“Or leave your own kind?”
“Sir?”
“I mean to go spend the rest of your life not just with niggers but with Tyree niggers — do you think that is natural?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You’ve heard your daddy talk about Tyree niggers?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Not even niggers have anything to do with Tyree niggers. Down there in Tyree County they’ve got three different kinds of schools, one for the white folks, one for niggers, and a third for Tyree niggers. They’re speckled-like in the face and all up in the head. Some say they eat clay. So where do you think Val goes?”
“Yes sir,” said the engineer.
“She went to Agnes Scott, then to Columbia and was just about to get her master’s.”
The engineer perceived that here was one of those families, more common in the upper South, who set great store by education and degrees.
“So what do I do? Two weeks before graduation I give her her money. So what does she do?”
“Gave it to the Tyree niggers?”
“Man, I’m telling you.”
An easy silence fell between them. Mr. Vaught crossed his legs and pulled one ankle above the other with both hands. The little lobby, now swirling with cigar smoke, was something like an old-style Pullman smoker where men used to sit talking by night, pulling their ankles above their knees, and leaning out to spit in the great sloshing cuspidor.
“Let’s get us another Coke, Bill.”
“I’ll get them, sir.”
Mr. Vaught drank his Coke in country style, sticking out a little finger and swigging it off in two swallows. “Now. Here’s what we’ll do. The doctors say Jamie can travel in a week or so. I aim to start home about Thursday week or Friday. Mama wants to go by Williamsburg and Charleston. Now you going to quit all this foolishness up here and come on home with us. What I’m going to do is get you and Jamie a little bitty car — you know I’m in the car business. Do you play golf?”
“Yes sir.”
“Hell, man, we live on the golf links. Our patio is twenty feet from number 6 fairway. You like to sail? The Lil’ Doll is tied up out at the yacht club and nobody will sail her. You’d be doing me a great favor.”
The engineer wished he would mention a salary.
“You and Jamie can go to college — or go round the world! Now isn’t that better than being a janitor?”
“Yes sir.”
“You think about it.”
“I will. Sir?”
“What?”
“Here — I’m going to write down my number here in New York.” Meaning, he hoped: you didn’t mention a figure and when you want to, it is for you to call me.
“Sho now,” said Mr. Vaught absently, and shoved the slip of paper into the side pocket of his seersucker, a bad enough sign in itself.
He stayed only long enough to watch the presentation of the checks. Kitty was back and without Rita!
Standing between Jamie and Kitty, Mr. Vaught crossed his arms, a check in each hand.
“When was your last cigarette?” he asked Jamie.
“There was no last cigarette,” said Jamie, grinning and thrashing.
“Your last drink?”
“There was no last drink.”
“Then go buy yourself a drink.”
“Yes sir,” said Jamie, taking his check.
“Kitty?”
“No cigarette and no drink.”
“Then go buy yourself one!”
“I might,” said Kitty, laughing.
“I mean it! They’re certified. You can cash it right down there at the bar on the corner.”
“Thank you, Poppy,” said Kitty, kissing him.
The checks were passed around among family, nurses, and internes.
Once again Kitty left and once again the engineer tried to follow her, but Jamie stopped him.
“Bill.”
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
“What?”
“Did Poppy speak to you?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“We didn’t get down to terms.”
“That’s Poppy. But what do you say in general?”
“I say O.K., if I can be of use to you.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Where do I want to go?”
Jamie waved the check. “Name it.”
“No sir. You name it. And I think you’d better name a school.”
“O.K.,” said Jamie immediately and cheerfully.
During the next week he set about putting his life in order. He ate and slept regularly, worked out every day, went down to Brooks Brothers like his father and grandfather before him and bought two ten-dollar pullover shirts with a tuck in the back and no pocket in the front, socks, ties, and underwear, and dressed like a proper Princetonian. At work he read business maxims in Living.
The only way people are defeated by their problems isby refusing to face them.
One day, some years ago, a now famous industrial counselor walked into the office of a small manufacturing concern. “How would you like to increase sales 200 % the first year?” he asked the president. The latter of course tried to get rid of him. “O.K., I’m leaving,” said the counselor. “But first lend me your scratch pad.” He wrote a few lines and handed the pad to the executive. “Read this. Think about it. If you put it into practice, send me a check a year from now for what it was worth to you.” One year later the counselor received a check in the mail for $25,000.
The counselor had written two sentences:
(1) Make a list of your problems, numbering them in the order of priority.
(2) Devote all your time, one day, one month, however long it takes, to disposing of one problem at a time. Then go to the next.
Simple? Yes. But as a result this executive is now president of the world’s third largest corporation and draws a salary of $400,000 a year.
It was no more nor less than true. You do things by doing things, not by not doing them. No more crazy upsidedownness, he resolved. Good was better than bad. Good environments are better than bad environments. Back to the South, finish his education, make use of his connections, be a business or professional man, marry him a wife and live him a life. What was wrong with that? No more pressing against girls, rassling around in elevators and automobiles and other similar monkey business such as gives you stone pains and God knew what else. What was wrong with a good little house in a pretty green suburb in Atlanta or Birmingham or Memphis and a pretty little wife in a brand-new kitchen with a red dress on at nine o’clock in the morning and a sweet good-morning kiss and the little ones off to school and a good old mammy to take care of them? The way to see Kitty is not not to see her but to see her.
But it didn’t work. Kitty’s phone didn’t answer. Outside in the park the particles were ravening and singing. Inside he went careening around the dark Aztec corridors of the Y.M.C.A. wringing out his ear and forgetting which floor he lived on. When he lay in bed, one leg defied gravity and rose slowly of itself. His knee began to leap like a fish.
Once when he called Kitty, someone did pick up the telephone but did not speak. “Hello, hello,” he said. “Who’s there?” But there came only the sound of breathing and of the crepitation of skin on plastic. Presently the telephone was replaced softly.
Nor did he hear from Mr. Vaught. He went once more to visit Jamie and, coming face to face with the older man, waited upon him smilingly. But the old man pulled out his gold watch, mumbled an excuse, and was off down the hall like the white rabbit.
Very well then, said he to himself, good day. If they wanted him, let them send for him.
Wednesday when he came home from work he was handed a message with his key. It was from Kitty. Meet me in the park, at the zoo, at four thirty. He went and waited until five thirty. She did not come.