Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

Here are the names of death, which shall not prevail over me because I know the names.

  Death in the guise of love shall not prevail over me. You, old father old mole, loved me but loved death better and in the name of love sought death for both of us. You only kissed me once and it was the kiss of death. True, death is a way out of a life-which-is-a-living-death. War and shooting is better than such a peace. But what if there is life?

  Everybody has given up. Everybody thinks that there are only two things: war which is a kind of life in death, and peace which is a kind of death in life. But what if there should be a third thing, life?

  Death in the guise of Christianity is not going to prevail over me. If Christ brought life, why do the churches smell of death?

  Death in the guise of old Christendom in Carolina is not going to prevail over me. The old churches are houses of death.

  Death in the form of the new Christendom in Carolina is not going to prevail over me. If the born-again are the twice born, I’m holding out for a third go-round.

  Death in the guise of God and America and the happy life of home and family and friends is not going to prevail over me. America is in fact almost as dead as Europe. It might still be possible to live in America, said the nutty American dancing in place in old Carolina.

  Death in the guise of belief is not going to prevail over me, for believers now believe anything and everything and do not love the truth, are in fact in despair of the truth, and that is death.

  Death in the guise of unbelief is not going to prevail over me, for unbelievers believe nothing, not because truth does not exist but because they have already chosen not to believe, and would not believe, cannot believe, even if the living truth stood before them, and that is death.

  Death in the guise of the new life in California is not going to prevail over me. Marin County and the Cupps are not going to prevail over me. But what if the Cupps and Marin County should prevail? Then the Germans and my father are right and war is better than peace, true death better than the living death. But it will not prevail over me because I know the names of death.

  Death in the form of isms and asms shall not prevail over me, orgasm, enthusiasm, liberalism, conservatism, Communism, Buddhism, Americanism, for an ism is only another way of despairing of the truth.

  Death in the guise of marriage and family and children is not going to prevail over me. What happened to marriage and family that it should have become a travail and a sadness, marriage till death do us part yes but long dead before the parting, home and fireside and kiddies such a travail and a deadliness as to make a man run out into the night with his hands over his head? Show me that Norman Rockwell picture of the American family at Thanksgiving dinner and I’ll show you the first faint outline of the death’s-head.

  God may be good, family and marriage and children and home may be good, grandma and grandpa may act wise, the Thanksgiving table may be groaning with God’s goodness and bounty, all the folks healthy and happy, but something is missing. What is this sadness here? Why do the folks put up with it? The truth seeker does not. Instead of joining hands with the folks and bowing his head in prayer, the truth seeker sits in an empty chair as invisible as Banquo’s ghost, yelling at the top of his voice: Where is it? What is missing ? Where did it go? I won’t have it! I won’t have it! Why this sadness here? Don’t stand for it! Get up! Leave! Let the boat people sit down! Go live in a cave until you’ve found the thief who is robbing you. But at least protest. Stop, thief. What is missing? God? Find him!

  Ross Alexander left his happy home in Beverly Hills, saying: I’m going outside and shoot a duck.

  You gave in to death, old mole, but I will not have it so. It is a matter of knowing and choosing. To know the many names of death is also to know there is life. I choose life. Hee hoo hee heee hooeee. He was shivering and dancing in place, hands in pockets like an Irishman doing a jig. Is it possible that a man in the last half of his life can actually learn something he didn’t know before? Yes! Ha hee hooee.

  Death in the form of death genes shall not prevail over me, for death genes are one thing but it is something else to name the death genes and know them and stand over against them and dare them. I am different from my death genes and therefore not subject to them. My father had the same death genes but he feared them and did not name them and thought he could roar out old Route 66 and stay ahead of them or grab me and be pals or play Brahms and keep them, the death genes, happy, so he fell prey to them.

  Death in none of its guises shall prevail over me, because I know all the names of death.

  Having pronounced this peculiar litany, he hopped into the car, lay down on the back seat, covered himself with the lap robe, stuck his nose in a fragrant crease of leather, and went to sleep.

  This is what is going to happen.

  In the very moment of sinking into a deep sleep he had, not a dream or a flight of fancy, but a swift sure unsurprised presentiment of what lay in store.

  Thirty years earlier the child knew that something was going to happen, and that the something was all he ever wanted or needed to know, and that it only remained for him to wait for it to happen and to settle for nothing less until it did.

  What was the something? Women? War? Or victory in life? Death?

  Thirty years passed. He had women, war, and victory in life.

  But nothing changed. Thirty years later he knew no more than he knew in Dalhart, Texas, squeezing his legs together and looking at girls.

  Yes, but you have just discovered again what you knew all along, that something is going to happen.

  This is what is going to happen. All at once he knew what had happened and what was going to happen.

  He found himself in a certain place. It was a desert place. Weeds grew in the sand. Vines sprouted in the rocks. The place was a real place. Its exact location could be determined within inches by map coordinates, ninety-one degrees so many minutes so many seconds longitude west, thirty-three degrees so many minutes so many seconds latitude north. He had been there forty years earlier. Then the place had not been deserted. It was a spot near a stream which ran through a meadow. The spot was in a springhouse on the stream where crocks of milk and sweet butter used to be stored. D’Lo still liked to keep her own buttermilk there because it was not far from her house, which had no refrigerator, and she could pick it up on the way home. She found him there in the cool darkness watching reflections of light play against the damp masonry. Boy, what you are doing down here? I been looking all over for you, it’s your dinnertime. (He didn’t answer.) Now you come on up and eat with D’Lo. (He didn’t answer.) Don’t you remember how you always used to sit with D’Lo in the kitchen while they ate in the dining room? And when you had your spells, you’d come running in the kitchen and jump up in my lap and put your head right here? Sometimes I’d hold you all day. (No, I don’t remember.) You come on here, boy, and let D’Lo hug you. You po little old white boy. (She hugged him but he didn’t feel anything except that he was being hugged by a big black woman. What’s this about big black loving mammies?) You poor little old boy, you all alone in the world. Your mama dead, your daddy dead, and ain’t nobody left in the house but you and me. (That’s not bad. He thought of the novelty of walking home from school in the afternoons to the big house empty except for D’Lo shuffling around in her flattened-out mules. Strange! But not bad.) Sweet Jesus, what we gon do? (One thing we gon do, D’Lo, is you gon turn me loose.) He stiffened. She was angry. He knew she would be. He already knew enough about people to know what displeased them. He knew how to please people, even black people. He was everybody’s nigger. He was even the niggers’ nigger. (Her lower lip ran out. There came across her face the new peevish black-vs.-white expression—for a second he saw that she wasn’t sure he hadn’t stiffened because of the new white-vs.-black business. She let go.) You poor little old boy, you don’t know nothing. You don’t even know what you need to know. You don’t even know enough to know what you ain’t got. (She wasn’t ang
ry now. He knew she wouldn’t be.) But don’t you worry, honey. You all alone in the world and you gon be alone a long time but the good Lawd got something special in mind for you. (He has?) Sho he has. (How do you know that?) Because he got the whole world in his hand, even a mean little old boy like you. (How do you know that?) Because, bless God, I know. You laughing at me, boy? (No, D’Lo.) You full of devilment but you messing with the wrong one this time. Now you get on up to the kitchen and we gon have us some pork chops and butter beans and then we gon set down on the back porch and listen to the radio. (Well, it beats sitting on the front porch and listening to Brahms.) What you say, boy? (Nothing.)

  Then the spot became part of a country club, the exact patch of grass in the concavity of a kidney-shaped bunker on number-six fairway. For twenty years winter and summer thousands of golf balls, cart tires, spiked shoes crossed the spot.

  After twenty years the country club became a subdivision. The spot was the corner of a lot where a ranch-style house was built for a dentist named Sam Gold. Weeds grew in the fence corner where not even the Yazoo Master mower could reach and covered an iron horseshoe for ten years. Though Sam Gold was a Jew, places meant nothing to him. One place, even Jerusalem, was like any other place. Why did he, Will Barrett, who was not a Jew, miss the Jerusalem he had never had and which meant nothing to Sam Gold, who was a Jew?

  After twenty-five years the subdivision became a shopping center, with a paved parking lot of forty acres. The spot was now located in the mall between the Orange Julius stand and the entrances to H&R Block. The mall was crowded with shoppers for twenty years.

  Now it was deserted. When he came to years from now, he was lying on the spot. The skylight of the mall was broken. The terrazzo was cracked. Grass sprouted. Somewhere close, water ran. Old tax forms blew out of H&R Block. A raccoon lived in the Orange Julius stand. No one was there. Yet something moved and someone spoke. Maybe it was D’Lo. No. Was it Allie? No, nobody. No, somebody was there all right. Someone spoke: Very well, since you’ve insisted on it, here it is, the green-stick Rosebud gold-bug matador, the great distinguished thing.

  The ocean was not far away.

  As he turned to see who said it and who it was, there was a flash of light then darkness then light again.

  III

  SUNLIGHT SHONE IN his eyes, then someone came between, then sunlight shone in his eyes again.

  “Could it be? It is. Is that you, Will?”

  “Yes,” he said, instantly awake, a thousand miles from his dreams, as unsurprised as if he were back in his office again. “Who—?” Holding a hand against the sun, he tried to make out the dark eclipsed face inside its bright corona of hair. What he recognized was the Alabama quirky-lilting voice and the way the round bare shoulder hitched up a little. “Kitty.” He sat up.

  “You stood me up, you dog. You no good scoun’l beast. Look at you. You’re a mess! Happy birthday yesterday.”

  “What? Oh.”

  “We had a date in your summerhouse. Don’t you remember?”

  He smiled. “What day was that?” What year was that? It pleased him that she was no more than mildly outraged and evidently found nothing remarkable in his absence or his appearance or finding him asleep in a car and looking like Ben Gunn. “I was called away suddenly,” he said. “I only just got back.”

  “So I notice,” said Kitty absently, gazing at him. How, in what manner, was she gazing at him?

  “Come around to the other side so I can see you.”

  Instead, Kitty got in the front seat and turned around to face him. The sun shone on the tiny beads of sweat on the down of her upper lip. She smelled of “prespiration,” which is the name we used to give lady sweat, which is a good name for it because it smells like prespiration, which smells more Presbyterian than perspiration. He smiled: I’m beginning to think like Allie.

  “Who are you going to play golf with? Walter?”

  “I already played eighteen holes, and not with Walter.” Her strong brown arm hugged the leather seat. The hand swung free just above his belt buckle.

  Then it was afternoon. The sun had not cleared the cart shed rising; it had cleared the Mercedes roof setting.

  It was odd seeing Allie in her, not just the upper lip drawn short by its double tendon but the quick economical stooping movements, the bowing of neck which caused the vertebra to surface in the smooth flesh, the risible watchfulness of the eyes searching his face. Yet somehow the liveliness which in Allie was graceful and shy became in Kitty rowdy and jostling. The hand in its pendulum arc touched his belt. The same become opposites in mother and daughter yet still remain the same. Chromosomes cast inverted but recognizable shadows of themselves

  “How do you feel, Will?”

  “Fine. I slept all day.”

  “Lewis is here. Do you want to see him?”

  “Lewis Peckham?”

  She nodded. He wondered if when the fingers touched him it would leave a welt like a pendulum. “He was in the foursome.”

  “With Walter and—?”

  “Not with Walter. Walter is long gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “I mean he’s gone. Took off. All we have in common now is this business with Allie.”

  “I see. How did you find me?”

  “That’s my car. I parked next to you this morning.”

  “You mean you saw me this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  He pondered the fact that Kitty had seen him, recognized him, and played eighteen holes of golf.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “You were sleeping very soundly and dreaming. Your lips and eyes were moving.”

  “I see.”

  “I did call your daughter Leslie, though. She’s been terribly concerned about you.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Only that you’d be coming home when you woke up. Will you?”

  “Yes. You mean she’s back from her honeymoon?”

  “She doesn’t believe in honeymoons. She and Jason stayed here. She’s discovered backwoods churches where people speak in tongues. She and Jack Curl have gotten very close.”

  “Jack Curl?”

  “Yes. It seems they have great plans for the Peabody Foundation.” She looked at him.

  “There is no Peabody Foundation—yet.”

  “Well, they are planning one.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you sure you feel well?”

  “Yes.”

  “We missed you at the wedding.”

  “Wedding. Oh yes.”

  “Same old Will. Same old Huck Finn lighting out for the territory. You know we’ve always been two of a kind.”

  “We have? How?”

  “Both of us can only stand the rat race for so long. Then bye-bye, folks.”

  “Was Leslie’s wedding all right?”

  “Sure. Leslie read from the Bible and Jason read from The Prophet. It was very casual. Nobody blamed you for ducking out. Leslie and Jason said they would do the same in your place. In fact, both of them think you’re like them. Unstructured.”

  “I am?”

  “Leslie understands you better than you think, Will.”

  “She does?”

  “Please try to understand her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Poor Will.” She clucked and shook her head.

  “Why poor Will?”

  “What are you going to do now, Will?”

  “Go home. I want to see Leslie.”

  “She’s not there.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She and Jason have moved into a community down in the cove.”

  “A community?”

  “A love-and-faith community. That’s what she and Jack want to use the Peabody Foundation for, to found such communities around the world, communities for all ages. Maybe the kids know something we don’t know, Will.”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyhow, she’s closed the house, but she knows you are coming th
ere.”

  “I see.”

  Kitty’s hand came to rest on his thigh. His thigh swelled. “Now listen, Will. This is important.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think I know where Allie is.”

  “Allie.”

  “Oh, Will, I need your help, but just look at you. You’re a mess!” Suddenly leaning over, she took hold of a handful of his flank and gave him a great friendly tweak. “Listen, Will, I need to talk to you.” But even as she said this, her mind seemed to wander. Her eyes went away. “You see that car.”

  “What car?”

  “My car. Right there. What does it remind you of?”

  He looked at the car. It was a black Continental. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you remember Daddy’s Lincoln?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember the last time?”

  “The last time?”

  “After you came back from Santa Fe. Before you took off for good?”

  “Ah—”

  “When we parked behind the golf course like this?”

  “Ah—”

  “Ho ho ho you remember all right. Now, Will, listen to me.”

  “All right.”

  “We need to talk. About Allie, for one thing. I need to see you. Go home. Get cleaned up. Shave. My God, where have you been, laying in some gutter? Tomcattin’?” She gave him a poke. “All this time you could have been at Dun Romin’ with me taking care of you. After you get settled, come over to my villa. We need to talk about Allie. I’m right over there in number six, Dun Romin’—don’t you like that?”

  “Very well, but if it’s about Allison, I’ll need to talk to Walter too.”

  “Honey, I done told you. Friend Walter has split.”

  “Split.”

  “Checked out. Long gone. Headed for the islands, or rather the island. Come to Dun Romin’ and I’ll tell you all about it.” She hooked three fingers inside his belt and gave him a tug.

  “I see.” He mused: Did Kitty’s special boldness come from a special sadness? Or do women grow more lustful as they grow older? “You and Walter are separated?”

  “I told you things have been popping around here!” Now swinging around merrily, she knelt as if she were in a pew, arms on the back of the seat. Was she merry or sad? “No, seriously. It’s been in the cards for years. It’s not that Walter has this thing for his little receptionists—the older he gets, the younger they get—I couldn’t care less. What it is is there’s nothing between us. Nothing. Maybe there never was. So we’ve split. And we’ve agreed. He gets the Georgia island. I get the mountain here.”