The Last Gentleman

lonely universe. His father would recite “Dover Beach,” setting his jaw askew and wagging’ his head like F.D.R.:
    for the world which seems
    To lie before us like a land of dreams,
    So various, so beautiful, so new,
    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain —
    or else speak of the grandfather and the days of great deeds: “And so he looked down at him where he was sitting in his barber chair and he said to him: ‘I’m going to tell you one time you son of a bitch, and that’s all, so hear me well; if anything happens to Judge Hampton, I’m not asking any questions, I’m not calling the police, I’m coming to look for you, and when I find you I’m going to kill you.’ Nothing happened to Judge Hampton.”
    Beyond the old brown roiled water, the bindings and lacings of water upon water, the Louisiana shore stretched misty and perfunctory. When he came abreast of the quarterboat of the U.S. Engineers, his knee began to leap and he sat down in the tall grass under a river beacon and had a little fit. It was not a convulsion, but his eyes twittered around under his eyeballs. He dreamed that old men sat in a circle around him, looking at him from the corners of their eyes.
    â€œWho’s that?” he cried, jumping to his feet and brushing off his Macy’s Dacron. Someone had called to him. But there was no one and nothing but the white sky and the humpy lobuled oaks of the town.
    He went down into Front Street, past the Syrian and Jewish dry goods and the Chinese grocery, and turned quickly into Market and came to the iron lion in front of the bank. It was a hollow lion with a hole between his shoulders which always smelled of pee.
    Spicer CoCo and Ben Huger, two planters his own age, stood in line behind him at the teller’s window and began to kid him in the peculiar reflected style of the deep Delta.
    â€œReckon he’s going to get all his money out and go on back off up there?” said Spicer CoCo.
    â€œI notice he got his box-back coat on. I think he be here for a while, ” said Ben Huger.
    He had to grin and fool with them, fend them off, while he asked the teller about the check. “Doris,” he said to the pretty plump brunette, remembering her before he could forget, “can I stop payment on a certified check?”
    She gave him a form to fill in. “Hello, Will. It’s good to see you.”
    â€œJust fine.” He scratched his head. “No, ah— You see, it’s not my check and it’s not on this bank. It was a check endorsed to me. I—it was misplaced.” He hoped he didn’t have to tell the amount.
    â€œThen have the payer make a stop-payment order,” she said, gazing at him with an expression both lively and absent-minded. “How long ago did you lose it?”
    â€œI don’t remember—ah, two days.”
    â€œSame old Will.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou haven’t changed a bit.”
    â€œI haven’t?” he said, pleased to hear it. “I thought I was worse.” I’ll call Poppy then, he said to himself and fell to wondering: how strange that they seem to know me and that I never supposed they could have, and perhaps that was my mistake.
    â€œYou know why he taking his money out,” said Spicer.
    â€œNo, why is that?” asked Ben.
    The two were standing behind him, snapping their fingers and popping their knees back and forth inside their trousers. They were talking in a certain broad style which was used in Ithaca jokingly; it was something like Negro talk but not the same.
    â€œHe on his way to the game Saddy. You can tell he come on into town to get his money—look, he done took off his regular walking shoes which he hid under a bridge and done put on his town slippers”—pointing down to the engineer’s suede oxfords.
    â€œThat had slipped my notice,” said Ben. “But look how he still th’ows his foot out like Cary Middlecoff, like he fixin’ to hit a long ball. ”
    â€œHe come over here to draw his money out and make a bet on the game and take our money because he thinks we don’t know they number one.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about,” cried the engineer, laughing and shaking his head, all but overcome by an irritable sort of happiness—and all the while trying to tell Doris Mascagni about his savings account.