The Last Gentleman

engineer.
    â€œWhy what?”
    â€œWhy should he believe that.”
    The priest leaned hard on his fists. “It is true because God Himself revealed it as the truth.”
    Again the youth’s lips moved and again the priest turned to the interpreter.
    â€œHe asked how, meaning how does he know that?”
    The priest sighed. “If it were not true,” he said to Jamie, “then I would not be here. That is why I am here, to tell you.”
    Jamie, who had looked across to the engineer (Christ, don’t look at me!), pulled down the corners of his mouth in what the engineer perceived unerringly to be a sort of ironic acknowledgment.
    â€œDo you understand me, son?” said the priest in the same voice.
    There was no answer. Outside in the night the engineer saw a Holsum bread truck pass under the street light
    â€œDo you accept these truths?”
    After a silence the priest, who was still propped on his fists and looking sideways like a storekeeper, said, “If you do not now believe these truths, it is for me to ask you whether you wish to believe them and whether you now ask for the faith to believe them.”
    Jamie’s eyes were fixed on the engineer, but the irony was shot through with the first glint of delirium. He nodded to the engineer.
    The engineer sighed and, feeling freer, looked up. Sutter hung fire, his chin on his knuckles, his eyes half-closed and gleaming like a Buddha’s.
    Jamie opened his mouth, it seemed, to say something bright and audible, but his tongue thickened and came out. He shuddered violently. Sutter came to the bedside. He held the youth’s wrist and, unbuttoning the pajamas, laid an ear to the bony chest. He straightened and made a sign to the priest, who took from his pocket a folded purple ribbon which he slung around his neck in a gesture that struck the engineer as oddly graceless and perfunctory.
    â€œWhat’s his name?” the priest asked no one in particular.
    â€œJamison MacKenzie Vaught,” said Sutter.
    â€œJamison MacKenzie Vaught,” said the priest, his fists spread wide. “What do you ask of the Church of God? Say Faith.”
    Jamie said something.
    â€œWhat does Faith bring you to? Say Life Everlasting.”
    Jamie’s lips moved.
    The priest took the bent sucking tube from Jamie’s water glass. “Go fill that over there.”
    â€œYes sir,” said the engineer. But surely it was to be expected that the priest have a kit of some sort, at least a suitable vessel. He half filled the clouded plastic glass.
    As he returned with the water, Jamie’s bowels opened again with the spent schleppen sound of an old man’s sphincter. The engineer went to get the bedpan. Jamie tried to lift his head.
    â€œNo no,” said Sutter impatiently, and coming quickly across simply bound the dying youth to the bed by folding the counterpane into a strap and pressing it against his chest. “Get on with it, Father,” he said angrily.
    The priest took the plastic glass. “I baptize you in the name of the Father—” He poured a trickle of water into the peninsula of fried dusty hair. “And of the Son—” He poured a little more. “And of the Holy Ghost.” He poured the rest.
    The three men watched as the water ran down the youth’s bruised forehead. It was dammed a moment by the thick Vaught eyebrows, flowed through and pooled around the little red carbuncle in the corner of his eye.
    The priest bent lower still, storekeeper over his counter, and took the narrow waxy hand between his big ruddy American League paws. “Son,” he said in the same flat mercantile voice, looking first at the brown stain on the wall and then down at the dying youth. “Today I promise you that you will be with our Blessed Lord and Savior and that you will see him face to face and see his mother, Our Lady, see them as you are seeing me. Do you hear me?”
    The four white vermiform fingers stirred against the big thumb, swollen with blood (did they, thumb and fingers, belong to the same species?).
    â€œThen I ask you to pray to them for me and for your brother here and for your friend who loves you.”
    The fingers stirred again.
    Presently the priest straightened and turned to the engineer as blank-eyed as if he had never laid eyes on him before.
    â€œDid you hear him? He said something. What did he say?”
    The engineer, who did not know how he knew,