The Last Gentleman

more such cottages fronting on a vast quadrangle of rich blue-green winter grass bordered by palm trees, a rectangular oasis in a scrabbly desert of mesquite. The evening rides were over and it was almost suppertime. Doors slammed as the dudes, mostly women, began the slow promenade to the chuck wagon. The sun was already down behind Sandia Mountain but the sky was bright and pure and empty as map space. The dudes smiled and nodded at Doc as they passed but the latter sat slumped and unresponsive, his dried-up Thom McAn shoes propped on the rail and Curlee pants hitched halfway up his skinny legs.
    Sutter didn’t seem to hear him. He slumped further and gazed at the bare mountain. The material of his trousers bunched up between his legs like curtain drapes.
    â€œThen you have nothing to tell me,” the engineer asked him again.
    â€œThat is correct. Nothing.”
    â€œBut, sir, you wrote many things in—”
    â€œIn the first place I didn’t write them to you. In the second place I no longer believe a word of it. Did you ever read the great philosopher Wittgenstein?”
    â€œNo sir,” said the other gloomily.
    â€œAfter his last work he announced the dictum which summarized his philosophy. He said: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should keep silent. And he did. He stopped teaching and went to live in a hut and said no more.”
    â€œAnd you believe that?”
    â€œNo, I don’t even believe that.”
    They watched the women for a while. Presently the engineer said, “But you told me to come out and find you.”
    â€œI did?”
    â€œTherefore you at least owe me the explanation of what happened to make you change your mind.”
    â€œWhat has happened?” Sutter looked puzzled.
    â€œWhat has happened to you?”
    â€œNothing has happened.”
    From the chair beside him, where he must have held it all along and out of the other’s sight, Sutter raised the Colt Woodsman and sighted it at an airliner which sparkled like a diamond in the last of the sunlight.
    â€œBut Val told me that you—”
    â€œVal.” Sutter smiled as he tracked the airliner.
    â€œOh, I know you don’t agree with Val.”
    â€œOh, but I do agree with her.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œOh yes, in every respect. About what has happened to the world, about what God should be and what man is, and even what the Church should be.”
    The engineer sighed. “Yes sir. That is very interesting, but I think you know why I am here.”
    â€œYou see, Barrett, Val had a dream of what the Church should come to. (And I agree! Absolutely!) For example, she did not mind at all if Christendom should be done for, stove in, kaput, screwed up once and all. She did not mind that the Christers were like everybody else, if not worse. She did not even mind that God shall be gone, absent, not present, A.W.O.L., and that no one noticed or cared, not even the believers. Because she wanted us to go the route and be like Sweden, which is not necessarily bad, but to go the route, to leave God out of it and be happy or miserable, as the case might be. She believes that then, if we go the route and run out of Christendom, that the air would be cleared and even that God might give us a sign. That’s how her own place makes sense, you see, her little foundation in the pines. She conceived herself as being there with her Delco and her butane tanks to start all over again. Did you notice how much it looked like one of those surviving enclaves after the Final War, and she’s probably right: I mean, who in the hell would want to bomb South Alabama? But yes, I agree with her. Absolutely! It’s just that nothing ever came of it.”
    â€œDr. Vaught. Excuse me, but—”
    â€œDon’t you see? Nothing happened. She got all dressed up for the bridegroom and the bridegroom didn’t come. There she sits in the woods as if the world had ended and she was one of the Elected Ones Left to keep the Thing going, but the world has not ended, in fact is more the same than usual. We are in the same fix, she and I, only I know it and she doesn’t. Here I sit in Sweden—most of those women are Swedes, spiritual Swedes, if you will notice—but I do not wait for a sign because there is no sign. I will even agree with her that when I first came to the desert I was waiting for a sign, but there was no sign and I am not waiting for one