The Last Gentleman (11 page)

“But—” began the engineer, who had formed a picture of a girl standing on the front porch handing out bills to passing Negroes. “I thought Kitty told me she went into a, ah, convent.”

“She did,” cried the old man, peering back through the smoke.

“Then how—”

“Now she's begging from niggers. Do you think that is right?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Let me ask you something. Do you think the good Lord wants us to do anything unnatural?”

“I don't know, sir,” said the engineer warily. He perceived it was an old argument and a sore subject.

“Or leave your own kind?”

“Sir?”

“I mean to go spend the rest of your life not just with niggers but with Tyree niggers—do you think that is natural?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“You've heard your daddy talk about Tyree niggers?”

“I don't remember.”

“Not even niggers have anything to do with Tyree niggers. Down there in Tyree County they've got three different kinds of schools, one for the white folks, one for niggers, and a third for Tyree niggers. They're speckled-like in the face and all up in the head. Some say they eat clay. So where do you think Val goes?”

“Yes sir,” said the engineer.

“She went to Agnes Scott, then to Columbia and was just about to get her master's.”

The engineer perceived that here was one of those families, more common in the upper South, who set great store by education and degrees.

“So what do I do? Two weeks before graduation I give her her money. So what does she do?”

“Gave it to the Tyree niggers?”

“Man, I'm telling you.”

An easy silence fell between them. Mr. Vaught crossed his legs and pulled one ankle above the other with both hands. The little lobby, now swirling with cigar smoke, was something like an old-style Pullman smoker where men used to sit talking by night, pulling their ankles above their knees, and leaning out to spit in the great sloshing cuspidor.

“Let's get us another Coke, Bill.”

“I'll get them, sir.”

Mr. Vaught drank his Coke in country style, sticking out a little finger and swigging it off in two swallows. “Now. Here's what we'll do. The doctors say Jamie can travel in a week or so. I aim to start home about Thursday week or Friday. Mama wants to go by Williamsburg and Charleston. Now you going to quit all this foolishness up here and come on home with us. What I'm going to do is get you and Jamie a little bitty car—you know I'm in the car business. Do you play golf?”

“Yes sir.”

“Hell, man, we live on the golf links. Our patio is twenty feet from number 6 fairway. You like to sail? The Lil' Doll is tied up out at the yacht club and nobody will sail her. You'd be doing me a great favor.”

The engineer wished he would mention a salary.

“You and Jamie can go to college—or go round the world! Now isn't that better than being a janitor?”

“Yes sir.”

“You think about it.”

“I will. Sir?”

“What?”

“Here—I'm going to write down my number here in New York.” Meaning, he hoped: you didn't mention a figure and when you want to, it is for you to call me.

“Sho now,” said Mr. Vaught absently, and shoved the slip of paper into the side pocket of his seersucker, a bad enough sign in itself.

8
.

He stayed only long enough to watch the presentation of the checks. Kitty was back and without Rita!

Standing between Jamie and Kitty, Mr. Vaught crossed his arms, a check in each hand.

“When was your last cigarette?” he asked Jamie.

“There was no last cigarette,” said Jamie, grinning and thrashing.

“Your last drink?”

“There was no last drink.”

“Then go buy yourself a drink.”

“Yes sir,” said Jamie, taking his check.

“Kitty?”

“No cigarette and no drink.”

“Then go buy yourself one!”

“I might,” said Kitty, laughing.

“I mean it! They're certified. You can cash it right down there at the bar on the corner.”

“Thank you, Poppy,” said Kitty, kissing him.

The checks were passed around among family, nurses, and internes.

Once again Kitty left and once again the engineer tried to follow her, but Jamie stopped him.

“Bill.”

“Yes?”

“Come here.”

“What?”

“Did Poppy speak to you?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“We didn't get down to terms.”

“That's Poppy. But what do you say in general?”

“I say O.K., if I can be of use to you.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Where do
I
want to go?”

Jamie waved the check. “Name it.”

“No sir. You name it. And I think you'd better name a school.”

“O.K.,” said Jamie immediately and cheerfully.

9
.

During the next week he set about putting his life in order. He ate and slept regularly, worked out every day, went down to Brooks Brothers like his father and grandfather before him and bought two ten-dollar pullover shirts with a tuck in the back and no pocket in the front, socks, ties, and underwear, and dressed like a proper Princetonian. At work he read business maxims in
Living.

It was no more nor less than true. You do things by doing things, not by not doing them. No more crazy upsidedownness, he resolved. Good was better than bad. Good environments are better than bad environments. Back to the South, finish his education, make use of his connections, be a business or professional man, marry him a wife and live him a life. What was wrong with that? No more pressing against girls, rassling around in elevators and automobiles and other similar monkey business such as gives you stone pains and God knew what else. What was wrong with a good little house in a pretty green suburb in Atlanta or Birmingham or Memphis and a pretty little wife in a brand-new kitchen with a red dress on at nine o'clock in the morning and a sweet good-morning kiss and the little ones off to school and a good old mammy to take care of them? The way to see Kitty is not not to see her but to see her.

But it didn't work. Kitty's phone didn't answer. Outside in the park the particles were ravening and singing. Inside he went careening around the dark Aztec corridors of the Y.M.C.A. wringing out his ear and forgetting which floor he lived on. When he lay in bed, one leg defied gravity and rose slowly of itself. His knee began to leap like a fish.

Once when he called Kitty, someone did pick up the telephone but did not speak. “Hello, hello,” he said. “Who's there?” But there came only the sound of breathing and of the crepitation of skin on plastic. Presently the telephone was replaced softly.

Nor did he hear from Mr. Vaught. He went once more to visit Jamie and, coming face to face with the older man, waited upon him smilingly. But the old man pulled out his gold watch, mumbled an excuse, and was off down the hall like the white rabbit.

Very well then, said he to himself, good day. If they wanted him, let them send for him.

Wednesday when he came home from work he was handed a message with his key. It was from Kitty. Meet me in the park, at the zoo, at four thirty. He went and waited until five thirty. She did not come.

Meanwhile he was getting worse. Thursday morning he slipped another cog. It came, he hoped, from working a double shift and not eating. The day man, a fellow named Perlmutter who had a sick wife, did not show. Like an idiot, he offered to stay on, figuring, what with his new plans and his expenses at Brooks Brothers, that he needed the money.

After sixteen hours underground he came staggering out into the gorge air of Seventh Avenue. For some ten minutes he stood, finger to nose, in the thunderous blue shadow of Pennsylvania Station. A bar turned in his head. Now let me see, said he, and taking out
Living
from his pocket, read a few maxims. Hmm. The thing to do is make a list.

Somewhere in the smoky vastness of the station lanced through with late slanting cathedral beams of sunlight—late or early? was it evening or morning—and haunted by old
déjà vus
of Here-I-am-up-from-Charlotte-or-Chattanooga-or-Tuscaloosa-and-where-do-I-go-from-here, he got turned around good and proper and came down on the wrong platform, headed in the wrong direction, and took the wrong train. He must have dozed off, for when he woke up he was in New Lots Avenue, or perhaps it was Far Rockaway.

What woke him? Something. His heart was thumping, making a regular commotion. Now he knew! A pair of eyes had been looking at him, gazing into his even as he slept with eyes open. Who? Rita. Or did he dream it? The train had stopped. He looked around but there was no one. Yet somebody was following him. He knew that. Goofy as he was, his radar still swung free and there was a prickling between his shoulder blades. Somewhere in Brooklyn he changed to an old local with straw seats and came out at a seaside station.

It was dark. He found himself in a long street which was nearly black between the yellow street lights at the corners. The sea was somehow close. There was a hint of an uproar abroad in the night, a teeming in the air and the sense of coming closer with each step to a primal openness. He walked six blocks in the empty street and there it was. But it was nothing like Wrightsville or Myrtle Beach or Nag's Head, lonesome and wide and knelling. It was domesticated. There were notion shops right up to the sand and the surf was poky, came snuffling in like lake water and collapsed
plaush
on a steep little old brown beach.

He looked behind him. No one followed him in the street. The drowsiness came again. He had to sleep then and there. He lay down in the warm black sand of a vacant lot and slept two hours without moving a muscle. He woke in his right mind and went back to the Y.

10
.

Jogging home from the reservoir the next morning, he spotted Rita two hundred yards away, sitting on a bench next to the milk-fund booth, the toilet-shaped telescope case under her hand. All at once he knew everything: she had come to get rid of him. She hoped he would take his telescope and go away.

But she was, for the first time, as pleasant as could be and patted the bench next to her. And when he sat down, she came sliding smack up against him, a bit too close for comfort. He humped himself over in his sweat suit and tried to smell as good as he could.

Her fist came softly down on his knee; she looked him in the eye and spoke not eight inches away. He couldn't hear for listening.

“But you and I know better,” she was saying. “He's got no business going home.”

“Jamie?”

Looking into her eyes was something of a shock. Every line of her face was known to him. Yet now, with her eyes opening into his, she became someone else. It was like watching a picture toy turned one degree: the black lines come and the picture changes. Where before her face was dark and shut off as a gypsy, now her eyes opened into a girlishness.

“Bill—”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Oh come
on.
Rita.”

“O.K., Rita.”

Again the fist came down softly on his knee.

“I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“The Vaughts are very fond of you.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“The extraordinary part of it is that though you are a new friend—perhaps because you are a new friend—you have more influence with them than anyone else.”

“I doubt it. I haven't heard from them in several days.”

“Oh, they carry on about you something awful. They plan to take you home with them, don't they?”

“When did you hear that?”

“Yesterday.”

“Did Mr. Vaught tell you?”

“Yes.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“But never mind about Poppy. Right now it's Jamie who needs us.” As gravely as she spoke, he noticed that she cast her eyes about, making routine surveys of Eighth Avenue. There was about her the air of a woman who keeps busy in a world of men. Her busyness gave her leave to be absent-minded. She was tired, but she knew how to use her tiredness.

“Why?”

“Jamie can't go home, Bill.”

“Why not?”

“Let me tell you something.”

“All right.”

“First—how much do you care for Jamie?”

“Care for him?”

“Would you do something for him?”

“Yes.”

“Would you do anything for him?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he were in serious trouble, would you help him?”

“Of course.”

“I knew you would.”

“What is it?” he asked after a moment.

Rita was smoothing out her skirt until it made a perfect membrane across her thighs. “Our Jamie is not going to make it, Bill,” she said in a low thrilling voice and with a sweetness that struck a pang to the marrow.