Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

  One morning when she returned from her woods latrine, a comfortable fork in the chestnut fall, which she used and where she deposited his excretions from a Clorox bottle and a neatly folded packet of newspaper, she found him sitting in the doorway in the morning sun. His swellings had gone down except for the knee, the scrapes had dry scabs, and his eyes were all right, not the inturning Khe Sanh white eyes but gray and clear and focused on the dog. His scruffy yellow beard looked odd against his smooth platinum-and-brown hair. Was he nodding because he knew what he was going to do? He nodded toward the other doorjamb as if it were the chair across his desk. She took it, sat down.

  “Now, you’ve done a great deal for me. I would thank you for it but won’t, for fear of upsetting your balance sheet of debits and credits. I know you are particular about owing somebody something, but maybe you will learn that’s not so bad. I don’t mind being in your debt. You won’t mind my saying that I would do the same for you, and take pleasure in it, and furthermore can easily see our positions reversed. What I wish to tell you is that I accept what you’ve done for me and that I have other things to ask of you. I don’t mind asking you. There are things that need to be done and only you can do them. Will you?”

  “I will,” she said. I will, she thought, because now he knew exactly what had to be done just as she had known what to do when he lay knocked out on her floor. I’d do anything he asks me, she thought, hoist anything. Why is that?

  “Do you have a calendar?” he asked.

  She gave him her Gulf card.

  He looked at it, looked up at her, smiled. (Smiled!) “Wrong year.” She shrugged. She was afraid to ask what year it was.

  “What is today?”

  “The fifteenth.”

  “Hm. It seems I’ve been gone two weeks.” His gray eyes met hers. She didn’t mind. “How much money do you have?”

  “One hundred and eleven dollars and thirty-one cents.”

  “What are you going to do when your money runs out?”

  She shrugged. “Find employment.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Hoisting maybe. Also gardening.”

  “Hoisting? Hoisting what?”

  “Anything.”

  “I see. You wouldn’t consider my paying you something, or lending, until you get paid for your ah hoisting.”

  “How much money do you have?” she asked.

  “On me?”

  “On you and off you.”

  “About fifty or sixty million.”

  “Gollee.”

  “That’s enough to employ you.”

  “No, that would throw things off-balance and render my Sirius unserious.”

  “Why shouldn’t I pay for my room and board?” he asked her.

  “To give one reason if not others, you don’t have a dime. I had to go through your pockets before washing your clothes.”

  He laughed then winced and put a hand to his side. “I can get some.”

  “When you do, there will be time for a consideration of remuneration. The only thing in your pockets was a slip of paper which said Help! With tiger, fifty feet above. I was wondering about the nature of the tiger you were over and above.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Could you do the following things for me in town? Do you have pencil and paper?”

  She opened her notebook.

  “Go to Western Union, which is at the bus station, and send the following telegram to Dr. Sutter Vaught, 2203 Los Flores, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Send this message: Plans changed. Forget about letter. Read it if you like but tear it up. Don’t act on it. Will write. Barrett. Send it straight message.”

  “Straight message,” she repeated, hoping he would explain but he didn’t. Probably he meant send it straight to Albuquerque and not roundabout by way of Chicago. “Is that all?”

  “No. Go to Dr. Vance Battle’s office. See him alone. Tell him I want to see him. Tell him where I am, tell him I want to see him today and ask him not to tell anybody or bring anybody with him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Go by the library and get a book on hydroponic gardening.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then go behind the bus station and see if my car is still there. A silver Mercedes 450 SEL. My keys are under the seat. Drive it to the country-club parking lot. Park at the far end, which is nearest to here.”

  “Okay.” She swallowed. Very well. Drive a car? His car? Very well. If he asked her to drive the car, she could drive the car. “Okay. Why were you in the cave?”

  “What? Oh.” Now he was walking up and down the greenhouse not limping badly, shouldering, hands in pockets. Does he notice how clean and smooth the concrete is? She felt the floor with both hands; it was cool and iron-colored and silky as McWhorter’s driveway. She wished he would notice her concrete, the best-cured concrete in North Carolina. “I go down in caves sometimes,” she said. He told her about the tiger.

  “But the tiger wasn’t there.”

  “No.”

  “Then—?”

  “Then what?”

  “Then there was more than the tiger?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were trying to find out something besides the tiger.”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “I was asking a question to which I resolved to find a yes-or-no answer.”

  “Did you find the answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you came back up and out.”

  “Yes, I came back up and out.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Good?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. At least I know what I have to do. Don’t worry.”

  “About what?”

  “About money. I’ll pay you back.”

  “I don’t worry about money. Money worry is not instigating.”

  “No, it’s not. You’d better go.”

  She enjoyed her errands.

  Straight to the bus station, where she found the silver Mercedes. Though she wanted to try the keys and practice starting the car, she decided not to. Someone might see her. She would do her errands, wait until dark, and drive to the country club.

  Nobody saw her.

  What pleasure, obeying instructions! Then is this what people in the world do? This is called “joining the work force.” It is not a bad way to live. One gets a job. There is a task and a task teller (a person who tells you a task), a set of directions, instructions, perhaps a map, a carrying out of the task, a finishing of the task, a return to the task teller to report success, a thanking. A getting paid. An assignment of another task.

  She clapped her hands for joy. What a discovery! To get a job, do it well, which is a pleasure, please the employer, which is also a pleasure, and get paid, which is yet another pleasure. What a happy life employees have! How happy it must make them to do their jobs well and please their employers! That was the secret! All this time she had made a mistake. She had thought (and her mother had expected) that she must do something extraordinary, be somebody extraordinary. Whereas the trick lay in leading the most ordinary life imaginable, get an ordinary job, in itself a joy in its very ordinariness, and then be as extraordinary or ordinary as one pleased. That was the secret.

  On to Western Union, which was part of the Greyhound bus station. As she wrote the message she tried not to make sense of it. The telegram cost $7.89. When the clerk read the message, she said to him casually but with authority: “Straight message, please!”

  “Right,” said the clerk, not raising his eyes.

  Victory! She had made it in the world! Not only could she make herself understood. People even understood what she said when she didn’t.

  It was a pleasure spending her money for him. Why? she wondered. Ordinarily she hoarded her pennies, ate dandelion-and-dock salad.

  She sat on her bench but in a new way. The buildings and the stores were the same but more accessible. She might have business in t
hem. Le Club was still there, its glass bricks sparkling in the sun. A cardboard sign in the window announced a concert by Le Hug, a rock group. What a pleasure to have a job! Smiling, she hugged herself and rocked in the sun. Imagine getting paid for a task by the task teller! Money wherewith to live! And live a life so, years, decades! So that was the system. Quel system!

  A real townie she felt like now, bustling past slack-jawed hippies, moony-eyed tourists, blue-haired lady leafers, antiquers, and quilt collectors.

  When she went into a building, the dog stayed on the sidewalk paying no attention to anyone until she came out. He showed his pleasure not by wagging his tail but by burying his heavy anvil head in her stomach until his eyes were covered.

  There was no way to see Dr. Battle except to sign a clipboard and wait her turn as a patient. She had to wait two hours. She liked him, though he was too busy and groggy from overwork and thought she was a patient despite her telling him otherwise, sizing her up in a fond dazed rush, not listening, eyes straying over her, coming close (was he smelling her?). His hand absently palpated her shoulder, queried the bones, tested the ball joint for its fit and play. Unlike Dr. Duk he didn’t bother to listen, or rather he listened not to your words but your music. He was like a vet, who doesn’t have to listen to his patients. There were other ways of getting at you. He saw so many patients that it was possible for him to have a hunch about you, a good country hunch, the moment you walked in the door. Better still, it was possible for her to subside and see herself through his eyes, so canny and unheeding, sleepy and quick, were they.

  Well then, how did she look to him? Is my shoulder human? He cocked an ear for her music. The fond eyes cast about to place her, then placed her. She was classifiable then. She was a piece of the world after all, a member of a class and recognizable as such. I belong here!

  He looked at her boots. “You just off the trail?”

  “Well no, though I’ve been walking quite a bit.”

  “And you’re feeling a little spacy.”

  “A little what?”

  “Spaced out.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you on something or coming off something?”

  “What?”

  He didn’t seem impatient with her dumbness. “Okay,” he said, counting off the questions on his fingers. “Are you taking a drug? Are you taking the pill? Are you coming off the pill? Are you pregnant?”

  “No to one and all.” How would he treat her madness? ignore it, palpate her shoulder and tell her to lead her life? Would she?

  “Okay, what’s the trouble, little lady?”

  “I’m fine. What I was trying to tell you was—”

  “You look healthy as a hawg to me.”

  “—was to give you a message from—” She wanted to say “from him.” What to call him? Mr. Barrett? Mr. Will? Will Barrett? Bill Barrett? Williston Bibb Barrett? None of the names fit. A name would give him form once and for all. He would flow into its syllables and junctures and there take shape forever. She didn’t want him named.

  Sluggishly, like a boat righting itself in a heavy sea, Dr. Battle was coming round to her. He began to listen.

  “From who?”

  “Your friend Barrett,” she mumbled. The surname was neutral, the way an Englishman speaks of other Englishmen.

  “Who? Will Barrett? Will Barrett’s out of town,” he said as if he were answering her questions.

  “Yes.”

  This time his eyes snapped open, click. “What about Will Barrett?”

  “You are to come see him this afternoon when you finish here.”

  “What’s the matter with him? Is that rascal sick?”

  Rascal. The word had peculiar radiations but mainly fondness.

  “No. That is, I think he is all right now. He is scratched up and bruised and his leg is hurt but he can walk. This is in confidence. He doesn’t want anyone to know about this message.” It was a pleasure to talk to another person about him.

  “In confidence?” For a second the eye went cold and flashed like a beacon.

  “I have not kidnapped him,” she said.

  He laughed. “All right. Where is he?”

  “He is at my—” My what? “—place.”

  “Oh. So.” He cocked his head and regarded her. It was possible for her to go around behind his eyes and see her and Will at her place. “Well, I’ll be dog. How about that? Okay. What’s with Will? Has he got his tail in some kind of crack?”

  She frowned and folded her arms. “He went down into Lost Cove cave, got lost, came back up, and fell into my place.”

  Though it was true, it sounded odd, even to her.

  “Fell?” he said.

  “That’s what I said. Fell. Flat fell down into my place.”

  “He fell into your place from a cave,” said the doctor.

  “That’s right.”

  The doctor nodded. “Okay.” Then he shook his head. “He shouldn’t be doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “He doesn’t take care of himself. With his brain lesion he won’t—” His eyes opened. “All right. This is as good a chance as any to throw him down and look at him. Where is your place?”

  “You know the old Kemp place?”

  “Yes. Near there?”

  “There. That’s my place.”

  “There is nothing left there.”

  “A greenhouse is left.”

  “You live in the greenhouse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will is staying in your greenhouse?”

  “Yes. He fell into the greenhouse from the cave.”

  “He fell into your greenhouse. From the cave. Okay.”

  It pleased her that Dr. Vance Battle did not seem to find it remarkable that the two of them, who? Will and who? Allie, Will and Allie, should be staying in the greenhouse. Only once did he cock his head and look at her along his cheekbone. Will and Allie? Williston and Allison? Willie and Allie?

  “It is a matter in confidence,” she said. In confidence? Of confidence? To be held in confidence? Her rehearsed language had run out. She didn’t know where to put ofs and ins. It was time to leave.

  “Right. Tell that rascal I’ll be out this afternoon. We’ll throw him down and have a look at him.”

  Right, she repeated to herself as she left. I will tell that rascal.

  5

  Why does the sun feel so good on my back, she thought as she sat on the bench counting her money.

  Why am I spending all my money, she wondered at the A & P as she paid $44.89 for two rib-eye steaks, horse meat for the dog, two folding aluminum chairs with green plastic webbing, and a cold six-pack of beer. What am I celebrating? His leaving? He’s leaving. Is he leaving?

  What would she do when her money ran out? Shelter and heat were free, but what about food? She could hoard hickory nuts like a squirrel and perhaps even catch the squirrels and eat them. No, she needed money.

  It was necessary to get a job.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the fat friendly pretty checkout girl after waiting for the right moment to insert the question, the moment between getting her change and being handed the bag. She had rehearsed the question. “What are job opportunities here or elsewhere?” She had watched the checker and noticed that she was the sort who would as soon answer one question as another.

  “I don’t know, hon. I’m losing my job here at Thanksgiving when the season’s over and going back to Georgia and see if I can get my old job at Martin Marietta. Then you know what I’m going to do?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to grab my sweet little honey man of a preacher, praise the good Lord every Sunday, and not turn him loose till Christmas. He’s no good but he’s as sweet as he can be.” The other checkers laughed. She noticed that her checker had raised her voice so the others could hear her. Her checker was a card. Yet she saw too that her checker was good-natured. “Why don’t you go back to school, hon?” the checker asked her. “You a school girl
, ain’t you?”

  “Ah, no, I—” Then that is what people do, get a job, go to church, get a sweet honey man. All those years of dreaming in childhood, of going to school, singing Schubert, developing her talent as her mother used to say, she had not noticed this.

  “What can you do hon?” the checker asked her.

  “I can do two things,” she said without hesitation. “Sing and hoist.”

  “Hoist?”

  “With block-and-tackle, differential gears, endless-chain gears, double and triple blocks. I can hoist anything if I have a fixed point and time to figure.”

  “Honey, you come on down to Marietta with me. I’ll get you a job. They always need hoisters.”

  She saw that the checker meant it. Then there was such a thing as a hoister. Then why not consider it: hoisting great B-52 bomber wings to just the right position to be bolted to the fuselage. (People were friendly!)

  “You think it over, hon.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  How good life must be once you got the hang of it, she thought, striding along, grocery bag in her arm, folded chairs hooked over her shoulder.

  Consulting her list—I have a list!—she went to the library and, sure enough, found a book on hydroponic gardening. List completed!

  Though it was not dark, she walked straight to the Mercedes, unlocked the door, pitched groceries and chairs inside, and drove off as easily as a lady leafer headed for the Holiday Inn.

  The tape player came on, playing Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Her eyes widened. The sound came from all around her. It was like sitting in the middle of the musicians. The music, the progress of the trout, matched her own happy progress. I’m going along now, I’m going along now, went the happy little chord. It was as if she had never left the world of music and the world of cars, hopping in your own car and tooling off like Schubert’s trout. What a way to live, zipping through old Carolina in a perfect fragrant German car listening to Schubert on perfect Telefunken tape better than Schubert in the flesh. How lovely was the old world she had left! Hm, there must have been something wrong with it, what? Why had she gone nuts?