“We could be of incalculable service to each other, you know.”
“How’s that?”
“You could help our work on mind-force with your scientific expertise in psychiatry. We’re on the same side in the struggle against materialism. Together we could help break the laws of materialism that straitjacket modern science.”
“I believe in such laws.”
“We could oppose the cult of objectivity that science breeds.”
“I favor such objectivity.”
“I have unending admiration for your Church.”
“I wish I could say the same for yours.”
“You know, Origen, one of the greatest doctors of your Church, was one of us. He believed in reincarnation, you know.”
“As I recall, we kicked his ass out.”
“Yes. And the poor man was so burdened with guilt, he cut off his own member.”
“I might do the same for you.”
“You’re a rum one, T?m.”
Mar-tyn laughed his one and only laugh: “Arr arr arr. Cut off ’is ruddy whacker, did he?”
Doris would have none of this, either Catholic vulgarity or Liverpool vulgarity, and she and Alistair would get back on reverence for life while I grilled rib-eye steaks on the hibachi, my specialty and Alistair’s favorite despite his reverence for steers.
What happened was not even his fault. What happened was that Samantha died and I started drinking and stayed drunk for a year — and not even for sorrow’s sake. Samantha’s death was as good an excuse as any to drink. I could have been just as sorry without drinking. What happened was that Doris and I chose not to forgive each other. It was as casual a decision as my drinking. Alistair happened to come along at the right time.
Poor fellow, he didn’t even get the money he wanted. He got Doris, whom he didn’t want. Doris died. God knows what Doris wanted. A delicate sort of Deep-South Oriental life lived with Anglican style. Instead, she died.
Alistair was right, as it turned out, to disapprove my religious intolerance. I, as defender of the faith, was as big a phony as he and less attractive. Perhaps I’d have done worse than follow Origen’s example, poor chap.
Feeling somewhat faint from hunger, I return to my apartment in the old wing and fix myself a duck-egg flip with Worcestershire and vodka. Check the phone. Dead. Call into Ellen on the Anser-Phone. The line is already plugged in. The Anser-Phone operator got frightened about something, Ellen said, and left. But all quiet at the motel. She and Moira are playing gin rummy.
Two lovely girls they are, as different as can be, one Christian, one heathen, one virtuous, one not, but each lovely in her own way. And some Bantu devil is trying to take them from me. He must be dealt with.
Back in the hunt room, I take the 30.06 from the cabinet. It is still greased and loaded. I pocket an extra clip. Get 38’s for the revolver!
Take the Toyota onto the links, use cart paths next to the woods, cross the fairway to my mother’s back yard, run under her mountainous Formosa azaleas and out of sight.
The back door is unlocked. All seems normal hereabouts. Eukie, Mother’s little servant, is sitting in the kitchen polishing silver and watching Art Linkletter III interview some school children from Glendale.
“Eukie, where is Mrs. More?”
“She up in the bathroom.”
“What’s been going on around here?”
Eukie is a non-account sassy little black who is good for nothing but getting dressed up in his white coat and serving cocktails to Mother’s bridge ladies.
Check the phone. Dead.
For a fact Mother is in the bathroom, all dressed up, blue-white Hadassah hair curled, down on her hands and knees in her nylons, scrubbing the tile floor. Whenever things went wrong, I remember, a sale fallen through, my father down on his luck sunk in his chair watching daytime reruns of I Love Lucy, my mother would hike up her skirt and scrub the bathroom floor.
“What’s wrong, Mama?”
“Look at that workmanship!” She points the scrub brush to a crack between tile and tub. “No wonder I’ve got roaches. Hand me that caulk!”
“Mother, I want to talk to you.” I pull her up, I sit on the rim of the tub. She closes the lid and sits on the john. “Now. What’s going on around here?”
“Humbug, that’s what’s going on.”
“Has anybody bothered you?”
“Who’s going to bother me?”
“Then why are you scrubbing the bathroom floor in your best clothes?”
“My car won’t start and I can’t call a taxi. My phone’s dead.”
“Is that all?”
“What else?” She is sitting straight up, smoothing her waist down into her hip, wagging her splendid calf against her knee.
“I mean, have you noticed anything unusual?”
“People running around like chickens with their heads cut off. You’d think a hurricane was on the way.”
“What people?”
“The Bococks down the street. He and the children threw their clothes in the boat and drove away.”
“Boat? Oh, you mean on the trailer. Is that all?”
“What else? Then this trash backs up a truck to the Bocock house.”
“Trash? What trash?”
“White trash. Black trash. Black men in yellow robes and guns.”
“You mean they moved in?”
“Don’t ask me!”
“Or did they take things and leave?”
“I didn’t notice.”
I sit on the tub thinking. Mother dips brush into Clorox.
“Mother, you’re leaving.”
“Leave! Why should I leave?”
“I’m afraid you’re in some danger here.”
“There’s not a soul in the neighborhood. Anyhow Euclid is here.”
“Eukie ain’t worth a damn.”
“I can’t leave. My car won’t start.” I see she’s frightened and wants to leave.
“Take my car. Or rather Ellen’s. Take Eukie with you and go to Aunt Minnie’s in town and stay there till you hear from me. Go the back way by my house.”
“All right,” says Mother distractedly, looking at her wrinkled Cloroxed fingertips. “But first I have to pass by the Paradise office and pass an act of sale.”
“Act of sale! What are you talking about?”
“Then I’m coming back and stay with Lola. Lola’s not leaving.”
Dusty Rhoades, Mother tells me, had come by earlier, argued with the two women, had an emergency call, and left.
“You mean Lola’s over there now?”
“She won’t leave! She’s a lovely girl, Tommy.”
“I know.”
“And she comes from lovely people.”
“She does?”
“She’s the girl for you. She’s a Taurus.”
“I know.”
“Ellen is not for you.”
“Ellen! Who said anything about Ellen? Last time you were worried about Moira.”
“She doesn’t come from the aristocratic Oglethorpes. I inquired. Her father was a mailman.”
“My God, Mother, what are you talking about? There were no aristocratic Oglethorpes. Please go get your things.”
My mother, who sets no store at all by our connection with Sir Thomas More, speaks often of her ancestor Sieur de Marigny, who was a rascal but also, she says, an aristocrat.
I give Eukie my father’s twelve-gauge pump gun loaded with a single twenty-five-year-old shell.
“Eukie, you ride shotgun.”
“Yes suh!” Eukie is delighted with the game.
“If anybody tries to stop Miss Marva, shoot them.”
Eukie looks at me. “Shoot them? Who I’m going to shoot?”
“I don’t know.” Euclid is sitting opposite Mother, holding the shotgun over his shoulder like a soldier. “Never mind.”
Off they go in the Toyota, facing each other across the tiller.