Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

“I too often get the two of them mixed up,” said the poor sweating engineer.

“But not the three,” said Rita.

Why did she have to be cruel, though? The engineer sat between the two, transfixed by a not altogether unpleasant horribleness. He couldn’t understand either woman: why one should so dutifully put her head on the block and why the other should so readily chop it off. And yet, could he be wrong or did he fancy that Rita despite her hostility felt an attraction for Myra? There was a voluptuousness about these nightly executions.

But tonight he wasn’t up to it and he left with Jamie. He was careful not to forget his book about General Kirby Smith’s surrender at Shreveport in 1865. He was tired of Lee’s sad fruitless victories and would as soon see the whole thing finished off for good.

The man walked up and down in the darkness of the water oaks, emerging now and then under the street light, which shed a weak yellow drizzle. The boy sat on the steps between the azaleas and watched. He always imagined he could see the individual quanta of light pulsing from the filament.

When the man came opposite the boy, the two might exchange a word; then the man would go his way, turn under the light, and come back and speak again.

“Father, you shouldn’t walk at night like this.”

“Why not, son?”

“Father, they said they were going to kill you.”

“They’re not going to kill me, son.”

The man walked. The youth listened to the music and the hum of the cottonseed-oil mill. A police car passed twice and stopped; the policeman talked briefly to the man under the street light. The man came back.

“Father, I know that the police said those people had sworn to kill you and that you should stay in the house.”

“They’re not going to kill me, son.”

“Father, I heard them on the phone. They said you loved niggers and helped the Jews and Catholics and betrayed your own people.”

“I haven’t betrayed anyone, son. And I don’t have much use for any of them, Negroes, Jews, Catholics, or Protestants.”

“They said if you spoke last night, you would be a dead man.”

“I spoke last night and I am not a dead man.”

Through an open window behind the boy there came the music of the phonograph. When he looked up, he could see the Pleiades, which seemed to swarm in the thick air like lightning bugs.

“Why do you walk at night, Father?”

“I like to hear the music outside.”

“Do you want them to kill you, Father?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“What is going to happen?”

“I’m going to run them out of town, son, every last miserable son of a bitch.”

“Let’s go around to the garden, Father. You can hear the music there.”

“Go change the record, son. The needle is stuck in the groove.”

“Yes sir.”

The engineer woke listening. Something had happened. There was not a sound, but the silence was not an ordinary silence. It was the silence of a time afterwards. It had been violated earlier. His heart beat a strong steady alarm. He opened his eyes. A square of moonlight lay across his knees.

A shot had been fired. Had he dreamed it? Yes. But why was the night portentous? The silence reverberated with insult. There was something abroad.

Nor had it come from Sutter’s room. He waited and listened twenty minutes without moving. Then he dressed and went outside into the moonlight.

The golf links was as pale as lake water. To the south Juno’s temple hung low in the sky like a great fiery star. The shrubbery, now grown tall as trees, cast inky shadows which seemed to walk in the moonlight.

For a long time he gazed at the temple. What was it? It alone was not refracted and transformed by the prism of dreams and memory. But now he remembered. It was fiery old Canopus, the great red star of the south which once a year reared up and hung low in the sky over the cottonfields and canebrakes.

Turning at last, he walked quickly to the Trav-L-Aire, got his flashlight from the glove compartment, cut directly across the courtyard and entered the back door of the castle; through the dark pantry and into the front hall, where he rounded the newel abruptly and went up the stairs. To the second and then the third floor as if he knew exactly where he was, though he had only once visited the second floor and not once been above it. Around again and up a final closeted flight of narrow wooden steps and into the attic. It was a vast unfinished place with walks of lumber laid over the joists. He prowled through the waists and caverns of the attic ribbed in the old heart pine of the 1920’s. The lumber was still warm and fragrant from the afternoon sun. He shone the flashlight into every nook and cranny.

When he heard the sound behind him, he slid the switch of the flashlight and stepped four feet to the side (out of the line of fire?) and waited.

“Bill?”

A wall switch snapped on, lighting a row of bulbs in the peak of the roof. The girl, hugging her wrap with both arms, moved close to him and peered into his face. Her lips, scrubbed clean of lipstick, were slightly puffed and showed the violet color of blood.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“I saw you outside.”

He didn’t answer.

“What are you looking for?”

“I heard something.”

“You heard something up here from the garage?”

“I didn’t know where it came from. I thought it might be from the attic.”

“Why?”

“Is there a room up here?”

“A room?”

“A room closed off from the rest of the attic?”

“No. This is all.”

He said nothing.

“You don’t know where you are, do you?”

“Where I am?”

“Where are you?”

“I know.” He did know now but he didn’t mind her thinking he didn’t. She was better, more herself, when he was afflicted.

“You were sleepwalking, I think.”

“It’s possible.”

“Come on. I’ll take you back.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t.”

He made her stay in the pantry. She was sweet and loving and not at all antic. It is strange, he thought as he stood in his own and Jamie’s room a few minutes later: we are well when we are afflicted and afflicted when we are well. I can lie with her only if she tends my wounds.

“Was there a shot?” he asked her as he left.

She had shaken her head but smiled, signifying she liked him better for being mistaken.

The square of moonlight had moved onto Jamie’s face. Arms folded, the engineer leaned against his bed and gazed down at the youth. The eye sockets were pools of darkness. Despite the strong black line of the brow, the nose and mouth were smudged and not wholly formed. He reminded the engineer of the graduates of Horace Mann, their faces quick and puddingish and acned, whose gift was the smart boy’s knack of catching on, of hearkening: yes, I see. If Jamie could live, it was easy to imagine him for the next forty years engrossed and therefore dispensed and so at the end of the forty years still quick and puddingish and childlike. They were the lucky ones. Yet in one sense it didn’t make much difference, even to Jamie, whether he lived or died — if one left out of it what he might “do” in the forty years, that is, add to “science.” The difference between me and him, he reflected, is that I could not permit myself to be so diverted (but diverted from what?). How can one take seriously the Theory of Large Numbers, living in this queer not-new not-old place haunted by the goddess Juno and the spirit of the great Bobby Jones? But it was more than that. Something is going to happen, he suddenly perceived that he knew all along. He shivered. It is for me to wait. Waiting is the thing. Wait and watch.