by Walker Percy
“The pleasure is mine.”
“For true?”
“For true.”
He kissed her again. Again she flew against him, from the side which was not possible, yet with no trouble at all.
“Now here is what you must do.”
“Yes?”
“Do you wish to go back to Valleyhead?”
“No. Assuredly not. Not ever. Never.”
“Very well. You don’t have to. Dr. Duk and your mother and possibly the sheriff are coming for you later this afternoon, but you don’t have to go.”
“I don’t?”
“No.”
“Who says?”
“I say.”
“Let’s leave now.” She buried her face in his shirt. “The cave! Let’s go in the cave!”
He laughed. “No. We don’t have to go in the cave. The cave is over and done with. We can live up here. How would you like to begin your life?”
“It is time. How would you like to begin yours?”
“I would like to.”
“It’s about time.”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible for you?”
“Yes. Now listen to me.”
“I am.”
“Pack a few things.”
“I only have a few things.”
“Don’t worry, we can buy some more clothes later. There will be plenty of time but I want you to leave here within ten minutes. The sheriff’s coming for you. Don’t worry, this is your property and you can come back and live here if you want to. So is the island. But go get ready. I’m taking you to the Holiday Inn for a few days.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let me get my NATO knapsack. Do you recall how Perry Mason would stash away a client in an obscure hotel under a false name for a few days?”
“Yes.”
“I read two hundred Perry Masons at Valleyhead. It was beguiling to think of the client living there with Delia Street in the Beverly Arms on Sepulveda.”
“Yes, but never mind that. Let’s get out of here. I want to get you some hot food, a hot bath, and some clean clothes. You’re too thin.”
“Do I also smell bad?”
“You smell like peat moss and army clothes. I think I’ll buy you a dress. Imagine you in a dress! While you take your bath, I’ll get a hot plate from the Holiday Inn buffet. They close at three, so hurry up. Then while you eat, I have a short errand to run. Then I will have something to tell you.”
“How about my dog?”
“Leave him here with some food. We’ll come back for him. He’ll discourage visitors. He knows you’ll be back, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. Let’s go.”
2
The room at the Holiday Inn was second floor rear. It was warm from the afternoon sunlight. The balcony overlooked a parking lot, a strip of grass, a chain-link fence, a meadow to the west where Holstein cows grazed, and beyond, the violet hulk of the Smokies, tall and dim enough to be a cloud.
While she bathed, he fetched two plates from the buffet, Tennessee pork sausage, sweet potatoes, butter beans, corn on the cob, ten pats of butter, corn bread, buttermilk, and apple pie. This was no ordinary Holiday Inn. When she came out of the bathroom in her pajamas, the very pajamas she had worn in her escape from Valleyhead, places were set at the round black woodlike table next to the drape, which was drawn enough to show a strip of sunlit meadow.
She began to eat. She ate fast and ate it all, gazing dry-eyed at the slot of meadow, sky, and violet mountain.
“I have an errand to run,” he told her, standing and gazing down at her, hands in pockets. “I have to see Slocum about something. I’ll be back in an hour.”
She nodded as she finished her apple pie.
“Take a nap.”
She nodded.
At the door he turned to look at her.
“I just realized something,” he said. “I don’t have an address. I don’t live anywhere.”
She smiled. “Do not trouble yourself unnecessarily. That is not necessarily unfavorable. Many people have addresses, yet observe them.”
“Right.”
“However, I should like eventually to have an address.”
“Yes.”
“Could we live together?” she asked.
“I think so, yes. At an address.”
“What joy.”
“Yes.”
3
It took half an hour.
He asked only two questions, and though they were unusual, Slocum blinked only once and answered them readily, looking at him closely only when he walked in, registering his dark suit with a nod and motioning him to a chair.
They sat in a pleasant office smelling of law books and balsam. A big window let onto a view of the mountain with its skewed face and one eye out of place.
“You’ve left the hospital,” said Slocum.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
Did I once practice law, he wondered, and he remembered that he had, not so much from the smell of the books as from Slocum’s practiced coolness and his resolve not to be surprised. He smiled. He had been observing doctors and lawyers lately. Both were good at keeping their own counsel and seeming to know something. He hoped Slocum did.
“Two things. First thing: are you familiar with the North Carolina Revised Statutes relating to the rights of patients pursuant to involuntary admissions under the new Mental Health Law?”
“More or less, counselor.” Slocum’s voice took on the familiar ironic gravity of talk among lawyers and his eyes shifted slightly, lining up with his, taking in the view with him.
“I take it that no director of a treatment facility shall prohibit any mentally ill person from applying for conversion of involuntary admission status to a voluntary admission status.”
“That is correct.”
They both gazed at the mountain, which with its bare trees looked like a moonfaced man with a stubble.
“I wish you to prepare an application for an injunction from old Judge Jenkins enjoining said director, a Dr. Alistair Duk, from detaining the person in question whose name I shall presently give you. As a precautionary measure I wish you also to apply for a writ of habeas corpus for the same person in the event of involuntary detention, say by Dr. Duk with the assistance of the sheriff—though I think such an eventuality highly unlikely. Finally, I wish you to represent the same person in a hearing to establish her mental and legal competence. Vance will bring in a psychiatrist from Duke.”
“No problem. Is that it?” Slocum asked the pied face of the mountain.
“No, that’s not it.”
“All right.”
“As you must know, I am not a member of the North Carolina bar.”
“I am aware of that. Not even an illustrious member of the New York bar can apply for a writ here. You got to use the local yokels.”
“That’s true. But that is not why I mentioned it.”
“Why did you mention it?”
“I intend to take the North Carolina bar examination.”
“Ah.” Slocum’s head turned but not enough for their eyes to meet. “You going to run me out of business?”
“No. I’m going to bring you in some business. How would you like the Peabody business?”
“I would like that.”
“You can have it. There is something I want.”
“I gathered there was.”
“I want to work with you. You’ve often asked me to. Very well, I will, but not as a partner. I’ve forgotten too much. As a clerk. At first.”
Now Slocum did look at him. “Why?”
“I want to.”
“I see that. I had figured you figured you quit too early. But aren’t you a little overqualified for this two-bit practice?”
“I’m just telling you what I want. You just tell me whether you will go with it. I shall be very pleased to trace titles, file petitions, pass acts of sale, do
courthouse runs. If you don’t employ me, I’ll open up next door and close you down.”
“I do believe you would sandbag me, just like you did in golf.”
“What do you say?”
“You want me to give you an answer now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. My answer is that if you really do get around to taking the bar exam and—”
“—and pass?”
“And pass. And then if you feel up to it—”
“—if I’m still alive?”
“If you’re still alive and kicking—”
“Yes?”
“You’re on.”
“Okay.”
Slocum did not move when he rose. “You know something,” he said to the mountain. “I always did want a Wall Street lawyer to shelve my books and do courthouse runs for me.”
“You got one.”
4
She was asleep when he returned, no sign of her but a tousle of hair and a curve of hip under the motel chenille. The sinking sun made a yellow stripe up the burlap wallpaper.
Her plate was clean. Her NATO knapsack hung from a hook in the alcove. He walked around the bed to see her. He stood looking down at her, hands in pockets. She slept like a child, face turned into the pillow, lips mashed open and making a wet spot on the cotton.
Suddenly he was tired, as tired as he had ever been in his life. Could it be that all these years he had not really slept or slept as lightly as a soldier on patrol? Could it be that not having an address, not living anywhere, meant that one was free to sleep?
Taking off his jacket, and even as he hung it up, he was, alertly he thought and casting ahead as was his wont, looking around for his suitcase, which must have his pajamas, when he realized that he had no suitcase and therefore no pajamas. Where do I go when I leave here? he wondered, yawning and turning. The gyroscope in his head resisted the turn but not unpleasantly. His pH was up. Great haunted molecules boomed around in his brain. A smell of old newspapers and flour paste and Octagon soap rose in his nostrils. Was this Georgia?
Though it was not late, the sun had already touched the top of the violet mountains. It glittered as if it had struck sparks from rock. The slot in the drapes showed a corner of the Holiday Inn property. The corner was empty, no pool, no lounges, no tables, no cars, no children’s playground. Yet the grass was well trimmed up to the fence separating it from the pasture. He wondered how many people had set foot in this empty corner over the years. Perhaps none.
Yawning and moving slowly against his gyroscope, he undressed to his underwear shorts, closed the drapes on the sunset, and got into bed. Allison was in the middle of the bed and so inert and heavy with sleep that there was no ready means of making himself comfortable except by fitting himself around her.
Suddenly bethinking himself, he jumped up and turning slowly like a ship heading up in a gale found the Do Not Disturb sign next to the Gideon Bible and hung it outside. He hooked up the chain and shot the dead bolt.
Inert or not, she was not so unyielding that he could not put his arms around her and hold her cupped like a child in his sideways lap. Smiling in her neck, he gave her some hugs. What made him happy was the thought of her sleeping so soundly, having eaten so well, resting and digesting and fattening and restoring herself even as he held her. Already the corn bread was sticking to her ribs. Her warm breath blew regularly against his arm.
5
You packed the guns in the trunk of the car, remember?
Yes. No. Leslie did.
Go get them.
No.
Come, it’s the only way, the one quick sure exit of grace and violence and beauty. Come, believe me, it’s the ultimate come, not the first come which we all grow up dreaming about and which is never what we hoped, is it, but near enough to know there is something better, isn’t it, the second, last and ultimate come to end all comes.
No.
Come, what else is there? What other end if you don’t make the end? Make your own bright end in the darkness of this dying world, this foul and feckless place, where you know as well as I that nothing ever really works, that you were never once yourself and never will be or he himself or she herself and certainly never once we ourselves together. Come, close it out before it closes you out because believe me life does no better job with dying than with living. Close it out. At least you can do that, not only not lose but win, with one last splendid gesture defeat the whole foul feckless world. You’ll do better than I, you’re already in a better place, you a placeless person in a placeless place, a motel surely a better place for taking off than a swamp or an attic, yes.
No.
Go like a man, for Christ’s sake, a Roman, here’s your sword.
No.
Very well. Then it will close you out, since you’re already impregnated with death, a slight case of sickness in the head making you crazier even than you are, smelling the past, nigger cabins, pin-oak flats, not even knowing where you are, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, without looking out the window to check the mountain, and from here on out nowhere to go but down.
No.
Very well, let it close you out with the drools and the shakes and your mouth fallen open, head nodding away and both hands rolling pills. But you’ll never even get that far because you’ve got my genes and you know better.
Yes.
Then get up and go out to the car and get it and go to the empty corner of grass and fence where nobody’s been. We like desert places.
All right.
It was dark.
His head as he turned to rise seemed to shift on its axis like the great world itself.
He rose and dressed in the dark, walked out to the Mercedes, unlocked the trunk, took out the leather case containing the Greener and the holster containing the Luger. It was a cold starry night. The mists of summer and fall had all blown away. He walked down the highway holding the Greener like a businessman with a briefcase. When he reached the overlook the Holiday Inn looked over, he did not even pause but swung the case like a discus, the throw turning him around and heading him back. He did not hear the Greener hit bottom. As an afterthought, he pitched the Luger back over his shoulder and went away without listening.
6
It was light.
“Wake up. What’s wrong? What is it?”
“What is what?” Instantly he was awake and unsurprised.
“Who were you talking to? What were you saying about Georgia? Why do you want to go to Georgia? Where did you go?”
“Outside for a walk.”
She must have gotten up. The drapes were open a little. The morning light poured in. The Holsteins were grazing beyond the chain-link fence. There was something pleasant about the unused ungrazed Holiday Inn corner. Her pajamas hung in the alcove.
“Come here,” he said.
“I’m here,” she said. “In the bed. By you.”
“Come here.”
“Well, you’ll have to straighten up. You were all bent over, covering your head with your arms like somebody was after you. Were they?”
“No. I don’t know. Now.”
“Yes. That’s better. Now.”
“Yes, it is.” Her skin was like silk against him.
“There you are,” she said.
“Yes.”
“It’s you.”
“Yes.”
“You against me, yet not really opposed.”
“Yes. That is, no.”
“Put your arms around me in addition.”
“They are around you.”
“They sure are.”
When she came against him from the side, it was with the effect of flying up to him from below like a little cave bat and clinging to him with every part of her.
They were lying on their sides facing each other.
“Come here,” he said.
“I’m here.”
“Now.”
“Yes.”
There was an angle but it did not make trouble. Entering he
r was like turning a corner and coming home.
“Oh my,” she said.
“Yes.”
“That’s you for true.”
“Yes.”
“This was not in the book.”
“What book?”
“No books, no running brooks, just you.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe this,” she said. “I don’t, I don’t.”
“It’s true,” he said.
“Oh my, what is happening? I think I’m going to have a fit.”
“Yes.”
“What is going to happen?”
“You’re going to have a fit.”
When he woke up, she was gazing at him. “Were you having a dream?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were talking about—loving.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Was it love like this?”
“No, not like this. I’ll take this.”
“Don’t ever let me go,” she said. “Now I know what it is I wanted. Before I only wanted.”
“I won’t let you go.”
“Ah, do you want to know what it is?”
“What is it?”
“It is a needfulness that I didn’t know until this moment that I needed. What a mystification.”
“Yes, it is a mystification.”
“Don’t you think you better get up and close the curtain?”
“Not necessarily. The consequences of not closing the curtain are neither here nor there and in any case not direful.”
“Are you making fun of me?” she said.
“Yes.”
They laughed. It was the first time he had heard her laugh so, a tickled hooting laugh, the way a girl laughs with other girls.
“Oh my,” she said after a while. “Perhaps that was it, after all.”
“It?”
“Yes, you know, it.”
“Yes.”
“Would you have ever believed?” she asked someone, perhaps herself, absently.
“Yes, I would have believed,” he said.
“Oh my,” she said again presently. “It is now evident that whatever was wrong with me is now largely cured. Quel mystery.”
“I have an idea,” he said after a while.
“What?”
“Let’s stay together. I do not wish to leave you again.”
“Me neither. I, that is, you.”
“Me too.”
“Well well,” she said later. Her back and legs were strong as a man’s. “That was not in the book either.”