Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

“I hope so too, sir.” He was sure he would not. Because he had lived a life of pure possibility, the engineer, who had often heard older people talk this way, always felt certain he would not repeat their mistakes.

“It’s something when the world goes to hell and your own family lets you down, both,” said Mr. Vaught, but not at all dolefully, the engineer noticed. His expression was as chipper as ever.

The tiny room soon became so thick with cigar smoke that the engineer’s eyes began to smart. Yet, as he sat blinking, hands on knees, he felt quite content.

“Ah, Billy, there’s been a loss of integrity in the world, all the things that made this country great.”

“Yes sir.”

“But the bitterest thing of all is the ingratitude of your own children.”

“It must be.”

Mr. Vaught sat on the very edge of the sofa and turned around and looked back through the smoke. “Rita’s the only one that’s worth a damn and she’s not even kin.”

“Sutter’s the oldest,” said the engineer, nodding.

“The oldest and the smartest and still isn’t worth a damn. Never was and never will be.”

“He wrote some very learned articles.”

“I’ll tell you what he did. He went to the bad on liquor and women.”

“Is that so?” All his life the engineer had heard of men who “went to the bad” on women, but he still didn’t quite know what it meant. “Isn’t he a good doctor?” he asked the older man.

“He had the best education money could buy and you know what he does?”

“No sir.”

“He went to Harvard Medical School and made the second highest grades ever made there. After that he interned at Massachusetts General Hospital. Came home. Practiced four years with wonderful success. Was doing people a world of good. Then he quit. Do you know what he does now?”

“No sir.”

“He’s assistant coroner. He makes five hundred dollars a month cutting on dead people in the daytime and chases women all night. Why, he’s not even the coroner. He’s the assistant. He works at the hospital but he doesn’t practice. What he is is an interne. He’s a thirty-four-year-old interne.”

“Is that right?”

“You know that boy in there,” Mr. Vaught nodded toward the room.

“Yes sir.”

“He is evermore crazy about his big brother and I be dog if I know why. And smart!”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

“—”

“I’ll tell you what happened, though.”

“What?”

“I made a mistake. Three years ago, when my other daughter Val had her twenty-first birthday, I got the idea of giving each of my children a hundred thousand dollars if they hadn’t smoked till they were twenty-one. Why not enjoy your money while you’re living?”

“That’s true,” said the engineer, who owned $7.

“Anyway I didn’t want to have to look at the bunch of them tippy-toeing around and grinning like chess-cats, waiting for me to die. You know what I mean.”

“Yes sir,” said the other, laughing.

“So what do you think happens? Sutter is older, so he gets his check the same time as Val. So Sutter, as soon as he gets his money, quits practicing medicine, goes out West, and buys a ranch and sits down and watches the birdies. And when he spends the money, do you know what he does? He takes a job at a dude ranch, like a ship’s doctor, only he’s taking care of five hundred grass widows. Oh, I really did him a favor. Oh, I really did him a big favor. Wait. I want to show you something. Today, you know, is Kitty’s and Jamie’s birthday. Kitty is twenty-one and Jamie is only sixteen, but I’m going to give him his money now.”

The engineer looked at the other curiously, but he could fathom nothing.

“Maybe you and Jamie would like to take a trip around the world,” said Mr. Vaught without changing his expression. He was fumbling in the back pocket of his seersucker pants and now took out a wallet as rounded off and polished as a buckeye. From it he plucked two checks and handed them to the engineer, watching him the while with a brimming expectation. They were stiff new checks, as rough as a cheese grater, bristling with red and black bank marks and punch-holes and machine printing. A row of odd Q-shaped zeros marched to the east.

“This one must be for Kitty,” he said, reading the word Katherine. “One hundred thousand dollars.” It seemed to be what the old man expected, for he nodded.

“You give it to one, you got to give it to all. I hope she dudn’t mess me up too.”

“Did Val mess you up?”

“Val? She was the worst. And yet she was my girlie. I used to call her that, girlie. When she was little, she used to have growing pains. I would hold her in my lap and rock her in the rocking chair, for hours.”

“What did she do?”

“With the money? Gave it to the niggers.”

“Sir?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. She gave it to the niggers.”

“But—” began the engineer, who had formed a picture of a girl standing on the front porch handing out bills to passing Negroes. “I thought Kitty told me she went into a, ah, convent.”

“She did,” cried the old man, peering back through the smoke.

“Then how—”

“Now she’s begging from niggers. Do you think that is right?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Let me ask you something. Do you think the good Lord wants us to do anything unnatural?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said the engineer warily. He perceived it was an old argument and a sore subject.

“Or leave your own kind?”

“Sir?”

“I mean to go spend the rest of your life not just with niggers but with Tyree niggers — do you think that is natural?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You’ve heard your daddy talk about Tyree niggers?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Not even niggers have anything to do with Tyree niggers. Down there in Tyree County they’ve got three different kinds of schools, one for the white folks, one for niggers, and a third for Tyree niggers. They’re speckled-like in the face and all up in the head. Some say they eat clay. So where do you think Val goes?”

“Yes sir,” said the engineer.

“She went to Agnes Scott, then to Columbia and was just about to get her master’s.”

The engineer perceived that here was one of those families, more common in the upper South, who set great store by education and degrees.

“So what do I do? Two weeks before graduation I give her her money. So what does she do?”

“Gave it to the Tyree niggers?”

“Man, I’m telling you.”

An easy silence fell between them. Mr. Vaught crossed his legs and pulled one ankle above the other with both hands. The little lobby, now swirling with cigar smoke, was something like an old-style Pullman smoker where men used to sit talking by night, pulling their ankles above their knees, and leaning out to spit in the great sloshing cuspidor.

“Let’s get us another Coke, Bill.”

“I’ll get them, sir.”

Mr. Vaught drank his Coke in country style, sticking out a little finger and swigging it off in two swallows. “Now. Here’s what we’ll do. The doctors say Jamie can travel in a week or so. I aim to start home about Thursday week or Friday. Mama wants to go by Williamsburg and Charleston. Now you going to quit all this foolishness up here and come on home with us. What I’m going to do is get you and Jamie a little bitty car — you know I’m in the car business. Do you play golf?”

“Yes sir.”

“Hell, man, we live on the golf links. Our patio is twenty feet from number 6 fairway. You like to sail? The Lil’ Doll is tied up out at the yacht club and nobody will sail her. You’d be doing me a great favor.”