The Third Generation (20 page)

The others gathered in clusters, talking tensely. Charles recognized a number of the teachers, his chemistry professor and the college president. He sat lonely in the dark. He wanted to pray. But there seemed something funny about God. At the time he didn’t know what. His thoughts were unjelled. Every now and then he’d work the pump on the dashboard. It felt that he was helping.

An eternity went by. Then Dr. Lukas opened the door. Mrs. Taylor guided her son outside. His face was bandaged so that only his mouth and nose were visible. In the light from the open door Charles caught sight of his mother’s face. It was gone-
gone
-
GONE!
She was an old woman. And then a little stoop-shouldered old man came out last, stumbling on the stones. Everything broke loose inside of Charles and he doubled down in his seat crying.

He felt his mother’s hand tugging him. “Charles. Charles.” Her voice had altered. It was so high and light and tremulous, as if the slightest breath would blow it all away—the voice of an old, old woman.

“Yes, Mama,” and he got down from the car and took William’s hand. “Will…Will…” But it was too late.

“Don’t worry, Chuck,” William whispered through the bandages. “Don’t cry.”

Emotion came up and cut his breath. They took their places in the car again. Now there was no race. The race was lost. They went now through the dark winding void of tragedy to the colored hospital. Once more Charles touched William’s hand. But now William was mute again. Mrs. Taylor went with him into the hospital and the others followed. They waited until he was put to bed. His mother said that she would stay. Professor Taylor took his youngest son and they went out to find a streetcar. The car came and they sat huddled in the Jim-Crow section at the rear. Not until then did the nightmare grow complete.

The next day his parents tried to build up hope. As soon as the tissue healed specialists would have to operate. Miraculous things had been done during the war. They were already planning to take William to a famous hospital in St. Louis. They bolstered their courage with talk of its fine surgeons. But they all knew that William was blind. And Charles knew that God, who had taken his sight, would never give it back.

It left him with a sense of shock that never wore off. He might have been able to adjust to his brother’s loss of sight. But he never learned to rationalize the error of God’s judgment—the profound and startling knowledge that virtue didn’t pay.

Before, life had held a reasoned pattern. There was good on the one side and bad on the other. And anyone could tell the difference. One knew what to expect. Good had its reward, and bad its punishment. It had been that simple.

Now it was complex. Who was to say what was good, if you were punished for it? Or that a way was bad when all it ever brought was good? God didn’t like ugly, his mother always said: God would punish him. God didn’t even know the difference, he thought bitterly. Because he himself was the one who’d acted ugly. It made being good a farce, and took the meaning out of right and wrong.

It was then that time began its nightmare race; incidents crowded together without continuity, days lacked their accustomed familiarity, his actions had no meaning, commotion piled on commotion. And always there was something missing. He’d turn in a sudden catch of excitement and say, “Will—” and it would break off. Hurt would cascade down until he couldn’t bear it. He’d have to do something to ease it off. Whatever came to mind. A vague memory of someone saying he had stolen a drink from the bottle of grain alcohol in the lab—and he broke in and drank the whole bottle and lay sick to death, vomiting on the floor, until midnight. When he got home his parents didn’t even ask where he had been. His mother looked at him queerly. They’d just returned from the hospital. Now she was faced with a terrible choice. Both sons needed her desperately. Whichever one she tried to save, the other would be surely lost. Should it be the seeing or the blind? But he thought in some vague way she blamed him for it. Her white old face was ravaged with despair, but the grim thin mouth was undefeated. And the curious gray-green eyes, with strange glints, seemed to follow him accusingly:

Why wasn’t it you?

Why wasn’t it you?

She was so tired. She sat before the dresser with her long silky hair let down, the brush held limply in her lap. He stole timidly into the room.

“Mama, I’ll brush your hair.”

“All right, my son. Your mother’s very tired.”

The long brown strands flowed beneath the brush. “Mama.”

She waited. And then asked, “What is it, Charles?”

“I wish it’d been me, too, Mama.”

The deep strange eyes were sudden pools of tears. She turned and clasped him to her breast.

“My little boy…my baby…you must be a good boy for Mother’s sake.”

At that moment she made her choice. He was so close to her, always so much a part of her, instantly he knew.

“It’s all right, Mama,” he said. “It’s all right.”

Now both of them were gone. He dried his tears and went back to brushing her hair, prolonging the moment. But finally she was weary. He kissed her tenderly and said goodnight.

The next week Mrs. Taylor took William to St. Louis. He’d come home for the day. Charles took him to the barbershop. Their affection had always been strangely inarticulate, expressed largely in their swift assistance to each other, blind headlong loyalty in a fight, the completion of a sentence should one falter in class, consoling each other at night, the almost mystical sharing of joy and pain, the oneness against the world. They’d talked in a language almost as sparse as signals, cryptic as a code, made up of the said and the known.

“Chuck.”

“Huh?”

Walking down the railroad track.

“Something’s wrong.”

“Old Six knew that.”

“Six doesn’t know ‘bout Joe and Maybelle.”

“Ha, but he will. Look, old Billy’s loose.”

“Pomp oughta be here.”

“Mi Rainy! Mi Rainy! De goat done dead.”

And they’d stop to laugh.

They’d seldom been out of each other’s sight since Charles was born. And though often it seemed the opposite, Charles always thought of William as the leader, even when it was he who took the lead. Now it felt so strange and wrong to be guiding his brother down the cinder lane. He felt a deep sense of shame and embarrassment, as if all the older people whom they passed were hiding something. It was like coming into a church to find all the congregation naked and not even knowing it. As if all of them together had conspired with God to do this, and in some way he knew that they were guilty.

The conversation wouldn’t jell.

“Will.”

“Huh?”

“That old yellow car with the bay window.”

“Car?”

“Boxcar.”

“Oh!”

“It came back. ‘Member we marked it to see. And it came back yesterday. I saw it on a manifest on the Iron Mountain.”

“Yare.” But William wasn’t interested.

Charles couldn’t say
look
. And now he couldn’t say
remember
. They were lost. Charles had the feeling that William was waiting only for the time when he would see again. And he knew that time was never. All that was left was the emotion that flowed between them, like the blood of joined twins. But when William left that night that was severed too.

“Good-bye, Chuck.”

“Good-bye, Will.”

“Don’t let old Percy get you.”

“Ha! Not if I can s—er—
hear
him first.” He couldn’t say
see
but it was worse to stumble.

“Good-bye, Mother.”

“Good-bye, son. Please try to be a good boy. Mother worries so when you are ugly.”

Ugly!
He turned and went off to one side; and he was crying like a baby.

Soon afterwards Professor Taylor took his son away from that house—now it also was haunted with so many hurting memories—and they went to room with a woman across from the campus entrance. They fixed their own meals, sharing the cooking between them, and made the bed in which they slept together. The food was either burnt or raw, and always tasted queer. Once Professor Taylor left a pot of beans to cook and hours later the neighbors broke in to quench the fire. Nothing seemed to go right.

Their home in St. Louis had been leased until September, and Mrs. Taylor and William were rooming too. The treatment on William’s eyes was slow; the doctors were picking glass and scar tissue from the cornea. There were many complications; and there was very little hope. Her letters were sad and bewailing; she spoke of taking him to Germany if the operation failed. The gap seemed widening every day.

Professor Taylor had to stay for the summer sessions and Charles worked for the school. He drove the school sedan and cleaned the president’s office. The driving took him all about the town; twice a day he picked up mail at the main post office; often he met the trains, took money to the bank. Someone was always after him to transport them some place. He had lunch with teachers in the restaurants off the grounds and was always taking ladies to Wednesday night church. He lived a strange, grown-up life.

On Friday evenings motion pictures were shown on the president’s lawn. Once, standing in the shadows, watching a picture the name of which he never knew, sweat started pouring from his body. It was a warm night, but not sultry, not hot enough to sweat. But the sweat came out of his hair and ran down his face and he could feel it streaming down his body in a deluge. He went searching for his father, frightened.

“You’re all wet, son,” his father observed. “What’ve you been doing?”

“Nothing. I was standing watching the picture and all of a sudden I started to sweat.”

“You’d better go home and lie down,” his father advised. “You’ve been too active lately.”

“But it won’t stop,” Charles complained. “I can feel it coming out my skin.”

“You go home and I’ll get Dr. Lukas.”

He went home and undressed and lay in the dark. But the sweat still streamed from his body as if he was being subjected to some insane process of dehydration. The doctor came and examined him but could find nothing wrong.

“You take these and drink a lot of water,” he directed, giving Charles some pills.

But the pills had no effect. A pool formed about him on the sheet and sunk into the mattress. After a time it stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Most of the summer school students were teachers from the district schools. Charles had a habit of playing tennis with them during the afternoons. But after the seizure his father made him stop. The next day he went out anyway. His father saw him from the blacksmith shop and came running across the campus.

“Confound it, I’m not going to tell you again,” he said, and picked up a rotten stick to whip Charles.

Charles was sick with shame and fury at being whipped before all the grownups he’d been playing with. He grappled with his father and they tussled about the court, digging deep holes in the packed clay surface. Finally Charles got the stick and threw it over the fence. His father looked astonished. Without another word he turned and went back to his shop. Charles went off by himself until time for bed. His father never referred to the incident in all his life. He never tried again to whip Charles. But the next day he took his son downtown and bought him new long pants. They made a difference. Now the older women looked at him.

That day he was out on the tennis courts waiting for a game. Classes kept the others later and he was always first. A young woman in a short white skirt sauntered up and sat beside him. She was pretty in a slow, sensuous way and he’d never seen a woman wearing so short a skirt. Dark hair grew like tendrils from her strong smooth neck and her full-blown lips were glistening red. She had the ripeness of the. South, slumbrous eyes with dark heat circles underneath and that strange look of dissipation found in sultry climates. Her breasts shook like molds of jello beneath the cotton blouse and her heavy thighs were smoothly tan as velvet. The men thought her an exciting piece, but to Charles she was beautiful and inaccessible. He adored her instantly.

“Waitin’ for someone?” she asked, the slurred, languid voice habitually affected.

“Oh, no one in particular,” he stammered self-consciously.

She glanced at him appraisingly. “Ah haven’t seen you ‘round before.”

“Oh, I’m out almost every day. I work for the president.”

“Ah must’ve seen you ‘round. You his nephew or somethin’, ain’t you?”

“You’re thinking of Harry. My name is Charles—Charles Taylor. My father teaches blacksmithing.”

“Oh, you’re Professor Taylor’s son.” She seemed impressed. “Want to play?”

Her skill was entirely dependent upon her opponent’s generosity. He let her win as often as he could, he didn’t know why. Usually he played all games with a reckless will to win. But she seemed to expect all the concessions. She’d serve and wait complacently for the return to come to her. After a couple of sets she was winded; they quit to let some others play.

He found some strange emotion at work inside of him. Her proximity sent tingling waves of cold fire coursing down his spine, yet he felt strangely heavy, weak, almost lethargic. To have her enfold him in her full, tanned arms and hold him closely to her heaving, sweating body came scalding through his mind like sinful ecstasy. And yet it had no definition; it stopped just short of sexual desire.

“I’ll take you to a show,” he blurted.

She looked at him, doubt mingled with expectancy. “How old are you?”

“I’m seventeen,” he lied.

Even that would be robbing the cradle, she thought. But the heat and exercise had flamed her blood with passion.

“Ah don’ know,” she hesitated. “Ah’ve got to take a bath.”

“I’ll wait,” he panted excitedly. “I’ll meet you by the side gate over by the men’s dormitory.”

“Well—all right.”

He ran all the way home and quickly bathed; then dressed himself in his newest blue long pants with a new white shirt and tie. He waited by the gate for two hours before finally she came. She wore a white dress with pleated skirt and patent leather pumps. Now she was commonplace in a way that seemed accessible. His heart pumped flame. But she was nervous and unsure and held herself aloof.