Chapter 9

After two years, I mostly remember the rest of that day, that night, and the next day as a total chaos of cops, photographers, and reporters swarming in and out of Gatsby’s front door.

A rope blocked the main gate, and a cop kept the nosy people out, but little kids quickly figured out they could sneak in through my yard. There were always a bunch of them hanging around the pool, mouths hanging open.

Someone, probably a detective, used the word "psycho" while looking at Wilson’s body that afternoon, and his voice just set the tone for the newspaper stories the next morning.

Most of those reports were a mess - twisted, full of details that didnn't make sense, and just plain untrue.

When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest revealed Wilson’s suspicions about his wife, I thought the whole story would be splashed across the tabloids - but Catherine, who could have said anything, stayed silent.

She actually showed a lot of strength about it - looked the coroner straight in the eye with a determined look under her fixed eyebrows, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was totally happy with her husband, and that her sister hadn’t been up to anything.

She seemed to convince herself, and cried into her handkerchief, like the very idea was too much to handle. So Wilson was written off as a guy "crushed by grief" to keep the story simple. And that’s where it ended.

But all of that felt distant and unimportant. I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and totally alone. From the moment I called to tell West Egg about what happened, every guess about him and every practical question got directed at me. At first, I was shocked and confused.

But then, as he lay in his house, not moving, breathing, or speaking for hours, it hit me that I was responsible - because nobody else cared, nobody else had that intense personal interest that everyone deserves at the end.

I called Daisy about half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively, without even thinking. But she and Tom had left early that afternoon, and they’d taken luggage with them.

"No address?"

"Nope."

"When do you think they’ll be back?"

"No idea."

"Any clue where they are? How could I reach them?"

"I don’t know. Can’t say."

I wanted to get someone for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: "I’ll get someone for you, Gatsby. Don’t worry. Just trust me and I’ll get someone for you - "

Meyer Wolfshiem’s name wasn’t in the phone book. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the time I had the number, it was way past five, and nobody answered the phone.

"Will you try again?"

"I’ve tried three times."

"It’s really important."

"Sorry. Looks like nobody’s there."

I went back to the living room and for a second thought they were just random visitors, all these official people suddenly filling the space. But even though they pulled back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with shocked faces, his protest kept echoing in my head:

"Look, old sport, you’re gonna get someone for me. You’re gonna try really hard. I can’t go through this alone."

Someone started to ask me questions, but I pushed away and quickly went upstairs to look through his unlocked desk - he’d never told me for sure that his parents were dead. But there was nothing - just the picture of Dan Cody, a reminder of some forgotten badness, staring down from the wall.

Next morning, I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem, asking for info and telling him to come out on the next train. It felt kinda pointless when I wrote it - I was sure he’d catch wind when he saw the papers, and I was just as sure Daisy would wire me before noon.

But neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem showed up. Just more cops, photographers, and reporters. When the butler finally brought back Wolfshiem’s answer, I started to feel defiant, like I was on Gatsby’s side against everyone else.

Dear Mr. Carraway,

This has been one of the most shocking things I’ve ever heard - I can hardly believe it’s real. Such a crazy thing that guy did should make us all think. I can’t come down right now, I'm tied up with some really important stuff and can't get involved in this mess.

If there’s anything I can do later, let me know by letter through Edgar. I’m totally knocked out when I hear something like this.

Yours truly,

Meyer Wolfshiem

And then a quick note at the bottom:

Let me know about the funeral, etc. Don’t know his family at all.

When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was calling, I thought this was finally Daisy. But the connection was a guy’s voice, super thin and far away.

"This is Slagle speaking..."

"Yeah?" I didn’t recognize the name.

"It’s a real mess, isn’t it? Did you get my wire?"

"No wires yet."

"Young Parke’s in trouble," he said quickly. "They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a wire from New York with the numbers just five minutes before. What do you know about that, hey? You can’t trust anyone in these small towns - "

"Hey!" I interrupted, breathless.

"Listen - this isn’t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead."

There was a long silence on the other end, then an exclamation... and then a quick static sound as the line went dead.

I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It just said the sender was leaving right away and to put off the funeral until he got there.

It was Gatsby’s dad, a solemn old guy, looking totally helpless and bummed out. He was bundled up in a cheap, long coat even though it was a warm September day.

His eyes were constantly leaking, and when I took his bag and umbrella, he kept tugging at his sparse grey beard so much it was hard to get his coat off. He looked like he was about to fall apart, so I took him into the music room and sent for some food.

But he wouldn't eat, and the glass of milk spilled from his shaking hand.

"I saw it in the Chicago newspaper," he said. "It was all in the Chicago newspaper. I left right away."

"I didn’t know how to reach you."

His eyes, seeing nothing, moved around the room.

"It was a madman," he said. "He must have been mad."

"Want some coffee?" I asked him.

"I don’t want anything. I’m okay now, Mr. - "

"Carraway."

"Well, I’m okay now. Where’s Jimmy?"

I took him into the living room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys had come up to the steps and were peeking into the hall; when I told them who had arrived, they went away, kinda bummed.

After a while, Mr. Gatz came out, his mouth open, his face slightly flushed, and tears leaking out randomly.

He’d reached an age where death didn’t feel like a total shock anymore, and when he finally looked around and saw the height and beauty of the hall and the big rooms opening out into other rooms, his sadness started to mix with a bit of pride.

I helped him up to a bedroom upstairs; while he took off his coat and vest, I told him that all the arrangements were put off until he got there.

"I didn’t know what you’d want, Mr. Gatsby - "

"Gatz is my name."

" - Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West."

He shook his head.

"Jimmy always liked it better down East. He made a name for himself here in the East. Were you a friend of my boy’s, Mr. - ?"

"We were close."

"He had a huge future ahead of him, you know. He was just a young guy, but he was really smart."

He tapped his head impressively, and I nodded.

"If he’d lived, he’d have been a big shot. A guy like James J. Hill. He’d have helped build up the country."

"That’s true," I said, feeling a little awkward.

He fumbled with the fancy embroidered blanket, trying to pull it off the bed, and then lay down stiffly - immediately fell asleep. That night, someone really freaked out called, demanding to know who I was before they’d even give their name.

"This is Mr. Carraway," I said.

"Oh!" He sounded relieved.

"It’s Klipspringer."

I was relieved too, because it seemed like another friend might show up at Gatsby’s grave. I didn’t want it to end up in the papers and draw a bunch of tourists, so I’d been calling around myself. It was hard to find anyone.

"The funeral’s tomorrow," I said. "Three o’clock, here at the house. I wish you’d let anyone who’s interested know."

"Oh, yeah, definitely," he blurted out.

"Of course, I’m probably not going to see anyone, but if I do..." His tone made me suspicious.

"Of course you’ll be there yourself."

"Well, I’ll certainly try. What I called about is..."

"Wait a sec," I interrupted.

"Just say you’ll come?"

"Well, the thing is - the truth is that I’m crashing with some people up here in Greenwich, and they kind of expect me to be around tomorrow. There’s like, a picnic or something going on. Of course, I’ll do my best to get away."

I let out a "Huh?" and he seemed nervous, so he kept going:

"What I called about was a pair of shoes I left there. I was wondering if it would be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see, they’re tennis shoes, and I’m totally useless without them. My address is care of B. F. - " I didn’t hear the rest of the name because I hung up.

After that, I felt a little embarrassed for Gatsby - one guy I called implied that he got what he deserved. But that was my bad, because he was one of those who used to trash-talk Gatsby’s liquor, and I should have known better than to call him.

The morning of the funeral, I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn’t reach him any other way. The door I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked "The Swastika Holding Company," and at first, it seemed like nobody was there.

But when I yelled "hello" a few times without a response, an argument broke out behind a partition, and then a beautiful Jewish woman appeared at an interior door and looked at me with intense, dark eyes.

"Nobody’s here," she said. "Mr. Wolfshiem’s gone to Chicago."

That part definitely wasn’t true, because someone had started to whistle "The Rosary," really badly, inside.

"Please tell Mr. Carraway wants to see him."

"I can’t get him back from Chicago, can I?"

Just then, a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem’s, called "Stella!" from the other side of the door.

"Leave your name on the desk," she said quickly. "I’ll give it to him when he gets back."

"But I know he’s here."

She took a step towards me and started sliding her hands up and down her hips indignantly.

"You young guys think you can just barge in here anytime," she scolded.

"We’re sick and tired of it. When I say he’s in Chicago, he’s in Chicago."

I mentioned Gatsby.

"Oh-h!" She looked me over again.

"What was your name?"

He vanished. In a moment, Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He pulled me into his office, saying in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.

"My memory goes back to when I first met him," he said. "A young major, just out of the army and covered with medals he got in the war. He was so broke he had to keep wearing his uniform because he couldn’t afford regular clothes."

"The first time I saw him was when he came into Winebrenner’s poolroom on Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn’t eaten anything in a couple of days. ‘Come on, have some lunch with me,’ I said. He ate more than four dollars’ worth of food in half an hour."

"Did you get him started in business?" I asked.

"Start him? I made him."

"Oh."

"I built him up from nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a good-looking, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he went to Oggsford, I knew I could use him. I got him to join the American Legion, and he used to be really popular there."

"Right off, he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were thick as thieves like that" - he held up two bulbous fingers - "always together."

I wondered if this partnership included the World’s Series thing in nineteen nineteen.

"Now he’s dead," I said after a moment. "You were his closest friend, so I know you’ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon."

"I’d like to come."

"Well, come then."

The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.

"I can’t do it - I can’t get mixed up in it," he said.

"There’s nothing to get mixed up in. It’s all over now."

"When a man gets killed, I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man, it was different - if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that’s sentimental, but I mean it - to the bitter end."

I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.

"Are you a college man?" he asked suddenly.

For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a "connection," but he just nodded and shook my hand.

"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he’s alive, not after he’s dead," he suggested.

"After that, my own rule is to let everything alone."

When I left his office, the sky had turned dark, and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes, I went next door and found Mr. Gatz pacing excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son and his son’s possessions was constantly growing, and now he had something to show me.

"Jimmy sent me this picture," he said, pulling out his wallet with trembling fingers. "Look there."

It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly.

"Look there!" and then he seemed to be looking for admiration from my eyes.

He’d shown it so many times that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself.

"Jimmy sent it to me. I think it’s a very pretty picture. It shows up well."

"Very well. Had you seen him lately?"

"He came out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course, we were on bad terms when he ran off from home, but I see now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And ever since he made a success, he’d been very generous with me."

He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, holding it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong Cassidy.

"Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you."

He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last flyleaf was printed the word schedule, and the date September twelve, nineteen oh six. And underneath:

General Resolves

No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]

No more smoking or chewing. Take a bath every other day. Read one helpful book or magazine each week. Save three dollars and zero cents per week. Be better to your parents.

"I stumbled across this book by chance," the old man said. "Doesn't that just show you?"

"It just shows you."

"Jimmy was bound to make it. He always had plans like this. Do you notice what he wrote about improving his mind? He was always into that. He told me I ate like a pig once, and I punched him for it."

He didn’t want to close the book, reading each item out loud and then looking at me expectantly. I think he was hoping I’d copy the list for myself.

Just before three, the Lutheran pastor arrived from Flushing, and I started looking out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s dad.

As time passed and the staff came in and stood waiting in the hallway, his eyes started blinking nervously, and he talked about the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The pastor glanced at his watch a bunch of times, so I pulled him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it was no use.

Nobody showed up.

Around five o’clock, our group of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a light drizzle by the gate - first a black, wet hearse, then Mr. Gatz, the pastor, and me in the limo, and a little later four or five workers and the postman from West Egg, in Gatsby’s station wagon, all soaked.

As we went through the gate into the cemetery, I heard a car stop and then someone splashing after us on the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the guy with the owl-eyed glasses who I’d found marveling over Gatsby’s books in the library a few months earlier.

I hadn’t seen him since. I don’t know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name. Rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the protective tarp pulled over Gatsby’s grave.

I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far gone, and I could only remember, without any bitterness, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower.

I heard someone softly say, "Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on," and then the owl-eyed guy said, "Amen to that," in a brave voice.

We hurried down through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.

"I couldn’t get to the house," he said.

"Nobody else could either."

"Seriously? Why, my gosh! People used to go there by the hundreds."

He took off his glasses and wiped them, inside and out.

"The poor dude," he said.

One of my clearest memories is coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas.

Those who went further than Chicago would meet up at the old, dim Union Station around six o’clock on a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up in their own holiday celebrations, to say a quick goodbye.

I remember the fur coats of the girls coming back from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath, and the waving hands as we spotted old friends, and the matching of invitations: "Are you going to the Ordways’ ? the Herseys’ ? the Schultzes’ ?"

and the long green tickets clutched tight in our gloved hands.

And last, the cheerful, murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking festive like Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, started to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin towns moved by, a sudden, sharp feeling of excitement filled the air.

We took deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold hallways, feeling completely connected to this country for one strange hour, before we blended back into it again.

That’s my Midwest - not the wheat fields or the prairies or the faded small towns, but the exciting trains coming home, and the streetlights and sleigh bells in the frosty nights, and the shadows of Christmas wreaths from lit-up windows on the snow.

I’m part of that, a little serious because of those long winters, and a little comfortable from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where houses are still known by a family’s name for decades.

I realize now that this has been a story of the West, after all - Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and me, we were all from out West, and maybe we all had something in common that made us a little awkward adjusting to life in the East.

Even when the East excited me most, even when I knew it was better than the bored, sprawling, and overcrowded towns beyond the Ohio, with their endless questions that spared only the kids and the very old - even then it felt a little off. West Egg, especially, still pops up in my wildest dreams.

I picture it as a night scene painted by El Greco: a hundred houses, both normal and weird, huddled under a gloomy sky and a dull moon. In the front, four serious guys in suits are walking along the sidewalk carrying a stretcher with a drunk woman in a white dress.

Her hand, dangling over the side, sparkles with jewels. The guys turn into a house - the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.

After Gatsby died, the East felt haunted for me like that, distorted beyond what I could fix. So when the blue smoke of dead leaves was in the air and the wind stiffened wet laundry on the line, I decided to head back home.

There was one thing I needed to do before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that maybe should have been left alone. But I wanted to leave things sorted out and not just trust the ocean to sweep my mess away.

I talked to Jordan Baker, going over and around what had happened between us, and what had happened to me afterward, and she just sat still, listening, in a big chair.

She was dressed to play golf, and I remember thinking she looked like a perfect picture, her chin tilted a little jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown shade as the fingerless glove on her knee.

When I was done, she said without comment that she was engaged to another guy. I doubted it, though she could have married anyone she wanted with a simple nod, but I pretended to be surprised.

For a minute, I wondered if I was making a mistake, then I thought about it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.

"Still, you dumped me," Jordan said suddenly. "You dumped me on the phone. I don't care about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while."

We shook hands.

"Oh, and do you remember," she added, "a conversation we had once about driving a car?"

"Not really."

"You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean, it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were a pretty honest, straightforward guy. I thought it was your pride."

"I’m thirty," I said. "I’m too old to lie to myself and call it honor."

She didn’t answer. Angry, and kind of in love with her, and really sorry, I turned away.

One afternoon late in October, I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth Avenue, moving quickly and confidently, his hands out a little from his body as if to push away anything that got in his way, his head moving sharply, taking in everything his restless eyes saw.

Just as I slowed down to avoid passing him, he stopped and started frowning into the windows of a jewelry store. Suddenly, he spotted me and walked back, holding out his hand.

"What’s wrong, Nick? Are you not down to shake my hand?"

"Yeah. You know how I feel about you."

"You’re out of your mind, Nick," he said quickly. "Totally nuts. I don’t get what’s going on with you."

"Tom," I asked, "what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?"

He stared at me without saying a word, and I knew I’d guessed right about those missing hours. I started to walk away, but he grabbed my arm.

"I told him the truth," he said. "He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I told him we weren’t in, he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car."

"He had his hand on a gun in his pocket the whole time he was in the house - " He stopped, defensive.

"So what if I did tell him? That guy had it coming. He was messing with you, just like he did with Daisy, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and didn’t even stop his car."

There was nothing I could say, except the one thing that wasn’t true.

"And if you think I didn’t have my own share of suffering - listen to this, when I went to give up that apartment and saw that ridiculous box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard, I just sat down and cried like a baby. It was awful, I swear - "

I couldn’t forgive him or even like him, but I could see that, to him, what he’s done was totally justified. It was all so careless and messed up.

Tom and Daisy were careless people - they wrecked things and people and then just went back into their money or their huge carelessness, or whatever kept them together, and made other people clean up the mess they made...

I shook his hand; it felt silly not to, because I suddenly felt like I was talking to a kid. Then he went into the jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace - or maybe just a pair of cuff links - finally getting rid of my small-town awkwardness forever.

Gatsby’s house was still empty when I left - the grass on his lawn was as long as mine.

One of the taxi drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and pointing inside; maybe it was him who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and maybe he’d made up his own story about it.

I didn’t want to hear it and avoided him when I got off the train.

I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those crazy, amazing parties of his were still so vivid that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and constant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his driveway.

One night I did hear a car pull up there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn’t go check it out. Probably it was just some last guest who’d been away at the ends of the earth and didn’t know the party was over.

On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge, messed-up failure of a house one last time.

On the white steps, a rude word, scrawled by some kid with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I wiped it out, scraping my shoe roughly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.

Most of the big houses along the shore were shut down now, and there weren't many lights except for the hazy glow of a ferryboat across the water.

As the moon climbed higher, the unimportant houses started to fade away until, little by little, I realized I was looking at the old island - the one that used to bloom for Dutch sailors - a fresh, green start to a new world.

The trees that were cut down to build Gatsby’s house had once whispered secrets about the biggest, wildest dreams people could have.

For just a moment, it felt like everyone had to stop and hold their breath, totally mesmerized by this continent, lost in a beauty they didn't even get, facing something that matched their ability to be amazed - probably for the last time ever.

Sitting there, thinking about all that old, unknown stuff, I remembered Gatsby's reaction when he first spotted that green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He’s come so far to get to this awesome lawn, and his dream must have felt so close he was sure he could grab it.

He didn’t realize it was already behind him, somewhere out there in that huge darkness beyond the city, where the country stretched out under the night sky.

Gatsby really believed in that green light, the crazy, amazing future that keeps moving further away from us every year. It felt just out of reach, but whatever - tomorrow we’ll go even faster, reach out even further... And one day -

So we kept pushing forward, like boats fighting against the tide, constantly pulled back into the past.