The Last Gentleman (30 page)

He stopped his hand, which had started up to touch his lips. Then someone had kissed him, not Alice Bocock in his dream,but Kitty herself, warm and flushed from the sun, tiny points of sweat glistening in the down of her lip. He shrugged. “I don't see what that has to do—”

“The question is not whether you would stay but whether Kitty would go with you.”

“I don't think so,” said the engineer, blushing with pleasure at the prospect. It had not occurred to him.

“The further question is, ahem, whether in case all three of you go, Rita might not go along with you after all.”

“You can't reach me any more, you bastard,” said Rita, but not, it seemed, angrier than before.

“You're right, of course,” said Sutter cheerfully and earnestly, facing her for the first time over his drink. “You were right before and I was wrong. I couldn't stand prosperity. We were good, you and I, as good as you wanted us to be, and in the end I couldn't stand it. You were productive and so, for the first time in years, was I, and thanks to you. As you say, we were self-actualizing people and altogether successful, though somewhat self-conscious, in our cultivation of joy, zest, awe, freshness, and the right balance of adult autonomous control and childlike playfulness, as you used to call it. Though I don't mind telling you that I never really approved your using technical terms like ‘penis envy' in ordinary conversation—”

“Excuse me,” said the engineer, setting a foot toward the door. But Rita was squarely in the way and gave no sign of seeing him.

“I confess,” Sutter went on, “that in the end it was I who collapsed. Being geniuses of the orgasm is the hardest of tasks, far more demanding than Calvinism. So I couldn't stand prosperity and had to mess around with Teresita. I longed for old-fashioned humbug in the same way other men long for the dear sights of home. You never really forgave me. And yet, now at this moment I forgive you for—”

“Don't you dare,”
said Rita in a strangled whisper, advancing upon Sutter and at the same time, fortuitously, upon the engineer, who saw his chance and made his escape. As he left he heard Sutter say:

“You always said I knew you backwards. Well, I'm telling you now that you are wrong about yourself and wrong about what you think you want. There is nothing wrong with you beyond a certain spitefulness and pride and a penchant for a certain species of bullshit. You're a fine girl, a fine Georgia girl—did you know Rita was from Georgia, Bill?—who got too far from home. Georgia girls have no business at Lake Chapala. Come on here—”

“Oh foul, foul, foul—” said Rita as he shut the door.

It is proof that the engineer was not in any ordinary sense an eavesdropper or a Peeping Tom that not only did he not head for the closet when he reached his room but instead closed the closet door and jumped into bed and pulled the pillow over his head so he could not hear a door close and so could not tell whether Rita stayed or left.

9
.

On the way to school Friday morning, Jamie leaned over and began to fiddle with the ashtray of the Lincoln. “I—ah—” said he, smiling a bit—they hardly ever spoke during this hour, the engineer drove, brother and sister watched the road as they would have from a schoolbus—”I've decided to quit school and go out west. Or rather transfer.”

“How soon would you like to go?” asked the engineer.

“I'm ready now.”

“Have you asked if it is all right with your parents?”

“Yes.”

It was a dewy bright haunted October morning. The silvery old Rock City barns leaned into the early sunlight. Killdeers went crying along the fallow fields where tough shallow spiderwebs were scattered like saucers. Now and then the Lincoln crossed deep railroad cuts filled with the violet light of ironweed.

“Then it would be in June,” said Kitty carelessly, putting her chin back to catch sight of the pledge pins on her cashmere sweater. “Could I go with you? Let's open up Rancho Merced,” she cried, but in a standard coed cry, eyes going away.

But the engineer was already turning the Lincoln around. It was Mrs. Vaught's car, a good solid old glossy black four-door, rounded fore and aft in the style of the fifties and smelling inside of wax like a ship's saloon.

“What in the world,” cried Kitty. “Where are you going?”

“Back to get the camper.”

“The camper. What for?”

“Jamie said he wanted to go out west. The camper would be better than this car.”

“My God, he didn't mean now!”

“I thought he did.”

They had gotten as far as Enfield. Even after the few weeks of their commuting, each inch of the way had become as familiar to them as their own back yard: this was the place where they always ran afoul of an unlucky traffic light which detained them at an empty crossing for an endless forty-five seconds. Always when they passed at this hour a line of sunlight and shade fell across the lettering of an abandoned storefront, SALOMON, whose middle o had fallen off, leaving its outline on the brick. Enfield was a defunct coal depot on the L & N Railroad.

“Jamie, tell him to turn around. I have an eight o'clock and so do you.”

But Jamie only went on with his smiling and his fiddling with the ashtray.

The engineer was smiling too, but from the pleasure of having her next to him and touching him at arm, hip, and calf. What a lovely fine fragrant Chi Omega she was in her skirt and sweater. A beautiful brown-kneed cheerleader and it was cheer to sit beside her. She saved them both from this decrepit mournful countryside. Without her he'd have jumped straight into one of these lonesome L & N gorges where old train whistles from the 1930's still echoed.

“The Tennessee game is tomorrow,” she said laughing, truly shaken because now she believed them. Overnight she had turned into a fierce partisan for the Colonels, who were now ranked number two in the United States. “Tennessee is number four and if we beat them—”

“That's right,” said Jamie, who, now that it was settled, sat back and took notice of the countryside. It was very different now, fifteen minutes later and what with them not going but returning with the sun in their faces. The hamlets seemed to be stirring with ordinary morning enterprise.

“How long will it take you to get ready?” Jamie asked him.

“I can have the camper stocked in thirty minutes!”

“O.K.”

“I have never in my life,” said Kitty, tapping her Scripto pencil on the world anthology.

He saw that she was angry. If Jamie had not been with them, he would have stopped then and there and kissed her pretty pouting lips and pressed her lovely cashmered person against him, Chi O pin and all. It was the sisterly aspect of her which excited him, big sister sweetheart at eight o'clock in the morning, her mouth not yet cleared of breakfast butter and molasses.

“Of course you're going with us,” he said to her, sending the Lincoln swooping along on its limber old springs.

“Hah. Not me, boy,” she cried, casting about her huffy coed glances.

“I'm serious.”

“I'm serious too.”

“Is it all right with you, Jamie, if your sister goes?”

“I don't care who goes. But I'm going.”

“Why for God's sake?” For the first time she spoke directly to her brother.

“What do you mean, why?” he asked her irritably. “Does there have to be a why?”

When Kitty did not answer and in fact began to blink back tears Jamie said: “I am not interested in seeing the Tennessee game.”

“And I happened to know how much you like Chem 2. Bubba Ray Ross was telling me. I'll bet you've heard too, haven't you Billy?”

“No.”

“I am not interested in Chem 2,” Jamie said, “or 3 or 4.”

“Well, what in the world are you interested in?” Kitty was smiling angrily and busily tucking her skirt under her knee and squaring away the world anthology on her lap.

“I—ah. I just want to take this trip. No, to tell you the truth I'm going to transfer. I've already spoken to—it can be done.”

“Transfer! Where? Where're yall going to live—in the camper?”

“I know this boy who goes to school in Albuquerque. In fact I heard from him yesterday. I correspond with him quite a bit. I could live with him, in fact.” After a moment he added: “His father has a shop of some sort. Out on the highway.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake. Tell him, Billy.”

“All I want Jamie to tell me is whether he has made arrangements to live with somebody or whether he wants me to go with him.”

“Well, I mean, if you want to.”

“O.K.”

“Do yall mean to tell me that you're going to jump in that little truck and go out there and park it somewhere and just start going to school?”

Jamie smiled and leaning forward spoke to both of them in a different voice. “I remember reading this novel in school last year, by a Russian writer. I think his name was Goncharov, or something like that, but he is a wonderful writer. Do you know him?”

“No,” said the engineer. Kitty did not answer.

“He's really a good writer,” said Jamie, going back to his ashtray. “At least in this novel. It was about this young man who was a refugee or a prisoner, I forget which. He was traveling the whole length of Russia in a cattle car, along with hundreds of others. He was sick with brain fever, whatever that is, I have only come across brain fever in Russian novels. It was summer and they were crossing Siberia, day after day, weeks even. The car was crowded and he had one tiny corner and a bit of straw and that was all. And though he was quite ill and even delirious at times, the strange thing about it was that it wasn't so bad. Through the slats of the car he could see the fields, which were covered by a little blue flower. And of course the sky. The train stopped often and peasant women would bring him bowls of blueberries and fresh warm milk—that was the peculiar thing about it, that even though he knew no one and the train only stopped for a few minutes at a time, somehow news of this young man traveled ahead of the train and they expected him. And though everybody else on the train became exhausted by the hardships of the trip, he actually got better! It was really good. I think it's the best novel I ever read.”

“That's fine, Jamie, that's fine and I agree with you,” said Kitty peevishly. “But I still don't see why—”

The engineer interrupted her. “Are you coming?”

“Me? No, indeed.”

They were silent when the Lincoln turned up the links road. When Jamie got out into the garage, which smelled of wet concrete from David's hosing, the engineer held Kitty.

“What?” she said, still turned away and not quite managing a look back at him.

“I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

“Or rather ask you something.”

“What?”

“I want you to come with us.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I want you to marry me.”

“In the next thirty minutes?”

“Look. Jamie wants to go and I think we ought to go with him.”

“
Why
does he want to go?” She was peevish still, but there was a settling under her peevishness. Though one foot was still out of the car and her books cradled in her arm, she had settled back half a millimeter.

“We can be married in Louisiana tomorrow.”

“Now I have heard it all. I don't mind saying that I have heard it
all.
”

“Put your book down.”

“What?”

“Give me your book.”

“What for?”

But she gave it to him and he threw it into the back seat and took hold of her while the warm Lincoln ticked away in the resounding garage. Oh, damnable straight upstanding Lincoln seat. He was almost beside himself with tenderness at the eight o'clock splendor of her. “I'm in love,” he said, kissing her and taking hold of the warm pad back of her knee, which he loved best of all when she was leading cheers. But the angles were bad and contrived against him.

“Good God,” cried Kitty, breaking free. “What in the world has happened to you and Jamie this morning! You're crazy!”

“Come here and let me hold you tight.”

“Hold me tight, my foot.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“What question?”

“Will you marry me?”

“Jeezum,” she said in a new expression of hers, something she got from the Chi O's. And retrieving her world anthology from the back seat, she left him alone in the garage.

10
.

Jamie became cheerful and red-cheeked as they fitted out the Trav-L-Aire. While the engineer set about laying in his usual grits and buttermilk and slab bacon and filling the tank with the sweet artesian water of the valley against the day of the evil alkali water of the desert, Jamie staked out the upper forward bunk as his private domain. It was a broad bed lying athwart the trim ship, with a fine view forward over the top of the cab. There was a shelf for his radio, a recessed reading light something like the old Pullman upper berth. Jamie hit on the idea of replacing the mattress with a cot pad which not only gave him the narrow hard corner he wanted but left a gutter just wide enough to hold his books.

“Let's take plenty of fresh milk with us,” said Jamie.

“O.K.”

“I've drunk a lot of milk lately. I've gained three pounds.”

“Good.”

Jamie stretched out on the hard bed and watched the engineer store away the staples Lugurtha had given him from the kitchen. “You know I truly believe that if I could live a simple life, I could actually conserve my energy and therefore gain strength. I honestly think it's a question of living simply and conserving your energy. I'll live right here, get up, go to class, come back, get up, eat, come back, etcetera. Don't you agree?”

“Yes.” To tell the truth, it didn't seem unreasonable.