in the doorway and keep the heavy jamb between me and the clubhouse, even though the latter is a good four hundred yards distant.

The Colonel takes another drink. “I’ve never seen anything like it son, since I was with the Alabama National Guard in Ecuador.” The Colonel is from Montgomery.

As best I can piece out the Colonel’s rambling, almost incoherent account, the following events took place earlier this morning. There is no reason to doubt their accuracy. For one thing, I witnessed the beginning of the incident on the golf links this morning.

The Colonel was in charge of the security and the transportation of the corps of Christian Kaydettes to Oxford, Mississippi, for the national baton-twirling contest. The Kaydettes had put on an early show for the Pro-Am Bible breakfast, immediately thereafter embarking for Mississippi in two school buses, the first transporting the girls, the second their moms, a formidable crew of ladies who had already fallen out with each other over the merits of their daughters and had boarded the bus carrying their heavy purses in silence. (It was this boarding that I had witnessed earlier in the day.) Firecrackers (not rifles, as I had thought) had been discharged. Banners on the buses read BEAT DAYTON, Dayton, Ohio, being the incumbent champs. Colonel Ringo rode point in his armored Datsun followed by the bus carrying the Kaydettes, followed by Rudy on his Farhad Grotto motorcycle, followed by the busload of moms, each a graduate of the Paradise karate school. The rear was brought up by Al Pulaski, formerly of the Washington, D.C, police and now president of PASHA (Paradise Anglo-Saxon Heritage Association), in his police special, an armored van fitted out with a complete communications system.