Walker Percy - The Second Coming

Yes, that’s what he was, she thought watching him through the waterfall, a Northern millionaire with his platinum-streaked hair growing carelessly-carefully under and over the soft collar, who would spend a hundred dollars for corduroy pants so they would look uncreased and too small but too small in the right way not the wrong way like her father’s khakis, which made his stomach look too big, or Dr. Duk’s double knits, which were too tight in the crotch.

Just as before, his head was turned slightly — was he listening for her in the greenhouse? — so that he faced her but did not see her though she was less than twenty feet away. Under the jut of his brow, his eyes were cast into deep shadow but as she watched they seemed to open and close, now shut and dark, now open and pale, like a trick picture of Jesus. Yes, it was a trick of light or of her own retina. She shut her eyes. The image of him went dark then bright with eye sockets like a skull.

There at her door he stood in the same odd and absolute stillness, the same way she had seen him standing in the glade. Ha, what to do at a greenhouse door clearly full of nothing but plants? ring a doorbell? knock on glass? Yes, because he was lifting a hand to the door.

Perhaps she had opened her mouth to say something or perhaps she had moved, but before she could do anything else and just as the man’s hand touched the house, the dog charged. The man had time to turn, it seemed to her slowly, the sunlight striking a different plane of his forehead, and held out his hand palm down to the dog. Too slowly it seemed to her: was this too part of his studied Northern nonchalance? No, because even now his eyes could not or would not focus on the dog. He didn’t care whether the dog bit him or not!

It was not courage, not even inattention but rather, she saw, a kind of indifference yet a curiosity with it. Would the dog attack? Would tooth enter flesh? If it did, would it matter?

The hand was held out like a piece of meat proffered by the man. It was easy to imagine him examining the wound as if it belonged to someone else.

She hollering something, the bristle-backed dog charging flat out, past all snarling, and even as he took the hand in his mouth in the same instant fetched up stiff-legged, shoulders jutting up one then the other like a reined-in horse, sliding to a sit, pushed the hand out of his mouth with his tongue and cocked a yellow tufted eyebrow around but not quite to her. Embarrassed again.

They watched as the dog settled his mouth and looked away. The man came over to the rock.

“Did he stop because of my saying or because of your not saying?” asked the girl.

“I’m not sure. Probably because of your saying. Would you give me a drink of water. I’ve had a long walk.”

It was sweat, she saw, that made his hair and forehead shine.

He followed her into the greenhouse. Without raising his head, he looked around, his lightish eyes moving in deep sockets. “It still smells like a greenhouse. Once I was in Cincinnati. I liked the smell of a greenhouse there so much I worked in it for six months.”

“Doing which and how and was it for consideration? How much?” she asked, eyes widening with interest. “Would you—” She stopped. Would he what?

“Work for you?” he said. “How much do you pay?”

“Never mind.” She gave him the Clorox bottle. He drank a long time.

“Thank you. Is this where you have to get your water?”

“Yes. How thirsty. It’s been a long time.”

“Since what? Since seeing anybody thirsty?”

“Something — something is up front but not all the way.”

“You mean you’re having difficulty remembering things and that you almost remembered something?”

“Yes, that’s—”

“I had that once. In my case it was a question of not wanting to remember. In fact, I remembered something here in this spot that I hadn’t thought of for years.”

“Was it for a gladness or the same old Sunday coming down?”

“No, it wasn’t the same old Sunday coming down. I can’t say it was a happy memory but I was glad I remembered. I feel much better. You will too. Thank you for the water.”

“You are — Are you?”

“I brought you something.”

“What?” She noticed the brown bag. “Oh, I don’t need. I am fine though I was in the hospital for — it is the time I can’t remember.”

“I know.”

“I was somewhat suspended above me but I am getting down to me.”

“Good.”

She was about to say something but she saw in his eyes that he had drifted away.

They stood in silence. It was not for her like a silence with another person, a silence in which something horrid takes root and grows. What if nobody says anything, what then? Sometimes she thought she had gone crazy rather than have to talk to people. Which was worse, their talk or their silences? Perhaps there was no unease with him because he managed to be both there and not there as one required. Is it possible to stand next to a stranger at a bus stop and know that he is a friend? Was he someone she had known well and forgotten?

“Are you—?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you my—?”

“Am I your what?”

For a moment she wondered if she had considered saying something crazy like “Are you my lover?” Or “Are you my father?”

She sighed. “You said the bag.”

“What? Oh yes. I brought this for you.” He gave her the bag.

She opened it. “Avocados? I think. And — what? A little square can of—” She read: “—Plagniol.”

He watched her.

“What a consideration! But more than a consideration. The communication is climbing to the exchange level and above. And the Plagna is not bologna.”

Gazing at her, he almost smiled. In her odd words he seemed to hear echoes of other voices in other years. One hundred years ago Judge Kemp might have said on this very spot: “How considerate of you!” with the same exclamatory lilt. But there was another voice, something new and not quite formed. Did she mean that his consideration (being considerate) was more than just a consideration (a small amount), more than exchange (market value of the Plagniol), which was after all baloney?

“I think you will like that olive oil. It is very good. Some friends brought the avocados from California. They’re the best kind, not hard and green, but a little soft and brown. They’re very good for you. You’re too thin. Fill a half with olive oil.”

The avocados were as big as coconuts. “I’ll plant the pits in the greenhouse,” she said. “No tricks with toothpicks.”

“Right. Plant them in soil.”

Later she tried to decide why she felt so free to talk or not talk with him. Was it because of her, that in her new life she could have gotten along with anybody? Was she just lonely? Or was it a certain tentativeness in him that waited on her, like the dog, even now and then cocking an eye in her direction? Or could it be a Northern awkwardness in him that brought out her Southern social graces because she was ha ha her mother’s daughter after all?

Her fingers felt the rough pebbled texture of the avocados. “Why are they here?”

“Why did I bring them? I thought you might like them. For another thing—”

“Yes?”

“They are the most nourishing of all vegetables.”

“What is entailed with you?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“You seem somewhat pale and in travail. Is the abomination at home or in the hemispheres?”

“I don’t know. Maybe both. You mean my brain. I don’t feel very well, to tell the truth.”

Later he irritated her and she got rid of him. He was standing by while she told him what she meant to do with the stove. There it was hanging from a rope suspended between two chimneys. It looked like a small iron house ripped from its foundations, pipes and connections dangling. She explained.