Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

by Walker Percy

“I didn’t see any, but we must assume the worst.”

  We sit drinking in companionable silence, reflecting upon the extraordinary events of the day.

  Presently the Colonel leans close and gives me a poke in the ribs. “I’ll tell you the damn truth, son.”

  “What’s that, Colonel?”

  “I wouldn’t take on those ladies in a month of Sundays. Whoo-ee,” says the Colonel and knocks back another inch of my Early Times. He laughs.

  “Ha ha, neither would I, Colonel,” I say, laughing. “I feel sure they will be all right.”

  Suddenly the Colonel catches sight of something through the crack. He leaps up, staggering to the doorway.

  “Stop thief!” he cries hoarsely.

  “What’s wrong, Colonel?”

  “They’re back, the little boogers!” he cries scarlet-faced, lunging about and picking up helmet and revolver and riding crop. “I’ll fix the burrheads!”

  “Wait, Colonel! The sniper!”

  But he’s already past me. Looking out the window, I catch sight of a dozen or so picaninnies and a few bigger boys running from the stables with armfuls of molasses cakes. One big boy totes a sack of feed. It’s too late to stop the Colonel. He’s after them, lumbering up a bunker. With his steel helmet and revolver, he looks like a big-assed General Patton. The culprits, catching sight of the furious red-faced Colonel thundering down on them, drop their ill-gotten goods and flee for the woods—all but one, the boy with the feed sack. The Colonel collars him, gives him a few licks with the crop and, dragging him to the shack, hurls him past me into the corner. “You watch this one. I’m going after the others.”

  “Wait, Colonel—!” I grab him. “You’ve forgotten the sniper.”

  “No, by God! I have my orders and I’m carrying them out.”

  “Orders? What orders?”

  “To guard the molasses cakes and soybean meal.”

  “Yes, but, Colonel—”

  He wrenches loose. “Here I come, you commonist Bantu burrheads!” cries the Colonel, charging the bunker and firing his revolver. “Alabama has your ass.” Up he goes and—“Oof!”—as quickly comes reeling back. He stumbles and sits down hard on the doorsill. At the same moment there comes a slamming concussion, a rifle shot, very loud, from the direction of the clubhouse. The youth shrinks into his corner.

  Gazing down at the Colonel, I try to figure out what hit him. He looks all in one piece.

  “What happened, Colonel?” I ask, pulling him out of the line of fire.

  “They got me in the privates,” groans the Colonel. “What am I going to do?”

  “Let me see.”

  “What am I going to tell Pearline?” he asks, swaying to and fro.

  “Who is Pearline?” I ask in a standard medical tone to distract him while I examine him, and from curiosity because his wife is named Georgene.

  “Oh, Lordy.”

  At last I succeed in stretching him out on the floor. There is a bloodstain on his cream-colored trousers. I borrow the youth’s pocketknife and cut out a codpiece.

  The Colonel is a lucky man. The bullet pierced a fold of scrotum, passed between his legs and went its way. I take out a clean handkerchief.

  “You’re O.K., Colonel. A scratch. Son, hand me a cold Seven-Up.”

  “Yes suh, Doc.”

  “Colonel, hold this bottle here and close your legs on it tight as you can. You’ll be right as rain.”

  There is time now to examine the black youth, who has been very helpful, uttering sympathetic noises and an exclamation of amazement at the nature of the Colonel’s wound: “Unonunh!”

  “Aren’t you Elzee Acree?”

  “Yes suh!”

  I recognize him now, a slender brindle-brown youth with a cast in his eye, the son of Ellilou Acree, a midwife and a worthy woman.

  We make the Colonel as comfortable as possible, propping his head on his helmet He lies stretched out the length of the tiny hut, the king-size Seven-Up in place between his legs.

  “Elzee, what in hell are you doing here?”

  “Nothing, Doc!”

  “Nothing! What do you mean, nothing?”

  “I heard they needed help unloading the barn.”

  “So you were unloading a few sacks to help them out?”

  “That’s right Doc. I was stacking them under that tree so the truck could pick them up.”

  “Never mind. Listen, Elzee. I want you to do something.” I give him five dollars. “You stay here and tend to the Colonel until the patrol picks him up.”

  “I’ll be right here! Don’t you worry, Doc. But what I’m gon’ tell the patrol?”

  “The patrol won’t bother you. The Colonel here will tell them you helped him, won’t you, Colonel?”

  “Sho. I been knowing Elzee, he’s a good boy. Bring me a Seven-Up, Elzee.”

  “Yes suh!”

  “Now pour out the neck and fill it up from Doc’s bottle there.”

  Collecting the carbine—the flask is empty—I stand in the doorway a minute, gathering my wits when: thunk ka-POW! Splinters fly from the jamb three inches from my nose. I sit down beside the Colonel.

  “Why, that son of a bitch is trying to kill us all!” I say.

  “Like I told you!” cries the Colonel.

  “Unh unh tch,” says Elzee, not unhappily. “Those some tumble folks over there.”

  “That fellow’s been after me for three days,” I mutter.

  “It sho looks like it Doc,” murmurs Elzee sympathetically and hands the Colonel the spiked Seven-Up.

  “What do you know about them, Elzee?” I ask, looking at him sharply. “Who all’s down there?”

  “I don’t know, Doc, but they some mean niggers, don’t you worry about that,” says Elzee proudly.

  “You mean there’s more than one?”

  “Bound to be.”

  “Or is there just one?”

  “I just seen one pass by and I didn’t know him.”

  I look at him in disgust “Elzee, you don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”

  “That Elzee’s a good boy, though,” says the Colonel, who feels a lot better after taking a drink. “Aren’t you, boy?”

  “Yes suh! I been knowing the Colonel here!”

  “Oh shut up,” I say disgustedly to both. Between the two of them they’ve struck up an ancient spurious friendship and I’ve had enough of both. Let me out of here. I look at the clubhouse through the crack. The sun is out. The fairways sparkle with raindrops. Pennants fly over the pavilions set up for the Pro-Am tournament, but not a soul is in sight. The legend of the banner, Jesus Christ Greatest Pro of Them All, can’t quite be read from this distance.

  There must be a way of getting behind the sniper.

  A drainage ditch runs from the higher ground behind the stable toward the clubhouse road and angles off across two fairways before it enters the strip of woods along the bayou.

  “Elzee, how deep is that dredge ditch over by the tree there?”

  “That grudge ditch at least ten feet deep, Doc!” cries Elzee.

  Shouldering my carbine, I bid farewell to the drunk Colonel and the obliging Elzee.

  8

  The ditch crosses the road under a cattle guard directly in front of the guardhouse. The danger here is thirty feet of open ground between the door and the ditch. There’s a better way. The north window of the guardhouse lets into a grove of live oaks whose thick foliage droops at the margins, the heavy limbs propped like elbows on the ground. The ditch skirts the far perimeter of the grove. Though the distance is a good hundred feet, at least ninety feet of it is covered by the grove.

  Drop from the window, three long steps and dive for the grove. No shot. Once inside the oak, the going is good. The ground is still dry. It is like walking across a circus tent, the dusty twilight space sparkling with chinks of sunlight in the shifting canopy.

  Elzee lied as usual. The ditch is no more than five feet deep, but it is dry and unchoked and walkable at a
stoop. The worst part is near the cattle guard, where it rises to within two feet of the bars. Through the briars on hands and knees, cradling the carbine in my elbows Ecuador-style.

  It takes ten minutes to reach the woods.

  Once again in deep shade and walking is possible, through little bare swales and hollows studded with cypress knees, all the while angling gradually toward the water and diverging from the raised shell road. My objective is the marina some two hundred feet upstream from the clubhouse. My face, elbows, and knees are scratched, but I don’t feel bad.

  Aiming for a point on the bayou where, as I recall, the bank curves out and anchors the downstream end of the docks.

  A piece of luck: a gleam of white directly ahead. It is fresh white sand deposited under willows that run out in a towhead. Here is both cover and footing where I expected muck.

  My knees make musical rubs in the sharp cool shearing sand, which is wet only on top. Not bad: I missed the end of the marina by no more than a few yards, hitting the lower docks at the fourth slip. This end of the dock is unroofed and low-lying, designed for skiffs and canoes. A reef of alligator grass runs in front of the slips. Mullet jump. Gold dust drifts on the black water. The bayou is brimming from a south wind. Upstream, yachts and power boats drift in their moorings. Sunlight shatters like quicksilver against their square sterns.

  I lie at the edge of the willows and watch. Three hundred yards upstream, at a point, two men are pole-fishing in the outside curve. A peaceful sight—but here’s an oddity. Their caps are the long-billed mesh-crowned kind Midwesterners wear, pulled low, shadowing their faces; but they fish Negro-style from the bank out, poles flat Something wrong here: Michiganders don’t fish like that and Negroes don’t wear caps like that.

  From their spot on the outer curve I calculate that they command two reaches of the bayou.

  The next-but-last slip was a child’s pirogue of warped plywood. It is unlocked and dry. Next to it floats a locked canoe with a paddle.

  Reach the pirogue, keeping lower than the alligator grass, and slip downstream lying on my back and paddling with both hands. Now past the reef of grass but under cover of the cyrilla and birch, which, caving and undermined, slant toward the water. A smell of roots and fresh-sloughed earth.

  Once round the bend and out of sight of the fishermen, it is safe enough to sit up and paddle straight to the water entrance at the rear of the clubhouse—but now! Downstream now, at the next point, sit another brace of fishermen, faces shaded, poles flat out!

  Did they see me? Hardly, because I’m already behind the Humble yacht tied the length of the club dock and standing off just enough, two feet to let me slip between. I can’t see the fantail above me where white-coated waiters would ordinarily be serving up frozen drinks to Humble bigshots. But today there is no sound but the slap of water. The yacht I reason, must be empty because the ports are closed and the air-conditioning is silent The cabins must be like ovens. Turning now into the dark boathouse that runs under the ground-level floor of the clubhouse.

  Wedging the pirogue between the dock and the high water, I climb up, keeping an eye peeled for the fishermen. But the yacht blocks the entire boathouse. Anyhow, it is too dark to be seen under here.

  Up the concrete service stairs, little used at best but which ascend, I know, into a kind of pantry between the kitchen and the men’s bar. (I was on the Building Committee.) If the sniper is still in the pro shop and the rest of the building is empty, it should be possible to slide open the panel at the rear of the bar where golfers in the pro shop are served, so saving the floors from their spikes (my sole contribution to the Building Committee).

  Silence, the keeping of it, is the problem. The door at the top of the stairs is open a crack. I stand on the landing listening. The kitchen sounds empty. It roars with silence and ticks away like any kitchen in the morning. No motors run. A bird hops on the roof.

  Will the door creak? Yes. But it can be opened silently, I discover, by warping it open, pushing high with one hand and pulling low with the other. The pantry is dark, darker than the Bayou Bar because the window in the swinging door makes a faint gray diamond. I look through, first from one side then the other, using the obliquest possible angle without touching the door. The bar is empty, but the far door into the main hall is open. The Portuguese fishnet droops from the ceiling, its glass floats gleaming like soap bubbles in the dim light.

  Test the swinging door for creaking. No creaks up to ten inches. Ten inches is enough.

  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 direc
tor’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?