Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

“Thursday, stupid.”

“Jamie wants to go somewhere.” He was thinking gloomily of standing around at a dance for seven hours drinking himself cross-eyed while Kitty danced the night away. “Where do you want to go, Jamie?”

But Jamie wouldn’t tell Kitty.

“Son asked me to go with him,” said Kitty.

“Isn’t he your nephew?”

“Not really. Myra is no kin. She is Poppy’s stepdaughter by another marriage.”

“You still can’t go with Son.”

“Why not!” she cried, widening her eyes. Since she had become a coed, Kitty had given up her actress’s lilt for a little trite sorority cry which was made with her eyes going away. She wore a cashmere sweater with a tiny gold sorority dagger pinned over her breast.

“I’m telling you, you can’t.” It actually made him faint to think of Kitty going anywhere with Son Junior, who was a pale glum fornicator, the type who hangs around the men’s room at a dance, patting himself and talking about poontang.

“Why not? ”—eyes going away again but not before peeping down for a glimpse of her pin.

“He’s a bastard.”

“Shh! He likes you.”

He did. Son had discovered through intricate Hellenistic channels that the engineer had been a collegiate middleweight and had not lost a fight. “We’re strong in everything but boxing,” he had told the engineer, speaking of the Phi Nu’s campus reputation. The engineer agreed to go out for boxing and golf. And during some hazing horseplay Son had told one of the brothers to take it easy with this one—“he can put your ass right on the Deke front porch with a six-inch punch.” And so he had attached himself to the engineer with a great glum Greek-letter friendship.

Now once again Son came close, sidling up and speaking at length while he twirled his Thunderbird keys. It was the engineer’s bad ear, but as best he could tell, Son was inviting him to represent the pledge class at a leadership conference next summer at the fraternity headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. “They always have outstanding speakers,” Son told him. “This year the theme is Christian Hellenism.”

“I really appreciate it, Son,” said the engineer.

“Look, Kitty,” he said when Son drifted off. He took off his own pledge pin. “Why don’t you wear mine?” It was a great idea. He had only recently discovered that being pinned was a serious business at the university, the next thing to an engagement ring. If she wore his pin, Son wouldn’t take her to the dance.

“Will you take me to the dance?”

“Yes. If Jamie doesn’t veto it. I promised to go with him.”

“Don’t worry about Jamie.”

As he watched, she pinned his gold shield to the same lovely soft blue mount, oh for wantonnesse and merrinesse, thought he tenderly and crossed his good knee over bad lest it leap through the card table.

Jamie punched him. He was angry because they were not paying attention to the game of hearts (here is my heart, thought the engineer sentimentally). “What do you say,” whispered the youth fiercely. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes.”

“O.K. What do you think of this? We’ll drive to the coast and—”

But before Jamie could tell him, the engineer caught sight of Mrs. Vaught beckoning to him from the dark doorway of the dining room. The engineer excused himself.

Mrs. Vaught had a book for him. “I saw what you were reading this afternoon in the garden!” She waggled her finger at him.

“Ma’am. Oh.” He remembered the R. E. Lee and saw at once that the sight of it had set Mrs. Vaught off on some gambit or other.

“Here’s a book on the same subject that I’m sure you’ll find fascinating,” she said, laughing and making rueful fun of herself, which was a sure sign she was proselytizing.

“Yes ma’am. Thank you very much. Is it about the Civil War?”

“It’s the real story behind the so-called official version of General Kirby Smith’s surrender at Shreveport. It’s the story behind the story. We all think that General Kirby Smith wanted to surrender.”

“Yes ma’am. That is true.”

“No, it isn’t. He was holding out until he could make a deal with the Rothschilds and the international bankers in Mexico to turn over Texas and Louisiana to Maximilian’s Jewish republic.”

“Ma’am?” He wrung out his good ear.

“Here’s proof,” she said, taking back the book and thumbing through it, still laughing ruefully at herself. She read: “At a meeting of the Rothschilds in London in 1857, Disraeli jumped to his feet and announced: ‘We’ll divide the United States into two parts, one for you, James Rothschild, and the other for you, Lionel Rothschild. Napoleon III will do what I tell him to do.’”

The engineer rubbed his forehead and tried to concentrate. “But don’t I recall that Kirby Smith did in fact surrender at Shreveport?”

“He didn’t want to! His men surrendered, fortunately for us.”

She got off on the Bavarian Illuminati and he leaned down to her so he needn’t look at her, looking instead at his shoes, lined up carefully with the sill of the dining-room door.

“Excuse me, Mother,” said Jamie, plucking at the engineer’s sleeve. Evidently he was so used to his mother’s opinions that he paid no attention.

“You read this!” Again she thrust the book on him, shaking her head at her own zeal.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Bill,” said Jamie.

“What?”

“Let’s go.”

“All right. Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s take the camper down to the Gulf Coast and live on the beach. Just for the weekend.”

“You don’t want to see the Tennessee game?”

“No.”

“You mean leave after classes tomorrow?”

“No, I meant — well, all right.”

“O.K.”

They were headed back to the hearts game but Lamar Thigpen caught them. “Did you ever hear about this alligator who went into a restaurant?” He took them by the neck and drew them close as lovers.

“No, I didn’t,” said the courteous engineer, though he had. Jokes always made him nervous. He had to attend to the perilous needs of the joke-teller. Jamie dispensed himself and paid no attention: I’m sick and I don’t have to oblige anybody.

“The waitress came over and brought him a menu. So this alligator says to her: do yall serve niggers in here? She says yes, we do. So he says, O.K. I’ll take two.”

“What about leaving tonight, Bill?” said Jamie.

“That’s all right, Mr. Thigpen,” said the engineer while the other held him close as a lover and gazed hungrily at his cheek. Rita had been watching Jamie and she knew something was wrong. The engineer, diverted by Lamar’s terrible needs, only realized it when he heard Rita’s hearty no-nonsense tone.

“Come on over here, Tiger.” She took the youth’s arm. Jamie flung her off angrily. He looked dog-faced. He plucked his thumb and pretended to muse.

“Hold it, Tiger,” said Rita, now managing to draw him down in David’s chair but not looking at him because he was close to tears.

Jamie looked sternly about but his eyes shone and there was heat and vulnerability in the hollow of his neck. The engineer wished that Son Junior would go away. In every such situation, he had noticed, there is always one person who makes things worse.

David left quickly. Dull in some ways, he was as quick as any Negro to know when white people had white troubles. Rita drew Jamie down in David’s chair.

“I can’t wait for the game,” cried Kitty. “You coming to see me work, Jimbo?” In the past month she had metamorphosed from ballerina to cheerleader. “We’re number one! We’re number one!” she would chant and set her white skirt swirling about her legs so cunningly that the engineer almost fell out of the grandstand, overcome by pride and love.