Last Gentleman and The Second Coming

by Walker Percy

  “Father was an old highballer from Raleigh before he took to persecuting the saints,” said Jack, absently socking fist into palm. “He used to ride the old Seaboard Air Line and never got over it. Right, Father?”

  Father Weatherbee said something.

  “What’s that, Father?” asked Will Barrett, leaning toward him.

  “Father Weatherbee has two unusual interests,” said Jack Curl, looking at his wristwatch. “Oh my, I’ve got to see Leslie before—” He took Will Barrett’s hand as if he meant to say goodbye. In the handshake he felt himself being steered closer to the old priest. “Father here believes in two things in this world. One is the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and the other is Apostolic Succession. Right, Padre? Frankly, it sounds more like the ancestor worship of his Mindanao tribesmen, but I don’t argue with him. After all, I also get along with Leslie, who has no use for any priests, let alone a succession of priests. So what? You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

  “Apostolic Succession?” said Will Barrett, looking from one to the other.

  “A laying on of hands which goes back to the Apostles,” said Jack Curl, smiling and nodding at the highballers.

  “It occurred,” said Father Weatherbee in a dry hoarse voice. When he spoke, a red bleb formed at the corner of his mouth like a bubble-gum bubble.

  “There you go,” said Jack Curl.

  Father Weatherbee said something.

  “What’s that?” asked Will Barrett, cocking his good ear.

  “I said he reminds me of a kumongakvaikvai,” said Father Weatherbee, nodding at Jack and blowing out a bleb.

  “What’s a kumongakvaikvai?”

  “It’s the dung bird of southern Mindanao. It follows herds of Kumonga cattle and eats dung like your cattle egret. Characteristically the bird perches on the backs of the beasts and utters its cry kvai kvai." And Father Weatherbee uttered a sound which could only have been the cry of the bird.

  “Ha ha,” laughed Jack Curl, giving Will Barrett the elbow. “I told you they’re all characters up here.”

  4

  “What do you think of these great John Kennedy rockers?” Jack Curl called out on the front porch. “You know I slipped a disc last year and instead of surgery I rocked. I mean really rocked. Do you know you can get a workout in one of these?”

  There were at least fifty rocking chairs, damp from the fog, none occupied.

  After supper he sat in a rocker and watched a cloud rise from the valley floor. To the left, where the valley narrowed, the cloud seemed to boom and echo against the sides of the gorge.

  Suddenly he jumped up, remembering something he meant to ask Jack Curl, even though Jack had left hours ago. Instead, he called Vance.

  “Vance, I just thought of something.”

  “What’s that, buddy?”

  “It just occurred to me that Leslie moved all my stuff here before she found out I was sick.”

  “Ahmmm.” Vance cleared his throat. “Well, we all knew something was wrong. You were sick. It was only a matter of diagnosis. As a matter of fact, I was me only one who didn’t think you were crazy. As for what you got, we going to lick that mother, right? How’re you feeling?”

  “Fine. But she moved me out before I came back. What did she have in mind?”

  “Let me tell you something, Will.”

  “All right.”

  “Leslie is much woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “She is some kind of woman, a fine Christian woman.”

  “Right. But—”

  “You know what she’s going to do with St. Mark’s?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she’s transferring the convalescents to the new community Marion had planned over on Sourwood Mountain—as soon as we can get it built. And we’ll use the present St. Mark’s as a hospital with a new wing for radiation patients complete with a new beta cyclotron. I’m sure you’d rather live in the Peabody community. There’s no reason for you to have to live in a hospital.”

  “The love-and-faith community.”

  “Right.”

  “I see. Where is the money for all this coming from?”

  Vance coughed. “I thought you and Leslie and Slocum had worked that out. Christ, you’re a lawyer.”

  “You’re talking about the Peabody Trust?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is no Peabody Trust. I am Marion’s sole beneficiary.”

  “I know, but Leslie had given me to understand that you wanted to carry out Marion’s wishes in this—let alone considerations of your own health.”

  “What about my health?”

  He could feel the shrug through the telephone. “You’re going to be following a strict regime from here on out—and you’re going to be fine! But let’s face it. We don’t know a damn thing about Hausmann’s Syndrome except how to maintain a patient.”

  “Are you talking about maintaining me or committing me?”

  “Ha ha. As long as your pH doesn’t get over seven point four, you’re right as rain. In fact—”

  “Yes?”

  “We were wondering if you might not run the Peabody community, since you’re going to be out there anyway.”

  “We?”

  “Talk to Leslie. She’s another Marion.”

  “I see.”

  He went up to his room and turned on the stereo. Leslie had even popped in a tape. It was Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder, which used to be one of his favorites.

  Earlier Jack Curl had introduced him to Warren East, formerly with Texas Instruments, who was also a music lover and had in his suite a digital sound system. “You two guys got it made,” said Jack, reaching deep in his jump-suit pockets. “You can either swap tapes or get together. Warren’s got everything that Victor Herbert ever composed.” Again the handshake steering him against Warren East.

  He looked at Warren East. Warren East did not look at him.

  Leslie had put a book next to his favorite chair. It was the Bible. He picked it up. It opened to a bookmark. He read: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Leslie had made a note in the margin: And what lovely hills!

  Overhead in the attic the Wabash Cannonball rambled along with a rustle and a roar.

  Closing the Bible, he got up fast, causing the gyroscope in his head to twist. He went by arcs down to the porch and sat in a John Kennedy rocker. It was damp. The porch was deserted. The cloud had come out of the valley. Everything beyond the banister rail was whited out. Through a window he caught sight of half of a giant TV screen in the recreation room. Lawrence Welk, still holding his baton, was dancing a waltz with a pretty young blonde.

  Presently Kojak came on.

  He felt an urge to get away from the silent white enveloping cloud and to go inside to the cheerful living room with its screen of lively sparkling colors and watch the doings of Kojak.

  He rose carefully, taking care not to excite the gyroscope inside his head, then sat down with a thump.

  Jesus Christ, he thought. I’m in the old folks’ home.

  5

  The friendly atmosphere of St. Mark’s was marred by two fights which occurred within the space of half an hour. He found himself embroiled in both of them. Remarkable! It had been years since he’d been in a fight or even seen a fight.

  Kitty came to St. Mark’s and assaulted him. Then Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan, his roommate for two years, got in a fistfight. Kitty must have found his suite empty and tracked him all over St. Mark’s because she burst into the small room where he was visiting the two old men. It was clear when she came through the door that her rage had already carried her past caring who heard or saw her.

  “You bastard,” she said. Her eyes showed white all around like a wild pony’s. “You—” She broke off.

  “What?” he asked, noticing that he felt scared, and wondered if this natural emotion were not another sign of his return to health.

  “What my butt,” she said. “Now I know why—” she sa
id and again her voice broke off, with a sob. Then with a grunt of effort as if she had to fling down a burden, she raised her woman’s fists, thumbs straight along the knuckle, and, leaning across Mr. Ryan, began to beat him on the chest.

  Later Mr. Ryan told him, “It looked like that lady was put out with you about something.”

  “Now I know why you didn’t come to Dun Romin’ or the summerhouse or anywhere at all, you—” Again her breath caught as she shoved past Mr. Ryan’s bad knee to get at him. “You—you dirty old man!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were shacked up in the woods with Allison, you—”

  Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan were lying in bed and watching Hollywood Squares as if nothing unusual were going on three feet above them.

  “Shacked up?”

  “You—snake in the grass! Taking advantage of a psychotic girl. You—you—”

  “Dirty old man?” said Mr. Ryan, looking up for the first time.

  “You shut your mouth, you old asshole,” said Kitty, without looking down.

  “Yes ma’am,” said Mr. Ryan.

  “Well, I’m here to tell you one damn thing, old pal. I hope to God you’re pleased with yourself. She is now hopelessly regressed. She won’t say a word. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m fixing it so you’ll never get your filthy hands on her again, you—snake in the grass. That’s exactly what you are, a snake in the grass!”

  “You mean she won’t talk to you?” he asked her.

  “I mean she won’t talk period, won’t eat period, won’t live period—unless I do something about it. You bastard,” she said softly. “You knew where she was all along.”

  He had spied Mr. Arnold in the hall hopping along on his crutch. There was no mistaking that peeled-onion head and the one bright eye in his shutdown face. Then, after Kitty left, flung out, jammed her fist into her side and flounced her hip with it—it’s amazing, he reflected, how trite rage is: enraged people in life act exactly like enraged people in comic books: there were stars and comets and zaps over Kitty’s head—then Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan had a fight.

  Mr. Arnold was sitting on the foot of his bed, fisted hand cradled like a baby in his good arm. Though it was his bed and his right to sit there, he was blocking Mr. Ryan’s view of Hollywood Squares. Mr. Ryan began shifting his head back and forth in an exaggerated way to see around Mr. Arnold. He asked him to move but Mr. Arnold either didn’t hear or pretended not to hear.

  “You may be a pane, Erroll,” he said to Mr. Arnold with an angry laugh, “but I can’t see through you.”

  Mr. Ryan had a neat white crewcut, a youthful face, its skin smooth and pink-creased like a baby waking up. But his eye had a cast in it. One leg was gone from the hip and the other freshly amputated and bandaged below the knee. Diabetes and arteriosclerosis, he explained, watching Will with a keen and lively eye to see how he would take it, and apparently was satisfied, for he, Will, took it as he took everything else, attentively and without surprise. They had got the infection in time, Mr. Ryan said, and this time he could keep his knee. He explained, watching Will Barrett closely, that it was better to chop off a good piece the first time than nibble away as they had done with the other leg. I could have told them from the beginning, he said, that it’s exactly like pruning back boxwood with the blight.

  Mr. Ryan was lying on top of the bedclothes. He pulled up his hospital gown to show his stump. “Ain’t that a pistol?” His thigh too had the same pink and white baby skin.

  The watchful, almost angry look, he saw, was Mr. Ryan’s way of asking him if he thought he would keep his knee. Is it such a bad thing, he mused chin in hand over Mr. Ryan’s remaining knee, to have a knee to think about day in and day out? Even if both knees were well and all was well, what would you do here? “They going to keep chopping on me till I’ll fit on a skateboard,” said Mr. Ryan, watching him.

  “It looks very healthy,” he said. “It looks fine to me.”

  “Yes, it does,” said Mr. Ryan instantly. “I believe they got it this time. We can’t see the show, Erroll,” he said to Mr. Arnold.

  But Mr. Arnold didn’t move.

  After a while Mr. Ryan said, “Like I said, Erroll, you may be a pane but we can’t see through you.”

  Still Mr. Arnold didn’t move.

  “You want to know what Erroll does?” Mr. Ryan asked Will Barrett with a smile, but his eyes were glittering.

  “What?”

  “He knows I can’t move yet he sits his ass right there on the end of his bed between me and the TV, Erroll you shit!” said Mr. Ryan, laughing, then with a sob but still laughing lunged out between the two beds and, propping himself on the floor with one hand, grabbed Mr. Arnold’s crutch with the other. When, with difficulty, veins pounding in his neck, glossy eye bulging, he got himself back in place, it appeared he meant only to steal Mr. Arnold’s crutch, but no. Gripping the crutch at the small end in both hands like a baseball bat and giving himself what purchase he could by gathering his knee stump under him, he swung the crutch with all his might and caught Mr. Arnold a heavy glancing blow on his onion dome, cursing all the while.

  “You no-good peckerwood son of a bitch!” he cried, his voice going suddenly hoarse.

  Mr. Arnold, suddenly on the move, turned, his good eye winking at Barrett, grabbed the crossbar of the crutch with his good hand, yanked it, and kicked out at Mr. Ryan with his good leg, but fell off the bed. Mr. Ryan flew through the air like a doll and fell on top of him. Three fists rose and fell.

  “You covite cocksucker,” said Mr. Ryan.

  “Cornholer,” said Mr. Arnold clearly. He had got on top, and though he could only use one arm, the curtain of his face had been lifted by rage. His whole mouth formed curses. Cursing cures paralysis.

  “Wait, hold it, okay okay,” said Will Barrett, jumping clean across the bed and landing astraddle the roommates in time to catch the crutch on his shin. “Shit,” he said. The two old men were grunting and embracing and cursing like lovers. “I mean for God’s sake stop it!” Picking up Mr. Ryan, who, truncated, was no bigger than a chunky child, he set him in place on his pillows. Mr. Arnold was already back on his perch at the foot of the bed, once again blocking Mr. Ryan’s view of Hollywood Squares. The fight might never have occurred. Instead of moving Mr. Arnold, Will Barrett moved the TV arm so Mr. Ryan’s view could not be blocked. He looked at them. They were gazing at Paul Lynde in the middle square as if nothing had happened.

  “How often does this happen?” he asked them.

  “Ever’ damn time they chop me down to size, Erroll sits his bony ass right where I can’t see the TV,” said Mr. Ryan.

  “It’s the onliest place I can see it good,” said Mr. Arnold. “It’s too little to see from back there.”

  “You speak very well,” Will Barrett told Mr. Arnold. “The last time I saw you at my house, you didn’t have much to say.”

  “There wasn’t much to say.”

  “He’s too damn mean to talk,” said Mr. Ryan. “But knock him upside the head like a mule and he’ll talk your ear off.”

  “How long have you been here?” Will Barrett asked Mr. Ryan.

  “Two years.”

  “How about Mr. Arnold?”

  “Ask him.”

  “Three years,” said Mr. Arnold clearly. The curtain of his face had not yet shut down.

  Strange: even during their rages they seemed to be watching him with a mute smiling appeal. They wanted to be told that no matter what happened, things would turn out well—and they believed him.

  He discovered that it was possible to talk to them and even for them to talk to each other, if all three watched TV. The TV was like a fourth at bridge, the dummy partner they could all watch.

  Mr. Ryan was a contractor from Charlotte who had moved to Linwood to build condominiums and villas for Mountainview Homes until diabetes and arteriosclerosis had “cut him down to size.”

  “Their joists are two foot on centers, the nails are cheap, and the floor
boards bounce clean off in two years,” said Mr. Arnold to Peter Marshall of Hollywood Squares. How could anger raise the curtain of his face?

  “You want to know what he wants to do?” Mr. Ryan asked Jonathan Winters. “Use locust pegs and hand-split shingles for the roof. So a locust peg lasts two hundred years. He still thinks labor is thirty cents an hour.”

  “Are you a builder?” Will Barrett asked Mr. Arnold.

  “He once built a log cabin,” said Mr. Ryan. “But now by the time he finished the cabin the owners would have passed.”

  “Anybody can go round up a bunch of hippies and knock up a chicken shack that won’t last ten years,” said Mr. Arnold. “What they do is punch on their little bitty machine and figure it out so the house will fall down same time as the people.”

  He looked at the two old men curiously. “You can get hippies to work for you?” he asked Mr. Ryan.

  “Sure you can. If you know which ones to pick. Some of them are tired of sitting around. I got me a real good gang. They work better than niggers.”

  “You build log cabins?” he asked Mr. Arnold.

  “I can notch up a house for you,” said Mr. Arnold to Rose Marie holding her rose.

  “If you live long enough,” said Mr. Ryan. They all watched TV in silence.

  “You give me my auger,” said Mr. Arnold suddenly and in a strong voice, “my ax, saw, froe, maul, mallet, and board brake and I’ll notch you up a house that’ll be here when this whole building’s fallen down—though you and your wife done real good to pay for it, otherwise we wouldn’t have nothing.”

  “Tell him about using hog blood and horsehair in the red-clay chinking,” said Mr. Ryan.

  “How much can you build a cabin for?” he asked Mr. Arnold.

  “I built a four-room house with a creek-rock chimley for Roy Price down in Rabun County for two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “That was in nineteen-thirty for Christ’s sake,” said Mr. Ryan.

  “It had overhanging dovetailing. I don’t use no hogpen notch, they’ll go out on you. I ain’t never made a chimley that never drawed. It’s all in how you make the scotch-back.”