Walker Percy - The Second Coming

A PRINCELY BLACK WATUSI who looked seven feet tall stood on a rock holding a staff and gazing to the north. Somewhere beyond lay the treasures of King Solomon.

On one side of him sat Mr. Ryan, on the other Mr. Arnold. There had been time to prop Mr. Ryan in a wheelchair and push him to the game room with its forty-five-inch giant-screen Sony projector TV. He had invited Mr. Arnold to come along. Mr. Arnold had said nothing but trudged dutifully alongside Mr. Ryan’s chair after tucking a blanket around him lest he topple forward.

“That’s the biggest nigger I ever saw,” said Mr. Ryan, gazing at the majestic Watusi. “But I can tell you one thing. That ain’t no African chief. That’s a blue-gum nigger from Mississippi. I’d know them anywhere. I had them working for me in crews building condos from Point Clear to Sea Island. They used to be good workers till Roosevelt ruined them.”

Mr. Arnold stirred in his chair. The curtain of his face lifted a little. Leaning out and looking back, good eye winking, he spoke not to Mr. Ryan but to Barrett in the middle. “I’m here to tell you that Roosevelt was the onliest one ever done anything for us pore folks up in the hills.”

The old men began to argue about Roosevelt, who had been dead for thirty-five years.

“Okay, hold it,” he said and the two men subsided in good part to watch the movie.

All I have to do is tell them, he thought.

South Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, he thought, watching the great Watusi prince. And my father and his near death in the Georgia swamp and my near death and later his death in Mississippi and my being at his death and his wanting me to be there, his wanting me to see his brain exploded, expanding like the universe and plastering the attic with neurones like stars in the night sky. Why did he want me to be there? To show me what? Now I know. To show me the one sure sweet exodus. Yes, that’s it, that’s what he was first giving me in Georgia, then telling me and finally showing me, and now at last I know.

Even D’Lo knew. You po little old boy, what you going to do now? What chance you got in this world? Your daddy done kilt hisself and your mama dead and gone and here you come, po little Willie, what chance you got? She shaking her head and socking down the grits spoon, as he watched her narrow-eyed and even smiling a little, knowing she was wrong. Because he was he and they were they and here he was, free and sure and alert and sly. Nothing, no one, would ever surprise him again. Not they. They least of all. He was free of them.

His father had shot twice in the Georgia swamp, reloaded the Greener, and shot again. But the second shot was a double shot aimed at him. I thought he missed me and he did, almost, and I thought I survived and I did, almost. But now I have learned something and been surprised by it after all. Learned what? That he didn’t miss me after all, that I thought I survived and I did but I’ve been dead of something ever since and didn’t know it until now. What a surprise. They were right after all. He was right. D’Lo was right. What a surprise. But is it not also a surprise that discovering you’ve been dead all these years, you should now feel somewhat alive?

He killed me then and I did not know it. I even thought he had missed me. I have been living, yes, but it is a living death because I knew he wanted me dead. Am I entitled to live? I am alive by a fluke like the sole survivor of Treblinka, who lived by a fluke, but did not really feel entitled to live.

Ah, but there is a difference between feeling dead and not knowing it, and feeling dead and knowing it. Knowing it means there is a possibility of feeling alive though dead.

Very well, he was right, they were right, and I’ve learned at last that I am one of them. But I’m improving on them, am I not? I’ve found a better way than swallowing gun barrels: in short, I can shuffle off among friends and in comfort and Episcopal decorum and with good Christian folk to look after every need. Dear good Christian blacks eased me into this world, changed my diapers, and here they are again to change my diapers and ease me out, right?

Wrong.

So here is the giant-screen Sony projector TV and CBS day and night and some of the programs not half bad either, some of the programs in fact well done and amusing, yes, especially the sports and documentaries, yes? M*A*S*H ain’t bad. No?

No.

There was something he had to do. Getting up so quickly that his head spun and he staggered, he found himself caught by strong hands on both sides, Mr. Arnold’s good hand and both of Mr. Ryan’s hands. “You all right, Will?” one asked quickly and as quickly let go and looked away. They were his friends. What delicacy and gentleness they had!

“I’m fine. I have to go now.”

“You come back to visit us,” Mr. Ryan said. Mr. Arnold nodded.

Stooping he looked into their faces. Who said anything about leaving for good? How did they know when he had not quite known it himself?

He stood for a moment gazing at a tarantula in Deborah Kerr’s tent. Was there a whole world of meaning, of talking and listening, which took place everywhere and all the time and which no one paid attention to, at least not he?

He looked down at the new navy-blue wool dressing gown Leslie had bought for him and the Brooks Bros, pajamas and the Bean’s moose-hide slippers Marion had given him one Christmas.

“Yes. I’ll be back.”

Thirty minutes later he had changed into street clothes, walked to his Mercedes, and was spinning down the highway. The car drove better than ever and he did not see double. Carefully yet absently, without thinking that he did so, he had dressed for the first time in months in suit, shirt, and tie, laced up the plain-toed Florsheims he hadn’t worn since he left New York.

A pang struck suddenly at his heart. He had not taken his acid for twelve hours! What with the two fights and the movie, he had forgotten to go to the lab. His pH was up and the old heavy molecules were on the move again. Again the past rose to haunt him and the future rose to beckon to him. Things took on significance.

Parking at the club, he walked hands in pockets down the eighteenth fairway, feeling odd in his city clothes, kicking leaves like a businessman walking home across the Great Meadow in Central Park on a fine fall day. The soft-buttoned collar felt snug around his neck but he felt the cold through his thin socks. The fresh cold air felt good in his face.

When he came to the fence, he stretched up the top strand of wire to hear the guitar sound. He let it go slack, stretched it again harder, cocked an ear. The wire sang again, creaked, and popped against the musical bridge of the post. He let go. It sounded like a wire stretching against a fence post, no more. The near post was rotten. It broke and swayed toward him. He kicked it down and walked over the fence.

The girl and the dog were sitting on the stoop of the copper-roofed porch. The girl, holding her hand against the sun, didn’t recognize him at first, but the dog did. Over he came grinning, broad tail swinging his body like an alligator. The dog grinned, swallowed, his lip caught high on a tooth embarrassing him. He looked away. The girl touched her cheek with her fingers as he looked down at her. She was thin and sallow. Perhaps it was the man’s olive-drab parka she wore which looked as if it had been worn in the Aleutians in World War II.

“It’s you irregardless of who,” she said.

He laughed. “Irregardless of who what?”

“Of who I thought you were.”

“Who did you think I was?”

“That you were an Atlantean but taller, yet I also knew you by the glancing way, you know, of your face here.” She touched her temple.