Lola, in jeans and gingham shirt, is hoeing her garden at Tara, A straight chair at the end of a row holds a.45 automatic and a cedar bucket of ice water with a dipper. Her shirttails are tied around in front leaving her waist bare. The deep channel of her spine glistens.
I lean my carbine against the chair.
“What are you planting?”
“Mustard.” Lola jumps up and gives me a big hug. “You’re so smart!”
“Smart?”
“Yesterday. I didn’t know you were a genius.”
“Genius?”
“In The Pit. Lola’s so proud of you.” She gives me another hug.
“Do you think you ought to be here by yourself? Where’s Dusty?”
“Nobody’s going to mess with Lola.”
“I see.” I fall silent.
“Did you come to see me?”
“Yes.”
“Well? State your business.”
“Yes. Well, I don’t think you ought to stay here.” It’s where she should stay that gives me pause. Lola sees this.
“And just where do you propose that I go?”
“Into town.”
She commences hoeing again. “Nobody’s running Lola off her own place. Besides, I doubt there is any danger. All I’ve seen are a few witch doctors and a couple of drug-heads.”
“There was another atrocity last night.”
“Nellie Bledsoe? I think P.T. got drunk and let her have it with the shish kebab.”
“I’ve been shot at twice in the last hour.”
“Tommy!” cries Lola, dropping the hoe. She takes my hand in her warm, cello-callused fingers. “Are you hurt?” she asks, feeling me all over for holes.
“No. He missed me.”
“Who in the world—?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s a Bantu.”
Lola slaps her thigh angrily. Eyes blazing, she places her fists on her hips, arms akimbo. She nods grimly. “That does it.”
“Does what?”
“You stay here with Lola.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I have, ah, other responsibilities.” Such as two girls in a motel room, but I can’t tell her that.
“Such as?”
“My mother.”
“Very well.” She waits, searching my eyes. She’s waiting for me to ask her to stay with me. When I don’t, she shrugs and picks up the hoe. “Don’t worry about Lola. Lola can take care of herself.”
“Why don’t you leave?”
“I can’t leave my babies.” She nods toward the stables.
“You mean the horses? Turn them loose. They’ll be all right.”
“Besides that, I’ve just laid in one thousand New Hampshire chicks.”
“Chickens, mustard greens. What are you planning for?”
“I think we’re in for a long winter and I’m planning to stick it out here.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugs and mentions the possibility of civil disturbances between Knothead and Leftpapas, between black and white, etcetera. “So I think the safest place in the world is right here at Tara minding my own business.”
I nod and tell her about my fears for the immediate future, about the mishap that befell my lapsometers and the consequent dangers of a real disaster.
Lola listens intently. It is beginning to drizzle. Suddenly taking my hand in hers, warm as a horn, and picking up her gun, she leads me impulsively to the great gallery of the house, where we sit in a wooden swing hung by chains from the ceiling.
“Tommy,” she says excitedly, “isn’t it great here? Look at the rain.”
“Yes.”
“Dusty’s leaving. Let’s me and you stay here and see it through, whatever it is.”
“I’d certainly like to.”
“You know what I truly believe?”
“What?”
“When all is said and done, the only thing we can be sure of is the land. The land never lets you down.”
“That’s true,” I say, though I never did know what that meant. We look out at six acres of Saint Augustine grass through the silver rain.
The great plastered columns, artificially flaked to show patches of brickwork, remind me of Vince Marsaglia, boss of the rackets. He built Tara from what he called the “original plans,” meaning the drawing of David O. Selznick’s set designer, whose son Vince had known in Las Vegas. Once, shortly after I began to practice medicine, I was called to Tara to treat Vince for carbuncles. Feeling much better after the lancings, he and his boys sat right here on the gallery shying playing cards into a hat from at least thirty feet, which they did with extraordinary skill. I watched with unconcealed admiration, having tried unsuccessfully to perfect the same technique during four years of fraternity life. I also admired the thoroughbreds grazing in the meadow.
“You like that horse, Doc? Take him,” said Vince with uncomplicated generosity.
Now the swing moves to and fro and in an almost flat arc on its long chains. We sit holding hands and watch the curtains of silvery rain. Lola smells of the fresh earth under her fingernails and of the faint ether-like vapors of woman’s sweat.
Her cello calluses whisper in my hand. At the end of each arc I can feel her strong back thrust against the slats of the swing.
“Now here’s what we’re going to do, Tom Tom,” says Lola, ducking her head to make the swing go. “Lola’s going to fix you a big drink. Then you’re going to sit right there and Lola will play for you.”
“For how long?”
“Until the trouble is over.”
“That might take weeks — if it’s over then.”
“O.K. Lola will do for you. We’ll work in the garden, and in the evenings we’ll sit here and drink and play music and watch the mad world go by. How does that sound?”
“Fine,” I say, pleased despite myself at the prospect of spending the evenings so, sipping toddies here in the swing while Lola plays Dvořák, clasping the cello between her noble knees.
“Tom Tom singing to Lola?” she asks and I become aware I am humming “Là ci darem” from Don Giovanni. My musical-erotic area, Brodmann 11, is still singing like a bird.
I pick up the 30.06. “There’s something I have to take care of first.”
Lola shoves her.45 into her jeans, “Lola will go with you.”
“No, Lola won’t.”
“I can shoot.”
Before I know what has happened, she takes out the.45 and, aiming like a man, arm extended laterally, shoots a green lizard off the column. I nearly jump out of the swing. In the bare gallery the shot is like a crack of lightning in a small valley. Thunder roars back and forth. Brick dust settles.
My ears are ringing when I stand up to leave.
“Darling Tom Tom,” whispers Lola, putting away the gun and giving me a hug, eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “Come back to Tara. Lola will be waiting. Come back and put down roots with Lola.”
“All right. Now listen. If anything happens — if there is an invasion by the Bantus or if you see a peculiar yellow cloud — I want you to do exactly what I tell you.”
“Tell Lola!”
“Come to the old plaza. To Howard Johnson’s. I’ll be there. You understand?”
“O.K.,” says Lola, hugging me and giving me some hard pats on the hip. “But don’t be surprised if you see Lola sooner than you think.” She winks.
I frown. “Don’t you follow me, Lola. I forbid it, goddamn it.”
“Tom Tom act masterful with Lola? Lola like that Howard Johnson’s. Wow.” She hands me my carbine. “Come back to Tara!”
Colonel Ringo’s distinguished head is outlined in the window of the guardhouse at the gates of Paradise. A reassuring sight. Hm, things cannot be too bad. The Colonel’s armored Datsun is parked behind the guardhouse.