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

Who is shooting? He’s not.

“Wait!” I’m yelling, having caught no more than one glimpse of the sorrel rump prancing sideways. “Don’t shoot him! It’s Ely!”—swinging the putter sideways and backhanded and not having time to aim and so of course catching Ely properly on the parietal skull, the Sten swinging away now and down and Ely going down and around with it.

I drag him into the garage and test his pulse and pupils. He’s all right. I still haven’t had time to look at Lola, who comes in leading the sorrel and holstering her automatic in her jeans.

“You almost killed Ely,” I tell her.

“Why, you damn fool, he was trying to kill you!”

“I know. Thank you. How did you know I was here?”

“Yellow Rose and I were watching from over there.” She nods toward the Joy Drive-In. “We saw you come crashing through the wall. Crazy Tom Tom! What would you do without Lola?”

“I don’t know. Let’s get out of here.” We have to yell to be heard above the racket of the carillon with its guaranteed five-mile radius at top volume.

We three kings of Orient are

“What is all that?” asks Lola, making a face.

“Christmas carols.”

“Oh,” says Lola, accepting it, July or not. “Where’re we going?”

“Back over there. Where’s the horse?”

Yellow Rose has wandered off. Lola gives an ear-splitting whistle through her fingers and here comes the mare, stirrups flying. I hop up.

Lola jumps up behind me and gives me a big hug. “Oh Tommy, I was so worried about you!”

“Keep worrying.”

The nearest cover is the Drive-In with its tower of a screen and its speaker-posts gone to jungle, but a good two hundred yards of open plaza intervene, most of it clearly visible from the front of the church. How many Bantus are left?

We light out, my legs swinging free, for the stirrups are too short, past the concrete screen enclosing the cloister. Swallows nesting in the fenestrae take alarm and flutter up by the hundreds.

Many swallows but no shots, no outcries and no Bantus. Are they all in church trying to figure out what started the carillon?

The first Noel

The angels did sing …

Breathlessly we fetch up behind lianas of possum grape, which festoon the giant Pan-a-Vision screen.

“You like to fell off,” says Lola, reverting to Tyler Texas talk.

Half off, I slide down. The noble girl faces me, arms as they say akimbo, breast heaving, color high in her cheek.

“What now?”

I explain that we’d best make our way to the motel, that indeed there is nowhere else to go.

“Wow!” says Lola, but as quickly frowns. “What about Rose?”

I shrug. “We can’t take Rose any farther.”

“Don’t worry!” She loosens the girth and gives the mare a slap across the rump. “Back to Tara! She’ll go home. We’ll follow shortly, won’t we, Tom?”

“Possibly.”

Sure enough, the mare takes out for the pines, straight across the plaza, head tossing around as if she meant to keep an eye on us.

The firing begins when the mare reaches the drive-up window of the branch bank. Little geysers of tar erupt around her flying hoofs. Lola moans and claps her cheeks. “She’s made it,” I reassure her. Parting the grape leaves, I catch sight of the two Bantus, one kneeling and both firing, on the porch of the church. “Keep down.”

But she’s whipped out her automatic again. “What—” I begin turning to see what she sees behind me.

Its Victor! — standing in the doorway of the Pan-a-Vision screen structure. The screen is a slab thick enough to house offices.

“Don’t shoot!” I jump in front of Lola.

“Why not?”

“It’s Victor.”

“Why not shoot Victor? He’s got a gun.” But she lowers her automatic.

“Here, Doc,” says Victor and tosses me my carbine. “This is so you can protect your mama. I know you not going to shoot people.”

I catch the carbine like old Duke Wayne up yonder on the giant screen.

“Thanks, Victor.”

“Now you all get on out of here. Some people headed this way. Go to town. You take care this little lady too.”

“O.K.”

Lola can’t tell the difference between the real Victor and the fake Willard. She claps her hands with delight. “Isn’t Victor wonderful! Tom, let’s go to Tara!”

“No.” I grab her hand.

We run at a crouch through the geometrical forest of flowering speaker posts, past burnt-out Thunderbirds, spavined Cougars, broken-back Jaguars parked these five long years, ever since that fateful Christmas Eve, in front of the blank and silent screen. The lovers must have found the exit road blocked by guerrillas and had to abandon their cars and leave the drive-in by foot In some cases speakers are still hooked to windowsills and we must take care not to run into the wires.

No more shots are fired, and when we reach the shelter of the weeds at the rear of the Howard Johnson restaurant, I feel fairly certain we’ve made our escape unobserved. But why take chances? Accordingly, we follow the easement between the motel and the fence. Directly below the bathroom window I take Lola’s arm and explain to her the circumstances that prompted me to fit out the motel room and stock it with provisions for months — all the circumstances, that is, except Moira. “There is some danger,” I tell her, “of a real disaster.”

“Darling Tom!” cries Lola, throwing her arms around my neck. “Don’t worry! I don’t think we’ll be here that long but we can have a lovely time! Lola will do for you. We’ll make music and let the world crash about our ears. Twilight of the gods! Could I go get my cello?”

“I’ve told you we can’t go back to Tara.”

“No, I mean over at the center. I could be back in fifteen minutes.”

“Where?”

“At the Center. Don’t you remember? I played a recital yesterday before the students rioted. There was so much commotion I thought the best thing to do was leave it in a safe place over there.”

“Yesterday?” I close my eyes and try to remember. “Where is it now?”

“Ken told me he’d lock it up in his clinic.”

“Ken?”

“Ken Stryker, idiot. Think of it, Tommy. We’ll hole up for the duration and Lola will cook you West Texas chili marguerita and play Brahms every night.”

“Very good. I’ll get the cello for you but not just now. Now I think we’d better go up and join the ah, others.”

“Others?”

“Yes. Other people have sought refuge here. I couldn’t turn them away.” Thank goodness there are two girls up yonder and not one.

“Of course you couldn’t. Who are they?”

“My nurse, Miss Oglethorpe, and a colleague, a Miss Schaffner.”

“Ken’s research assistant?”

“She was.”

“Should be cozy.”

“There are plenty of rooms.”

“I should imagine.”

“Are you ready to go up?”

“Can’t wait.”

I give the sign, a low towhee whistle. Above us the window opens.

The girls are badly out of sorts, from fright but even more, I expect, from the heat. After the rainstorm they did not dare turn on the air-conditioner, the sniper might be hanging around. The room is an oven.

Moira is hot, damp, petulant, a nagging child.

“Where have you been , Chico?” She tugs at my shirt. There are beads of dirt in the creases of her neck.

Ellen sits straight up in the straight chair, drumming her fingers on the desk. Her eyes are as cool as Lake Geneva. The only sign of heat is the perspiration in the dark down of her lip.

“I thought you were going to get your mother,” she says drily, not looking at Lola.