The Moviegoer - Walker Percy [7]
Eddie watches the last float, a doubtful affair with a squashed cornucopia.
“We’d better do better than that.”
“We will.”
“Are you riding Neptune?”
“No.”
I offer Eddie my four call-outs for the Neptune ball. There is always the problem of out-of-town clients, usually Texans, and especially their wives. Eddie thanks me for this and for something else.
“I want to thank you for sending Mr. Quieulle to me. I really appreciate it.”
“Who?”
“Old man Quieulle.”
“Yes, I remember.” Eddie has sunk mysteriously into himself, eyes twinkling from the depths. “Don’t tell me—”
Eddie nods.
“—that he has already set up his trust and up and died?”
Eddie nods, still sunk into himself. He watches me carefully, hanging fire until I catch up with him.
“In Mrs. Quieulle’s name?”
Again a nod; his jaw is shot out.
“How big?”
The same dancing look, now almost malignant. “Just short of nine hundred and fifty thou.” His tongue curves around and seeks the hollow of his cheek.
“A fine old man,” I say absently, noticing that Eddie has become as solemn as a bishop.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Binx. I count it a great privilege to have known him. I’ve never known anyone, young or old, who possessed a greater fund of knowledge. That man spoke to me for two hours about the history of the crystallization of sugar and it was pure romance. I was fascinated.”
Eddie tells me how much he admires my aunt and my cousin Kate. Several years ago Kate was engaged to marry Eddie’s brother Lyell. On the very eve of the wedding Lyell was killed in an accident, the same accident which Kate survived. Now Eddie comes around to face me, his cottony hair flying up in the breeze. “I have never told anybody what I really think of that woman—” Eddie says “woman” as a deliberate liberty to be set right by the compliment to follow. “I think more of Miss Emily—and Kate—than anyone else in the world except my own mother—and wife. The good that woman has done.”
“That’s mighty nice, Eddie.”
He murmurs something about how beautiful Kate is, that next to Nell etc.—and this is a surprise because my cousin Nell Lovell is a plain horsy old girl. “Will you please give them both my love?”
“I certainly will.”
The parade is gone. All that is left is the throb of a drum.
“What do you do with yourself?” asks Eddie and slaps, his paper against his pants leg.
“Nothing much,” I say, noticing that Eddie is not listening.
“Come see us, fellah! I want you to’ see what Nell has done.” Nell has taste. The two of them are forever buying Shotgun cottages in rundown neighborhoods and fixing them up with shutterblinds in the bathroom, saloon doors for the kitchen, old bricks and a sugar kettle for the back yard, and selling in a few months for a big profit.
The cloud is turning blue and pressing down upon us. Now the street seems closeted; the bricks of the buildings glow with a yellow stored-up light. I look at my watch: one is not late at my aunt’s house. In an instant Eddie’s hand is out.
“Give the bride and groom my best.”
“I will.”
“Walter is a wonderful fellow.”
“He is.”
Before letting me go, Eddie comes one inch closer and asks in a special voice about Kate.
“She seems fine now, Eddie. Quite happy and secure.”
“I’m so damn glad. Fellah!” A final shake from side to side, like a tiller. “Come see us!”
“I will!”
2
Mercer lets me in. “Look out now! Uh oh.” He carries on in a mock astonishment and falls back limberkneed. Today he does not say “Mister Jack” and I know that the omission is deliberate, the consequence of a careful weighing of pros and cons. Tomorrow the scales might tip the other way (today’s omission will go into the balance) and it will be “Mister Jack.”
For some reason it is possible to see Mercer more clearly today than usual. Ordinarily it is hard to see him because of the devotion. He worked for my grandfather in Feliciana Parish before Aunt Emily brought him to New Orleans. He is thought to be devoted to us and we to him. But the truth is that Mercer and I are not at all devoted to each other. My main emotion around Mercer is unease that in threading his way between servility and presumption, his foot might slip. I wait on Mercer, not he on me.