The Second Coming

an Associate, he was returning to Valdosta to sell his family home. It had once been a farm.
    â€œDo you play golf?” he asked the tall man. Emerald Isle Estates was nothing but a raw new golf course surrounding a small new lake with eroded red banks which looked like a Georgia cattle pond.
    â€œNo, I never. But I don’t have to to keep in shape. In Atlanta I walked to work twenty blocks down West Peachtree every day.”
    The tall man had come close and now took his arm in a freckled hand as if he were going to tell him a joke or say something about the Negroes in Atlanta, but he didn’t lower his head but stood reared, head high, lips curved in a smile, rimless glasses flashing in the fluorescent light.
    When he tried to move his arm, the man’s grip tightened. He must have something else to say. What would the tall man do in Emerald Isle Estates if he didn’t play golf? walk on the highway? watch TV? do isometrics? Who would he talk to?
    â€œWhat about you?” the man said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou got unfinished business in Georgia too?”
    â€œIn Georgia?”
    â€œThere’s the Atlanta bus pulling in.”
    â€œYes,” he heard himself say. “I have unfinished business in Georgia.” And having said it, if only to answer the man’s question, he suddenly knew that he meant it. Georgia, the man had said, and the word came to him like a sign. Georgia! That was the place!
    At any rate, it was enough to say it aloud to know what he would do.
    â€œWhereabouts in Georgia?” asked the tall man.
    â€œThomasville.”
    â€œThomasville! Well, I’ll be. You selling out too?”
    â€œNo, I’m buying in.”
    â€œYou going back?” the tall man asked him.
    â€œYou could say.”
    â€œWhat are you buying, a farm?”
    â€œYou could say.”
    â€œYou retiring?”
    â€œYou might say.”
    â€œA young fellow like you? That could be a mistake.”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    But the tall man wasn’t really listening. He was doing an exercise with his legs, resting his weight first on the ball of one foot, then the other.
    â€œDo you know Ike Nunally’s place?” the tall man asked.
    â€œThat’s where I’m headed. I used to hunt there.”
    â€œIs that so? I did too. Many a time. So you going to buy a piece of the Nunally place.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhich part?”
    â€œA parcel of swamp.”
    â€œOh, for the hunting. You must be a hunter.”
    â€œOf a sort.” But bigger game than you think.
    â€œYou must be one of these rich Northern folks who’ve bought up everything around here and down there too.”
    â€œNo. That is, I’m rich, but not Northern.”
    â€œBut they’re as nice as they can be, the ones I’ve met,” said the tall man agreeably and inattentively, glasses flashing as he sprang gently on one foot then the other to exercise his calves.
    â€œYes they are.”
    â€œNow isn’t that something. What a small world. We better get our tickets. You go ahead.”
    â€œAfter you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou’re catching the Georgia bus, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes, but—”
    â€œBut what?”
    But I’ve forgotten something. What? He felt like a man who has lost his wallet. He slapped his pocket. It was there with the five hundred dollars.
    The bus swung up the ramp through sunlight and shade and onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. The two men sat side by side, hands on their knees. Will Barrett inclined his head attentively. Between them, like a silent child beckoning to them, sat the burden of the conversation to come.
    â€œNow isn’t that something,” said the Associate. “Both of us going back to Georgia to make the deal of our lives. I’m selling a farm and you’re buying one.”
    â€œYes,” he said, watching a low ridge which ran just above the tree line like a levee. The Associate was right. This journey would settle it for both of them. One was going back to Georgia to be rid of it forever, to get shut of the old house with its heavy Valdosta-style gable returns, and begin a new life in his garden home in Emerald Isle Estates, watch Monday-night football, do isometrics in the family room, drive to Highlands with his wife to attend Miami-style auctions. The Jews hadn’t left! The other was going back to Georgia to find something he had