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

“Well well well. The hunted walks in on the hunter.”

“Then I was the hunted.” I look at him curiously, shifting my head a bit to get a fix on him. What sort of fellow is he?

“Where did you find him, Victor?”

“He was in there.” Victor nods toward the panel. “Fixing hisself a drink. Can’t you smell it?”

I take some hope in Victor not mentioning my carbine and in Uru not picking his up. Perhaps they are not going to shoot me.

“What were you doing in there, Doctor?” asks Uru, straining his clasped hands against his head.

“Doc was picking up a couple of bottles,” says Victor, shaking his head. “Doc he like his little toddy.”

“I didn’t ask you. I asked him.”

Uru diphthongs his I ’s broadly and curls his tongue in his R ’s. I judge he is from Michigan. He sprawls in his chair exactly like a black athlete at Michigan State sprawling in the classroom and shooting insolent glances at his English instructor.

“So Chuck here was going to have himself a party,” says Uru lazily. He turns to me. “Chuck, your party days are over.”

“Is that right?”

“All right, Victor. You found him. You take care of him.”

“D-D-Doc’s all right!” cries Victor. Victor’s stammering worries me more than Uru’s malevolence. “When Doc give you his word, he keep it. Doc, tell Uru you leaving and not coming back.”

“Leaving your house?” Uru asks.

“As a matter of act, I have left. Moved out.”

“So we’re taking Doc’s word now,” says Uru broadly, imitating Victor. He frowns. The chair legs hit the floor. “Victor, who are you taking orders from?”

“You, but I’m going to tell you about Doc here,” says Victor, rushing his speech, a frightening thing. He is afraid for me. “Doc here the onliest one come to your house when you’re sick. He set up all night with my auntee.”

Uru is smiling broadly — a very pleasant face, really. “So Chuck here set up all night with your auntee.” He rolls his eyes up, past Gene Sarazen, to the ceiling. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” I ask Uru.

“Make it quick, Chuck.”

“Just what is it you all have in mind to do around here?”

“Doc,” says Victor, sorrowful again. “You know we can’t tell you that.”

“Why can’t we tell him? Chuck’s not going to tell anybody, are you, Chuck?”

“Are you all taking over Paradise Estates?”

“No, we all not,” says Uru, like any other Yankee.

“Not in the beginning, Doc,” says Victor patiently. “All we wanted was the ridge houses since they were empty anyhow, all but yours and you wouldn’t leave. We had to have your house.”

“Why?”

“The TV tower, Doc.”

“What?” I screw up an eye.

“We had to have the transmitter, Chuck,” says Uru almost patiently.

“And there you setting under it, Doc.” The pity of it comes over Victor. “How come you didn’t move in with Miss Marva?”

“Then the shootings were to frighten me away?”

Uru looks at Victor.

“What about the kidnappings?” I ask.

Victor shrugs. “That was just insurance. We just going to keep the little ladies out in Honey Island till y’all sign the papers with us. Ain’t nobody going to harm those little ladies, Doc! In fact, my other auntee out there looking after them right now. She raised half of them, like Miss Ruthie and Miss Ella Stone.”

“I don’t know,” says Uru to Gene Sarazen. “I just don’t know. They told me about coming down here.” He shakes himself and looks at me with an effort. “Victor is right, Chuck. That’s all we wanted in the beginning. But now it looks like all the chucks and dudes have moved out. So: we can use the houses.”

“It won’t work. How long do you think you can hold the place?”

“Just as long as you value your womenfolk.”

I am wondering: does he mean the moms and does he know the Kaydettes were not taken?

The chair legs hit the floor again. Uru looks straight at me.

“I’m going to tell you exactly how it is, Doctor. You chucks had your turn and you didn’t do right. You did bad, Doc, and now you’re through. It’s our turn now and we are going to show you. As Victor says, we sho going to move your ass out.”

“I didn’t say no such of a thing,” says Victor. “I don’t talk nasty.”

“It won’t work,” I say.

“Doc, you don’t know who all we got out there,” says Victor. “And we holding enough folks so nobody’s going to give us any trouble.”

“That’s not what he means,” says Uru grimly. “Is it, Doctor?”

I am silent.

“What he means, Victor, is that even if we win, it won’t work. Isn’t that right, Doctor?” Uru has a light in his eye.

I keep silent.

“He means we don’t have what it takes, Victor. Oh, he likes you and your auntee. You’re good and faithful and he’ll he’p you. Right Doctor? You don’t really think we got what it takes, do you?” Uru taps his temple.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Doctor, tell us the truth.”

“Doc always tell the truth!”

“Shut up, Victor. Doctor?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Do you always tell the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell it now.”

“All right.”

“You don’t really think we’re any good, do you?”

“How do you mean, good?”

“I’m talking about greatness, Doctor. Or what you call greatness. I’m talking about the Fifth Symphony, the Principia Mathematica , the Uranus guidance system. You know very well what I’m talking about.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, you—”

“And don’t tell me about music and rhythm and all.”

“All right.” I fall silent.

“Let me put it this way, Doctor. You know what we’re going to do. We’re going to build a new society right here. Right? Only you don’t think we can do it do you?”

I shrug.

“What does that mean?”

“Well — you haven’t.”

“Haven’t what, Doctor?”

“You haven’t done very well so far.”

“Go on. Let’s hear what you mean.”

“I think you know what I mean.”

“You’re not talking to Victor now. You’re talking to a Ph.D. in political science. Only I didn’t choose to be a black-ass pipe-smoking professor.”

“Didn’t you used to play split-end for Detroit?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Aren’t you Elijah Washington?”

“We have no Jew-Christian names, least of all Washington. I’m Uru. You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“About us not doing very well.”

“You’ve had Liberia a long time.”

“So?”

“Look at Liberia. You’ve had Haiti even longer.”

“So?”

“Look at Haiti.”

“You know something, Chuck. You got a smart mouth. We’re liable to do to you what you did to the Indians.”

“Do you mind if I have a drink?”

“We don’t use it.”

“I’ll fix you a drink, Doc,” says Victor.

“No, you won’t,” says Uru, showing anger for the first time. “You’re not his goddamn houseboy.”

“You know, my name’s Washington too,” Victor tells Uru. “After George Washington Carver.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Uru to Gene Sarazen.

“Blessed be Jesus,” says Victor.

“Look what you done to him,” Uru says to me.

“What he done to me!” cries Victor.

“You did a good job, Doctor. It took you four hundred years but you really did a good job. Let me ask you something.”

“All right.”

“What would you do about it if you were me? I mean what with the four hundred years and Victor here.”