Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

  “Sure.”

  “That’s my boy. No, seriously. In my opinion, and Lewis agrees, you haven’t begun to realize your potential. If you put your mind to it, you could knock off Snead and Hogan.”

  An eighty-year-old Gene Sarazen. Why not?

  Why not play golf with hale and ruddy Seniors for the next thirty years? He’d be the youngest on the tour, the Golden Bear among the old grizzlies.

  When he drove the Mercedes back to town in the dark, a light flew behind the bushes at the corner of his eye as if a runner with a lantern were keeping pace. The road ran along the ridge, which fell away on both sides. He saw two roads instead of one, and thinking himself to be on an interstate, took the passing lane, until he saw headlights coming straight at him. He spun the wheel. As he was crossing the shoulder of the highway and the car which almost hit him was still blowing its horn in an outraged Doppler downbeat eeeoooo, he had time to wonder how shallow the ditch was and how steep the drop-off beyond it. Saplings lashed at the windows as if his car were still and a storm raged. The Mercedes, riding trees, airborne, rose and hit something hard but at an angle which bore him up even higher.

  His head struck the windshield.

  The car was propped at a queer angle. Though he had slid against the door and was comfortable enough, head propped against the post like a motorist taking a nap, he noticed that the window did not let onto leaves or earth as might be expected but deep empty dark. Perhaps it would be better to wait until daylight before climbing out, he thought, dozing. He thought about the Greener and the Luger he had locked in the trunk.

  3

  He was walking along the highway, hands in pockets. The November sun was warm on his back. Jewelweed still bloomed in the ditches. Bright yellow birds fluttered in the trees. Cars and trucks roared past him in a hurry to leave somewhere or arrive somewhere. The drivers gazed straight ahead, swerving only slightly to miss him. Their faces showed a strong sense of purpose. Most of the cars, he noticed, had North Carolina plates. North Carolina. What am I doing here? he wondered. A Mazda passed with a bumper sticker which read: YOUR GOD MAY BE DEAD BUT I TALKED TO MINE THIS MORNING.

  Behind him the Mercedes was wedged securely in the crotch of a maple not high above a ravine. He had not been in danger. It was an easy matter to open a door on the high side, climb out, and drop the few feet to the soft earth.

  When he thrust his hands in his pockets he found a roll of bills. He sat in the sunny dry ditch and counted them. Five hundred dollars in fifties. He smiled and nodded, put the money back in his pocket, and resumed walking. With one part of his mind he knew where the money came from. But if someone had asked him, he might not have been able to answer. Leslie has staked me, he said to himself. Leslie has a plan. He felt himself in good hands.

  In the bus-station restaurant, he ate a breakfast of three fried eggs, a plate of grits and bacon, two pieces of buttered toast, and two cups of coffee. He felt fine but somewhat abstracted, like a man who is looking at something without seeing it yet cannot bring himself to tear his eyes away. A man sitting next to him at the counter began to speak to him and he nodded agreeably but didn’t listen. The man was talking about Georgia.

  After he paid his check, he found a tall man walking beside him. The man was talking to him. It was the same man. He looked at him. Though the tall man stood reared back, feet apart, as if he had a big belly, he did not. Actually he was thin and seemed infirm. His rimless glasses flashed. His cheeks were pale and withered but his lips curved richly as if they belonged to a hearty man.

  Now they were standing more or less in line at the ticket window. The tall man was explaining something. Suddenly he made a fist of one hand and thrust it into the other open hand and pushed with all his might. The man’s pale face grew red and his elbows trembled.

  He began to listen.

  “This is how I stay fit,” said the tall man. “Even though I set at a desk ten hours a day. Sat, that is.” Then, instead of pushing, he hooked his fingers together and began to pull so hard his face grew red again.

  “What do you do?” he asked the tall man curiously.

  “You mean what did I do?”

  “Yes, what did you do?”

  “I was with the Associates.”

  “Associates? You were associated with—?”

  “No, it’s a loan company. The Associates. I’m going back to settle some unfinished business. Then I’m set.”

  The man was returning to Georgia to sell his house. He and his wife had bought a garden home in Emerald Isle Estates. He explained the difference between a villa, a condominium, a mountain home, and a garden home. A garden home had the privacy of a villa and the maintenance services of a condominium and more land than a mountain home. Though he had lived and worked in Atlanta twenty years as an Associate, he was returning to Valdosta to sell his family home. It had once been a farm.

  “Do you play golf?” he asked the tall man. Emerald Isle Estates was nothing but a raw new golf course surrounding a small new lake with eroded red banks which looked like a Georgia cattle pond.

  “No, I never. But I don’t have to to keep in shape. In Atlanta I walked to work twenty blocks down West Peachtree every day.”

  The tall man had come close and now took his arm in a freckled hand as if he were going to tell him a joke or say something about the Negroes in Atlanta, but he didn’t lower his head but stood reared, head high, lips curved in a smile, rimless glasses flashing in the fluorescent light.

  When he tried to move his arm, the man’s grip tightened. He must have something else to say. What would the tall man do in Emerald Isle Estates if he didn’t play golf? walk on the highway? watch TV? do isometrics? Who would he talk to?

  “What about you?” the man said.

  “What?”

  “You got unfinished business in Georgia too?”

  “In Georgia?”

  “There’s the Atlanta bus pulling in.”

  “Yes,” he heard himself say. “I have unfinished business in Georgia.” And having said it, if only to answer the man’s question, he suddenly knew that he meant it. Georgia, the man had said, and the word came to him like a sign. Georgia! That was the place!

  At any rate, it was enough to say it aloud to know what he would do.

  “Whereabouts in Georgia?” asked the tall man.

  “Thomasville.”

  “Thomasville! Well, I’ll be. You selling out too?”

  “No, I’m buying in.”

  “You going back?” the tall man asked him.

  “You could say.”

  “What are you buying, a farm?”

  “You could say.”

  “You retiring?”

  “You might say.”

  “A young fellow like you? That could be a mistake.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  But the tall man wasn’t really listening. He was doing an exercise with his legs, resting his weight first on the ball of one foot, then the other.

  “Do you know Ike Nunally’s place?” the tall man asked.

  “That’s where I’m headed. I used to hunt there.”

  “Is that so? I did too. Many a time. So you going to buy a piece of the Nunally place.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which part?”

  “A parcel of swamp.”

  “Oh, for the hunting. You must be a hunter.”

  “Of a sort.” But bigger game than you think.

  “You must be one of these rich Northern folks who’ve bought up everything around here and down there too.”

  “No. That is, I’m rich, but not Northern.”

  “But they’re as nice as they can be, the ones I’ve met,” said the tall man agreeably and inattentively, glasses flashing as he sprang gently on one foot then the other to exercise his calves.

  “Yes they are.”

  “Now isn’t that something. What a small world. We better get our tickets. You go ahead.”

  “After you.”

  “What?�
��

  “You’re catching the Georgia bus, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  But I’ve forgotten something. What? He felt like a man who has lost his wallet. He slapped his pocket. It was there with the five hundred dollars.

  The bus swung up the ramp through sunlight and shade and onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. The two men sat side by side, hands on their knees. Will Barrett inclined his head attentively. Between them, like a silent child beckoning to them, sat the burden of the conversation to come.

  “Now isn’t that something,” said the Associate. “Both of us going back to Georgia to make the deal of our lives. I’m selling a farm and you’re buying one.”

  “Yes,” he said, watching a low ridge which ran just above the tree line like a levee. The Associate was right. This journey would settle it for both of them. One was going back to Georgia to be rid of it forever, to get shut of the old house with its heavy Valdosta-style gable returns, and begin a new life in his garden home in Emerald Isle Estates, watch Monday-night football, do isometrics in the family room, drive to Highlands with his wife to attend Miami-style auctions. The Jews hadn’t left! The other was going back to Georgia to find something he had left there, to find a place where something had happened to him. Or rather hadn’t happened to him. All these years he had thought he was in luck that it didn’t happen and that he had escaped with his life and a triumphant life at that. But it was something else he had escaped with, not his life. His life—or was it his death?—he had left behind in the Thomasville swamp, where it still waited for him. With a kind of sweet certainty he knew now that it was there that he would find it. Finding the post oak—he knew he could walk straight to it—and not coming out of the swamp at all was better man thrashing around these pretty mountains, playing in Scotch foursomes, crawling into caves, calling on God, Jews, and tigers. No, it was in Georgia that he would find it. And it was in Georgia that he would do it.

  But as he listened to the Associate talk about his work—talk with pleasure! he enjoyed his work! he enjoyed walking twenty blocks down West Peachtree, sitting behind his desk for ten hours, making loans, good loans! good for lender and lendee, doing isometrics between appointments, he was no loan shark!—his eye traveled along the ridge and came to a notch where in the darkness of the pine and spruce there grew a single gold poplar which caught the sun like a yellow-haired girl coming out of a dark forest. Once again his heart was flooded with sweetness but a sweetness of a different sort, a sharp sweet urgency, a need to act, to run and catch. He was losing something. Something of his as solid and heavy and sweet as a pot of honey in his lap was being taken away.

  “I’m not going back to Georgia,” he said, rising.

  “What’s that?” said the Associate quickly and in a changed voice (something was up) but making room for him with his knees.

  Already at the front of the bus—how did he get there?—he was tapping the driver’s shoulder, the driver a heavy uniformed man who looked like an aging airline pilot except that his fingernails were dirty and his face was sullen. His tanned neck had deep sharp hieroglyphs carved in it.

  “Excuse me, driver, but I want to get out.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stop the bus. I want to get off.”

  “This is an express, Mac. Next stop, Asheville.”

  “I said goddamn it stop the bus and let me off.”

  The driver went on driving the bus as if he weren’t there. Angry at the beginning, his face dark with blood, the driver seemed to grow angrier still. What was he angry about? Working conditions? Life at home?

  He leaned close to the driver. They both watched the pleasant road spinning under them. “If you don’t stop this fucking bus right now, I’m grabbing your ass out of that seat and stopping it for you.”

  The driver slowed. Well, he’s going to let me out, he thought. But no, it was in order to reach for a rack on the dash in front of him, and take out cards and pass them to the passengers behind him. “Please pass these along and fill them out. You are witnesses to a crime. This is a hijacking.”

  He looked at the four passengers on the front row of seats. They gazed straight ahead, faces like stone. Something is happening, their stricken expressions said, but it is happening too close. We do not know what to do. It was better not to look. But they took the cards dutifully and gazed at the scenery, not daring even to look at the cards.

  The bus was still going slow.

  “Let the man out. The man wants out.” It was the Associate, standing tall and reared, glasses flashing. He was not smiling. “You heard the man. He wants out.”

  “I’ll let him out all right,” said the driver, who in his rage had gone stupid and sought now only the ultimate gesture, the last one-up face-saver, to prove himself to himself and to the passengers, who watched stone-faced holding their legal cards as dutifully as TV game players. The door opened while the bus was still moving and in the moment of his stepping down the driver slammed on the brakes, slamming him forward into metal jamb, then started up rhhhooom, slamming him back into the other jamb not squarely but glancingly so that he was bounced out, which would not have been serious except that the door, itself now part of the driver’s stupidity and rage, was already closing and caught his foot, levering him down hard enough so that the next thing he knew, the pebbles of tar and craters of pavement were coming up at him like a moon landing fast and silent yet slow enough for him to say to himself: right, it’s not going to end like this or in a Georgia swamp either because I won’t stand for it and don’t have to. Then the Eagle landed and the moon went dark.

  4

  The room was dark.

  The table he was strapped to began to move. It slanted up at the foot, then slanted down, rolled over on one side, stood on end. Quick sure woman’s hands moved his body, straightening it. Someone measured his head with a ruler and marked it. There was the sense of conforming his body, its warm wayward flesh and bone, to the simple cold geometry of straight metal edges. A motor went on and off. There was a hum.

  When he and the table were stood on end like a mummy case, he saw stars. A window directly in front of him seemed to open into deep space. There twinkling in a thousand, a million points of light was a distant galaxy. But it was not a window, not deep space, not a galaxy, but a brain. The fore part of the brain crouched between two lobes like a sphinx.

  He turned his head. The sphinx turned. He turned his head the other way. The sphinx turned the other way.

  It was his own brain.

  Later the same quick hands unstrapped him and led him into a brightly lit examining room. There were Leslie and Jack Curl and Vance Battle and another man, no doubt a doctor, wearing a long white coat with a rubber hammer sticking out of his pocket. Leslie and Jack were smiling at him.

  “What are you grinning about?” he asked Leslie crossly. Uh oh, he thought. Something is wrong for sure. Leslie never smiles unless somebody dies or the Holy Spirit descends. What had happened to her inverted-U frown?

  “Credit friend Jack here,” she said, giving him a pat. Ah, they had become friends. What was up? “There is nothing like the power of prayer.”

  “There you go,” said Jack absently, dancing a little.

  “Power of prayer to do what?” asked Will Barrett.

  “To find you and get you here at Duke!” said Leslie, giving him a hug. “Oh, Poppy, you’re a mess!”

  Vance and the other man were holding their arms and talking, their heads down. The other man must be a doctor because he was talking to Vance both seriously and casually. He didn’t have to smile. A courtesy was being extended Vance. They did not seem to be exchanging medical information as doctors do, but rather reaching an agreement, as lawyers do. They traced designs on the floor with the toes of their shoes. An agreement was reached. Both men nodded. The other doctor left.

  Leslie and Jack Curl were smiling and shaking their heads. Vance winked. With so much cheerfulness—Leslie s
miling and soft-eyed!—the news must be bad.

  “Son, we had a time catching up with you and throwing you down,” said Vance, talking more country man usual. Bad! He turned to Leslie. “What this old boy needs is some strong-arm tactics, and this little lady is just the one to do it.”

  “There you go,” said Jack Curl, doing a turn and bumping into Leslie. There occurred between them some kind of comic Christian jostle.

  He was looking down at his short hospital smock. It was tied loosely in the back. A draft blew up under the flap. There was lettering on the front. He tried to read it.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  “You’re at Duke, Poppy,” said Leslie and sure enough took him by a strong hand. “The Duke hospital.”

  “Sit down, Tiger, before you fall down,” said Vance.

  “I feel fine,” he said. He did. Except for a lightness in the head and a throbbing above one eye, he felt strong. He was hungry. “How long have I been here?”

  “Twelve hours,” said Vance. “And I’m here to tell you one damn thing. Out of your head you’re a lot easier to get along with. You’re not a bad patient. You actually hold still when I tell you.”

  “How did I get here from the bus?”

  The three looked at each other and laughed.

  Jack Curl did a turn and addressed the others, with Will Barrett as listener-in. “I don’t know what friend Will here told that bus driver, but that sucker turned that bus around and delivered him straight to Linwood Hospital.”

  He looked at them. Their smiles and winks and jokes bore him along as skillfully as the swift hands on the X-ray table. “What am I doing here?”

  Vance’s eyes gazed unfocused into his. “I thought there might be a little sumpn wrong with you.”

  “Was there?”

  “Not what I was afraid of. Actually I was right all along. It looked to me like you were having little petty-mall seizures, but when you took to falling down and acting even meaner than usual, I was afraid it might be something more serious. As it is, they even got a pill for what ails you. You won’t even have to stay in a hospital. A convalescent home for a spell is all you need, long enough for me to get you regulated. Let’s go back to the mountain, boy. At least I know now what was causing your slice. What a relief. I thought for a while your golf game was shot.”