by Walker Percy
Insert thumbnail into plastic seal between glass rim and stopper. The slight pop is like a violation.
Comes a knock. Patient number four.
Put away the Early Times in the drawer of Bayonne-rayons.
It is a new patient, a young coffee-colored graduate student with intense eyes and a high bossed forehead like the late Harry Belafonte. Seems he has a private complaint. Nothing for it but to close the back door. He leans forward in a pleasant anxious way. I know what is wrong with him before he opens his mouth, but he tells me anyway.
Chief complaint: a feeling of strangeness, of not feeling himself, of eeriness, dislocation, etcetera etcetera.
Past history: native of Nassau, graduate of U. of Conn. and Syracuse. He tells me it is his plan to “unite in his own life the objective truths of science with the universal spiritual insights of Eastern religion.”
Ah me. Another Orientalized heathen Englishman.
“Well, let’s see,” I say, and take out my lapsometer.
When he’s gone, I open the back door. The Sears ramp is empty.
Ah well. To my fat ladies, to the A & P for a turkey, to the toy store and home.
6
“Fore!”
“Good mashie, old man!”
In a bunker I notice that, December or not, weeds are beginning to sprout.
A tractor pulling a gang mower stops beside me. The driver is greenskeeper Moon Mullins, a fellow Knight of Columbus, Holy Name man, ex-Pontiac salesman. Moon stayed because he owns half the shacks in Happy Hollow, now inhabited by peckerwoods, and can’t sell them.
“How goes it, Moon?”
The greenskeeper shakes his head dolefully. Really, though, he’s fit as can be. What he doesn’t remember is his life as a Pontiac salesman in a Toyota town, standing around the showroom grinning and popping his knuckles while his colon tightened and whitened, went hard and straight as a lead pipe.
“You want to know where it all began to go wrong?” Moon asks me, nodding toward a foursome of sepia golfers.
“Where?”
“It started when we abandoned the Latin mass.”
“You think?”
“Sure. You think about it.”
“All right.”
Off he roars, whistling a carol and showering me in a drizzle of grass cuttings.
“See you tonight!” he hollers back.
He comes down to the chapel now. Most A.C.C. (Cicero) Catholics have moved away. Monsignor Schleifkopf was transferred to Brooklyn. Moon and others who stayed have drifted back to Father Smith.
7
After holding fat clinic at the club, I am served lunch in the hall. The placing of my table in the hall between the men’s bar crowded with golfers and the dining room overflowing with Mah-Jongg ladies is nicely calculated not to offend me.
I eat with the English pro.
From one side comes the click of Mah-Jongg tiles, from the other the rattle of poker dice in cup. My Bantu ladies, the weight watchers, are a hefty crew. They are all dressed in the fashion of the day, in velveteen, mostly green and wine-colored with hats to match, hats with tall stove-in crowns and large cloche-shaped brims.
The food is good—it comes straight from the rib room and is the same roast beef and Yorkshire pudding everyone is served. I eat heartily. Better still, I don’t have to listen to “Christmas gif, Doc!” and I don’t have to worry about tipping. Instead I get tipped. Beside my plate I find an envelope with check for $25 and poem attached. From my fat ladies.
Merry Longhu6 for our Doc
Who tries to keep us slim.
Don’t get discouraged, Doc, we’ll try harder
More power to him.
Reading poem and nodding and chewing roast beef.
8
The bell rings for midnight mass. Ellen decides to come with me.
“Thanks again for the bell, my son,” says Father Smith on the tiny porch of the chapel. With his deep tan from fire-watching and his hairy Spanish futbol wrists he looks more than ever like Ricardo Montalban.
The bell is the plantation bell from Tara. It is the original bell provided by David O. Selznick for the original Tara. Lola hid it in the well before the Bantus came.
There is some confusion in the chapel. The Jews are leaving—it is their Sabbath. The Protestants are singing. Catholics are lined up for confession. We have no ecumenical movement. No minutes of the previous meeting are read. The services overlap. Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Bessie Charles is singing a spiritual:
He’s got the little bitty baby in his hands,
He’s got the whole world in his hands.
Catholics join in self-consciously and off-key.
Father Smith looks at his watch as usual and as usual says: “Time to get locked in the box. Coming?”
“Very well.”
Blinking with surprise, he lets out a groan and looks at his watch again. Must he hear my confession in the few minutes he allots to polishing off the week’s sins of his practicing Catholics? Well, he will if he must.
“Don’t worry, Father. It won’t take a minute.”
He nods, relieved. Perhaps I’ve been slipping off to confess elsewhere.
My turn comes at last. I kneel in the sour darkness of the box, which smells of sweat and pullman curtain.
The little door slides back. There is Father Smith, close as close, cheek propped on three fingers, trying to keep awake. He’s cross-eyed from twelve hours of fire-watching. A hundred brushfires flicker across his retina. These days people, convinced of world-conspiracies against them, go out and set the woods afire to get even.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I say and fall silent, forgetting everything.
“When was your last confession?” asks the priest patiently.
“Eleven years ago.”
Another groan escapes the priest. Again he peers at his watch. Must he listen to an eleven-year catalogue of dreary fornications and such? Well, he’ll do it.
“Father, I can make my confession in one sentence.”
“Good,” says the priest, cheering up.
“I do not recall the number of occasions, Father, but I accuse myself of drunkenness, lusts, envies, fornication, delight in the misfortunes of others, and loving myself better than God and other men.”
“I see,” says the priest, who surprises me by not looking surprised. Perhaps he’s just sleepy. “Do you have contrition and a firm purpose of amendment?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You don’t feel sorry for your sins?”
“I don’t feel much of anything.”
“Let me understand you.”
“All right.”
“You have not lost your faith?”
“No.”
“You believe in the Catholic faith as the Church proposes it?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe that your sins will be forgiven here and now if you confess them, are sorry for them, and resolve to sin no more?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you say you do not feel sorry.”
“That is correct.”
“You are aware of your sins, you confess them, but you are not sorry for them?
“That is correct.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Pity.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For not being sorry.”
The priest sighs. “Will you pray that God will give you a true knowledge of your sins and a true contrition?”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
“You are a doctor and it is your business to help people, not harm them.”
“That is true.”
“You are also a husband and father and it is your duty to love and cherish your family.”
“Yes, but that does not prev
ent me from desiring other women and even contriving plans to commit fornication and adultery.”
“Yes,” says the priest absently. “That’s the nature of the beast.”
Damn, why doesn’t he wake up and pay attention?
“But you haven’t recently,” says the priest.
“Haven’t what?”
“Actually committed adultery and fornication.”
“No,” I say irritably. “But—”
“Hm. You know, Tom, maybe it’s not so much a question at our age of committing in the imagination these horrendous sins of the flesh as of worrying whether one still can. In the firetower on such occasions I find it useful to imagine the brushfires as the outer circle of hell, not too hot really, where these sad sins are punished, and my toes toasting in the flames. Along comes Our Lady who spies me and says: ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you here? This is ridiculous.’”
Damn, where does he come off patronizing me with his stock priestly tricks—I can tell they’re his usual tricks because he reels ’em off without even listening. I can smell the seminary and whole libraries of books “for the layman” with little priest-jokes. How can he lump the two of us together, him a gray ghost of a cleric and me the spirit of the musical-erotic?
More tricks:
“For your drinking you might find it helpful, at least it is in my case, to cast your lot with other drunks. Then, knowing how much trouble you’re going to put your friends to if you take a drink, you’re less apt to—though it doesn’t always work.”
“Thank you,” I say coldly.
“Now let’s see.” He’s nodding again, drifting off into smoke and brushfires. “Very well. You’re sorry for your sins.”
“No.”
“That’s too bad. Ah me. Well—” He steals a glance at his watch. “In any case, continue to pray for knowledge of your sins. God is good. He will give you what you ask. Ask for sorrow. Pray for me.”
“All right.”
“Meanwhile, forgive me but there are other things we must think about: like doing our jobs, you being a better doctor, I being a better priest, showing a bit of ordinary kindness to people, particularly our own families—unkindness to those close to us is such a pitiful thing—doing what we can for our poor unhappy country—things which, please forgive me, sometimes seem more important than dwelling on a few middle-aged daydreams.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I say instantly, scalded.
“You’re sorry for your sins?”
“Yes. Ashamed rather.”
“That will do. Now say the act of contrition and for your penance I’m going to give you this.”
Through the little window he hands me two articles, an envelope containing ashes and a sackcloth, which is a kind of sleeveless sweater made of black burlap. John XXIV recently revived public penance, a practice of the early Church.
While he absolves me, I say an act of contrition and pull the sackcloth over my sports coat.
“Go in peace. I’ll offer my mass for you tonight.”
“Thank you,” I say, dumping the ashes in my hair.
After hearing confessions, the priest gets ready to say mass. The pious black seminarian, who looks like Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, who never entertained a dirty thought, assists him.
Some of the Protestants stay, including Leroy Ledbetter and Victor Charles and his wife.
There is a flick of eyes as people notice my sackcloth. Ellen’s cheek radiates complex rays of approval-disapproval. Approval that I will now “do right,” be a better husband, cultivate respectable patients, remain abstemious, etcetera. What she disapproves is not that I am doing public penance. No, what bothers her is an ancient Presbyterian mistrust of things, things getting mixed up in religion. The black sweater and the ashes scandalize her. Her eyelid lowers—she almost winks. What have these things, articles, to do with doing right? For she mistrusts the Old Church’s traffic in things, sacraments, articles, bread, wine, salt, oil, water, ashes. Watch out! You know what happened before when you Catholics mucked it up with all your things, medals, scapulars, candles, blood statues! when it came finally to crossing palms for indulgences. Watch out!
I will. We will.
Father Smith says mass. I eat Christ, drink his blood.
At the end the people say aloud a prayer confessing the sins of the Church and asking for the reunion of Christians and of the United States.
Outside the children of some love couples and my own little Thomas More, a rowdy but likable lot, shoot off firecrackers.
“Hurray for Jesus Christ!” they cry. “Hurrah for the United States!”
9
After mass, Victor Charles wishes me merry Christmas and tells me he’s running for Congress.
“The U.S. Congress?”
“Why not?”
He wants me to be his campaign manager.
“Why me?”
“I got the Bantu vote. They’ve fallen out with each other and are willing to go with me. Chuck Parker’s helping me with the swamp people. Max is working on the liberals. Leroy Ledbetter’s got the peckerwoods. You could swing the Catholics.”
“I doubt that. Anyhow, I’m not much of a politician.” I have to laugh. He sounds exactly like a politician from the old Auto Age.
“You organized the SOUP chapter here, didn’t you?”
SOUP is Southerners and Others United to Preserve the Union in Repayment of an old Debt to the Yankees Who Saved It Once Before and Are Destroying It Now.
For, in fact, much of the North is pulling out. The new Hanseatic League of Black City-States—Detroit, New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington—refused last year to admit federal election commissioners. D.C. had to remove to Virginia, home of Jefferson.
“You’re a good doctor, Doc. People respect you.”
“What’s that got to do with politics?”
“Everything, man!”
“You running as Knothead or Left?”
“Doc, I’m running under the old rooster.” In Louisiana the rooster stood for the old Democratic Party.
I laugh. Victor laughs and claps his hands. It’s the same old funny fouled-up coalition. Kennedy, Evers, Goldberg, Stevenson, L. Q. C. Lamar.
“All right.”
“All right, what?”
“I will.”
We laugh. Why are we laughing?
“Merry Christmas, Doc.”
“Merry Christmas.”
10
Barbecuing in my sackcloth.
The turkey is smoking well. The children have gone to bed, but they’ll be up at dawn to open their presents.
The night is clear and cold. There is no moon. The light of the transmitter lies hard by Jupiter, ruby and diamond in the plush velvet sky. Ellen is busy in the kitchen fixing stuffing and sweet potatoes. Somewhere in the swamp a screech owl cries.
I’m dancing around to keep warm, hands in pockets. It is Christmas Day and the Lord is here, a holy night and surely that is all one needs.
On the other hand I want a drink. Fetching the Early Times from a clump of palmetto, I take six drinks in six minutes. Now I’m dancing and singing old Sinatra songs and the Salve Regina, cutting the fool like David before the ark or like Walter Huston doing a jig when he struck it rich in the Sierra Madre.
The turkey is ready. I take it into the kitchen and grab Ellen from behind. She smells of flour and stuffing and like a Georgia girl.
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” says Ellen, picking up a spoon.
“You’re lovely here.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Yes.”
“Put my dress down.”
“All right.”
“What are you doing?”
“Picking you up.”
“Put me down.”
I’m staggering with her, a noble, surprisingly heavy, Presbyterian armful.
“You’re drunk.”
“Yes.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
�
��In here. Put the spoon down.”
She puts the spoon down and I put her down on her new $600 bed.
To bed we go for a long winter’s nap, twined about each other as the ivy twineth, not under a bush or in a car or on the floor or any such humbug as marked the past peculiar years of Christendom, but at home in bed where all good folk belong.
A Biography of Walker Percy
By Judy Khan
When Walker Percy was diagnosed with tuberculosis at twenty-six, what might have seemed a serious setback for a recent medical school graduate turned into a life-altering career change. During the years Percy spent recovering at Trudeau Sanatorium in upstate New York, reading literature and religion, falling under the spell of European existential philosophers such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Søren Kierkegaard, he turned his focus from healing bodies to healing souls. Returning to his native South, he married Mary Bernice Townsend, converted to Catholicism, and settled into the life of a writer/philosopher. Like the Europeans he admired, he expressed his fascination with philosophy in fictional form, publishing six novels before his death at home in Covington, Louisiana, in 1990.
With the publication of his first novel, The Moviegoer (1961), which won the National Book Award, Percy was immediately recognized as a leading Southern writer. His handling of major existential themes such as alienation, loss of faith, and search for meaning, expressed through the characters of Binx Bolling and Kate Cutrer, left no doubt that he was a writer of great philosophical depth.
Walker Percy was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1916. Undoubtedly his thematic concerns reflected his own childhood tragedies of losing his grandfather and father to suicide and, soon after, his mother to a car accident. Walker and his two brothers were adopted by a cousin, William Alexander Percy (“Uncle Will”), a lawyer, writer, and Southern traditionalist living in Greenville, Mississippi, whose values shaped the Moviegoer character Aunt Emily.
But it’s Binx, a Korean War veteran and New Orleans stockbroker, who most clearly embodies Percy’s own brand of Christian existentialism. Though Binx’s daily activities of making money in the stock market, sexually pursuing a series of secretaries, and moviegoing might seem shallow and avoidant, his inner life is anything but. Internally, he observes and interprets life according to “the search,” a complex philosophical stance of how to live in a world where the traditional values of religious faith and Southern stoicism are crumbling. His female counterpart, Kate, is also adrift after the death of her mother when Kate was still a young girl. Filled with anxiety, at times suicidal, Kate seeks refuge in familial rebellion, pills, and the one person who understands her—Binx. For Kate, Binx’s search is an antic preoccupation; for Binx it is an existential quest of the highest order.
