Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

“Grace settin’ up there,” said one lady in the back seat, “acting like she’s crowded and can’t stand it.”

“She can stand it, hooo,” said another and they all hooted with laughter.

Another one said: “I peep out of my door last night and here comes Grace tippy-toeing down the hall with this little bitty man and I say what is this: look like Grace got a little blister, the way she walking.”

For some reason the word “blister” set them off again. It even seemed to the engineer to mean six different things. “Hooo, she got a little blister!” The most ordinary words and objects like zippers and golf tees brought on more hoots and jabs in the ribs. Although the engineer did not quite know what the joke was — it had something to do with the good-looking one sitting next to him — he couldn’t help being tickled and in fact laughed like a maniac. By the time the old howling Dynaflow Buick reached Williamsburg, his sides ached.

Though he had planned to go into town and there collect his thoughts and begin his sleuthing, it turned out not to be necessary. As the Buick sailed past the Coach-and-Four Motel on the outskirts, he spotted the two vehicles and recognized both, though he had seen neither before: the Trav-L-Aire, glittering and humped up and practical, yet somehow airy and light on its four brand-new Goodyear jumbo treads; cheek to jowl with a squirrel-gray Cadillac which was mean and low and twenty feet long. He hollered to the driver but she wouldn’t let him out. When at last she did stop and he asked them to wait until he could get his firkin from the trunk, they began to hoot again, positively rolling about on the seats. He had a six-block walk back to the motel.

There was nobody in sight but a pair of listless slothlike children worming over the playground equipment. He had time to take a good look at the Trav-L-Aire. She was all she might be, a nice balance of truck heaviness, steel and stout below and cabined aluminum lightness above. She had just the faintest and lightest quilted look, her metal skin tucked down by rivets like an airplane wing. Vents and sockets and knobs made discreet excrescences, some faired against the wind, others propped out to scoop the wind. The step was down and the back door ajar and he had a peep inside: the coziest little caboose imaginable, somehow larger inside than out, yet all compact of shelf, bunk, galley, and sink.

Now here surely is a good way to live nowadays, said he and sat down on the firkin: mobile yet at home, compacted and not linked up with the crumby carnival linkage of a trailer, in the world yet not of the world, sampling the particularities of place yet cabined off from the sadness of place, curtained away from the ghosts of Malvern Hill, peeping out at the doleful woods of Spotsylvania through the cheerful plexiglass of Sheboygan.

“Hullo!”

It was Mr. Vaught, He had come out of his motel room, scratched his seat, shot his cuff, and, spying the engineer, hailed him over as if he were just the man he was looking for.

“Got dog, man,” said the old man, cocking his head direfully. “So you thought better of it.”

“Thought better of what?”

“You decided to come after all.”

“Sir,” said the engineer, blinking. Was this the plan all along, that he was to meet them here?

“You want to see something fine?”

“Yes sir.”

Mr. Vaught unlocked the trunk of the Cadillac and showed him a vast cargo of food, Quaker jams, Shaker jellies, Virginia hams. He began to give an account of each package.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the engineer, interrupting him.

“Yace.”

“Excuse me but I can’t help but think that explanations are in order. For my part I can say—”

“That’s all right,” cried the old man hastily. He was actually blushing. “I’m just tickled to death to have you aboard!”

“Thank you, sir. But I think we’d better clear this up.” He heard himself speak without consulting his memory. His voice had a memory of its own. “My understanding was yall were going to pick me up. I waited for three hours.”

“No,” cried the old man and coming close seized him under the armpit and took him aside. “Take this apple jelly.”

“Thank you.”

“Son, look. If it was a question of money, why didn’t you say so? I’ll tell you this where I wouldn’t just as to say tell most folks: I got more damn money than I know what to do with and if I don’t give it to you the government’s going to get it anyway.”

“Money,” said the engineer, screwing up an eye.

“Rita said she asked you to come with us and you refused.”

“No sir,” he said, remembering. “What she asked was whether I wanted to be employed by her or—”

“Naturally, when I didn’t hear from you to the contrary, I assumed you didn’t want the job.”

“No sir!”

“Son, you know what we really thought? We thought you didn’t want to come with either one of us but that you would be nice enough tocome if we asked you, just to help us, and I wasn’t going to do that. Look,” cried the old man joyfully.

“What?”

“It’s better this way!”

“How is that, sir?”

“Now we know where we stand. Now I believe you want to come with us.”

“Yes sir, that is true,” said the engineer dryly. “I desire now only to have the same assurance from you.”

“What! Oh! By George,” said the other, shooting his cuff and calling on the high heavens. “If you’re not your daddy all over again.”

“Yes sir,” said the engineer gloomily, wondering if the old man was slipping away again like the white rabbit. But this time Mr. Vaught took out his buckeye wallet arid counted out five $100 bills, like crisp suede, freshly pollinated from the mint, into the other’s hand. “One month’s salary in advance. Do we understand each other now?”

“Yes sir.”

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Rita will drive us in the Cadillac. You and Jamie take that thing.” He nodded toward the camper.

“All right, sir.”

“Now you and Jamie get on down the road. We’ll see you at home.” He counted out two more bills. “Expenses.”

“Do you mean you want us to leave now and—”

But before he could finish, the rest of the family came swarming out half a dozen doors and bore down upon him. His natural shyness was almost made up for by the pleasant sensation of reunion. Perhaps he belonged here after all!

“Look who’s here!”—“What in the woerrld—!”—“Well I’ll be damned—!” they cried.

The side of his face was also being looked at by a pair of roguish eyes.

“Look at him blush,” cried Mrs. Vaught

For some reason his being there, hands in pockets and eyes rolled up to the eyebrows, began to be funny. They were all laughing at him. All but Kitty. She came close and touched him but at the same time it was as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him. She turned him roughly by the shoulder as if she was another boy.

“What happened to your nose? ” she asked angrily. It was somehow shameful to her that a misfortune should have befallen his nose.

He waved a hand vaguely toward the north. “A white lady up in New Jersey—” he began.

“What,” Kitty cried incredulously, curling her lip and calling the others to witness. “What happened?”

“A lady from Haddon Heights hit me on the nose.”

The others laughed and the engineer too. Only Kitty went on curling her lip in the most sensual and angry way. Rita laughed but her eyes were wary. She was handsome!

Jamie stood a little above them, on the motel walk, grinning and shaking his head. He looked brown and fit but a bit sooty-eyed.