Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

“I’m afraid we’re in for it, kids,” she told them.

“Why is that?” the engineer asked since Kitty sat silent and sullen.

“Jamie has telephoned Sutter,” Rita told Kitty.

Kitty shrugged.

The engineer screwed up an eye. “He told me he was going to call his sister Val.”

“He couldn’t reach Val,” said Rita flatly.

“Excuse me,” said the engineer, “but what is so alarming about Jamie calling his brother?”

“You don’t know his brother,” said Rita trying to exchange an ironic glance with Kitty. “Anyhow it was what was said and agreed upon that was alarming.”

“How do you know what was said?” asked Kitty, so disagreeably that the engineer frowned.

“Oh, Jamie makes no bones about it,” Rita cried. “He’s going to move in with Sutter.”

“You mean downtown?” Kitty asked quickly.

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand,” said the engineer.

“Let me explain, Bill,” said Rita. “Sutter, my ex, and Kitty and Jamie’s brother, lives in a dark little hole next to the hospital. The plan of course had been for you and Jamie to take the garage apartment out in the valley.”

The engineer shrugged. “I can’t see that it’s anybody’s loss but mine if Jamie would rather live with his brother. In fact, it sounds quite reasonable.”

Again Rita tried to enlist Kitty in some kind of exchange but the girl was hulkish and dull and sat gazing at the sea grapes.

“It’s like this, Lance Corporal,” said Rita heavily. “Kitty here can tell you how it was. I saved the man once. I loved him and pulled him out of the gutter and put him back together. And I still think he’s the greatest diagnostician since Libman. Do you know what I saw him do? Kitty was there. I saw him meet a man in Santa Fe, at a party, speak with him five minutes — a physicist — ask him two questions, then turn to me and say: that man will be dead of malignant hypertension inside a year.”

“Was he?” asked the engineer curiously. “Dead, I mean?”

“Yes, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“How did Sutter, Dr. Vaught, know that?”

“I have no idea, but that’s not what concerns us now.”

“What were the two questions?”

“Ask him yourself. What is important now is what’s in store for Jamie.”

“Yes.”

“Here again Kitty will bear me out. If not, I shall be glad to be corrected. It is not that Sutter is an alcoholic. It’s not that he is a pornographer. These traits, charming as they are, do not in themselves menace Jamie, or you or me — no matter what some people may say. I flatter myself that all of us are sufficiently mature. No, what concerns me is Sutter’s deep ambivalence toward Jamie himself.”

“What do you mean?” asked the engineer, straining his good ear. The storm had begun banging away again.

“He has every right to make away with himself but he can damn well leave Jamie alone.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Kitty. “I mean, I don’t believe he tried to harm Jamie.”

“It is not a question of belief,” said Rita. “It is a question of facts. Do you deny the facts?”

Kitty was silent.

“It was an experiment,” she said presently.

“Some experiment. What do you think of this as an experiment, Lance Corporal. Last summer, shortly after Sutter learned of Jamie’s illness, he took him camping in the desert. They were lost for four days. Even so, it was not serious because they had plenty of water. On the fourth day the canteens were found mysteriously emptied.”

“How did they get out?”

“By pure freakish chance. Some damn fool shooting coyotes from an airplane spotted them.”

“He meant no harm to Jamie,” said Kitty dully.

“What did he mean?” said Rita ironically.

“Val said it was a religious experience.”

“Thank you all the same, but if that is religion I’ll stick to my ordinary sinful ways.”

“What do you mean, he is a pornographer?” the engineer asked her.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” said Rita calmly. “He likes fun and games, picture books, and more than one girl at a time.”

“I don’t think it’s pornography,” said Kitty.

“This time, by God, I know whereof I speak. I was married to him. Don’t tell me.”

“My brother,” said Kitty solemnly to the engineer, “can only love a stranger.”

“Eh?”

“It is a little more than that,” said Rita dryly. “But have it any way you please. Meanwhile let us do what we can for Jamie.”

“You’re right, Ree,” said Kitty, looking at her for the first time.

“What do you want me to do?” the engineer asked Rita.

“Just this. When we get home, you grab Jamie, throw him in this thing and run for your life. He’ll go with you!”

“I see,” said the engineer, now falling away like Kitty and turning mindless and vacant-eyed. “Actually we have a place to go,” he added. “He wants either to go to school or visit his sister Val. He asked me to go with him.”

Rita looked at him. “Are you going?”

“If he wants me to.”

“Fair enough.”

Presently he came to himself and realized that the women had left in the storm. It was dark. The buffeting was worse. He made a plate of grits and bacon. After supper he climbed into the balcony bunk, turned up the hissing butane lamp, and read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd from cover to cover.

THE SOUTH HE came home to was different from the South he had left. It was happy, victorious, Christian, rich, patriotic and Republican.

The happiness and serenity of the South disconcerted him. He had felt good in the North because everyone else felt so bad. True, there was a happiness in the North. That is to say, nearly everyone would have denied that he was unhappy. And certainly the North was victorious. It had never lost a war. But Northerners had turned morose in their victory. They were solitary and shut-off to themselves and he, the engineer, had got used to living among them. Their cities, rich and busy as they were, nevertheless looked bombed out. And his own happiness had come from being onto the unhappiness beneath their happiness. It was possible for him to be at home in the North because the North was homeless. There are many things worse than being homeless in a homeless place — in fact, this is one condition of being at home, if you are yourself homeless. For example, it is much worse to be homeless and then to go home where everyone is at home and then still be homeless. The South was at home. Therefore his homelessness was much worse in the South because he had expected to find himself at home there.

The happiness of the South was very formidable. It was analmost invincible happiness. It defied you to call it anythingelse. Everyone was in fact happy. The women were beautifuland charming. The men were healthy and successful and funny; they knew how to tell stories. They had everything the North had and more. They had a history, they had a place redolent with memories, they had good conversation, they believed in God and defended the Constitution, and they were getting rich in the bargain. They had the best of victory and defeat. Their happiness was aggressive and irresistible. He was determined to be as happy as anyone, even though his happiness before had come from Northern unhappiness. If folks down here are happy and at home, he told himself, then I shall be happy and at home too.

As he pressed ever farther south in the Trav-L-Aire, he passed more and more cars which had Confederate plates on the front bumper and plastic Christs on the dashboard. Radio programs became more patriotic and religious. More than once Dizzy Dean interrupted his sportscast to urge the listener to go to the church or synagogue of his choice. “You’ll find it a rich and rewarding experience,” said Diz. Several times a day he heard a patriotic program called “Lifelines” which praised God, attacked the United States government, and advertised beans and corn.