Walker Percy - The Second Coming

Kitty’s face had gone solemn. Her eyes were shining.

“You will help me with Allison?”

“Sure,” he said absently.

“The child hasn’t learned that she has to get in touch with her feelings before she can get well. When things don’t go just right, she thinks she has to crawl into a hole. Or hit the road, change, move, go.”

“Yes,” he muttered. “Sometimes you have to go. Get out. I’ve done that.”

“You? You’ve never copped out. You were a good husband. Marion told me.”

“Actually I wasn’t. Did she tell you what I did last year?”

“No.”

“One Sunday after church Marion sent me to town for some booze. We were entertaining Bertie and some of his Palm Beach pals. It was not that I couldn’t stand Bertie and his pals, though in fact I couldn’t. In fact, I don’t know exactly why I did it. Instead of going to the liquor store I went to the bus station and took the first Trailways. A week later I found myself in Santa Fe. You know who I was looking for? Your brother Sutter.”

Kitty made a face. “What was he doing?”

“He was sitting in an imitation adobe house watching M*A*S*H. He would only talk to me during commercials. He was working in a V.A. hospital for paraplegics and had one more year to go before his pension. After a while I left. I don’t think he noticed.”

“Sutter is a mess,” said Kitty absently and took hold of him, coat, shirt, flank, and gave him a hard pinch as a mother might. “Don’t forget,” she said. “Three o’clock. The summerhouse.”

“What? Oh. No. I won’t forget.”

7

Leslie looked up at him briefly and went on with her argument with the Cupps. No, it was Leslie and Jack Curl who were arguing. Or rather Jack Curl who was listening, pale as a ghost, as Leslie said: “Okay, big deal. First you have the Book of Common Prayer, then the green prayer book, then the red book, then the zebra book, then the interim book — and that was all I ever heard you and Mother talk about. Big deal.”

As he watched Jack Curl, who was smiling and frowning and had opened his mouth to say something, he heard himself say: “Am I not also a member of the wedding?”

No one paid attention. Leslie’s face was heavy with dislike, her lower lip curled. The Cupps were still smiling but their teeth looked dry. Mr. Arnold pointed his finger at his open mouth. He was hungry. Jason sat listlessly, big hands dangling between his legs. They were all angrier than he thought. Were they arguing about religion or the rehearsal party?

“Very well,” said Will Barrett, clearing his throat. “It seems I am not a member of the wedding.” When no one answered or looked at him, he cleared his throat again. “Okay. I have one suggestion before I leave”—when he said “leave,” Leslie looked up briefly and nodded ironically—“to go on an errand. It is this. It is my understanding that according to custom and the book of etiquette we are not supposed to have the rehearsal party here in this house, though as Marge and Ed well know, it would please me to do so. If Ed and Marge wish to give the party at the Buccaneer Room of the Holiday Inn, it is quite all right with me. After all, one place is as good as another. If, however, there is some dissatisfaction on this point, may I suggest as a tertium quid, ha ha, that if Ed wishes me to, I can put him in touch with Arthur at the club and the two of them can work out what they want. It is done all the time and it will cost Ed so much it will take his mind off his Mercedes.”

“There you go,” said Ed, cheering up.

Leslie held up both hands. “Now hear this, folks,” she said, taking off her glasses and folding the stems. Her hazed eyes went from one to another. She nodded grimly. Her thin lips curved in satisfaction. She looked like Barbara Stanwyck in that part of the movie where she tells everybody off. “Number one, there is not going to be a rehearsal party for the simple reason that there is not going to be a rehearsal. The reason there is not going to be a rehearsal is that there is not going to be any ceremony to be rehearsed. Since when do you need a ceremony for two people to come together in the Lord? Number two. As for this book I keep hearing about, the only book I go by is the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Number three. The only reason Jason and I are here at all is because you want us to be. We love you all dearly and wish to please you but we cannot compromise our beliefs. Number four. As far as such quaint customs as ‘giving the bride away’ is concerned, forget it, folks. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Daddy, but nobody can give me away because I’ve already given myself away, to the Lord and to Jason. Number five. As far as a priest is concerned, an intermediary between God and man, no hard feelings, Jack, but the Gospel commands us to call no man father.”

Jack Curl opened his mouth to everyone. “Father? Nobody calls me father. Who here calls me father?”

But no one answered. Everyone seemed sunk in thought. Only Mr. Arnold tried to say something but his lip blew out. He pointed a finger straight into his mouth. Across the room Yamaiuchi was leaving fast with a tray of empty bloody-Mary glasses. Will Barrett called to him and made a motion. It was possible for Yamaiuchi, whose eye had not quite met his, to pretend he hadn’t heard him. He called to him again. He knew that Yamaiuchi heard because his ears fluttered even closer to his glossy head, but he did not turn around. It was rare for anyone but Marion, who had hired him and sent him to forestry school in Asheville, to give him orders. For this reason it now became possible for Yamaiuchi to pretend not to hear him.

For some reason this made him angry with a quick hot anger. He lost his temper. He had not been angry or surprised for thirty years — no, once before, when Kitty’s brother was dying and the stupid nurses wouldn’t do anything — and in the very instant of feeling the anger rise in his throat, he remembered that it was with exactly the same sudden rage his father had turned on the black guide. His father, known as a nigger-lover, cursed the guide like a nigger-hater.

He, Will Barrett, meant to say: Get your ass or perhaps even get your yellow ass (his father said black ass) over here, but he felt the room go silent and felt himself shrug and laugh as Yamaiuchi wheeled with the tray. He beckoned to him. Yet even now the Japanese looked for the briefest instant in Leslie’s direction, decided she wasn’t boss, and came over, smiling angrily.

“Bring this man a plate of food,” he said, pointing to Mr. Arnold, who was pointing a forefinger straight into his mouth.

“Y’sah,” said Yamaiuchi. “The buffet is urready.” Again his eye slewed toward Leslie. Was he saying, I’d rather take orders from her?

“Do it now,” he said, smiling angrily. He was genuinely puzzled: I wonder why this Japanese is playing this game, calculating decimal points of insolence.

“Y’sah.” Yamaiuchi bowed, two degrees too far, and left.

Someday I’m going to hit that little grinning bastard, he thought, drive him right into the ground with both fists.

An instant later he thought with amazement, where did that rage come from? I could have killed him. My father could have too: he could as easily have shot the guide as he shot the dog.

You’re one of us, his father said.

Yes, very well. I’m one of you. You win.

Where does such rage come from? from the discovery that in the end the world yields only to violence, that only the violent bear it away, that short of violence all is in the end impotence?

8

He gazed at himself in the bathroom mirror, turned his head, touched his cheek like a man testing whether to shave. Presently his face canceled itself. The bright-faceted forehead went dark, the deep-set eyes began to glow, the shadowed pocked cheek grew bright. The mirror, he noticed, did not reflect accurately. It missed the slight bulge of forehead, the hollowing of temple which showed in photographs. Even when he turned his head, his nose did not look snoutish as it did in a double mirror.