The Last Gentleman (28 page)

“I really appreciate it, Son,” said the engineer.

“Look, Kitty,” he said when Son drifted off. He took off his own pledge pin. “Why don't you wear mine?” It was a great idea. He had only recently discovered that being pinned was a serious business at the university, the next thing to an engagement ring. If she wore his pin, Son wouldn't take her to the dance.

“Will you take me to the dance?”

“Yes. If Jamie doesn't veto it. I promised to go with him.”

“Don't worry about Jamie.”

As he watched, she pinned his gold shield to the same lovely soft blue mount, oh for wantonnesse and merrinesse, thought he tenderly and crossed his good knee over bad lest it leap through the card table.

Jamie punched him. He was angry because they were not paying attention to the game of hearts (here is my heart, thought the engineer sentimentally). “What do you say,” whispered the youth fiercely. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes.”

“O.K. What do you think of this? We'll drive to the coast and—”

But before Jamie could tell him, the engineer caught sight of Mrs. Vaught beckoning to him from the dark doorway of the dining room. The engineer excused himself.

Mrs. Vaught had a book for him. “I saw what you were reading this afternoon in the garden!” She waggled her finger at him.

“Ma'am. Oh.” He remembered the
R. E. Lee
and saw at once that the sight of it had set Mrs. Vaught off on some gambit or other.

“Here's a book on the same subject that I'm sure you'll find fascinating,” she said, laughing and making rueful fun of herself, which was a sure sign she was proselytizing.

“Yes ma'am. Thank you very much. Is it about the Civil War?”

“It's the real story behind the so-called official version of General Kirby Smith's surrender at Shreveport. It's the story behind the story. We all think that General Kirby Smith wanted to surrender.”

“Yes ma'am. That is true.”

“No, it isn't. He was holding out until he could make a deal with the Rothschilds and the international bankers in Mexico to turn over Texas and Louisiana to Maximilian's Jewish republic.”

“Ma'am?” He wrung out his good ear.

“Here's proof,” she said, taking back the book and thumbing through it, still laughing ruefully at herself. She read: “At a meeting of the Rothschilds in London in 1857, Disraeli jumped to his feet and announced: ‘We'll divide the United States into two parts, one for you, James Rothschild, and the other for you, Lionel Rothschild. Napoleon III will do what I tell him to do.'”

The engineer rubbed his forehead and tried to concentrate. “But don't I recall that Kirby Smith did in fact surrender at Shreveport?”

“He didn't want to! His men surrendered, fortunately for us.”

She got off on the Bavarian Illuminati and he leaned down to her so he needn't look at her, looking instead at his shoes, lined up carefully with the sill of the dining-room door.

“Excuse me, Mother,” said Jamie, plucking at the engineer's sleeve. Evidently he was so used to his mother's opinions that he paid no attention.

“You read this!” Again she thrust the book on him, shaking her head at her own zeal.

“Yes ma'am.”

“Bill,” said Jamie.

“What?”

“Let's go.”

“All right. Where do you want to go?”

“Let's take the camper down to the Gulf Coast and live on the beach. Just for the weekend.”

“You don't want to see the Tennessee game?”

“No.”

“You mean leave after classes tomorrow?”

“No, I meant—well, all right.”

“O.K.”

They were headed back to the hearts game but Lamar Thigpen caught them. “Did you ever hear about this alligator who went into a restaurant?” He took them by the neck and drew them close as lovers.

“No, I didn't,” said the courteous engineer, though he had. Jokes always made him nervous. He had to attend to the perilous needs of the joke-teller. Jamie dispensed himself and paid no attention: I'm sick and I don't have to oblige anybody.

“The waitress came over and brought him a menu. So this alligator says to her: do yall serve niggers in here? She says yes, we do. So he says, O.K. I'll take two.”

“What about leaving tonight, Bill?” said Jamie.

“That's all right, Mr. Thigpen,” said the engineer while the other held him close as a lover and gazed hungrily at his cheek. Rita had been watching Jamie and she knew something was wrong. The engineer, diverted by Lamar's terrible needs, only realized it when he heard Rita's hearty no-nonsense tone.

“Come on over here, Tiger.” She took the youth's arm. Jamie flung her off angrily. He looked dog-faced. He plucked his thumb and pretended to muse.

“Hold it, Tiger,” said Rita, now managing to draw him down in David's chair but not looking at him because he was close to tears.

Jamie looked sternly about but his eyes shone and there was heat and vulnerability in the hollow of his neck. The engineer wished that Son Junior would go away. In every such situation, he had noticed, there is always one person who makes things worse.

David left quickly. Dull in some ways, he was as quick as any Negro to know when white people had white troubles. Rita drew Jamie down in David's chair.

“I can't wait for the game,” cried Kitty. “You coming to see me work, Jimbo?” In the past month she had metamorphosed from ballerina to cheerleader. “We're number one! We're number one!” she would chant and set her white skirt swirling about her legs so cunningly that the engineer almost fell out of the grandstand, overcome by pride and love.

“No, it's not the game,” said Rita, gazing steadfastly away but patting Jamie's arm with hard steady pats. Kitty's gambit didn't work, she was saying. But hers didn't either.

“Jamie and I are planning to go down to the Coast this weekend,” said the engineer.

Everyone looked at Jamie, but he could not bring himself to say anything.

“You don't mean this weekend,” cried Kitty.

“I'm going,” said Jamie in a loud voice, all squeaks and horns.

“I'm with you, Tiger,” said Rita, still patting.

Damn, don't pat him, thought the engineer.

Rita ran a hand through Jamie's hair (like my mother, thought the engineer in a sudden
déjà vu,
ruffling my hair for the photographer so it would look “English” and not slicked down). “Val was here today and she upset him with some of her—ideas.”

“It's not that,” said Jamie, losing control of his voice again.

“I think he really wants to go down to Tyree County and clear things up and I don't blame him.”

“I don't.”

“You said you did.”

“That was before.”

“Don't misunderstand me,” said Rita, speaking for some reason to the engineer. “I think Val is doing a magnificent job down there. I happen to know a little about such things, having worked with Indian kids, who are just as bad off. No, my hat's off to her. But to come up here cold, so to speak, after making herself scarce for the past year as far as Jamie is concerned and to seriously propose to this guy here who despite the fact that he is a wretch and a no-good-bum”—she ruffled Jamie's hair—“nevertheless pulled down first place in the National Science competition—that a rather stupid Irishman in a black skirt pour water over his head while uttering words in a dead language (and uttering them in atrocious ecclesiastical Latin besides)—excuse me, but I think the whole affair is exceedingly curious. Though I'm frank to say I don't know why it upsets you. But listen now: if you want to go down there, Tiger, I'll drive the car for you and hold the ewer or whatever it is.”

“I am
not
going there,” said Jamie through his teeth. “And if I were, that would
not
be the reason.” The engineer sighed with relief. Jamie's anger had got the better of his tears.

“I'm Baptist and DeMolay myself,” said Son Junior, twirling his keys glumly. He had not quite got the straight of it but did perceive that the subject of religion had come up.

“That's not the point,” cried Jamie, in anguish again. “I'm not interested in either—”

Mr. Vaught, who couldn't stay put anywhere for long and so made a regular tour of the house, shuttling back and forth between the pantry and the living room, where Mrs. Vaught and Myra Thigpen usually sat, happened at that moment to be circling the wall of the pantry.

“We all headed for the same place and I don't think the good Lord cares how we get there,” he cried, shot his cuff, and went on his way.

“The Bible says call no man father,” said Lamar Thigpen sternly, looking around for the adversary.

Sutter, whom the engineer had not for one second lost sight of sighed and poured another glass of dark brown bourbon.

Jamie groaned and the engineer reflected that there were no clear issues any more. Arguments are spoiled. Clownishness always intervenes.

Rita waited until the Thigpens drifted away and then pulled the card players closer. “If you want to know what sets my teeth on edge and I strongly suspect Jamie here might be similarly affected”—she spoke in a low voice—“it is this infinitely dreary amalgam of Fundamentalism and racism.”

“No, no, no,” groaned Jamie loudly, actually holding his head. “What do I care about that. That's not it.” He glared at Rita angrily, embarrassing the engineer, who was aware of Rita's strong bid for low-pitched confidential talk and didn't mind obliging her. “This is all irrelevant,” cried Jamie, looking behind him as if he was expecting someone. “I just don't care about that.”

“What do you care about?” asked Rita after a moment

“It's just that—I can't explain.”

“Jamie wants to get away,” said the engineer. “He would like to spend some time in a new place and live a simple life without the old associations—such as, for example, parking the camper on a stretch of beach.”

“That is correct,” said Jamie instantly and soberly.

“Listen who's telling me that,” said Rita. “What in the world have I been saying all summer?” She spoke to them earnestly. Why didn't they finish the semester and join her in her house in Tesuque? Better still, she and Kitty could go now, since credit hours were more important to men than women—everyone made a fuss over Jamie's credit hours—get the place ready and the two young men could join them later. “I'm calling your bluff, Tiger. You can kill two birds with one stone. You can have your new life and you can get out of the closed society at the same time.”

Jamie frowned irritably. He opened his mouth.

“Ah, that's fine, Rita,” said the engineer. “That really sounds wonderful. But I think Jamie has in mind something right away, now, this minute.” He rose. “Jamie.”

“Now wait a minute,” said Kitty, smoothing down her sweater, taking a final peep at the two pins (to think she is mine! rejoiced the engineer, all her sweet cashmered self!). “Whoa now. Not so fast. I think yall are all crazy. I'm going to the game and I'm going to the dance and I'm going to school tomorrow morning.” She rose. “I'll meet yall in the garage at six thirty.”

To the engineer's surprise, Jamie made no protest. Something had mollified him. At any rate he said no more about leaving and presently rose wearily and invited the engineer to the apartment for a bedside game of gin rummy. It pleased him to play a single snug game, pull the beds together and direct a small disk of light upon the tray between them where the cards were stacked.

Son Junior and his father started their favorite argument about Big Ten versus Southeastern Conference football.

“The Big Ten on the whole is better,” said Son glumly. “You have your ten teams, one as good as any other.”

“Yes,” said Lamar, “but there are always two or three teams in the Southeast which could take any of them. And don't you think the Big Ten doesn't know it. I happen to know that both Alabama and Ole Miss have been trying for years to schedule Ohio State and Michigan. Nothing doing and I don't blame them.”

At that moment Myra, Lamar's wife, came into the pantry and the engineer was glad to have an excuse to leave. She would, he knew, do one of two things. Both were embarrassing. She would either quarrel with her husband or make up to Rita, whom she admired. It was a dread performance in either case, one from which, it is true, a certain amount of perverse skin-prickling pleasure could be taken, but not much.

Here she came toward Rita and as certain as certain could be she would make a fool of herself. Something about Rita made her lose her head. The night before, Kitty and Rita were talking, almost seriously, of going to Italy instead of New Mexico. Rita had lived once in Ferrara, she said, in a house where one of Lucrezia's husbands was said to have been murdered. Oh yes, broke in Myra, she knew all about Lucrezia Bori, the woman who had started St. Bartholomew's Massacre. And on and on she went with a mishmash about the Huguenots—her mother's family were Huguenots from South Carolina, etc. She had not the means of stopping herself. The engineer lowered his eyes.

“Pardon me,” said Rita at last. “Who is it we are talking about? Lucrezia Bori, the opera singer, the Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia Borgia, or Catherine de' Medici?”

“I too often get the two of them mixed up,” said the poor sweating engineer.

“But not the three,” said Rita.

Why did she have to be cruel, though? The engineer sat between the two, transfixed by a not altogether unpleasant horribleness. He couldn't understand either woman: why one should so dutifully put her head on the block and why the other should so readily chop it off. And yet, could he be wrong or did he fancy that Rita despite her hostility felt an attraction for Myra? There was a voluptuousness about these nightly executions.