The Last Gentleman (29 page)

But tonight he wasn't up to it and he left with Jamie. He was careful not to forget his book about General Kirby Smith's surrender at Shreveport in 1865. He was tired of Lee's sad fruitless victories and would as soon see the whole thing finished off for good.

8
.

The man walked up and down in the darkness of the water oaks, emerging now and then under the street light, which shed a weak yellow drizzle. The boy sat on the steps between the azaleas and watched. He always imagined he could see the individual quanta of light pulsing from the filament.

When the man came opposite the boy, the two might exchange a word; then the man would go his way, turn under the light, and come back and speak again.

“Father, you shouldn't walk at night like this.”

“Why not, son?”

“Father, they said they were going to kill you.”

“They're not going to kill me, son.”

The man walked. The youth listened to the music and the hum of the cottonseed-oil mill. A police car passed twice and stopped; the policeman talked briefly to the man under the street light. The man came back.

“Father, I know that the police said those people had sworn to kill you and that you should stay in the house.”

“They're not going to kill me, son.”

“Father, I heard them on the phone. They said you loved niggers and helped the Jews and Catholics and betrayed your own people.”

“I haven't betrayed anyone, son. And I don't have much use for any of them, Negroes, Jews, Catholics, or Protestants.”

“They said if you spoke last night, you would be a dead man.”

“I spoke last night and I am not a dead man.”

Through an open window behind the boy there came the music of the phonograph. When he looked up, he could see the Pleiades, which seemed to swarm in the thick air like lightning bugs.

“Why do you walk at night, Father?”

“I like to hear the music outside.”

“Do you want them to kill you, Father?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“What is going to happen?”

“I'm going to run them out of town, son, every last miserable son of a bitch.”

“Let's go around to the garden, Father. You can hear the music there.”

“Go change the record, son. The needle is stuck in the groove.”

“Yes sir.”

The engineer woke listening. Something had happened. There was not a sound, but the silence was not an ordinary silence. It was the silence of a time afterwards. It had been violated earlier. His heart beat a strong steady alarm. He opened his eyes. A square of moonlight lay across his knees.

A shot had been fired. Had he dreamed it? Yes. But why was the night portentous? The silence reverberated with insult. There was something abroad.

Nor had it come from Sutter's room. He waited and listened twenty minutes without moving. Then he dressed and went outside into the moonlight.

The golf links was as pale as lake water. To the south Juno's temple hung low in the sky like a great fiery star. The shrubbery, now grown tall as trees, cast inky shadows which seemed to walk in the moonlight.

For a long time he gazed at the temple. What was it? It alone was not refracted and transformed by the prism of dreams and memory. But now he remembered. It was fiery old Canopus, the great red star of the south which once a year reared up and hung low in the sky over the cottonfields and canebrakes.

Turning at last, he walked quickly to the Trav-L-Aire, got his flashlight from the glove compartment, cut directly across the courtyard and entered the back door of the castle; through the dark pantry and into the front hall, where he rounded the newel abruptly and went up the stairs. To the second and then the third floor as if he knew exactly where he was, though he had only once visited the second floor and not once been above it. Around again and up a final closeted flight of narrow wooden steps and into the attic. It was a vast unfinished place with walks of lumber laid over the joists. He prowled through the waists and caverns of the attic ribbed in the old heart pine of the 1920's. The lumber was still warm and fragrant from the afternoon sun. He shone the flashlight into every nook and cranny.

When he heard the sound behind him, he slid the switch of the flashlight and stepped four feet to the side (out of the line of fire?) and waited.

“Bill?”

A wall switch snapped on, lighting a row of bulbs in the peak of the roof. The girl, hugging her wrap with both arms, moved close to him and peered into his face. Her lips, scrubbed clean of lipstick, were slightly puffed and showed the violet color of blood.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“I saw you outside.”

He didn't answer.

“What are you looking for?”

“I heard something.”

“You heard something up here from the garage?”

“I didn't know where it came from. I thought it might be from the attic.”

“Why?”

“Is there a room up here?”

“A room?”

“A room closed off from the rest of the attic?”

“No. This is all.”

He said nothing.

“You don't know where you are, do you?”

“Where I am?”

“Where are you?”

“I know.” He did know now but he didn't mind her thinking he didn't. She was better, more herself, when he was afflicted.

“You were sleepwalking, I think.”

“It's possible.”

“Come on. I'll take you back.”

“You don't have to.”

“I know I don't.”

He made her stay in the pantry. She was sweet and loving and not at all antic. It is strange, he thought as he stood in his own and Jamie's room a few minutes later: we are well when we are afflicted and afflicted when we are well. I can lie with her only if she tends my wounds.

“Was there a shot?” he asked her as he left.

She had shaken her head but smiled, signifying she liked him better for being mistaken.

The square of moonlight had moved onto Jamie's face. Arms folded, the engineer leaned against his bed and gazed down at the youth. The eye sockets were pools of darkness. Despite the strong black line of the brow, the nose and mouth were smudged and not wholly formed. He reminded the engineer of the graduates of Horace Mann, their faces quick and puddingish and acned, whose gift was the smart boy's knack of catching on, of hearkening: yes, I see. If Jamie could live, it was easy to imagine him for the next forty years engrossed and therefore dispensed and so at the end of the forty years still quick and puddingish and childlike. They were the lucky ones. Yet in one sense it didn't make much difference, even to Jamie, whether he lived or died—if one left out of it what he might “do” in the forty years, that is, add to “science.” The difference between me and him, he reflected, is that I could not permit myself to be so diverted (but diverted from what?). How can one take seriously the Theory of Large Numbers, living in this queer not-new not-old place haunted by the goddess Juno and the spirit of the great Bobby Jones? But it was more than that.
Something is going to happen,
he suddenly perceived that he knew all along. He shivered. It is for me to wait. Waiting is the thing. Wait and watch.

Jamie's eyes seemed to open in their deep sockets. But they gazed back at him, not with their usual beamish expression, casting about for recondite areas of agreement in the space between them, but mockingly: ah, you deceive yourself, Jamie seemed to say. But when the engineer, smiling and puzzled, leaned closer, he saw that the eyes had not opened.

A bar of yellow light fell across the room. A figure was outlined in the doorway of the kitchenette. It beckoned to him.

It was Rita.

As soon as he was inside the tiny room, she closed the door and whispered: “Is Jamie asleep?”

“Yes.”

Sutter stood gazing into the sink. The sink was dusty and still had a paper sticker in the basin.

“We want you to settle a little point,” said Rita.

Sutter nodded. The engineer sniffed. The kitchenette had the close expired air of impasse. Now as if they were relieved by the diversion, its occupants turned toward him with a mild, unspecified interest.

“I want to know whether you are still prepared to go somewhere with Jamie,” Rita said.

The engineer rubbed his forehead. “What time is it?” he asked no one in particular. Was this the true flavor of hatred, he wondered, this used, almost comfortable malice sustained between them, with its faint sexual reek? They turned as fondly to him as spent lovers greeting a strange child.

“Two thirty,” said Sutter.

“What about it, Bill?” asked Rita crisply.

“What? Oh, Jamie,” he repeated, aware that Sutter watched him. “Why, yes. But you knew all along that I would go with him. Why do you ask?”

“I have reason to believe that Jamie is getting restless and that he may ask Sutter to go off somewhere with him. I think this is too much to ask of Sutter.”

He stole a glance at Sutter, but the latter's expression was still fond and inattentive.

“You are very much in demand, Bill,” said he at last. “Jimmy wants you, not me.”

“Then what's the difficulty?” asked the bemused engineer, feeling their apathy steal into his bones.

“The difficulty,” said Sutter, “is that Rita wants to make sure Jimmy doesn't go anywhere with me.”

“Why not?”

“That's a good question, isn't it, Rita,” said Sutter, but still not quite looking at her (couldn't they stand the sight of each other?). “Why don't you want Jimmy to go with me?”

“Because of your deliberate cultivation of destructiveness, of your death-wish, not to mention your outhouse sexuality,” said Rita, still smiling, and addressing Sutter through the engineer. “Every man to his own taste but you can bloody well leave Jamie out of it.”

“What do you think I would do?” Sutter asked.

“I know what you have done.”

“Jamie also spoke of going down to Val's,” said the engineer for reasons of his own. He could not quite make this pair out and wished to get another fix on them. Val was his triangulation point.

“Val,” said Rita nodding. “Yes, between the two of you, Sutter and Val, you could dispose of him very nicely. You'd kill him off in three weeks and Val would send his soul to heaven. If you don't mind I shall continue to minister to the living.”

“Kill him off?” Sutter frowned but still could not tear his vacant eye from the engineer. “I understood he was in a remission.”

“He was.”

“What's his white count?”

“Eighteen thousand.”

“How many immature forms?”

“Twenty percent.”

“What's he on?”

“Prednisone.”

“Wasn't he on Aminopterin?”

“That was a year ago.”

“What's his red count?”

“Just under three million.”

“Is his spleen palpable?”

“That's what I like about you and your sister,” said Rita.

“What's that?”

“Your great concern for Jamie, one for his body, the other for his soul. The only trouble is your interest is somewhat periodic.”

“That's what interests me,” said Sutter. “Your interest, I mean.”

“Put up your knife, you bastard. You no longer bother me.”

They quarreled with the skillful absent-minded malice of married couples. Instead of taking offense, they nodded sleepily and even smiled.

“What is it you want this young man to do?” Sutter asked, shaking his head to rouse himself.

“My house in Tesuque is open,” said Rita. “Teresita is there to cook. The Michelins are next door. I have even determined that they could transfer to the college in Santa Fe without loss of credit—at the end of this semester.”

“Who are the Michelins?” asked the engineer.

“A duo piano team,” said Sutter. “Why don't you take him out yourself, Rita?”

“You persuade him to go and I will,” said Rita listlessly.

“Rita,” said Sutter in the same mild temper which the engineer had not yet put down to ordinary friendliness or pluperfect malice, “what do you really care what happens to Jimmy?”

“I care.”

“Tell me honestly what difference it makes to you whether Jimmy lives or dies.”

The engineer was shocked but Rita replied routinely. “You know very well there is no use in my answering you. Except to say that there is such a thing as concern and there is such a thing as preference for life over death. I do not desire death, mine, yours, or Jamie's. I do not desire your version of fun and games. I desire for Jamie that he achieve as much self-fulfillment as he can in the little time he has. I desire for him beauty and joy, not death.”

“That is death,” said Sutter.

“You see, Bill,” said Rita, smiling but still unfocused.

“I'm not sure,” said the engineer, frowning. “But mainly what I don't understand is what you are asking me to do since you already know I will go anywhere Jamie wants to go and any time.”

“I know, Bill,” said Rita mournfully. “But apparently my former husband thinks you have reasons for staying.”

“What reasons?” he asked Sutter.

“He cannot conceive that everyone is not as self-centered as he is,” Rita put in before Sutter could reply.

“No, I can't, that's true,” said Sutter. “But as to reasons, Bill, I know you are having some difficulties and it was my impression you wanted me to help you.” Sutter was opening and closing cabinet doors, searching for the bottle which was in plain sight on the counter. The engineer handed it to him.

“What's number two?”

“Number two: I would not suppose that you were anxious to leave Kitty.”

“Kitty?” The engineer's heart gave a queer extra thump.

“I could not help but observe her kissing you in the garden as you lay under a Governor Mouton.”