Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

  “What will I say?”

  “Say ‘Jerry, I’d like to borrow one of your old creepers.’”

  “The word is creeper.”

  “Yes. And there are two other things you’re going to need.”

  “What?”

  “You are probably going to have to take the stove apart to move it and to get it through the door of the greenhouse. You’re going to need two ten-inch crescent wrenches and a can of WD-40 to loosen the rusty bolts.”

  “Give me the words.” She took out pad and pencil. He wrote: Creeper. Ten-inch crescent wrench. WD-40.

  “Good.”

  “I found the word ‘block’ in the dictionary in the library under the word ‘pulley.’ So I knew what to ask for in the hardware store.”

  “I see.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’d be glad to lend you—”

  “No thank you.”

  After the man left, she sat in the sun under the poplar. Though the air was still, one gold leaf shook violently. The bark had a bitter smell.

  4

  In the dim light and damp bitter-bark smell of the pittosporum there was the sound just above her head of a bird on the feeding tray. It was scratching seed with its feet like a chicken. The only way she could get comfortable sitting on the not quite horizontal branch was to slump against the trunk.

  Through the open casement of Dr. Duk’s office came her father’s voice, faint then louder, going away then coming back. He was pacing up and down, shirt-sleeved, hands on hips, getting the show on the road. Dr. Duk would be sitting four feet from her, safer now behind his desk and swiveled around in his chair, keeping one eye on the feeding station and one hand near the tripoded Nikon in case a painted bunting should show up. Did buntings kick seed around like chickens?

  Her mother? She must be sitting in the patient’s chair across the desk, bolt upright, one little finger in her mouth, eyes lidded and ironic as she watched her husband.

  —might disagree on the particulars, Doc, said her father, coming close now. But one thing we can sure as hell agree on and that’s Allison’s well-being. It’s her happiness and health which comes first, now and always, right?

  Right on, said Dr. Duk.

  (No, dumb Docky Duck. Not right on. Like Kelso says, when you try to sound like something, you don’t sound like nothing.)

  Get to the point, Tiger, said her mother dryly. A muted clunk, heavy gold striking gold, and she knew without seeing that her mother pursed one corner of her mouth and stuck her fist into her waist, jangling her bracelets.

  Not point, said her father. Points. Okay.

  Point one: We have the obligation to act in Allison’s best interests, right? You, Dr. Duk, in her medical interests, we, Katherine and I, in all her other interests, home, family, finances, future, and so forth.

  Yes? said Dr. Duk, perking up. He did after all have an ear for such things and knew when something was up. At this moment he was looking at her father and thinking, as Kelso would say: What’s this dude up to, dropping by on his way to a party with all these plans for Allison when he hasn’t showed up twice in the past year? And what are these two all steamed up about with their competing plans, and what’s coming up now, the real plan? What’s this about finances? Have they suddenly gotten rich?

  Point number two: As Allison’s parents we are also her guardians, right? I mean especially since Allison is hardly competent to manage her own affairs.

  Well—

  Would you believe, Doc, that in this state under a new law there is a difference between a person being mentally incompetent and legally incompetent? That even a person committed to a mental institution can inherit property?

  Would I believe, you ask. Yes, I think I—

  Would you believe this, Doc?—and this is the bottom line, folks—that even in such a case the parents do not automatically qualify as guardians?

  Well yes, as a matter of fact—

  I mean, what the hell is happening to the American family? Her father’s voice swept around the room like a searchlight. You know what I would do with people like Earl Warren?

  You don’t have to. Earl Warren’s dead, said her mother wearily. Why don’t you get to the point, Tiger?

  Would you believe, Doc, that in order for us to be Allison’s legal guardians, we have to petition the court and that it is up to the judge, any damn local redneck judge, to decide?

  Well—

  (What’s up, Doc? Your ears are standing straight up, aren’t they?)

  That’s where you come in, Alistair, said her mother crisply, clinking and gathering herself. I’m quite sure you know the new laws better than we do. Namely, that a legal procedure is involved and that your testimony as to Allison’s legal competence will be crucial. I mean, my stars (now her eyes would be going up to the ceiling), you could testify in good conscience to my legal competence.

  Of course. Quite. Dr. Duk’s voice was going down. No doubt he was rolling his unlit Marlboro cigarette. The little Dead Sea scroll was still undecipherable, but there was something here!

  The only thing I don’t quite see, can’t find the handle of, said Dr. Duk carefully, is why all of a sudden the issue becomes important at this point in time.

  (This point in time. Oh, Docky, now we’re Nixon. The question is, who are you, Docky, and what are you doing here at this point in time?)

  She stopped listening and let her weight slump her hard against the trunk. She closed her eyes and ears to the words. The voices rose and fell, mounted against each other, glanced off, went away, came back, joined. It was like being a child and listening from the top of the stairs. Voices can be understood without words. Her father’s voice now had the same ragging importunate tone she heard from the landing when he was winning at poker. Dr. Duk’s was tentative, premonitory—like a prospector whose Geiger counter begins to click: hold on, what’s this? what have we here? Her mother’s voice was foot-wagging, eyes going around, exclamatory, impatient: oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s get this over with!

  She started listening again when after a silence her father’s voice changed, fell into a quiet storytelling cadence. Such-and-such happened. So-and-so did it. Everyone listens when someone tells the news of a happening. Something had happened, and he was telling it as much to himself as to them, as if only in the telling, the saying out loud, could he believe it.

  She pricked up her ears. They were talking about her.

  —and would you believe, Doc, that the old lady, Aunt Sally, was not even her aunt? She was her real aunt’s friend, Aunt Grace. The two of them had lived together for thirty years, fought like cats and dogs most of the time. They used to come over every Sunday for dinner, so Allie naturally called Miss Sally Aunt Sally. Sure, we knew Miss Sally was fond of Allie ever since Allie was a little girl—for one thing Allie was the only one who would listen to her because the old lady could talk the ears off a jackass and frankly I couldn’t stand it more than a few minutes—

  (That was because I thought I was supposed to and did not know how not to listen or what would happen to a person if one got up and went away.)

  —and it was a good two weeks after she died that Ludean, the old nigger maid the two of them had had for twenty years, brought it over to me, this old metal Crailo candy box with a piece of ruled paper inside and about three lines in Miss Sally’s handwriting—the paper wrinkled from having been balled up once just before being thrown away, because Ludean was cleaning up Miss Sally’s room and you know how niggers like those old candy boxes to keep things in—

  (Now how in the world would Docky know anything about niggers and Crailo candy boxes?)

  —I still don’t know how Ludean had sense enough to save it but there it was, carefully uncrumpled and smoothed out, saying: Being of sound mind I hereby leave all my worldly goods to my dear little friend, Allison Hunnicutt Huger. What had happened of course was that she and Grace had had a fight and she had changed her will, so Grace
should have gotten it but we’ll take care of Grace—so there it is, a perfectly good holographic will dated last month and I’m mainly thinking that it’s funny because it will screw up her lawyer who is sitting there with probably six previous wills in his safe—you know what I would do with lawyers, don’t you?

  Yes, we know, Tiger, said her mother. We have to leave in ten minutes.

  So I’m thinking mainly it’s funny and certainly no big deal since her worldly goods consist of only two items she was always joking about: her grandfather’s poor little old dirt farm on the side of a mountain which she used to say was so steep the mule had to grow longer legs on one side to plow it, and the other, a sandspit of an island off Georgia which had two pine trees and whose only value was the treasure Captain Kidd was supposed to have buried and nobody had ever found.

  (Yes, and that’s one reason I’d listen to her—I’d see myself on the island with a map, climbing up one tree and sighting through the other. It wasn’t even the treasure I liked but the island and the idea of something being hidden there and finding it through a geometry of pine trees.)

  So all this time she had been paying her taxes and talking about her dirt farm and her island and nobody had been listening but Allie. How about that?

  Get to the point, Walter. I’m leaving, said her mother.

  Okay. The point is, to make a long story short, that her poor little old dirt farm is eight hundred acres next to the Linwood golf course and her sandpit of an island is over two thousand acres, more of a wilderness than Cumberland which you’ve heard of, and that the Arabs have already offered two mill one for it. That’s getting to the point, isn’t it.

  Two mill one? said Dr. Duk.

  Two million one hundred thousand dollars, Doctor.

  (How about that, Doc?)

  Silence. Sounds only of fingers drumming on wood—Dr. Duk’s on his desk?—and bird scratching feed—painted bunting? Docky, you’ve plumb forgot the birds, haven’t you?

  You said get to the point, didn’t you, Mrs. Huger? said Dr.Duk in a new voice, a deeper richer crisper voice. Well, Allison is the point, isn’t she? Clearly you have much to think about but equally clearly we can agree on one thing, can’t we? That no matter which of your plans seems more feasible when Allison is well enough to leave here—assuming she is well enough but as I don’t have to tell you, Dr. Huger, there is no such thing as a guarantee in either dentistry or psychiatry, is there? But we can agree that no matter what comes to pass, we will bear any burden, pay any price, to do what is best for Allison. Right?

  (Jesus, Docky, first Nixon, now Kennedy?)

  You got it, Doc. That is certainly true of us. I gather you have the same concern for Allison.

  You better believe it.

  (Not bad, Doc. You almost got it right.)

  Okay, said her father. Now have we got our ducks in a row?

  Ducks? said Dr. Duk suspiciously. He knew people called him Dr. Duck.

  One, you do what is right for Allie medically. Go ahead with your treatment. Two, meanwhile we’ll all three do what is right for Allison legally. Three, Katherine and I will come up with a long-term plan, maybe a place for Allie in Linwood, maybe a place at home, maybe we’ll take over your Founder’s Cottage for family sessions or whatever—is the place for sale, by the way? Anyhow, we’ll see—

  Again the meaning of the words went away and there was only the feint and parry of the voices, and then the goodbye sound of words swerving together before going away. Chairs scraped. They were on their feet.

  There was not much time, not more than two or three minutes. That was enough, because she knew what she wanted to do.

  No, there was plenty of time, as it turned out. They were still talking in the office when she reached the parlor, the tone of their voices rising but not quite reaching the penultimate breakpoint of goodbye. She figured she had another thirty seconds. And she did, time enough to reach her father’s pink-crinkly jacket still carefully draped over the back of her wooden chair, from it take out the blue-leather passport-size wallet she knew he used when he wore a jacket and from it four of the one-hundred-dollar bills she knew he took on a trip (You know what I would do with American Express?), and was out and down the hall and halfway up the stairs so quickly and yet so silently that she could hear their voices as the inner door of the office opened.

  In her bathroom she folded the bills lengthwise once and put them under the loose leather lining in one of her slippers. Then she lay on her bed and waited for her parents to come tell her goodbye.

  After they left she sat at her window, head wedged in the corner of her wingback chair, took out her notebook, and began to write.

  V

  NOW THAT HE WAS making his weekly visit to the nursing home his wife’s money had built, he realized that he was doing exactly the same things he did when she was alive, taking the same route through the gleaming halls, even visiting the same patients. The only difference was that instead of pushing Marion ahead of him in her wheelchair, he had Jack Curl the chaplain in tow.

  But something was different. Ordinarily Jack Curl would have distracted him. All his life he had waited on people, tuned in on them, attended them. Now for some reason it didn’t matter.

  As Jack Curl talked, Will Barrett stood in the hall moving his head a little to make the bright sunlight race like quicksilver around the beveled glass of the front door. He seemed to remember halls, the hall of the hospital where his father stayed in Georgia, the hall of the hospital where Jamie died in Santa Fe. How odd, he thought smiling to himself, that then I didn’t know what to do with myself and now I do. The only time I knew what to do was when something bad happened to somebody. Disaster gave me leave to act. Between times I didn’t know what to do. Now I know.

  Now he remembered that after he had gone to find the Negro guide and sent him for the sheriff, he had returned to his father lying in the pin-oak swamp. He sat down beside him to wait. The man’s eyes opened. His father did not speak but in his eyes there were both sorrow and certitude. Now you know, the eyes said. I’m sorry. I was trying to tell you something and I didn’t. Now you’ll have to find out for yourself. I’m sorry.

  Very well, he thought. I found out. Now I know what to do.

  “What?” he said. Jack Curl had asked him something.

  “I said what I remember about Marion was the way she not only knew about all the patients but the help too. You were wonderful with her. I’m so glad you’ve continued her wonderful idea of inviting patients to your home. She’d have liked that. This week it’s Mr. Arnold’s turn, isn’t it? Do you remember how she always asked about the janitor’s grandchildren—by name? Now I’m the janitor. She’d have liked that too. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” No. What he remembered was the weight of her, the angle and set of his own body when he levered her out of the Rolls and in one motion around and into the wheelchair.

  A tuft of bronze hair curled through the zipper of the chaplain’s jump suit. Jack Curl’s muscular jaw swelled like a pear under the temples just as his lower body swelled like a pear in the jump suit. Yet he was as light on his feet as a good dancer. He danced around in front of him like a child to catch his attention. Today for some reason it was possible to observe the smallest detail about Jack Curl, for example, the way he was letting his sideburns grow longer by shaving a little below them. The short new hair did not match the long hair of the sideburns. But more than that: he suddenly saw the purpose of the jump suit and Jack Curl’s shambling way of walking and his not quite clean hands and the pliers in his hip pocket and the way he moved his shoulders in the jump suit. Jack Curl was saying: I am more than a clergyman going about doing clerical things. I am also a handyman, a super, something of a tough really. Somebody has to fix the plumbing and wiring. To do God’s work, it is necessary to come off manual work. Like Paul fixing tents.

  He took a good look at Jack Curl.

  How did it happen that now for the first time in his life he could see everyt
hing so clearly? Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he allowed himself to come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself forward from some dark past he could not remember to a future which did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream.

  Is it possible for people to miss their lives in the same way one misses a plane? And how is it that death, the nearness of death, can restore a missed life? Marion knew this. She loved to go to funerals. They went to funerals in Manhattan, Long Island, Utica, and all over the South; funerals of her uncles and aunts and cousins, his uncles and aunts and cousins, kinfolk he’d never seen. Funerals made her solemn and vivacious. The old folk here died off like flies. She attended every funeral and volunteered him as pallbearer. Suddenly he had become pallbearer to friend, kin, and stranger. It became clear why Presidents like to go to funerals. The worse things got for Lyndon Johnson, the more funerals he went to, there he stood grave and silent, dispensed. Like a President, Marion stood in her braces at a hundred gravesides, solemn and exultant.

  Why is it that without death one misses his life? When Marion was dying, he was standing at the window of the hospital room, hands in pockets, gazing down at the bluish-white street light above the empty corner. It was four o’clock in the morning. She spoke to him in a different voice. In the dark her jaundice—she was yellow as a gourd—did not show, but her voice was quavery with fever. “Yes?” he said and came to the bed. She looked at him calmly. Had they looked at each other in years? “I want you to do something,” she said. “All right,” he said. “Keep the house for Leslie.” “All right,” he said. “She is going to need a place,” she said. “She is going to California but she will want to come back here, won’t she?” “Yes,” he said. “Very well. I will.”

  She spoke with the quietness of people after a storm which had drowned out their voices. What struck him was not sadness or remorse or pity but the wonder of it. How can it be? How can it happen that one day you are young, you marry, and then another day you come to yourself and your life has passed like a dream? They looked at each other curiously and wondered how they could have missed each other, lived in the same house all those years and passed in the halls like ghosts.