The Moviegoer - Walker Percy [47]
“Where is Joyce from?”
“Illinois.”
“Is she nice?”
“Joyce is a good old girl.”
“She seems to be. Are you all good friends?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“Lordy lord, the crazy talks we have. If people could hear us, they would carry us straight to Tuscaloosa.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Everybody.”
“Me?”
“Why sure.”
“What do you say?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well I can tell you one thing, son.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re surely not gon find out from me.”
“Why not?”
“Larroes catch medloes.”
Out Elysian Fields we go, her warm arm lying over mine. All at once she is free with herself, flouncing around on the seat, bumping knee, hip, elbow against me. She is my date (she reminds me a little of a student nurse I once knew: she is not so starchy now but rather jolly and horsy). The MG jumps away from the stop signs like a young colt. I feel fine.
Yes, she is on to the magic of the little car: we are earth-bound as a worm, yet we rush along at a tremendous clip between earth and sky. The heavy fragrant air pushes against us, a square hedge of pyrocantha looms dead ahead, we flash past and all of a sudden there is the Gulf, flat and sparkling away to the south.
We are bowling along below Pass Christian when the accident happens. Just ahead of us a westbound green Ford begins a U-turn, thinks it sees nothing, creeps out and rams me square amidships. Not really hard—it makes a hollow metal bang b-rramp! and the MG shies like a spooked steer, jumps into the neutral ground, careens into a drain hole and stops, hissing. My bad shoulder has caught it. I think I pass out for a few seconds, but not before I see two things: Sharon, she is all right; and the people who hit me. It is an old couple. Ohio plates. I swear I almost recognize them. I’ve seen them in the motels by the hundreds. He is old and lean and fit, with a turkey throat and a baseball cap; she is featureless. They are on their way to Florida. He gives me a single terrified look as we buck over the grass, appeals to his wife for help, hesitates, bolts. Off he goes, bent over his wheel like a jockey.
Sharon hovers over me. She touches my chin as if to get my attention. “Jack?”
The pain in my shoulder was past all imagining but is already better.
“How did you know my name was Jack?”
“Mr. Daigle and Mr. Hebert call you Jack.”
“Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“You look scared.”
“Why that crazy fool could have killed us.”
The traffic has slowed, to feast their eyes on us. A Negro sprinkling a steep lawn under a summer house puts his hose down altogether and stands gaping. By virtue of our misfortune we have become a thing to look at and witnesses gaze at us with heavy-lidded almost seductive expressions. But almost at once they are past and those who follow see nothing untoward. The Negro picks up his hose. We are restored to the anonymity of our little car-space.
Love is invincible. True, for a second or so the pain carried me beyond all considerations, even that of love, but for no more than a second. Already it has been put to work and is performing yeoman service, a lovely checker in a lovely game.
“But what about