Walker Percy - The Second Coming

“Yes.”

“I read two hundred Perry Masons at Valleyhead. It was beguiling to think of the client living there with Delia Street in the Beverly Arms on Sepulveda.”

“Yes, but never mind that. Let’s get out of here. I want to get you some hot food, a hot bath, and some clean clothes. You’re too thin.”

“Do I also smell bad?”

“You smell like peat moss and army clothes. I think I’ll buy you a dress. Imagine you in a dress! While you take your bath, I’ll get a hot plate from the Holiday Inn buffet. They close at three, so hurry up. Then while you eat, I have a short errand to run. Then I will have something to tell you.”

“How about my dog?”

“Leave him here with some food. We’ll come back for him. He’ll discourage visitors. He knows you’ll be back, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. Let’s go.”

2

The room at the Holiday Inn was second floor rear. It was warm from the afternoon sunlight. The balcony overlooked a parking lot, a strip of grass, a chain-link fence, a meadow to the west where Holstein cows grazed, and beyond, the violet hulk of the Smokies, tall and dim enough to be a cloud.

While she bathed, he fetched two plates from the buffet, Tennessee pork sausage, sweet potatoes, butter beans, corn on the cob, ten pats of butter, corn bread, buttermilk, and apple pie. This was no ordinary Holiday Inn. When she came out of the bathroom in her pajamas, the very pajamas she had worn in her escape from Valleyhead, places were set at the round black woodlike table next to the drape, which was drawn enough to show a strip of sunlit meadow.

She began to eat. She ate fast and ate it all, gazing dry-eyed at the slot of meadow, sky, and violet mountain.

“I have an errand to run,” he told her, standing and gazing down at her, hands in pockets. “I have to see Slocum about something. I’ll be back in an hour.”

She nodded as she finished her apple pie.

“Take a nap.”

She nodded.

At the door he turned to look at her.

“I just realized something,” he said. “I don’t have an address. I don’t live anywhere.”

She smiled. “Do not trouble yourself unnecessarily. That is not necessarily unfavorable. Many people have addresses, yet observe them.”

“Right.”

“However, I should like eventually to have an address.”

“Yes.”

“Could we live together?” she asked.

“I think so, yes. At an address.”

“What joy.”

“Yes.”

3

It took half an hour.

He asked only two questions, and though they were unusual, Slocum blinked only once and answered them readily, looking at him closely only when he walked in, registering his dark suit with a nod and motioning him to a chair.

They sat in a pleasant office smelling of law books and balsam. A big window let onto a view of the mountain with its skewed face and one eye out of place.

“You’ve left the hospital,” said Slocum.

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“I think so.”

“Okay. What’s up?”

Did I once practice law, he wondered, and he remembered that he had, not so much from the smell of the books as from Slocum’s practiced coolness and his resolve not to be surprised. He smiled. He had been observing doctors and lawyers lately. Both were good at keeping their own counsel and seeming to know something. He hoped Slocum did.

“Two things. First thing: are you familiar with the North Carolina Revised Statutes relating to the rights of patients pursuant to involuntary admissions under the new Mental Health Law?”

“More or less, counselor.” Slocum’s voice took on the familiar ironic gravity of talk among lawyers and his eyes shifted slightly, lining up with his, taking in the view with him.

“I take it that no director of a treatment facility shall prohibit any mentally ill person from applying for conversion of involuntary admission status to a voluntary admission status.”

“That is correct.”

They both gazed at the mountain, which with its bare trees looked like a moonfaced man with a stubble.

“I wish you to prepare an application for an injunction from old Judge Jenkins enjoining said director, a Dr. Alistair Duk, from detaining the person in question whose name I shall presently give you. As a precautionary measure I wish you also to apply for a writ of habeas corpus for the same person in the event of involuntary detention, say by Dr. Duk with the assistance of the sheriff — though I think such an eventuality highly unlikely. Finally, I wish you to represent the same person in a hearing to establish her mental and legal competence. Vance will bring in a psychiatrist from Duke.”

“No problem. Is that it?” Slocum asked the pied face of the mountain.

“No, that’s not it.”

“All right.”

“As you must know, I am not a member of the North Carolina bar.”

“I am aware of that. Not even an illustrious member of the New York bar can apply for a writ here. You got to use the local yokels.”

“That’s true. But that is not why I mentioned it.”

“Why did you mention it?”

“I intend to take the North Carolina bar examination.”

“Ah.” Slocum’s head turned but not enough for their eyes to meet. “You going to run me out of business?”

“No. I’m going to bring you in some business. How would you like the Peabody business?”

“I would like that.”

“You can have it. There is something I want.”

“I gathered there was.”

“I want to work with you. You’ve often asked me to. Very well, I will, but not as a partner. I’ve forgotten too much. As a clerk. At first.”

Now Slocum did look at him. “Why?”

“I want to.”

“I see that. I had figured you figured you quit too early. But aren’t you a little overqualified for this two-bit practice?”

“I’m just telling you what I want. You just tell me whether you will go with it. I shall be very pleased to trace titles, file petitions, pass acts of sale, do courthouse runs. If you don’t employ me, I’ll open up next door and close you down.”

“I do believe you would sandbag me, just like you did in golf.”

“What do you say?”

“You want me to give you an answer now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. My answer is that if you really do get around to taking the bar exam and—”

“—and pass?”

“And pass. And then if you feel up to it—”

“—if I’m still alive?”

“If you’re still alive and kicking—”

“Yes?”

“You’re on.”

“Okay.”

Slocum did not move when he rose. “You know something,” he said to the mountain. “I always did want a Wall Street lawyer to shelve my books and do courthouse runs for me.”

“You got one.”

4

She was asleep when he returned, no sign of her but a tousle of hair and a curve of hip under the motel chenille. The sinking sun made a yellow stripe up the burlap wallpaper.

Her plate was clean. Her NATO knapsack hung from a hook in the alcove. He walked around the bed to see her. He stood looking down at her, hands in pockets. She slept like a child, face turned into the pillow, lips mashed open and making a wet spot on the cotton.

Suddenly he was tired, as tired as he had ever been in his life. Could it be that all these years he had not really slept or slept as lightly as a soldier on patrol? Could it be that not having an address, not living anywhere, meant that one was free to sleep?

Taking off his jacket, and even as he hung it up, he was, alertly he thought and casting ahead as was his wont, looking around for his suitcase, which must have his pajamas, when he realized that he had no suitcase and therefore no pajamas. Where do I go when I leave here? he wondered, yawning and turning. The gyroscope in his head resisted the turn but not unpleasantly. His pH was up. Great haunted molecules boomed around in his brain. A smell of old newspapers and flour paste and Octagon soap rose in his nostrils. Was this Georgia?