The Last Gentleman

the—”
    â€œThe photographer.”
    â€œYes, I think I do,” said the engineer, nodding but still wary. This fellow could still be a philosopher. “Anyhow I certainly do appreciate the ride.” The singing hordes of mosquitoes were coming ever nearer. He wished Forney would getgoing.
    â€œForney,” cried the other, holding out a hand.
    â€œWill. Will Barrett.”
    The green Chevrolet resumed its journey, taking its place shakily among the Fruehauf tractors. Breathing a sigh of relief, the engineer spoke of his own small efforts in photography and took from his wallet a color snapshot of the peregrine falcon, his best.
    â€œTremendous,” cried the photographer, once again beside himself with delight at having fallen in with such a pleasant and ingenious young man. In return he showed his passenger a tiny candid camera concealed under his necktie whose lens looked like the jewel of a tie clasp.
    It, the candid camera, was essential to his present assignment. The photographer, it turned out, was setting forth on an expedition this very afternoon, the first he had undertaken in quite awhile. It was something of a comeback, the engineer surmised. He had the shaky voice and the fitful enthusiasms of a man freshly sober.
    The nature of his new project accounted for his extraordinary disguise. He wished to do a series on behind-the-scene life of the Negro. The idea had come to him in the middle of the night: why not be a Negro? To make a long story short, he had persuaded a dermatologist friend to administer an alkaloid which simulates the deposit of melanin in the skin, with the difference that the darkening effect could be neutralized by a topical cream. Therefore the white patch on his forearm. To complete the disguise, he had provided himself with the personal papers of one Isham Washington, an agent for a burial insurance firm in Pittsburgh.
    This very afternoon he had left the office of his agent in New York, tonight would stop off at his house in Bucks County, and tomorrow would head south, under the “cotton curtain,” as he expressed it.
    The pseudo-Negro was even more delighted to discover that his passenger was something of an expert on American speech. “You were my first test and I passed it, and you a Southerner.”
    â€œWell, not quite,” replied the tactful engineer. He explained that for one thing you don’t say in sur -ance but in -surance or rather in -shaunce.
    â€œOh, this is marvelous,” said the pseudo-Negro, nearly running under a Borden tanker.
    You don’t say that either, mah velous, thought the engineer, but let it go.
    â€œWhat do you think of the title ‘No Man an Island’?”
    â€œVery good.”
    Tomorrow, the pseudo-Negro explained, he planned to stop in Philadelphia and pick up Mort Prince, the writer, who planned to come with him and do the text.
    â€œBut hold on,” exclaimed the driver, smacking the steering wheel again. “How stupid can you get.”
    For the third time in a month the engineer was offered a job. “Why didn’t I think of it before! Why don’t you come with us? You know the country and you could do the driving. I’m a lousy driver.” He was. His driving was like his talking. He was alert and chipper and terrified. “Do you drive?”
    â€œYes sir.”
    But the engineer declined. His services were already engaged, he explained, by a family who was employing him as tutor-companion to their son.
    â€œTen dollars a day plus keep.”
    â€œNo sir. I really can’t.”
    â€œPlus a piece of the royalties.”
    â€œI certainly appreciate it.”
    â€œYou know Mort?”
    â€œWell, I’ve heard of him and read some of his books.”
    â€œYou know, it was Mort and I who first hit on the idea of the Writers’ and Actors’ League for Social Morality.”
    The engineer nodded agreeably. “I can certainly understand it, considering the number of dirty books published nowadays. As for the personal lives of the actors and actresses—”
    The pseudo-Negro looked at him twice. “Oh- ho . Very good! Very ironical! I like that. You’re quite a character, Barrett.”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œJoking aside, though, it was our idea to form the first folk theater to travel through the South. Last summer it played in over a hundred towns. Where are you from—I bet it played there.”
    The