The Last Gentleman (39 page)

“Ask Breeze.” The engineer scowled. Why couldn't these people call him by his name?

But when the playwright turned to Breeze the latter only nodded and shrugged. Breeze, the engineer perceived, was extremely nervous. His, the engineer's, presence, disconcerted him. He didn't know what footing to get on with the engineer, the old one, the old ironic Ithaca style: “Hey, Will, where you going?” “Going to caddy.” “How come your daddy pays you five dollars a round?” “He don't pay no five dollars”—or the solemn fierce footing of the others. But finally Breeze said absently and to no one and from no footing at all: “This here's Will Barrett, Lawyer Barrett's boy. Lawyer Barrett help many a one.” But it was more than that, the engineer then saw, something else was making Breeze nervous. He kept opening the door a crack and looking out. He was scared to death.

But the pseudo-Negro wanted to talk about more serious matters. He asked the others some interview-type questions about racial subjects, all the while snapping pictures (only the engineer noticed) from his tie-clasp camera.

“It's a moral issue,” said the actor, breaking the swizzle stick between his fingers, breaking it the way actors break swizzle sticks and pencils. The pseudo-Negro explained that the actor had flown in from Hollywood with Mona his companion to assist in the present drive at great cost to himself, both financially and emotionally, the latter because he was embroiled in a distressing custody suit in the course of which his wife had broken into his bedroom and pulled Mona's hair.

“Of course it's a moral issue,” said the playwright. Now the engineer remembered seeing one of his plays with Midge Auchincloss. It was about an artist who has gone stale, lost his creative powers, until he musters the courage to face the truth within himself, which is his love for his wife's younger brother. He puts a merciful end to the joyless uncreative marriage in favor of a more meaningful relationship with his friend. The last scene shows the lovers standing in a window of the artist's Left Bank apartment looking up at the gleaming towers of Sacre-Coeur. “There has been a loss of the holy in the world,” said the youth. “Yes, we must recover it,” replies the artist. “It has fallen to us to recover the holy.” “It has been a long time since I was at Mass,” says the youth, looking at the church. “Let's have our own Mass,” replies the artist as softly as Pelleas and, stretching forth a shy hand, touches the youth's golden hair.

Sweet Evening Breeze, the engineer noticed, was growing more nervous by the minute. His skin turned grayer and more sharklike and he had fallen into a complicated way of snapping his fingers. Once, after peering through the cracked door, he called the pseudo-Negro aside.

“Breeze says the fuzz is on its way over here,” the pseudo-Negro told them gravely.

“How do you know?” the playwright asked Breeze.

“I know.”

“How do they know we're here?”

“Ask Merle,” said the actor.

“Don't be ridiculous,” said the pseudo-Negro, frowning. “I pulled him in here, remember. Barrett's all right.”

“The man done pass by here twice,” said Breeze, rattling off a drumroll of fingersnaps. “The next time he's coming in.”

“How do you know?” asked the pseudo-Negro with his lively reporter's eye.

“I knows, that's all.”

“Wonderful,” said the playwright. The playwright's joy, the engineer perceived, came from seeing life unfold in the same absurd dramatic way as a Broadway play—it was incredible that the one should be like the other after all.

“Bill,” said the pseudo-Negro earnestly. “We've got to get Mona out of here. You know what will happen to her?”

The engineer reflected a moment. “Do you all want to leave town?”

“Yes. Our business here is finished except for Bugs.”

“What about your Chevrolet?”

“They picked it up an hour ago.”

“Why not get on a bus?”

“That's where they got Bugs, at the bus station.”

“Here they come,” said Breeze.

Sure enough, there was a hammering at the door. “Here's what you do,” said the engineer suddenly. Upside down as always, he could think only when thinking was impossible. It was when thinking was expected of one that he couldn't think. “Take my camper. Here.” He quickly drew a sketch of the highway and the old river road. “It's over the levee here. I'll talk to the police. Go out the back door. You drive,” he said to Mona, handing her the key. The actor was watching him with a fine gray eye. “The others can ride in the back.” The hammering became deafening. “Now if I don't meet you at the levee,” shouted the engineer, “go to my uncle's in Louisiana. Cross the bridge at Vicksburg. Mr. Fannin Barrett of Shut Off. I'll meet you there.” From his breast pocket he took out a sheaf of road maps, selected a Conoco state map, made an X, and wrote a name and gave it to Mona. “Who are they?” he asked Breeze, who stood rooted at the heaving door.

“That's Mist' Ross and Mist' Gover,” said Breeze eagerly, as if he were already smoothing things over with the police.

“Do you know them, Merle?” asked the actor, with a new appraising glint in his eye.

“Yes.”

“How are they?”

“Gover's all right.”

“Open the door, Breeze.” The voice came through the door.

“Yes suh.”

“No, hold it—” began the engineer.

“The man said unlock it.” It was too late. The doorway was first flooded by sunlight, then darkened by uniforms.

“What do you say, Beans. Ellis,” said the engineer, coming toward them.

“Where's the poontang?” asked Beans Ross, a strong, tall, fat man with a handsome tanned face and green-tinted sunglasses such as highway police wear, though he was only a town deputy.

“This is Will Barrett, Beans,” said the engineer, holding out his hand. “Mister Ed's boy.”

“What,” said Beans, shoving his glasses onto his forehead. He even took the other's hand and there was for a split second a chance of peace between them. “What the hell are you doing here?” Beans took from his pocket a small blackjack as soft and worn as skin.

“I'll explain, but meanwhile there is no reason to hit Breeze.” He knew at once what Beans meant to do.

“All right, Breeze,” said Beans in a routine voice, not looking at him.

Sweet Evening Breeze, knowing what was expected of him, doffed his stocking cap and presented the crown of his head. Hardly watching but with a quick outward flick of his wrist, Beans hit Breeze on the forehead with the blackjack. Breeze fell down.

“Goddamn it, Beans,” said the engineer. “That's no way to act.”

“You got something to say about it?”

“Yes.”

“Where's the poontang?” asked Beans, and with a gesture at once fond and conspiratorial—enlisting: him—and contemptuous, he leaned across and snapped his middle finger on the engineer's fly.

“Augh,” grunted the engineer, bowing slightly and seeming to remember something. Had this happened to him as a boy, getting snapped on the fly? The humiliation was familiar.

“Don't do that, Beans,” said Ellis Gover, coming between them and shaking his head. “This is a real good old boy.”

By the time the engineer's nausea had cleared, Beans had caught sight of Mona in the booth. Without taking his eyes from her, he pulled Ellis close and began to whisper. The engineer had time to straighten himself and to brace his foot in the corner of the jamb and sill of the front door. For once in his life he had time and position and a good shot, and for once things became as clear as they used to be in the old honorable days. He hit Beans in the root of his neck as hard as he ever hit the sandbag in the West Side Y.M.C.A. Beans's cap and glasses flew off and he sat down on the floor. “Now listen here, Ellis,” said the engineer immediately, turning to the tall, younger policeman. “Yall go ahead,” he told the others casually, waving them over Beans's outstretched legs and out the front door. “Catch a Bluebird cab at the corner.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ellis, but he did not stop them.

“Don't worry about it, Ellis. They haven't done anything. They're leaving town and that's what you want.”

“But, shit, man,” said Ellis, who could not take his eyes from the fallen policeman. “You done hit Beans.”

“I know, but look at Breeze,” said the engineer by way of answer, and nodded to the Negro, who was laid out straight as a corpse. Standing next to Ellis, he took him by the elbow just as he used to touch him in a football huddle. Ellis was all-state halfback and the engineer, who was quarterback (not all-state), had called the plays in huddle. Ellis was a bit slow in catching the signals and the engineer used to squeeze him so, just above the elbow.

“Yeah, but hailfire, Will.”

“Listen, Ellis,” said the engineer, already moving. “You bring charges against me to clear yourself, do you understand? Tell Beans the others got in behind you. You got it?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Now give Beans a hand and tell him to come after me, O.K.?” He said this though Beans was still out cold, and giving Ellis a final huddle sort of squeeze and nod, the engineer walked quickly to the back door and out into Heck's Alley.

“Will,” cried Ellis again, feeling that all was not well. But the other had already crossed the alley to a certain board in a fence which had been eroded into the shape of Illinois and which he knew, now fifteen years later, to swing free on a single nail, was through it and into Miss Mamie Billups' back yard. Miss Mamie was sitting on her side porch when he stooped to pass under her satsuma tree.

“How do you do, Miss Mamie,” said the courteous engineer, bowing and putting his tie inside his coat

“Who is that?” called out the old woman sharply. Everyone used to steal her satsumas.

“This is Will Barrett, Miss Mamie.”

“Will Barrett! You come on up here, Will!”

“I can't right now, Miss Mamie,” said the engineer, turning up Theard Street. “I'll be right back!”

4
.

His friends waited for him but not long enough. By the time he rounded the lower curve of Milliken Bend, having walked the inner shoulder of the levee out of sight of highway and town, the Trav-L-Aire had already lumbered out of the willows and started up the levee—at an angle! The cabin teetered dangerously. He forgot to tell Mona not to do this. He covered his face with his hands: Mona, thinking to spare the G.M.C. the climb straight up, was in a fair way to turn her plumb over. When he looked up, however, the levee was clear.

It was two o'clock. He was hungry. At the levee end of Theard Street he bought a half dozen tamales from a street vendor (but not the same whose cry
Rayed hot!
used to echo up and down the summer night in the 1950's). Now finding a patch of waist-high elephant grass past the towhead and out of sight of anyone standing on the levee behind him, he rolled to and fro and made a hollow which was tilted like a buttercup into the westering sun. It was warm enough to take off his coat and roll up his sleeves. He ate the tamales carefully, taking care not to stain his clothes. The meat was good but his tooth encountered a number-eight shot: rabbit or possibly squirrel. Afterwards he washed his hands in river water, which still thrashed through the lower level of the towhead, and dried them with his handkerchief. Returning to his hollow, he sat cross-legged for a while and watched a towboat push a good half acre of sulphur barges up the dead water on the Louisiana side. Then he curled up and, using his coat folded wrong-side-out for a pillow, went to sleep.

Cold and stiffness woke him. It was a moonless overcast night, but he could make out Scorpio writhing dimly over Louisiana, convulsed around great bloody Antares. Buttoning all three buttons of his jacket, he ran along the inner shoulder of the levee, out of sight of town, until he got warm. When he came abreast of the stacks of the gypsum mill, he went quickly over and down into Blanton Street and took the Illinois Central tracks, which went curving away behind the high school. It was pitch dark under the stadium, but his muscles remembered the spacing of the ties. The open rear of the bleachers exhaled a faint odor of cellar earth and urine. At the Chinaman's he took the tangent of Houston Street, which ran through a better Negro neighborhood of neat shogun cottages and flower gardens, into the heavy humming air and ham-rich smell of the cottonseed oil mill, and out at De Ridder.

He stood in the inky darkness of the water oaks and looked at his house. It was the same except that the gallery had been closed by glass louvers and a flagpole stuck out of a second-story window. His aunts were sitting on the porch. They had moved out, television and all. He came closer and stood amid the azaleas. They were jolly and fit, were the aunts, and younger than ever. Three were watching “Strike It Rich,” two were playing canasta, and one was reading
Race and Reason
and eating Whitman's Sampler. He remembered now that Sophie wrote love letters to Bill Cullen. What a tough hearty crew they were! hearty as muzhiks, and good haters, yet not ill-natured—they'd be honestly and unaffectedly glad to see him walk in, would kiss him and hold him off and make over him—rosy-skinned, easy in their consciences, arteries as supple as a girl's, husbands dead and gone these forty years, pegged out so long ago that he could not remember anyone ever speaking of them; Christian ladies every one, four Protestant, Presbyterian, and Scotch-Irish, two Catholic and Creole, but long since reconciled, ecumenized, by bon appétit and laughter and good hearty hatred.

It was here under the water oaks that his father used to stroll of a summer night, hands in his pockets and head down, sauntering along the sidewalk in his old Princeton style of sauntering, right side turning forward with right leg. Here under the water oaks or there under the street light, he would hold parley with passers-by, stranger and friend, white and black, thief and police. The boy would sit on the front steps, close enough to speak with his father and close enough too to service the Philco which played its stack of prewar 78's but always had trouble doing it. The mechanism creaked and whirred and down came the record plop and round it went for a spell, hissing under the voyaging needle. From the open window came Brahms, nearly always Brahms. Up and down the sidewalk went his father, took his turn under the street light sometimes with a client, sometimes alone. The clients, black and white and by and large the sorriest of crews but of course listening now with every eager effort of attention and even of a special stratspheric understanding. Between records the boy could hear snatches of talk: “Yassuh, that's the way it is now! I have notice the same thing myself!”—the father having said something about the cheapness of good intentions and the rarity of good character—“I'm sho gon' do like you say”—the passer-by working him of course for the fifty cents or five dollars or what, but working him as gracefully as anyone ever worked, they as good at their trade as he at his. The boy listening: what was the dread in his heart as he heard the colloquy and the beautiful terrible Brahms which went abroad into the humming summer night and the heavy ham-rich air?