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

Slip along pecky cypress wall to hinged section of bar. Don’t lift, go under — damn! I trip and almost fall. Forgot the raised slatting on the floor to save the barman’s feet. Will the slatting creak? Yes. Try the nailed joints. No creak. The quality of the silence is different here. A more thronging, peopled silence — as thick as last Christmas Eve’s party. Perhaps it is the acoustic effect of the bottles.

The panel opening into the pro shop is closed. Take a full minute to unsling carbine and prop it against the cushioned edge of the bar. Wait and blink and get used to the light.

Listen.

The leather dice cup is in place, worn and darkened by sweat and palm oil. The bottles are visible now, the front row fitted with measuring spouts. Whitish tendrils of vine have sprouted through the simulated wormholes and twined around the necks of the bottles. I blink. Something is wrong. What? Then I see. What is wrong is that nothing is wrong. The bottles are intact and undrunk.

Someone clears his throat, so close that my breath catches. I open my throat and let my breath out carefully.

The sound comes from behind me, behind the panel.

Again the hawking: I breathe easier. It is a careless habituated sound, deep-throated and resonant with blown-out cheeks, the sound of a man who has been alone for some time.

A chair creaks. Something — its front legs? — hits the floor.

I listen — for a second man and to place the first. If you know a man, you can recognize his voice in his throat-clearings.

French windows, I remember, open from the pro shop onto a putting green. Beyond, the shell drive winds through the links and joins the main road. A hundred yards farther is the gate and the guardhouse.

How does the panel fit in its frame? Does it run on channel bearings? Test its hang by putting a finger into the finger recess. The panel sits, simply, in a wooden slot. Test lateral motion: a faint grate. Lubricate it. With what? spit? No, Benedictine. The liqueur pours like 40-weight oil. Test again. The panel moves an eighth-inch with a slight mucous squeak.

More hawking and throat-clearing. I do not recognize the voice. Wait for a long hawk and slide the panel a quarter-inch. But the panel clears the frame by no more than a crack: a bright line of light but not wide enough to see anything.

Another hawk, another quarter-inch.

I can see him but it’s the wrong man: Gene Sarazen in plus fours and slanted forty-five degrees to the floor. To my nostrils comes the smell of spike-splintered pine floor and of sweated leather. The sunlight is bright. I can hear the open window.

The hawking again but now I can also hear the liquid sound of throat muscles swallowing — and even a light click of the uvula popping clear of the tongue.

Ahem.

I reflect: better get the carbine in position now rather than later. The problem now is balance and position, clearing shelf space for my elbows. I calculate he is sitting ten or fifteen feet to the left of my line of sight and that the panel must be opened two or three inches to take the carbine at this angle.

Open it then: with right hand, forefinger in recess, holding carbine stock in left elbow. Open it till I can see him. It takes five minutes.

There he is. Up he comes swimming into view like a diver from the ocean depths.

I don’t know him.

He sits at the window, back turned, but I see him at an angle. One cheek is visible, and the notch of one eye. His feet are propped on the low sill — it is not a French window, as I had remembered — the front legs of the director’s chair clear of the floor. The feet flex slightly, moving the chair. The rifle lays on the floor under his right hand. It is an M-32, the army’s long-barrel sniper rifle with scope. How did he miss me with that? He must be a poor shot.

He is dressed as an inyanga , a herbalist, in a monkhu6 , a striped orange and gray tunic of coarse cotton. From his belt hangs an izinkhonkwani , a leather bag originally worn to carry herbs and green sticks but now no doubt filled with.380 mm shells. The foot propped on the sill wears a dirty low-quarter Ked, the kind pro ballplayers wear for scrimmage. His head, shaved, ducks slightly in time with the rocking. His right wrist, dangling above the rifle, wears a large gold watch with a metal expansion band.

I judge he was or is a pro. The lateral columns of neck muscles flare out in a pyramid from jaw to the deep girdle of his shoulders. The bare leg below the tunic is rawboned and sharp-shinned, as strong and stringy as an ostrich’s. The skin is, on his neck, carbon-black. It blots light. Light hitting it drains out, it is a hole. The skin at the heel of the loosely flexed hand shades from black to terra cotta to salmon in the palm.

The front sight of my carbine is on his occipital protuberance. The sweetish smell of the Benedictine fills my nostrils. I must shoot him. He will experience light, a blaze of color, and nothing else.

Then shoot him.

He tried to shoot you three times and he would shoot you now. Worse, he wants to take your woman, women.

Saint Thomas Aquinas on killing in self-defense: Q.21, Obj. 4, Part I, Sum. Theol. But did he say anything about shooting in the back?

My grandfather on sportsmanship (my grandfather: short on Saint Thomas, long on Zane Grey): Don’t ever shoot a quail on the ground or a duck on the water.

Then what do I do now for Christ’s sake, stomp my foot to flush him and shoot him on the fly?

Or in Stereo-V-Western style: Reach, stranger?

No. Just shoot him. The son of a bitch didn’t call you out.

Shoot him then.

Wound him?

No, kill him.

The trouble is my elbow is not comfortable.

Get it comfortable then.

Now.

Consider this though: would Richard Coeur de Lion have let Saladin have it in the back, heathen though he was?

The trouble is that my grandfather set more store by Sir Walter Scott than he did by Thomas More.

What would Thomas More have done? Undoubtedly he would have—

“Hold it, Doc.”

The voice, which is both conversational and tremulous, comes from close behind me.

“All right.”

“Just set the gun down real easy.”

“I will.”

“You wasn’t going to do it anyway, was you, Doc?”

“I don’t know.’

“You wasn’t. I been watching you. Now turn around.”

“All right.”

It is Victor Charles. He sighs and shakes his head. “Doc, you shouldn’t ought to of done this.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

Victor stands against one flap of the saloon doors, single-barrel shotgun held in one hand like a pistol. The weak light from the hall gleams on his white ducks and white interne shoes.

The gun was aimed at my middle but now strays off. Victor, I know, will shoot me if he has to. But I perceive that an old etiquette requires that he not point his gun at me.

“Doc Doc Doc. You sho done gone and done it this time?”

“Yes.”

“Doc, how come you didn’t do like I told you and move in with your mama and tend to your business?”

“You didn’t tell me why.”

“How come you had to come over here?”

“That fellow in there has been trying to kill me.”

“O.K., Doc. Now let’s us just move on out of here and up in the front.”

It is odd: the main emotion between us is embarrassment. Each is embarrassed for the other. We cannot quite look at each other.

As he waits for me to get in front Victor picks up the carbine and shoves it under the slatting!

We walk around to the pro shop. At the door I hesitate, wondering if the inyanga will shoot me. Victor fathoms this and calls out: “It’s all right, Uru. It’s just me and Doc.”

Uru has swung his chair around to face us. His rifle is still on the floor, his hands clasped behind his head. I notice with surprise that he is very youthful. His pleasant broad face has a sullen expression. A keloid, or welted scar, runs off one eyebrow, pulling the eyebrow down and giving him a Chinese look.