The Last Gentleman

dying?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œI’m leaving now. I’ll get a plane in New Orleans.”
    â€œGood.”
    He slumped with the relief of it. She’d do, nutty as she was. It came over him suddenly: there is another use for women after all, especially Southern women. They knew how to minister to the dying! It was they all along who had set at nought the shame of it and had done it so well that he had not even known that it took doing. He’d rather have a proper Southern woman (even one of his aunts!) but he’d settle for this one. “Very good. And would you call the rest of the family. My change is gone and I have to get back to Jamie.” All women come. The more women, the less shame.
    â€œIf anything happens before I get there, you’ll have to attend to it.”
    â€œYes, ma’am. Attend to what?”
    â€œHis baptism.”
    â€œMa’am? Eh?”
    â€œI said you’ll have to see to his baptism if I don’t get there in time.”
    â€œExcuse me,” said the courteous but terrified engineer. “Much as I’d like to oblige you, I don’t believe I can take the responsibility.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œFor one thing, I’m not a member of the family.”
    â€œYou’re his friend, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWould you deny him penicillin if it would save his life?”
    â€œNo,” he said, stiffening. None of your Catholic tricks, Sister, the little tricky triumphs of analogy. You learned more in Paterson, New Jersey, than you realize. But he said only: “Why don’t you get Sutter?”
    â€œI don’t know where he is.”
    â€œAs a matter of fact, he asked me to call you too.”
    â€œGood. Then you hold the fort till I get there.”
    â€œI don’t believe in baptizing anybody against their will,” said the sweating engineer, for lack of anything better to say.
    â€œThen ask him if it’s against his will.”
    â€œAsk him?”
    â€œBarrett, I charge you to ask him.” She sounded serious enough but he couldn’t swear she wasn’t laughing at him.
    â€œIt’s really none of my business, Sister.”
    â€œIt’s my responsibility but I am giving it to you until I get there. You can call a priest, can’t you?”
    â€œI am not of your faith, Sister.” Where did he get these solemn religious expressions?
    â€œThen call a minister for God’s sake. Or do it yourself. I charge you. All you have to do is—”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œIf you don’t call someone, then you’ll have to do it yourself.”
    Then God knows I’ll call someone, thought the prudent engineer. But he was becoming angry. To the devil with this exotic pair, Sutter and Val, the absentee experts who would deputize him, one to practice medicine, the other to practice priestcraft. Charge him indeed. Who were they to charge anybody?
    â€œBarrett, look. I know that you are a highly intelligent and an intuitive man, and that you have a gift for fathoming people. Isn’t that true?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said glumly.
    â€œI think you can tell when somebody is deadly serious about something, can’t you?”
    â€œI couldn’t say.”
    â€œThen I am charging you with the responsibility. You will have to fathom that according to your own lights.”
    â€œYou can’t—” But the circuits had closed on unhappy old Alabama, frying away in its own juices.
    The poor addled engineer took the steps four at a time, racing to do he knew not what. So that when he reached the sickroom and found Jamie both unconscious and unattended, he was of two minds about it: dismayed that the worst had happened, that Jamie was very likely dying here and now; yet relieved despite himself that Jamie was unconscious and so he didn’t have to ask him any such question (for it was of course absolutely the last question to be tolerated by the comradely and stoic silence generated between the two of them). Here he stood, therefore, stooped over the machinery of Jamie’s veins, hoist not only by the vast awkwardness of dying but now by religion too. He became angrier than ever. Where was the hospital staff? Where was the family? Where was the chaplain? Then he noticed, almost idly as if he had spied a fly on the pillow, that there was something amiss about the vein. Its machinery rhythm was out