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

“Miss Rhoades went hiking off to Tara with the pistol stuck in her jeans and the cello slung over her shoulder. The last time I saw Miss Schaffner, she was getting in Dr. Brown’s car in the plaza.”

“Buddy Brown? How did that happen?”

“The Anser-Phone is working. She had me call him.”

“I see.”

“Now, come on. We’re going home.”

“Home?”

“Back to your house.”

“What happened to the Bantus?”

“They’ve faded away.”

“I think I’d better stay here a while.”

“Come on. You’re going to pick up your life where you left it. Dr. Gottlieb is wrong. You don’t need to go to the hospital. All you need is good hard work and a—” she pauses.

“No. I can’t go now.”

“Why not?”

“The danger here is too great. I must do what I can. Did you bring my lapsometer?”

“Yes, Chief. But the important thing is to get you back in harness.”

“Do you understand the danger?”

“Yes. I believe in you completely. That’s why I want you to get out of here.”

“And do what?”

“Go home and get some sleep. I’ll meet you at the office tomorrow. We’ll have our work cut out for us.”

“I’m not going back to that.”

“Back to what?”

“Back to my old life.”

“It’s your duty, Chief,” says Ellen and means it.

“I still can’t do it.”

“Why can’t you? You can. I’ll help you. We’ll do it.”

I am thinking of my old life: waking up Monday Tuesday Wednesday as not myself, breakfast on Tang and terror in the “enclosed patio,” Thursday Friday afternoons a mystery of longing. My old life was a useless longing on weekdays, World War I at night and drunk every weekend.

“You wait here, Chief. I’ll get my car. Your mother had Eukie bring it to the plaza. She’s safe. The Bantus are under control. There was no real trouble. All the trouble was caused by a few outsiders and some hopped-up swamp rats. Most people here, white and black, like things the way they are.”

“I don’t.”

“You will. Wait here. I’m going to get the car.”

Three pairs of legs dangle over the lip of the bunker, two on one side of me, one on the other. They belong to Chuck Parker with his golden curls, his Jeb Stuart fan of a beard and his clamshell necklace, and Ethel, his little dark Smithie Pocahontas, and Hester on my other side.

“Are you all right?” asks Hester in her lovely peculiar flatted New England vowels and laterals.

“I’m fine.” With a bit of effort I hike up on my elbows and sit beside her. I look into her clear hazel eyes in which there is no secret or concealment such as causes one to look away. There is only clarity here and no shadow of the past. It’s all gone, not only the old Priscilla-Puritan beginnings but what came later and opposed it: no Priscilla, no anti-Priscilla; no Puritanism, no transcendentalism, no — ism at all, not even an anti-ism, not even a going back like Ethel to Pocahontasism, no left no right. It’s all gone, she’s wiped the slate clean and now she sits in the wilderness and reads and rereads The Case of the Velvet Claws . She’s waiting for something.

“What a sight, eh, Doc?” says Chuck, leaning out to see me. “I’m glad to be here, glad to have seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“Seen the end. You’re looking at it, Doc. The game is up.” Chuck sweeps his arm past the smoking bunker, his father with the hose, the pros, the ams, the golf carts, the officials, the scientists, the stereo-V tower with its cameras, the sodium arcs. “A fitting end, wouldn’t you say, Doc?”

“End to what?”

“Everything! Look at my poor father. His mind is blown, and you know why? Because of a game with a little ball and money. Money, Doc!”

“Actually it’s not money at all.”

“Look at him! It’s too much for him. He thinks the sand is burning. But you and I know better, eh, Doc? We know why it’s smoking and what is going to happen, wow! Doc, you are something else, you and your doomsday machine. What a way for them to go, in a golf game with the bunkers on fire, hee hee hee. You set it, didn’t you, Doc? You fixed ’em all, not only Pop but the others.”

“What others?”

“All of them. Look at them, the scientists, the manipulators, the killers of subjectivity, the jig is up with them too and they don’t even know it; and them too, the Christian flag-wavers and hypocrites, and it’s all thanks to you — you may be forty-five but you’re one of us.”

“Yeah, well—”

“So we’re leaving now and you’re coming with us.”

“With you?”

“With Hester.”

“Hester?”

“Hester wants you to live with her in her chickee.”

I look at Hester. She looks back. There is no secrecy in the clear depths, no modesty or boldness. She smiles and nods. She neither blushes nor not blushes. I look at her bare brown legs, unscarred, not fat, not thin, thighs simple and deep in youth. I look at my ghostly moon-pocked shins. It is just possible that—

“Will you come, Doc?” asks Chuck.

“I have my profession.” “Practice it. We need you. We’ll start a new life in a new world. We’ll hole up in Confederate number 2 until the fallout settles — your doomsday machine will protect us, wow, whee, you’re our shaman, Doc, then we’ll live on Bayou Pontchatalawa, which means peace, and love one another and watch the seasons come and smoke a little cannab in the evenings, hee hee hee, and live on catfish and Indian maize and wild grape and raise good sweet innocent children.”

“Well—”

“Tell me the truth, Doc.”

“All right.”

“Have you ever lived your life?”

“Lived?”

“Lived completely and in the moment the way a prothonotary warbler lives flashing holy fire?”

“Not often.”

Chuck laughs. “Hoowee! You know what I mean, don’t you, Doc?”

“Yes.”

“Hester, don’t you want Doc to come live with you in your chickee?”

For her answer, Hester, who is hugging her legs and has laid her cheek on her knees, facing me, sways to and fro and lightly against me.

“All right. Here’s the deal, Doc,” says Chuck. “I have to see Uru and get some maize seeds and ammunition to shoot rabbits this winter. You go get your gear, medicine and all, and one book — we each have one book — and meet us in an hour at the landing near the slave quarters. What book will you bring?”

“Stedmann’s World War I ,” I say absently.

“Oh yeah! Wow! We’ll all read it, all about those bad old days, and lead our new life!”

A light breeze springs up, swirling the smoke column. A whiff of brimstone comes to my nostrils.

Now a tuning fork sings against my skull. Art whispers behind me. “Just a little vaccination, Doc. You understand.”

“Did you vaccinate the others?”

“Positively.”

“Ellen says you lie.”

“I don’t believe you. She’s a lovely person. If you go to Honey Island, I should like to employ her.”

“You keep away from her, you bastard.”

“I am not illegitimate.”

“If you vaccinated the others, how come they’re acting like that?”

“They act like that normally.”

Dr. Billy Matthews, perhaps because he can’t stand it any longer, perhaps because the vapors have irritated his vagal nucleus, comes charging up the grassy hillock, where he confronts the scientists.

“I heard you rascals!” he cries.

“Heared us say what?” asks Stryker easily.

“You insulted the United States, Old Glory, and Jesus Christ!”

“When did we do that?” asks Colley, also smiling, but his voice is shaky. The scientists are astonished at the sight of the burly chiropractor, fists clenched, bald head gleaming malignantly in the sodium light, sunshades flipped in place like black eye-patches.