“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.
“Yes. Mother. Right But Mother, you know, has her own ideas ha ha. No, Mother is in town and safe. Lola was at Tara and alone. I made her come.” I jump up and turn on the air-conditioner. “With all the racket at the church, I doubt if anyone could hear this.” Sinking down on the foot of the bed. “I could use a drink. I’ve been shot at, locked up, pushed around.”
Ellen comes around instantly, sits behind me, begins probing my scalp with her rough mothering fingers. “Are you hurt, Chief?”
“I’m all right,” I say, noticing that Lola is eyeing me ironically, thumbs hooked in her jean pockets.
“Quite a place you have here, Tommy,” she says.
“Yes. Well. Now here’s where we stand, girls,” I say, rising and pacing the floor wearily. I am in fact weary but there are also uses of weariness. “I’m afraid we’re in trouble,” I tell them seriously because it is true but also because there are uses of seriousness. The three girls make me nervous. “As I believe all of you know, there is a good chance of a catastrophe this afternoon, of national, perhaps even world proportions. You asked about my mother, Ellen. Here’s what has happened.”
Everyone is feeling serious and better. The air-conditioner blows cold fogs into the room. Hands deep in pockets, I pace the floor, eyes on the carpet, and give them the bad news, reciting the events of the day in sentences as grave, articulate, apocalyptic, comforting as a CBS commentator. Now swinging a chair around, I sit on it backward and give the girls a long level-eyed look. “And that is by no means the worst of it. No,” I repeat as somberly as Arnold Toynbee taking the long view. “As I also believe each of you also know, the Bantu revolt may be the least of our troubles.”
“You’re speaking, Chief,” says Ellen, “of the danger of your lapsometer falling into the wrong hands.”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid it’s already happened, Chief,” she says as gravely as I.
“I’m afraid it has.”
“And what you fear is both a physical reaction and a psychical reaction, physical from the Heavy Salt domes in the area and psychical from its effect on political extremists.”
“That is correct, Ellen.”
The room is silent save for the rattling of the air-conditioner. Outside, like distant artillery, I can hear The Drummer Boy again.