Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

  “Transfer! Where? Where’re yall going to live—in the camper?”

  “I know this boy who goes to school in Albuquerque. In fact I heard from him yesterday. I correspond with him quite a bit. I could live with him, in fact.” After a moment he added: “His father has a shop of some sort. Out on the highway.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Tell him, Billy.”

  “All I want Jamie to tell me is whether he has made arrangements to live with somebody or whether he wants me to go with him.”

  “Well, I mean, if you want to.”

  “O.K.”

  “Do yall mean to tell me that you’re going to jump in that little truck and go out there and park it somewhere and just start going to school?”

  Jamie smiled and leaning forward spoke to both of them in a different voice. “I remember reading this novel in school last year, by a Russian writer. I think his name was Goncharov, or something like that, but he is a wonderful writer. Do you know him?”

  “No,” said the engineer. Kitty did not answer.

  “He’s really a good writer,” said Jamie, going back to his ashtray. “At least in this novel. It was about this young man who was a refugee or a prisoner, I forget which. He was traveling the whole length of Russia in a cattle car, along with hundreds of others. He was sick with brain fever, whatever that is, I have only come across brain fever in Russian novels. It was summer and they were crossing Siberia, day after day, weeks even. The car was crowded and he had one tiny corner and a bit of straw and that was all. And though he was quite ill and even delirious at times, the strange thing about it was that it wasn’t so bad. Through the slats of the car he could see the fields, which were covered by a little blue flower. And of course the sky. The train stopped often and peasant women would bring him bowls of blueberries and fresh warm milk—that was the peculiar thing about it, that even though he knew no one and the train only stopped for a few minutes at a time, somehow news of this young man traveled ahead of the train and they expected him. And though everybody else on the train became exhausted by the hardships of the trip, he actually got better! It was really good. I think it’s the best novel I ever read.”

  “That’s fine, Jamie, that’s fine and I agree with you,” said Kitty peevishly. “But I still don’t see why—”

  The engineer interrupted her. “Are you coming?”

  “Me? No, indeed.”

  They were silent when the Lincoln turned up the links road. When Jamie got out into the garage, which smelled of wet concrete from David’s hosing, the engineer held Kitty.

  “What?” she said, still turned away and not quite managing a look back at him.

  “I want to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “Or rather ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to come with us.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, I want you to marry me.”

  “In the next thirty minutes?”

  “Look. Jamie wants to go and I think we ought to go with him.”

  “Why does he want to go?” She was peevish still, but there was a settling under her peevishness. Though one foot was still out of the car and her books cradled in her arm, she had settled back half a millimeter.

  “We can be married in Louisiana tomorrow.”

  “Now I have heard it all. I don’t mind saying that I have heard it all.”

  “Put your book down.”

  “What?”

  “Give me your book.”

  “What for?”

  But she gave it to him and he threw it into the back seat and took hold of her while the warm Lincoln ticked away in the resounding garage. Oh, damnable straight upstanding Lincoln seat. He was almost beside himself with tenderness at the eight o’clock splendor of her. “I’m in love,” he said, kissing her and taking hold of the warm pad back of her knee, which he loved best of all when she was leading cheers. But the angles were bad and contrived against him.

  “Good God,” cried Kitty, breaking free. “What in the world has happened to you and Jamie this morning! You’re crazy!”

  “Come here and let me hold you tight.”

  “Hold me tight, my foot.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What question?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Jeezum,” she said in a new expression of hers, something she got from the Chi O’s. And retrieving her world anthology from the back seat, she left him alone in the garage.

  10.

  Jamie became cheerful and red-cheeked as they fitted out the Trav-L-Aire. While the engineer set about laying in his usual grits and buttermilk and slab bacon and filling the tank with the sweet artesian water of the valley against the day of the evil alkali water of the desert, Jamie staked out the upper forward bunk as his private domain. It was a broad bed lying athwart the trim ship, with a fine view forward over the top of the cab. There was a shelf for his radio, a recessed reading light something like the old Pullman upper berth. Jamie hit on the idea of replacing the mattress with a cot pad which not only gave him the narrow hard corner he wanted but left a gutter just wide enough to hold his books.

  “Let’s take plenty of fresh milk with us,” said Jamie.

  “O.K.”

  “I’ve drunk a lot of milk lately. I’ve gained three pounds.”

  “Good.”

  Jamie stretched out on the hard bed and watched the engineer store away the staples Lugurtha had given him from the kitchen. “You know I truly believe that if I could live a simple life, I could actually conserve my energy and therefore gain strength. I honestly think it’s a question of living simply and conserving your energy. I’ll live right here, get up, go to class, come back, get up, eat, come back, etcetera. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes.” To tell the truth, it didn’t seem unreasonable.

  “Are you really going to marry Kitty?”

  “I asked her. But if I do and she does come along, it will be just the same for you. These are your quarters if we are married, yours and mine if we’re not.”

  “What if she won’t, ah—go? Will you still come?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “O.K.,” said Jamie and began to arrange his books in alphabetical order. “Where do you keep your telescope?”

  “Here.”

  “Oh yes. I remember. Look. I’m bringing my Freylinghausen star charts along. I understand the atmosphere is a great deal clearer in New Mexico.”

  “That’s right. Now, Jamie, I think you’d better go find your parents. It is not enough for you to tell me that you have their permission. They must tell me too.”

  “O.K.”

  “We’ll drive till we get tired and start out again when we feel like it.”

  11.

  It turned out to be a morning for dealing with practical matters. Two letters awaited him on the refectory table in the castle hall. He never received mail from anywhere. They had been written more than two weeks earlier and addressed to the Y.M.C.A. in New York, forwarded to General Delivery in Williamsburg and thence to the Vaughts’ home address. Both had to do with money. One was from his Uncle Fannin, who lived in Shut Off, Louisiana. His uncle wrote to remind him that although the “place” had been sold many years ago, certain mineral rights had been retained, and that he had recently received a lease offer from Superior Oil Company of California. The rights, as he must know, were jointly owned by the two surviving male Barretts. Would he, the younger, signify his intention in this matter? He, the elder, would as soon accept the offer. The share of each would come to $8,300. The latter was written in neat pencil script on ruled paper which had been torn from a pad.

  The other letter had also to do with money. The First National Bank of Ithaca wished to advise him of the existence of a savings account in his name, opened for him by his father in the year 1939. What with the compounding of interest, his balance now stood at $1,715.60. The occasion of this notice was t
he present reorganization of the bank. He pondered—1939. That was the year of his birth.

  Jamie was delayed. His clothes still lay on the bed in the garage apartment. After waiting for him a good forty minutes, the engineer returned to the house. Lugurtha was making beaten biscuits for the football picnic tomorrow. On the marble slab sifted with flour, she rolled out a soft mitt of dough. Kitty met him in the pantry, in a secret glee, and hustled him into the “little” pantry, a dark cold closet where potatoes and onions were stored in bins. He peered at her.

  “My darling,” she whispered, giving him a passionate kiss and making herself free of him in an entirely new way, all joyous legs and arms. He felt a vague unease. “Guess what?”

  “What?” Through two doorways he could see Lugurtha handle the dough up into the air, fingers dancing under it, giving way, yet keeping it up, setting gravity at nought.

  “Jamie has decided not to go until after Christmas.”

  “Why?”

  “Then he will have his semester credits and can transfer without losing a month’s work.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the sun parlor. Darling, don’t you see what this means?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “What’s the matter?” Swaying, her hands clasped in the small of his back in a new conjugal way, like a French girl saying farewell to her poilu, she squeezed him close and leaned away from him.

  “I am afraid he might be doing it for me. Us.”

  “He wants to!”

  “I’m afraid you talked him into it.”

  “It was his idea!”

  “Who talked to him?”

  Her eyes sparkled triumphantly. “Rita!”

  “Rita?” He pondered. “Did Rita know that you and I might be leaving with Jamie today?”

  “Yes!” Swaying triumphantly.

  “And she talked Jamie into staying?”

  “She didn’t talk him into anything. It was his idea. In fact, he wants more time to plan the trip.” Her tongue hollowed out her cheek and made a roguish joke. “What a nut! Imagine the three of us wandering around Arkansas in the middle of the winter like a bunch of Okies.” She shook her head at him fondly, wifely. “I’ve got news for you, you big dope.”

  “Eh?”

  “You’re among friends here, you know.”

  “Yes.” What he could not tell her was: if I can marry, then you can travel. I can even stand this new horsy conjugal way, this sad poilu love with you, if you will hit the road with me. Jamie is dying, so he needs to go. But I need to go too. Now the pantry’s got us, locked in, with a cold potato love, and you the chatelaine with the keys at your belt. “I’d better go see Jamie.”

  “He’ll tell you. What’s the matter?” Her fingers touched his sweating forehead.

  “I’m hot.”

  “It’s freezing in here.”

  His eyes were caught in a stare. Lugurtha’s working of the biscuit dough, the quick kneading gathering movement of her hands against the sifted marble, put him in mind of something She sang:

  Up in an airplane

  Smoking her sweet cigarette

  Keeping his hand clasped in hers, Kitty led him to the sun parlor and showed, not him to them but them to him, as if they were trophies, the articles of her proof: Jamie stretched on the sofa with a wet handkerchief across his eyes; Mrs. Vaught waiting, hands outstretched to them: a new Mrs. Vaught, too, a genial little pony of a lady, head to one side, pince-nez flashing quick family love-flashes, Rita in a wide stance, back to the coal fire. Mrs. Vaught gave him a quick press of her hand and a kiss, a dismaying thing in itself. She said nothing, but there was an easement in the air, the tender settled sense of larger occasions. The sun parlor itself was an unused ceremonial sort of place. He had only been inside it once before, when Mr. Vaught showed him his old Philco, a tall console glistening with O-Cedar. It had a tilted sounding board and it still worked. Mr. Vaught turned it on and presently the tubes heated up and put out regular 1932 static and the smell of hot speaker-silk such as used to attend the broadcasts of Ben Bernie and Ruth Etting and the Chase & Sanborn hour.

  The cold wind pressed against the old-style double-hung windows, leaked through and set dust devils whirling along the tile under the wicker. There were lacquered Chinese boxes and miniature chests of drawers, a mahjong set, and a large gonglike table; the brass coalbox was stamped with a scene of jolly Dutch burghers. The coal grate, which had not been used, gave off a smell of burnt varnish. In one corner stood a stork five feet tall with a hollow eye and a beak which cut off the ends of cigars.

  Mrs. Vaught twined her arm in his and, rocking slightly, held the two of them by the fire. “Did I tell you that I knew your mother very well one summer?”

  “No’m.”

  “It was at the old Tate Springs Hotel. Lucy Hunicutt was the prettiest little thing I have ever seen—all dark hair and big violet eyes. And beaus! They swarmed around her like flies. She was a demon tennis player and wore a little cap like Helen Wills. In fact, everyone called her ‘Little Miss Poker Face.’ But there was one boy who was hopelessly in love with her—Boylston Fisk from Chattanooga (Boylston is now chairman of the board of Youngstown and Reading)—and he was the handsomest man I ever saw. But he could never dance more than three steps with her before somebody would break. So she told him if he could ever find out the name of her favorite piece she would dance it with him. Well, somehow he did. It was ‘Violets.’ And don’t you know, he asked the orchestra to play it, not during the dance but while everyone was still at dinner. And he came across the room to her table with every eye on him and bowed and said: Miss Hunicutt, I believe this is our dance. It was like a dare, don’t you see, but she got up! And they danced the whole piece out on the floor by themselves. I swear it was the most romantic thing I ever saw in my life!”

  It was as if the memory of this gentler age had dispensed Mrs. Vaught from the terrible quarrels of the present. She softened. His radar sensed it without quite defining it: the connection between the past time and the present insane quarrel over fluoridation. For him it was the other way around! It was the olden time with its sweetness and its great occasions which struck a dread to his heart! It was past fathoming.

  Jamie lay with the handkerchief across his eyes and said nothing. When Mrs. Vaught let him go, the engineer went over and sat on the sofa beside him.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you mean what happened?” said Jamie irritably.

  “I thought we were leaving.”

  “I don’t mind waiting a while. After all, what’s the big hurry?”

  “But it was not your idea, the postponement.”

  “Sure it was!”

  “I’m packed and ready to go.”

  “I know you are.”

  “If you want to go, all you have to do is to get up and we’ll leave. And I think Kitty will go with us. But even if she doesn’t, I’m ready.”

  “I know you are.” Jamie looked at him curiously. The engineer blushed.

  “If you are staying on my account, then I don’t want it. I’d truly rather leave. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I am putting you on your honor to say whether it is on my account or anyone’s account that you are staying. If it is, then let’s go.”

  Jamie took away the wet handkerchief and wiped his mouth but did not reply. As the engineer waited, the cold air seeped into his shoes. The jaybirds called in the ragged garden outside. Above the Philco hung a great gloomy etching of Rheims cathedral depicting 1901 tourists with parasols and wide hats and bustles strolling about its portal. The three women in the parlor, he suddenly became aware, had fallen silent. Turning his head a degree, he saw that they were watching the two of them. But when he arose, Kitty and her mother had put their heads together and were talking in the most animated way, Mrs. Vaught counting off items on her fingers as if she were compiling a list of some sort. Jamie put the handkerchief across his eyes.

  Rita
still stood in front of the fire, feet wide apart, hands locked behind her. She watched ironically as the shivering engineer came up to get warm.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You and Jamie don’t seem to be very happy about things.”

  “Jamie told me this morning he wanted to take a trip out west—and leave immediately. I told him I would. Now I’m afraid he’s delaying the trip on my account. Don’t you think the trip would be a good idea?” He watched her closely.

  She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. How could a delay of a few weeks matter one way or another? Perhaps it would be better to wait at least until everyone knows what he and she really wants to do. Right now I can’t help but detect a certain precipitousness in the air. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, once decisions are made, to live with them for a while, to see if perhaps they can be lived with.”

  As he watched, she set her jaw askew, made her eyes fine, and moved her chin to and fro in the web of her thumb. It was a gesture that reminded him strangely of his own father. Suddenly a thrill of recognition and of a nameless sweet horribleness ran like electricity down his spine and out along the nerves between his ribs. She was daring him. Very well, said the fine-eyed expression and the quirky (yes, legal) eyebrow. Let us see what we shall see. Perhaps I know something about you, you don’t know. Let us see if you can do what you say you want to do, stay here and get married in the regular woman’s way of getting married, marry a wife and live a life. Let us see. I dare you.

  But was he being flattered or condemned? Was she saying you know better than to stay here or you don’t have what it takes to stay? He cocked an eye at her and opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment Kitty plucked at his sleeve. “Let’s go, Tiger.”

  “What?”

  “I have a couple of calls to make. You want to come along?”

  “Sure.”

  There had occurred between the people in the room, in the very air itself, a falling upward of things and into queer new place, like the patterns of a kaleidoscope. But it was his own Kitty who had been most mysteriously transformed. Her cheek was flushed and she swung her shoulders in her school blouse like a secretary sitting between three desks. She bustled. No longer was she the solitary girl on the park bench, as inward and watchful as he, who might wander with him through old green Louisiana, perch on the back step of the camper of an evening with the same shared sense of singularity of time and the excellence of place. No, she was Miss Katherine Gibbs Vaught and the next thing he knew she’d have her picture in the Commercial Appeal.