The Second Coming

No electric bill. No utilities. It runs on cave air.”
    â€œCave air,” said Mr. Eberhart, watching water disappear into the sandy soil. Now he looked up.
    â€œThat’s right. Cave air. A steady flow winter and summer. A steady sixty degrees. Is that too cold?”
    â€œCave air. I’ve heard of that around here.”
    â€œIs that too cold?”
    â€œNot for lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, or parsley. Or some orchids. What is your monthly utility cost?”
    â€œZero. Unless you want to live there and turn on the lights.”
    â€œCave air.” He couldn’t get it through his head.
    â€œDid you say orchids?”
    â€œSure.” He put down the can, adjusted his cap, picked up a handful of soil. Standing alongside Barrett, he spoke quickly in an East Tennessee accent. He gave his long-billed cap a tug. They could have been a couple of umpires.
    â€œYou can grow your cymbidium cooler than that, or laelia. But you don’t want to repot your cymbidium.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI got my own way of growing vanda—that’s what you call Hawaiian orchid. Don’t nobody know about it. I’ve applied for a patent. You’re a lawyer. You want to know what it is?”
    â€œSure.”
    Mr. Eberhart moved closer. “I use chestnut chips and a steady temperature. Most people think they got to have seventy to eighty degrees. But what vanda don’t like and you got to watch is your sudden temperature change. And up here you can give them full sunlight.”
    â€œWe got plenty of both, chestnut and steady temperature.”
    â€œThat’s where your money is.”
    â€œWhere’s that?” Arms folded, they gazed out over the St. Mark’s putting green.
    â€œIn orchids.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    â€œYou want to know who buys orchids now?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThe colored. I sold five hundred corsages to one colored-debutante ball.”
    â€œYou want the job? I can get you some help.”
    â€œSure. When do I start?”
    â€œNext week.”
    â€œOkay.” He went back to watering the pines but called after him. “I’ll tell you where else the money is.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œLettuce. If we got the room.”
    â€œWe got the room. Do you know what a head of lettuce costs you up here?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œA dollar and a half.”
    Mr. Eberhart blinked. “Did you say cave air?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI got to see that.”
    10
    Before he found Father Weatherbee in the attic, watching trains, he was stopped by a big florid fellow wearing an L & N engineer’s cap. The man had a nose like J. P. Morgan—there were noses on his nose—and wore a double-breasted blue blazer with brass buttons.
    â€œAren’t you Will Barrett?”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œBoykin Ramsay of Winston-Salem. Reynolds Tobacco.”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œYou own this place.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou don’t charge enough.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    â€œI understand you’re going to start a Council on Aging here.”
    â€œI hadn’t heard of it. It sounds like my daughter’s idea—I was thinking of starting something else—farming in cave air.”
    â€œI’m eighty-five years old and I’m here to tell you I don’t need any goddamn Council on Aging.”
    â€œI see.”
    Mr. Ramsay grabbed him around the shoulders and pulled him close. “Come here, Will,” he said with a heavy but not unpleasant bourbon breath. “I want to tell you something.”
    â€œOkay. I’m here.”
    â€œI’m going to tell you the secret of getting old.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œMoney.”
    â€œMoney?”
    â€œMaking money and keeping it. If you work hard and make money and keep it, I’m here to tell you you don’t need any goddamn Council on Aging or educating the public and all that shit. That’s how come the Chinese were right or used to be. They kept their money and kept the respect of their families. That’s the secret.”
    â€œThen why are you here?”
    â€œBecause I’m married to the sorriest damn woman in North Carolina and I got three sons who the only reason they are working is I won’t support them. They’re all waiting for me to die and I’m just mean enough not to. I came up here to take care of myself. Will, you be a mean old son