Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

“He’s not conning you, Forney,” the playwright told the pseudo-Negro.

“I knew that,” cried the pseudo-Negro. “Barrett and I are old shipmates. Aren’t we?”

“That’s right.”

“We went through the Philadelphia thing together, didn’t we?”

“Yes.” It seemed to the engineer that the pseudo-Negro said “Philadelphia” as if it were a trophy, one of a number of campaign ribbons, though to the best of the engineer’s recollection the only campaign which had occurred was his getting hit on the nose by an irate housewife from Haddon Heights, New Jersey.

“Do you think you could prevail upon the local fuzz to do something for you?” the pseudo-Negro asked him.

“What?”

“Let Bugs out of jail.”

“Bugs?”

“Bugs Flieger. They put him in jail last night after the festival, and our information is he’s been beaten up. Did you know Mona over there is Bugs’s sister?”

“Bugs Flieger,” mused the engineer.

The actor and the white girl looked at each other, the former popping his jaw muscles like Spencer Tracy.

“Tell — ah — Merle here,” said the actor, hollowing out his throat, “that Bugs Flieger plays the guitar a little.”

“Merle?” asked the mystified engineer, looking around at the others. “Is he talking to me? Why does he call me Merle?”

“You really never heard of Flieger, have you?” asked the playwright.

“No. I have been quite preoccupied lately. I never watch television,” said the engineer.

“Television,” said the girl. “Jesus Christ.”

“What have you been preoccupied with?” the playwright asked him.

“I have recently returned to the South from New York, where I felt quite dislocated as a consequence of a nervous condition,” replied the engineer, who always told the truth. “Only to find upon my return that I was no less dislocated here.”

“I haven’t been well myself,” said the playwright as amiably as ever and not in the least sarcastically. “I am a very shaky man.”

“Could you speak to the sheriff?” the pseudo-Negro asked him.

“Sure.”

Breeze brought more beer and they all sat in the round booth at the corner under the glass bricks.

“Baby, are you really from around here?” the playwright asked the engineer.

“Ask Breeze.” The engineer scowled. Why couldn’t these people call him by his name?

But when the playwright turned to Breeze the latter only nodded and shrugged. Breeze, the engineer perceived, was extremely nervous. His, the engineer’s, presence, disconcerted him. He didn’t know what footing to get on with the engineer, the old one, the old ironic Ithaca style: “Hey, Will, where you going?” “Going to caddy.” “How come your daddy pays you five dollars a round?” “He don’t pay no five dollars”—or the solemn fierce footing of the others. But finally Breeze said absently and to no one and from no footing at all: “This here’s Will Barrett, Lawyer Barrett’s boy. Lawyer Barrett help many a one.” But it was more than that, the engineer then saw, something else was making Breeze nervous. He kept opening the door a crack and looking out. He was scared to death.

But the pseudo-Negro wanted to talk about more serious matters. He asked the others some interview-type questions about racial subjects, all the while snapping pictures (only the engineer noticed) from his tie-clasp camera.

“It’s a moral issue,” said the actor, breaking the swizzle stick between his fingers, breaking it the way actors break swizzle sticks and pencils. The pseudo-Negro explained that the actor had flown in from Hollywood with Mona his companion to assist in the present drive at great cost to himself, both financially and emotionally, the latter because he was embroiled in a distressing custody suit in the course of which his wife had broken into his bedroom and pulled Mona’s hair.

“Of course it’s a moral issue,” said the playwright. Now the engineer remembered seeing one of his plays with Midge Auchincloss. It was about an artist who has gone stale, lost his creative powers, until he musters the courage to face the truth within himself, which is his love for his wife’s younger brother. He puts a merciful end to the joyless uncreative marriage in favor of a more meaningful relationship with his friend. The last scene shows the lovers standing in a window of the artist’s Left Bank apartment looking up at the gleaming towers of Sacre-Coeur. “There has been a loss of the holy in the world,” said the youth. “Yes, we must recover it,” replies the artist. “It has fallen to us to recover the holy.” “It has been a long time since I was at Mass,” says the youth, looking at the church. “Let’s have our own Mass,” replies the artist as softly as Pelleas and, stretching forth a shy hand, touches the youth’s golden hair.

Sweet Evening Breeze, the engineer noticed, was growing more nervous by the minute. His skin turned grayer and more sharklike and he had fallen into a complicated way of snapping his fingers. Once, after peering through the cracked door, he called the pseudo-Negro aside.

“Breeze says the fuzz is on its way over here,” the pseudo-Negro told them gravely.

“How do you know?” the playwright asked Breeze.

“I know.”

“How do they know we’re here?”

“Ask Merle,” said the actor.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the pseudo-Negro, frowning. “I pulled him in here, remember. Barrett’s all right.”

“The man done pass by here twice,” said Breeze, rattling off a drumroll of fingersnaps. “The next time he’s coming in.”

“How do you know?” asked the pseudo-Negro with his lively reporter’s eye.

“I knows, that’s all.”

“Wonderful,” said the playwright. The playwright’s joy, the engineer perceived, came from seeing life unfold in the same absurd dramatic way as a Broadway play — it was incredible that the one should be like the other after all.

“Bill,” said the pseudo-Negro earnestly. “We’ve got to get Mona out of here. You know what will happen to her?”

The engineer reflected a moment. “Do you all want to leave town?”

“Yes. Our business here is finished except for Bugs.”

“What about your Chevrolet?”

“They picked it up an hour ago.”

“Why not get on a bus?”

“That’s where they got Bugs, at the bus station.”

“Here they come,” said Breeze.

Sure enough, there was a hammering at the door. “Here’s what you do,” said the engineer suddenly. Upside down as always, he could think only when thinking was impossible. It was when thinking was expected of one that he couldn’t think. “Take my camper. Here.” He quickly drew a sketch of the highway and the old river road. “It’s over the levee here. I’ll talk to the police. Go out the back door. You drive,” he said to Mona, handing her the key. The actor was watching him with a fine gray eye. “The others can ride in the back.” The hammering became deafening. “Now if I don’t meet you at the levee,” shouted the engineer, “go to my uncle’s in Louisiana. Cross the bridge at Vicksburg. Mr. Fannin Barrett of Shut Off. I’ll meet you there.” From his breast pocket he took out a sheaf of road maps, selected a Conoco state map, made an X, and wrote a name and gave it to Mona. “Who are they?” he asked Breeze, who stood rooted at the heaving door.

“That’s Mist’ Ross and Mist’ Gover,” said Breeze eagerly, as if he were already smoothing things over with the police.

“Do you know them, Merle?” asked the actor, with a new appraising glint in his eye.

“Yes.”

“How are they?”

“Gover’s all right.”

“Open the door, Breeze.” The voice came through the door.