Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

  The man was walking toward the greenhouse from the glade. His hands were in his pockets. Something in brown paper was tucked under his arm. The sunlight made a glint on a facet of his forehead and his brown hair, which had streaks on it. Was it turning gray or was it burnished and bleached by the sun? Was he gray-haired or a platinum blond? He was not good-looking. His eye sockets were too deep, his eyes too light, his mouth too grim, his skin burned too dark by the sun. Her father always smiled; he never smiled. A shadow like a German saber scar crossed one cheek. Today he was dressed differently. Instead of golf clothes, he wore an ordinary white shirt and ordinary pants. No, not ordinary. The shirt was tailored and had a soft rolled buttoned-down collar and the pants were narrow in the cuff and at least two inches above the dirty tennis shoes. Was he dressed carelessly as her father would dress if he put on shirt and pants on Saturday morning? No, he thought about how he would dress. The way he walked reminded her of the yachtsmen who stopped in Williamsport and strolled about town: not exactly ambling and not striking out, foot coming down heel first, but toed in, left shoulder coming forward with left leg. It was either a Northern walk or a yachting walk.

  Yes, that’s what he was, she thought watching him through the waterfall, a Northern millionaire with his platinum-streaked hair growing carelessly-carefully under and over the soft collar, who would spend a hundred dollars for corduroy pants so they would look uncreased and too small but too small in the right way not the wrong way like her father’s khakis, which made his stomach look too big, or Dr. Duk’s double knits, which were too tight in the crotch.

  Just as before, his head was turned slightly—was he listening for her in the greenhouse?—so that he faced her but did not see her though she was less than twenty feet away. Under the jut of his brow, his eyes were cast into deep shadow but as she watched they seemed to open and close, now shut and dark, now open and pale, like a trick picture of Jesus. Yes, it was a trick of light or of her own retina. She shut her eyes. The image of him went dark then bright with eye sockets like a skull.

  There at her door he stood in the same odd and absolute stillness, the same way she had seen him standing in the glade. Ha, what to do at a greenhouse door clearly full of nothing but plants? ring a doorbell? knock on glass? Yes, because he was lifting a hand to the door.

  Perhaps she had opened her mouth to say something or perhaps she had moved, but before she could do anything else and just as the man’s hand touched the house, the dog charged. The man had time to turn, it seemed to her slowly, the sunlight striking a different plane of his forehead, and held out his hand palm down to the dog. Too slowly it seemed to her: was this too part of his studied Northern nonchalance? No, because even now his eyes could not or would not focus on the dog. He didn’t care whether the dog bit him or not!

  It was not courage, not even inattention but rather, she saw, a kind of indifference yet a curiosity with it. Would the dog attack? Would tooth enter flesh? If it did, would it matter?

  The hand was held out like a piece of meat proffered by the man. It was easy to imagine him examining the wound as if it belonged to someone else.

  She hollering something, the bristle-backed dog charging flat out, past all snarling, and even as he took the hand in his mouth in the same instant fetched up stiff-legged, shoulders jutting up one then the other like a reined-in horse, sliding to a sit, pushed the hand out of his mouth with his tongue and cocked a yellow tufted eyebrow around but not quite to her. Embarrassed again.

  They watched as the dog settled his mouth and looked away. The man came over to the rock.

  “Did he stop because of my saying or because of your not saying?” asked the girl.

  “I’m not sure. Probably because of your saying. Would you give me a drink of water. I’ve had a long walk.”

  It was sweat, she saw, that made his hair and forehead shine.

  He followed her into the greenhouse. Without raising his head, he looked around, his lightish eyes moving in deep sockets. “It still smells like a greenhouse. Once I was in Cincinnati. I liked the smell of a greenhouse there so much I worked in it for six months.”

  “Doing which and how and was it for consideration? How much?” she asked, eyes widening with interest. “Would you—” She stopped. Would he what?

  “Work for you?” he said. “How much do you pay?”

  “Never mind.” She gave him the Clorox bottle. He drank a long time.

  “Thank you. Is this where you have to get your water?”

  “Yes. How thirsty. It’s been a long time.”

  “Since what? Since seeing anybody thirsty?”

  “Something—something is up front but not all the way.”

  “You mean you’re having difficulty remembering things and that you almost remembered something?”

  “Yes, that’s—”

  “I had that once. In my case it was a question of not wanting to remember. In fact, I remembered something here in this spot that I hadn’t thought of for years.”

  “Was it for a gladness or the same old Sunday coming down?”

  “No, it wasn’t the same old Sunday coming down. I can’t say it was a happy memory but I was glad I remembered. I feel much better. You will too. Thank you for the water.”

  “You are—Are you?”

  “I brought you something.”

  “What?” She noticed the brown bag. “Oh, I don’t need. I am fine though I was in the hospital for—it is the time I can’t remember.”

  “I know.”

  “I was somewhat suspended above me but I am getting down to me.”

  “Good.”

  She was about to say something but she saw in his eyes that he had drifted away.

  They stood in silence. It was not for her like a silence with another person, a silence in which something horrid takes root and grows. What if nobody says anything, what then? Sometimes she thought she had gone crazy rather than have to talk to people. Which was worse, their talk or their silences? Perhaps there was no unease with him because he managed to be both there and not there as one required. Is it possible to stand next to a stranger at a bus stop and know that he is a friend? Was he someone she had known well and forgotten?

  “Are you—?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you my—?”

  “Am I your what?”

  For a moment she wondered if she had considered saying something crazy like “Are you my lover?” Or “Are you my father?”

  She sighed. “You said the bag.”

  “What? Oh yes. I brought this for you.” He gave her the bag.

  She opened it. “Avocados? I think. And—what? A little square can of—” She read: “—Plagniol.”

  He watched her.

  “What a consideration! But more than a consideration. The communication is climbing to the exchange level and above. And the Plagna is not bologna.”

  Gazing at her, he almost smiled. In her odd words he seemed to hear echoes of other voices in other years. One hundred years ago Judge Kemp might have said on this very spot: “How considerate of you!” with the same exclamatory lilt. But there was another voice, something new and not quite formed. Did she mean that his consideration (being considerate) was more than just a consideration (a small amount), more than exchange (market value of the Plagniol), which was after all baloney?

  “I think you will like that olive oil. It is very good. Some friends brought the avocados from California. They’re the best kind, not hard and green, but a little soft and brown. They’re very good for you. You’re too thin. Fill a half with olive oil.”

  The avocados were as big as coconuts. “I’ll plant the pits in the greenhouse,” she said. “No tricks with toothpicks.”

  “Right. Plant them in soil.”

  Later she tried to decide why she felt so free to talk or not talk with him. Was it because of her, that in her new life she could have gotten along with anybody? Was she just lonely? Or was it a certain tentativeness in him that waited on he
r, like the dog, even now and then cocking an eye in her direction? Or could it be a Northern awkwardness in him that brought out her Southern social graces because she was ha ha her mother’s daughter after all?

  Her fingers felt the rough pebbled texture of the avocados. “Why are they here?”

  “Why did I bring them? I thought you might like them. For another thing—”

  “Yes?”

  “They are the most nourishing of all vegetables.”

  “What is entailed with you?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “You seem somewhat pale and in travail. Is the abomination at home or in the hemispheres?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe both. You mean my brain. I don’t feel very well, to tell the truth.”

  Later he irritated her and she got rid of him. He was standing by while she told him what she meant to do with the stove. There it was hanging from a rope suspended between two chimneys. It looked like a small iron house ripped from its foundations, pipes and connections dangling. She explained.

  “I bought the thing which is called a block-and-tackle. I tied the ropes on the chimneys which have shoulders like steps.” Listen to me talking good, she thought. Perhaps in order to talk all you need to do is do something, then explain what you have done. “Tomorrow the stove will go from here to there.”

  He stood, hands in pockets, looking up at the stove from under his eyebrows as if it had descended from another world.

  “How?” he asked.

  She did not reply.

  “What—?” he began and stopped.

  He is in some kind of distress, she thought.

  After a moment he said: “You got that thing up there all by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you going to get it over there?”

  “It’s downhill.”

  “I know, but—” He stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “Ah, why do you want it over there?” He sounded as if he had a hundred questions and picked this one at random.

  “To keep warm.”

  “You’re going to put it in the greenhouse?”

  “Yes. What type of stove do you call it?”

  “It is a cook stove.”

  “Does it burn wood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it both keep me warm and cook?”

  “Yes. It also has a water tank.”

  “Then it will have hot water?”

  “If it gets cold water and then you feed it wood.”

  She clapped her hands without smiling. “The climb is underway.”

  “Yes, right. The climb may be underway, but”—he turned toward her, shoulder turning with his head, but did not quite meet her eye—“you see, it has pipes which you connect with a plumbing system. And I don’t believe—”

  “I can bring water down from the rock.”

  “Well, yes, you could if—”

  “Do you have my dossier?”

  “Your what? Oh, you mean how do I know about you?”

  “You look like you know about me.”

  “I know something about you.”

  Her eyes tell. Forehead muscles pushed her eyebrows down into a shelf. Then he had come from her parents.

  “Then the word came from the bloard.”

  “Bloard?” He didn’t know what she meant. From the board? the broad? blood? blood kin? bloody broad? All these?

  What she meant was board and bored, meeting of her father’s board which was boring because it bored into you.

  “Look. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  “No no. Naw.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m going to get a golf cart from the club and a trailer and a couple of men and we’ll put the stove where you want it.”

  “Oh no.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because there I will be with people having put the stove where I want it. And that’s the old home fix-up which is being in a fix. Then what? The helping is not helping me.”

  “I see.” After a while he said: “You mean you would rather do it yourself.”

  “The arrangement is the derangement. When the arrangement is arranged, then you know what the ensuement is.”

  “No, what is the ensuement?”

  “The ensuement is: then I am with the arrangement.”

  “Yes, I see that. But does that also mean that you can’t accept anything from anybody?”

  She tightened her arms around the brown bag. “The contents are intense and also tense.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because of the thanks. After thanks come blanks.”

  “Not necessarily. The avocados are yours. You don’t owe me any thanks. But if you did thank me, it wouldn’t take anything away from the avocados. They wouldn’t become blank. They’re solid.”

  “That is not the climbing question.”

  “What is the climbing question?”

  “When are you going to leave?”

  “Oh.”

  “You see.”

  “What?”

  “The feelings are more than revealing.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. Yes, you may have hurt my feelings a little, but maybe not as badly as you think. At any rate, it is not an awful thing. I’ll leave so you can enjoy the avocados.”

  “It’s not you.”

  “You mean it’s not that you dislike me but you don’t know how to get rid of me and that makes you nervous. What if I don’t leave? Yes, it’s a problem sometimes. I developed an art of moving people out of my office. It was a matter of placement of chairs and of getting up and moving in such a way that the other person moves in front of you and finds himself at the door without knowing how he got there.”

  “Le cool is coming soon,” she said, gazing around.

  “Le cool? Yes, fall is upon us.”

  “Le dad is no better than le doc and what are you in le plan?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But I wasn’t trying to be your father or your doctor.”

  “Understanding can also be a demand. De man. Le mans.”

  “Yes. I guess you are fed up with people trying to understand you. And I guess I was sounding like—who? De man. What man is that, I wonder. I’m making you nervous. I’ll be going.”

  “Yes, I have to go also.” She hugged the bag. “They’re mine when you leave.”

  “They’re yours now.”

  “But I cannot inspect them with your inspection.”

  “I understand. Very well, I’ll leave so you can inspect them.”

  “Okay then.”

  She waited. Why didn’t he leave? It is difficult to talk to people, to stand around wondering what to say and what to do with your eyes. Maybe it is easier to be crazy than to put up with people’s pauses. Suppose he didn’t leave.

  He left. Whew. She began to think of topics of conversation in case he should come again.

  Later the dog walked toward the chestnut fall, sat, and cocked his head.

  The man was getting up from a log where he had been sitting (watching her?). He began to walk and fell down. She hurried to help him but he was up quickly, brushing himself off.

  “What happened?” She took his arm and was thinking not so much about him but about herself, the sudden weakness at the pit of her stomach when he fell, her heart still racing. What happened to me? she meant.

  “I fell down.”

  “I know that. But why?”

  “I don’t know. Lately I tend to fall down.”

  “That’s all right I tend to pick things up. I’m a hoister.”

  “We’d make a twosome.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “All right.”

  Was that the world’s secret then, that you have to joke all the time? Is that how you live?

  The man was sitting on a polished chestnut log, one arm stretched over his knee, hand open. He seemed to be looking at the barbed-wire fence. Now he stood and putting his hands in his pockets bent over them as if he were col
d.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I—” He looked at his watch. His brown smooth hand still had tooth marks from the dog. She could not take her eyes from his hand.

  “I love—” she began.

  “You love what?”

  She loved his hand.

  “Is it time and if it is, time for what?” she asked.

  “Time? Yes.” He was gazing at the fence in an absent staring way. He broke away, blinked. “Yes. I have to be somewhere at five-thirty.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I know. This is your home.”

  “Where is your home?”

  “Over there.” He nodded toward the one-eyed mountain.

  “You own a home on the mountain?”

  “I own the mountain.”

  “Okay. Then go home.”

  “Right.” They were both startled by her command. He left.

  She watched as he stepped through the fence, paused, then went quickly through. Now, standing and facing her from the golf links, he seemed to feel freer, as if the fence allowed a neighborliness.

  “Perhaps you would not mind a suggestion,” he said.

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Do you know what a creeper is?”

  “Virginia creeper?”

  “No no.” If he could have smiled, she thought, he would have smiled. “No, it’s a little platform on wheels which mechanics lie on when they work under cars.”

  “I know it but not the word.”

  “You have some planks, but you’re going to need a creeper to get the stove down the hill.”

  “Thanks for the word.”

  He noticed that she treated the gift of the word exactly like the avocados. She’d have to think about it after he left.

  As she listened she noticed he was white around the eyes. Did he usually wear sunglasses? His eyes, his face reminded her of something, what? yes, of the face and white eyes of combat soldiers she had seen a long time ago in Life magazine. The eyes of the soldiers could not or would not bring themselves to focus.

  Why could she remember perfectly an old Life magazine but could not quite remember why she had decided to come here?

  “Go to Washau Motors in town,” the man said. “They sell Fords. I own it. But you won’t have to mention my name. So I am not doing you a favor. Ask for Jerry, the parts man. Through an error, probably Jerry’s, we have on hand one hundred creepers. Jerry is why I’m not making money. He would be glad to lend or give you an old one.”