Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

“Yes suh.”

“No, hold it—” began the engineer.

“The man said unlock it.” It was too late. The doorway was first flooded by sunlight, then darkened by uniforms.

“What do you say, Beans. Ellis,” said the engineer, coming toward them.

“Where’s the poontang?” asked Beans Ross, a strong, tall, fat man with a handsome tanned face and green-tinted sunglasses such as highway police wear, though he was only a town deputy.

“This is Will Barrett, Beans,” said the engineer, holding out his hand. “Mister Ed’s boy.”

“What,” said Beans, shoving his glasses onto his forehead. He even took the other’s hand and there was for a split second a chance of peace between them. “What the hell are you doing here?” Beans took from his pocket a small blackjack as soft and worn as skin.

“I’ll explain, but meanwhile there is no reason to hit Breeze.” He knew at once what Beans meant to do.

“All right, Breeze,” said Beans in a routine voice, not looking at him.

Sweet Evening Breeze, knowing what was expected of him, doffed his stocking cap and presented the crown of his head. Hardly watching but with a quick outward flick of his wrist, Beans hit Breeze on the forehead with the blackjack. Breeze fell down.

“Goddamn it, Beans,” said the engineer. “That’s no way to act.”

“You got something to say about it?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the poontang?” asked Beans, and with a gesture at once fond and conspiratorial — enlisting: him — and contemptuous, he leaned across and snapped his middle finger on the engineer’s fly.

“Augh,” grunted the engineer, bowing slightly and seeming to remember something. Had this happened to him as a boy, getting snapped on the fly? The humiliation was familiar.

“Don’t do that, Beans,” said Ellis Gover, coming between them and shaking his head. “This is a real good old boy.”

By the time the engineer’s nausea had cleared, Beans had caught sight of Mona in the booth. Without taking his eyes from her, he pulled Ellis close and began to whisper. The engineer had time to straighten himself and to brace his foot in the corner of the jamb and sill of the front door. For once in his life he had time and position and a good shot, and for once things became as clear as they used to be in the old honorable days. He hit Beans in the root of his neck as hard as he ever hit the sandbag in the West Side Y.M.C.A. Beans’s cap and glasses flew off and he sat down on the floor. “Now listen here, Ellis,” said the engineer immediately, turning to the tall, younger policeman. “Yall go ahead,” he told the others casually, waving them over Beans’s outstretched legs and out the front door. “Catch a Bluebird cab at the corner.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ellis, but he did not stop them.

“Don’t worry about it, Ellis. They haven’t done anything. They’re leaving town and that’s what you want.”

“But, shit, man,” said Ellis, who could not take his eyes from the fallen policeman. “You done hit Beans.”

“I know, but look at Breeze,” said the engineer by way of answer, and nodded to the Negro, who was laid out straight as a corpse. Standing next to Ellis, he took him by the elbow just as he used to touch him in a football huddle. Ellis was all-state halfback and the engineer, who was quarterback (not all-state), had called the plays in huddle. Ellis was a bit slow in catching the signals and the engineer used to squeeze him so, just above the elbow.

“Yeah, but hailfire, Will.”

“Listen, Ellis,” said the engineer, already moving. “You bring charges against me to clear yourself, do you understand? Tell Beans the others got in behind you. You got it?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Now give Beans a hand and tell him to come after me, O.K.?” He said this though Beans was still out cold, and giving Ellis a final huddle sort of squeeze and nod, the engineer walked quickly to the back door and out into Heck’s Alley.

“Will,” cried Ellis again, feeling that all was not well. But the other had already crossed the alley to a certain board in a fence which had been eroded into the shape of Illinois and which he knew, now fifteen years later, to swing free on a single nail, was through it and into Miss Mamie Billups’ back yard. Miss Mamie was sitting on her side porch when he stooped to pass under her satsuma tree.

“How do you do, Miss Mamie,” said the courteous engineer, bowing and putting his tie inside his coat

“Who is that?” called out the old woman sharply. Everyone used to steal her satsumas.

“This is Will Barrett, Miss Mamie.”

“Will Barrett! You come on up here, Will!”

“I can’t right now, Miss Mamie,” said the engineer, turning up Theard Street. “I’ll be right back!”

His friends waited for him but not long enough. By the time he rounded the lower curve of Milliken Bend, having walked the inner shoulder of the levee out of sight of highway and town, the Trav-L-Aire had already lumbered out of the willows and started up the levee — at an angle! The cabin teetered dangerously. He forgot to tell Mona not to do this. He covered his face with his hands: Mona, thinking to spare the G.M.C. the climb straight up, was in a fair way to turn her plumb over. When he looked up, however, the levee was clear.

It was two o’clock. He was hungry. At the levee end of Theard Street he bought a half dozen tamales from a street vendor (but not the same whose cry Rayed hot! used to echo up and down the summer night in the 1950’s). Now finding a patch of waist-high elephant grass past the towhead and out of sight of anyone standing on the levee behind him, he rolled to and fro and made a hollow which was tilted like a buttercup into the westering sun. It was warm enough to take off his coat and roll up his sleeves. He ate the tamales carefully, taking care not to stain his clothes. The meat was good but his tooth encountered a number-eight shot: rabbit or possibly squirrel. Afterwards he washed his hands in river water, which still thrashed through the lower level of the towhead, and dried them with his handkerchief. Returning to his hollow, he sat cross-legged for a while and watched a towboat push a good half acre of sulphur barges up the dead water on the Louisiana side. Then he curled up and, using his coat folded wrong-side-out for a pillow, went to sleep.

Cold and stiffness woke him. It was a moonless overcast night, but he could make out Scorpio writhing dimly over Louisiana, convulsed around great bloody Antares. Buttoning all three buttons of his jacket, he ran along the inner shoulder of the levee, out of sight of town, until he got warm. When he came abreast of the stacks of the gypsum mill, he went quickly over and down into Blanton Street and took the Illinois Central tracks, which went curving away behind the high school. It was pitch dark under the stadium, but his muscles remembered the spacing of the ties. The open rear of the bleachers exhaled a faint odor of cellar earth and urine. At the Chinaman’s he took the tangent of Houston Street, which ran through a better Negro neighborhood of neat shogun cottages and flower gardens, into the heavy humming air and ham-rich smell of the cottonseed oil mill, and out at De Ridder.

He stood in the inky darkness of the water oaks and looked at his house. It was the same except that the gallery had been closed by glass louvers and a flagpole stuck out of a second-story window. His aunts were sitting on the porch. They had moved out, television and all. He came closer and stood amid the azaleas. They were jolly and fit, were the aunts, and younger than ever. Three were watching “Strike It Rich,” two were playing canasta, and one was reading Race and Reason and eating Whitman’s Sampler. He remembered now that Sophie wrote love letters to Bill Cullen. What a tough hearty crew they were! hearty as muzhiks, and good haters, yet not ill-natured — they’d be honestly and unaffectedly glad to see him walk in, would kiss him and hold him off and make over him — rosy-skinned, easy in their consciences, arteries as supple as a girl’s, husbands dead and gone these forty years, pegged out so long ago that he could not remember anyone ever speaking of them; Christian ladies every one, four Protestant, Presbyterian, and Scotch-Irish, two Catholic and Creole, but long since reconciled, ecumenized, by bon appétit and laughter and good hearty hatred.