The Last Gentleman

on here—”
    â€œOh 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.”
    â€œHow soon would you like to go?” asked the engineer.
    â€œI’m ready now.”
    â€œHave you asked if it is all right with your parents?”
    â€œYes.”
    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.
    â€œThen 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.
    â€œWhat in the world,” cried Kitty. “Where are you going?”
    â€œBack to get the camper.”
    â€œThe camper. What for?”
    â€œJamie said he wanted to go out west. The camper would be better than this car.”
    â€œMy God, he didn’t mean now!”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œJamie, 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.
    â€œThe 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—”
    â€œThat’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.
    â€œHow long will it take you to get ready?” Jamie asked him.
    â€œI can have the camper stocked in thirty minutes!”
    â€œO.K.”
    â€œI 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