Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

“Me too.”

  “Well well,” she said later. Her back and legs were strong as a man’s. “That was not in the book either.”

  “What book?”

  “The pine-tree book. Or the picture book.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I’ll tell you what let’s do,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s get a house and live in it.”

  “Okay. Can we make love like that much of the time?”

  “As much as you like.”

  “For true?”

  “For true. Would you like to marry?”

  “Uh, to marry might be to miscarry.”

  “Not necessarily. I’ll practice law. You grow things in your greenhouse. We can meet after work, have supper. We can walk the Long Trail or go to the beach on your island. Then go to bed irregardless.”

  “Perhaps crash in a shelter?”

  “What?” he said, laughing. “Crash?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.”

  “It is a good regime. Perhaps with you to marry would not miscarry. Is it legal to do this at four o’clock in the afternoon?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Now I know what was wrong with four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “It would be nice to have two children and walk to school with them in the morning.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  They stayed in bed all day and all night except for meals, loving and laughing, frolicking, exchanging many a kiss and smacks on the ass while carts creaked outside and maids tapped on doors with keys. Frowning, she peered closely at his cheek and squeezed a blackhead. He straddled her thighs and rubbed her back, sore from hoisting, pressed his thumbs in the two dips at the bottom of her spine, marveling at how she was made. Each tended to the other, kneading and poking sore places. She examined him like a mother examining a child, close, stretching skin, her mouth open, grabbing hair to pull his head over to see his neck, her eyes slightly abulge with concentration, checking his cave wounds, picking at scabs. When her eyes happened to meet him, they softened and went deep. Eyes examining are different from eyes meeting eyes. As she would say, a look at a book is not a look into a look. Then she smiled and flew against him again. Her supple bent-back strength and coverage astounded him.

  7

  She had brought his razor from the greenhouse. It felt good to shave.

  After they dressed, they ate a huge breakfast of grits and bacon and scrambled eggs in the Buccaneer Tavern, came back to the room and opened the drapes to the morning and the Smoky Mountains, which humped up like a blue whale in the clear sky. He sat her down across the round black woodlike table.

  “Let’s get down to business.”

  “Oh, look at you in your dark suit.”

  “Yes?”

  “You look nice around the neck and head.”

  “Thank you. You look good all over.”

  “Come here,” she said.

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re nice here around the ears, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Let’s go to bed.”

  “But we’re dressed.”

  “Undress.”

  “Okay.”

  Afterwards she said: “Good gosh.”

  “Yes.”

  Again at the table he said: “Now ah—”

  “The business.”

  “Yes. Let us speak of one or two things.”

  “Right.”

  It had come to pass, for reasons which neither could have said, that he now knew what needed to be done and could say so and she could heed him, head slightly cocked, listening carefully. She looked like a survivor on the mend. Could it be that her thin face was already fuller?

  “Here is what I intend to do,” he told her, “and what I hope you will wish to do. If you do not wish to do so, will you tell me?”

  “Assuredly.”

  “I propose that we marry. Wait. I don’t think I am saying this right.”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps I’d better ask you.”

  “Very well.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is possible that though marriage in these times seems for some reason to be a troubled, often fatal, arrangement, we might not only survive it but revive it.”

  “Yes, we could survive and revive it.”

  “I presently have very little income of my own. I’m not counting Marion’s estate, which I inherited from Marion but which I won’t use. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it—figure out what Marion would want—something. Therefore, I shall be working. You own valuable property. I propose that for the present we rent or buy a garden home. They are somewhat like motels but not unpleasantly so. You need to get out of that greenhouse and eat better. Garden homes are convenient and have pleasant views. We shall need a place to live until we build a house. I’ll look up the Associate at Emerald Isles and give him a job making home loans. He’ll be sick of isometrics and TV.”

  “What’s wrong with staying here?”

  “Nothing. But we might need more than one room eventually.”

  “That’s true. Let’s come back here every weekend.”

  “Okay. Now you might wish to finish your greenhouse and develop your property here or on the island—perhaps build log cabins on ten- or twelve-acre plots. I have two friends, one a contractor, the other a cabin notcher, who though old and maimed can still do excellent work, I think. It would be a pleasant business.”

  “Yes. I think I want to finish my greenhouse and perhaps build others against the same ridge and make use of the same warm cave air.”

  “A good idea. It could be an excellent business.”

  “If I could find enough men to work for me, any men who are willing, old men. But that’s impossible.”

  “No, I know some good men. Old men but good.”

  “Do you know what a head of lettuce costs at the A & P?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  “A dollar and fifty cents.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  She looked at him. “Yes, and three small tomatoes cost a dollar. I could make money.”

  “Yes. I also have another friend who is an excellent gardener but has nothing to do but water pine trees.”

  “Hire him. I have a friend at Valleyhead I would like to get out. She would be glad to work for someone who can tell her what to do. She needs that. Moreover, she’s a good bookkeeper.”

  “Can you tell her what to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. As for myself, I think I’ll resume the practice of law in a small way if my health will permit it. I have an incurable mental condition but it can be controlled as long as my pH is okay.”

  “How is your pH now?”

  “Fine.”

  Actually, his pH was up again. Fewer hydrogen ions were zipping around the heavy alkaline molecules sweet with memory and desire. Perhaps a slight case of Hausmann’s Syndrome was better than none at all.

  “I am sure of it. There is nothing serious wrong with you.” Frowning, she leaned over and took hold of his flank in her rough holster’s hand. It was odd how she was like and unlike Kitty. “Our cases are similar. Nowadays many psychosomatic conditions can be cured. I was reading in the National Observer at the A & P about the supremacy of mental attitude over physical conditions.”

  “Yes. Whatever it is, I think it is under control. I can feel it going away.”

  He did feel good. The twisting in his head now felt like a scar contracting. Did he imagine it, or wasn’t his brain lesion shriveling like a crab in acid? There was a feint smell of smoke high in his nostrils and the sinuses in front of his brain.

  “Another thing,” he said. “What do you think of our having a child and enrolling him or her in the Linwood elementary school?”

  “I think well of that.”

  “I could drive him to school every morning and he could ride the s
chool bus home.”

  “Or she, as the case may be. I thought you wanted two.”

  “Oh yes. I had forgotten. Could it be that now you’re doing the remembering?”

  “Could be.”

  “Now let’s go to town and do some shopping. You need some clothes. I have to go to St. Mark’s.”

  “To get your stuff?”

  “Yes. Then we’ll find a villa or condo or a garden home. And I need to talk to someone.”

  “All right. I’m going back to the greenhouse.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to get my dog.”

  “Very well. I think it’s safe. I don’t think they will be looking for you now. We’ve been here for two days, haven’t we?”

  “Or one long night. Or both. I’m not sure.”

  “Very well. But don’t stay long.”

  “All right.”

  She wet her thumbs with her tongue and smoothed his eyebrows. He was going to town.

  8

  Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan were lying in bed watching Search for Tomorrow. A curtain was drawn around the third bed. It seemed best to wait for a commercial break before putting his question. When it came, he turned down the volume and spoke fast.

  “Excuse me, but this is important.”

  The two men gazed at him.

  “YOU fellows want a job?”

  They gazed at each other.

  “I have some property and I want it developed right,” he said, talking fast, so he wouldn’t interfere with Search for Tomorrow. “I want well-built log cabins, enough land for privacy, and gardens, and at a price young couples, singles, and retired couples can afford. Not two hundred and fifty dollars maybe but less than twenty-five thousand. Mr. Ryan here has the know-how about financing, subdividing, contracting, and so forth. And he has the crew. Mr. Arnold has the building technique. What I want is for Mr. Arnold to work with Mr. Ryan’s crew and teach them how to notch up a cabin, perhaps with more modern methods. I have plenty of timber, creek rocks, and flagstone. I’ll handle the legal work. I figure we can build and sell cabins on ten acres of land and come out fine at twenty-five thousand.” The commercial was almost over. “What do you say?”

  The two old men looked at each other.

  “Whereabouts we going to live?” asked Mr. Arnold.

  “Wherever you like. Here. Or Mr. Arnold could notch up a cabin for the two of you.”

  “What, me live with that old peckerwood?” said Mr. Ryan.

  “Hail fire,” said Mr. Arnold.

  “Look, I don’t care where you live. I’m making you a proposition. This is a good deal all around. We’ll incorporate—that’s one thing I know how to do—and share the profits. What do you say? Mr. Ryan, can you still get a crew?”

  “Slick, Tex, Tomás, and Vishnu came by to see me last week. All of them said they wished they still worked for me.”

  “Two of them looked like gypsies, the other two looked like women,” said Mr. Arnold.

  “They may look funny,” said Mr. Ryan, “but they can outwork niggers. How am I going to get around?” He slapped the flat sheet where his leg should have been. “I’m missing two feet and one leg.”

  “Any way you can. You figure it out.”

  “They make cars now you can drive with your hands,” said Mr. Ryan, answering his own question.

  “There you go. The corporation can afford one,” said Will Barrett. “Mr. Arnold, are you willing to teach this crew what to do?”

  “All they got to do is watch me and keep out of my way. What land we talking about?”

  “The Kemp property, over by the country club.”

  “There’s plenty of good timber there. All you got to do is keep me in logs—and somebody to pick up on one end.”

  “You willing to use cement chinking instead of river clay and hog blood?” Mr. Ryan asked the silent TV screen. Neither of the men seemed to notice that Search for Tomorrow was playing without sound.

  “I chinked a house on Dog Mountain with cement. Ain’t nothing wrong with cement. You just bring your boys and keep me in straight logs. We going to need some boys to get the roof up. It takes several to mortise and peg the peaks. I can’t climb no roof but I can show them how to split shingles and put the sap sides together. You going to need a forty-five-degree angle on your roof and a halfway lap to keep out leaks.”

  “Your roof? Whose roof?” asked Mr. Ryan. “I’ll show you some composition roofing that comes by the roll,” Mr. Ryan told the TV, “but it looks real good. I think you’ll like it. It saves labor. You’re talking about splitting shingles by hand, I mean Jesus Christ.”

  “It sounds like tar paper but I’ll look at it.”

  It was a good time to leave. He turned up the volume on Search for Tomorrow.

  There was a commotion around the third bed. The curtain was pulled back. Two orderlies were trying to get an old woman onto a hospital stretcher. The woman was sitting on the edge of the bed and crying. She was no larger than a child but her ankles, clad in men’s socks, were as thick as small trees. A great vessel moved in her neck in a complex out-of-sync throbbing. Her eyes were glossy and unblinking in her round heavy face. Tears ran down her cheek and caught in the dark down of her lip.

  “Oh, I’m so afraid,” she said loudly with a little smile and a shrug. She pronounced afraid afred, like ladies in Memphis and Vicksburg.

  “What you scared of, honey?” asked one orderly, a giant black woman big as an old black mammy but young.

  “I’m afraid I’m never going to leave the hospital. Oh, I’m so afraid.”

  “You be all right, honey,” said the black woman, her eyes absentminded, and put a black-and-pink hand on the patient’s swollen leg. “You gon be fine, bless Jesus.”

  Will Barrett was standing at the foot of the bed.

  “Oh, hello, Will,” said the patient with the same smile and shrug. “Oh, Will, I hate to leave here!”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “I—” Oh Lord, I am supposed to know her. Was she an aunt? No, but she was one of ten or twelve ladies from Memphis or Mississippi he should have recognized. He made as if to give the orderlies a hand.

  As he came close to her, he could hear her heart, which raced and rumbled so hard it shook her thick body.

  He took her arm. It was not necessary. The other orderly, a sorrel-colored man who wore his mustache and short-sleeved smock like Sugar Ray Robinson, picked up the woman and in one swift gentle movement swung her onto the stretcher. He was an old-style dude who still wore a conk! He chewed gum like Sugar Ray. Where did he come from? Beale Street twenty years ago? After he centered the woman on the stretcher (ah, I know what that feels like, to be taken care of by strong quick sure hands at one’s hips) and buckled the straps, Sugar Ray leaned close to her.

  “Listen, lady, I’m gerng to tell you something.” (That was the difference between them, the two orderlies, that gerng, his slightly self-conscious uptown correction of the black woman.) “The doctors know what they know, but I have noticed something too. I can tell about people and I’m gerng to tell you. We taking you to the hospital in Asheville and we coming to get you Tuesday and bringing you back here and that’s the truth, ain’t that right, Rosie?” And he smiled, a brilliant white-and-gold Sugar Ray smile, yet his eyes had not changed because they didn’t have to. The patient couldn’t see his eyes.

  “Sho,” said Rosie, her eye not quite meeting Sugar Ray’s eye and not quite winking. “You gon be fine, honey.”

  “Ah,” said the patient and, closing her eyes, slumped against the straps like a baby in its harness.

  Then how does it add up in the economy of giving and getting, he wondered, that the two orderlies cared nothing (or did they?) for the old woman, that even in the very act of their offhand reassurances to her they were probably cooking up something between themselves, that they, the orderlies, who had no reason to give her anything at all, gave it because it was so little to give and so much for her to get? 2¢ = $5? How?

  Do
es goodness come tricked out so as fakery and fondness and carrying on and is God himself as sly?

  In the hall he stood gazing after the three of them. Young big black mammy, Sugar Ray, and the sick woman, the great machinery of her heart socking away so hard at her neck, it made her nod perceptibly as if she understood and agreed, yes, yes, yes.

  9

  Mr. Eberhart was watering small pine trees with a green plastic mop pail. He walked in a fast limping stoop from tree to tree. Standing with one leg crooked and with his long-billed cap fitting tightly on his head, he looked like a heron.

  “Why are you watering these pine trees? It rained yesterday.”

  “It didn’t rain enough. They planted these seedlings too early. The rains don’t come till after Christmas.”

  “Didn’t you used to run a nursery in Asheville?”

  “Atlanta and Asheville. For forty years.”

  “How would you like to run a greenhouse now? Perhaps several greenhouses.”

  “What kind of greenhouse?” He had not yet looked up.

  “An old kind. About fifty by twenty-five feet. No fans, no automatic ventilation, no thermostats.”

  “That’s the kind I started with. You cain’t build them like that now. What kind of heat? That’s what put me out of business. My gas bill was nine hundred dollars a month in the winter.”

  “No gas bill. No electric bill. No utilities. It runs on cave air.”

  “Cave air,” said Mr. Eberhart, watching water disappear into the sandy soil. Now he looked up.

  “That’s right. Cave air. A steady flow winter and summer. A steady sixty degrees. Is that too cold?”

  “Cave air. I’ve heard of that around here.”

  “Is that too cold?”

  “Not for lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, or parsley. Or some orchids. What is your monthly utility cost?”

  “Zero. Unless you want to live there and turn on the lights.”

  “Cave air.” He couldn’t get it through his head.

  “Did you say orchids?”

  “Sure.” He put down the can, adjusted his cap, picked up a handful of soil. Standing alongside Barrett, he spoke quickly in an East Tennessee accent. He gave his long-billed cap a tug. They could have been a couple of umpires.

  “You can grow your cymbidium cooler than that, or laelia. But you don’t want to repot your cymbidium.”