Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

The engineer wished he would mention a salary.

“You and Jamie can go to college — or go round the world! Now isn’t that better than being a janitor?”

“Yes sir.”

“You think about it.”

“I will. Sir?”

“What?”

“Here — I’m going to write down my number here in New York.” Meaning, he hoped: you didn’t mention a figure and when you want to, it is for you to call me.

“Sho now,” said Mr. Vaught absently, and shoved the slip of paper into the side pocket of his seersucker, a bad enough sign in itself.

He stayed only long enough to watch the presentation of the checks. Kitty was back and without Rita!

Standing between Jamie and Kitty, Mr. Vaught crossed his arms, a check in each hand.

“When was your last cigarette?” he asked Jamie.

“There was no last cigarette,” said Jamie, grinning and thrashing.

“Your last drink?”

“There was no last drink.”

“Then go buy yourself a drink.”

“Yes sir,” said Jamie, taking his check.

“Kitty?”

“No cigarette and no drink.”

“Then go buy yourself one!”

“I might,” said Kitty, laughing.

“I mean it! They’re certified. You can cash it right down there at the bar on the corner.”

“Thank you, Poppy,” said Kitty, kissing him.

The checks were passed around among family, nurses, and internes.

Once again Kitty left and once again the engineer tried to follow her, but Jamie stopped him.

“Bill.”

“Yes?”

“Come here.”

“What?”

“Did Poppy speak to you?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“We didn’t get down to terms.”

“That’s Poppy. But what do you say in general?”

“I say O.K., if I can be of use to you.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Where do I want to go?”

Jamie waved the check. “Name it.”

“No sir. You name it. And I think you’d better name a school.”

“O.K.,” said Jamie immediately and cheerfully.

During the next week he set about putting his life in order. He ate and slept regularly, worked out every day, went down to Brooks Brothers like his father and grandfather before him and bought two ten-dollar pullover shirts with a tuck in the back and no pocket in the front, socks, ties, and underwear, and dressed like a proper Princetonian. At work he read business maxims in Living.

The only way people are defeated by their problems isby refusing to face them.

One day, some years ago, a now famous industrial counselor walked into the office of a small manufacturing concern. “How would you like to increase sales 200 % the first year?” he asked the president. The latter of course tried to get rid of him. “O.K., I’m leaving,” said the counselor. “But first lend me your scratch pad.” He wrote a few lines and handed the pad to the executive. “Read this. Think about it. If you put it into practice, send me a check a year from now for what it was worth to you.” One year later the counselor received a check in the mail for $25,000.

The counselor had written two sentences:

(1) Make a list of your problems, numbering them in the order of priority.

(2) Devote all your time, one day, one month, however long it takes, to disposing of one problem at a time. Then go to the next.

Simple? Yes. But as a result this executive is now president of the world’s third largest corporation and draws a salary of $400,000 a year.

It was no more nor less than true. You do things by doing things, not by not doing them. No more crazy upsidedownness, he resolved. Good was better than bad. Good environments are better than bad environments. Back to the South, finish his education, make use of his connections, be a business or professional man, marry him a wife and live him a life. What was wrong with that? No more pressing against girls, rassling around in elevators and automobiles and other similar monkey business such as gives you stone pains and God knew what else. What was wrong with a good little house in a pretty green suburb in Atlanta or Birmingham or Memphis and a pretty little wife in a brand-new kitchen with a red dress on at nine o’clock in the morning and a sweet good-morning kiss and the little ones off to school and a good old mammy to take care of them? The way to see Kitty is not not to see her but to see her.

But it didn’t work. Kitty’s phone didn’t answer. Outside in the park the particles were ravening and singing. Inside he went careening around the dark Aztec corridors of the Y.M.C.A. wringing out his ear and forgetting which floor he lived on. When he lay in bed, one leg defied gravity and rose slowly of itself. His knee began to leap like a fish.

Once when he called Kitty, someone did pick up the telephone but did not speak. “Hello, hello,” he said. “Who’s there?” But there came only the sound of breathing and of the crepitation of skin on plastic. Presently the telephone was replaced softly.

Nor did he hear from Mr. Vaught. He went once more to visit Jamie and, coming face to face with the older man, waited upon him smilingly. But the old man pulled out his gold watch, mumbled an excuse, and was off down the hall like the white rabbit.

Very well then, said he to himself, good day. If they wanted him, let them send for him.

Wednesday when he came home from work he was handed a message with his key. It was from Kitty. Meet me in the park, at the zoo, at four thirty. He went and waited until five thirty. She did not come.

Meanwhile he was getting worse. Thursday morning he slipped another cog. It came, he hoped, from working a double shift and not eating. The day man, a fellow named Perlmutter who had a sick wife, did not show. Like an idiot, he offered to stay on, figuring, what with his new plans and his expenses at Brooks Brothers, that he needed the money.

After sixteen hours underground he came staggering out into the gorge air of Seventh Avenue. For some ten minutes he stood, finger to nose, in the thunderous blue shadow of Pennsylvania Station. A bar turned in his head. Now let me see, said he, and taking out Living from his pocket, read a few maxims. Hmm. The thing to do is make a list.

Somewhere in the smoky vastness of the station lanced through with late slanting cathedral beams of sunlight — late or early? was it evening or morning — and haunted by old déjà vus of Here-I-am-up-from-Charlotte-or-Chattanooga-or-Tuscaloosa-and-where-do-I-go-from-here, he got turned around good and proper and came down on the wrong platform, headed in the wrong direction, and took the wrong train. He must have dozed off, for when he woke up he was in New Lots Avenue, or perhaps it was Far Rockaway.

What woke him? Something. His heart was thumping, making a regular commotion. Now he knew! A pair of eyes had been looking at him, gazing into his even as he slept with eyes open. Who? Rita. Or did he dream it? The train had stopped. He looked around but there was no one. Yet somebody was following him. He knew that. Goofy as he was, his radar still swung free and there was a prickling between his shoulder blades. Somewhere in Brooklyn he changed to an old local with straw seats and came out at a seaside station.

It was dark. He found himself in a long street which was nearly black between the yellow street lights at the corners. The sea was somehow close. There was a hint of an uproar abroad in the night, a teeming in the air and the sense of coming closer with each step to a primal openness. He walked six blocks in the empty street and there it was. But it was nothing like Wrightsville or Myrtle Beach or Nag’s Head, lonesome and wide and knelling. It was domesticated. There were notion shops right up to the sand and the surf was poky, came snuffling in like lake water and collapsed plaush on a steep little old brown beach.