The Third Generation (21 page)

“How old did you say you were?” she greeted him.

“I’m seventeen,” he lied again, but uncertainty cut into his ardor.

Two men passed nearby and looked at them curiously. She turned away in shame. “Ah’m too old for you,” she said harshly. “Ah’m twenty-two.”

His face mirrored his hurt and humiliation. The woman came up in her and she felt sorry for him. Tenderly she held his hands. “You find a girl your own age. Ah like you, honey, but you’re jes’ too young.”

“All right.”

He turned away to hide the sudden tears and walked rapidly around the building. Then suddenly he was running in headlong flight. He ran until he was out of breath.

But the shame wouldn’t leave him. Finally he went home. He tried to play at making out that he was great and famous and that she would come seeking his attention. But he couldn’t find the handle to the dream. There was no defense against his age. Afterwards he shunned the tennis courts for fear of seeing, her. There was little else to do. The afternoons became empty. He took to walking out of town and wandering through the woods again. The countryside had always been his friend.

On the last day of the summer session he met a girl his age. He saw her standing on the cinder walk beside the chapel. She looked lost and on the verge of tears. He’d just alighted from the school sedan. He looked at her curiously and would have gone past. But she touched him lightly on the arm and stopped him.

“Could you please tell me how to get to the domestic science building?” she asked timidly, painfully embarrassed.

He felt mature and condescending. “Sure, it’s over by the diamond. Hop in, I’ll drive you over,” he offered grandiloquently.

“Oh, thank you, but I can walk.” Her huge brown eyes shone shyly from a thin, fragile face. She was as tall as he but very thin, her body like a reed in the faded calico dress, but her face blossomed from the long neck like an exquisite flower. Something in the slight droop of her narrow shoulders made him think of dogtooth violets in bloom.

“Why walk when you can ride?” he said arrogantly. Mutely she permitted him to bully her. He drove around the chapel and across the diamond. “You’re new,” he remarked.

“Oh, we just came for sister,” she blurted out. She was rigid with self-consciousness. “Sister studied here this summer.”

He pulled up before the domestic science building. “What’s your name?”

She glanced at him and her gaze fled off in panic. “Jessie.”

“Mine’s Charles,” he said. “My brother calls me Chuck.”

She saw her parents and jumped guiltily from the car. She ran off, then ran back and cried, “Thank you,” and then ran off again. He watched her go with the older people into the building. After waiting for a time he turned the car and drove away. But all that day he thought of her. She seemed so wild and fresh and yet so fragile that should she fall she’d break.

That evening during the exercises in the chapel he saw her on the steps. He took her arm. “Want to go for a ride, Jessie.”

Her huge eyes widened in fright. “Oh, I couldn’t.”

“Let’s walk then.”

Her eyes sought his and lingered for a moment; her thin taut body seemed caught in flight. “Just for a li’l ways.”

They walked along the cinder path toward the campus gate. “I work here in the summer. My father teaches.”

“I know,” she said. “It must be wonderful.”

“You know?”

“I showed you to my sister.”

“Oh.” And then suddenly it struck him. “Wonderful? How?”

“Everything going on all the time.”

“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “I never thought about it. When Will was here we never—” he broke off.

They left the campus and sauntered slowly up Pullen Street. Neither knew where they were going.

“I guess you miss him lots.”

He turned and stared at her. Her face was blurred and softly dreamlike in the dark.

“My sister told me he lost his sight.”

They went along in silence.

After a time he said, “He’s in St. Louis now.” Later he said, “I guess I do.” /

He felt her slender cool hand groping for his fingers and took it gratefully.

“I always wanted a brother,” she confessed.

“I guess we wanted a sister too, although I don’t remember ever thinking of it.”

Then for a long time they just walked through the cool, dim night, matching strides. Their arms swung a little with their fingers locked together as, they walked along without talking, caught in the entrancement of the moment.

Finally she said, “We’re going back to Brinkley in the mornin’.”

“We’re going to St. Louis tomorrow too.” It frightened him.

“Don’t be scared,” she said intuitively. He choked to keep from crying. “You can do a lot of things all by yourself.”

“I know,” he said. His voice sounded strange and thick. He tried to make it clear. “I’m always doing something.”

“Not what you used to do together.”

“No, I couldn’t do that by myself.”

Now they were in the bright lights that extended down past Main. Instinctively they turned into the darkness of Cherry Street.

“But I used to never tell my dreams,” he said. “I mean—you know—while you’re awake. Just sort of making up things you’d like to do if everything was different.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like I’d say you were Penelope and I was Ulysses returning home from twenty years of wandering. Then I’d make out you’d been waiting for me all those years.” He didn’t feel embarrassed; he was excited telling it. “But you couldn’t really be there; I mean, if you were there I couldn’t make it up.” The back of the icehouse loomed up, loading docks vague in the darkness.

“Why can’t you do it with me here?” she whispered timidly. “You’ve never tried.”

He stopped to look at her and she turned from one step ahead and shyly searched his face.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

Then awkwardly they groped together, clumsy from inexperience. But there was a young sweet poetry in their clumsy hands and awkward motions. His mouth kept searching for her lips as they tried to adjust their faces and his arms about her slender body. Finally their lips were meeting, softly pressing in a clear, cool kiss. The queerest sort of feeling surged from deep inside him; an overwhelming sense of love and purity gathered in his heart. He was flooded with the impulse to defend her. Wordlessly they broke apart and looked straight into each other’s eyes. There was no shame; only the bright, luminous quality of their love. Her long dark hair, worn in loose curls down on her shoulders, made a soft, delicate cameo of her thin, fragile face.

“You’re very pretty,” he said chokingly. “You look something like my mother used to look. Only her hair was lighter.”

“Would you like me better if my hair was lighter?”

“No.”

“You’re a funny boy,” she said tremulously, catchy-like, as if she thought he might vanish or fly away.

He laughed from happiness. “I’m just natural nuts.”

Now she laughed along with him. “You are not; you’re nice.”

“Come on.” He took her hand. “There’s a carnival at the fairgrounds.” He must show her what he knew.

Time and parents were forgotten. The night was filled with magic as they swung along. Clouds drifted in disorder across the moon. He drew her to a stop and pointed.

“See, it’s Pegasus. See how the wings spread out and the hoof is raised.” He was all excited.

“That’s a horse, isn’t it?”

He laughed uproariously. “What a question! Didn’t you ever do that? Play at finding things in the clouds? Will and I used to all the time.”

“Oh, with my sister, yes. But we just found people mostly; just folks whom we both knew.”

“You ought’ve been with us. We used to find all sort of things.”

“You and I could too,” she said stoutly.

“Race you!” he said suddenly. They leaped and ran with joy. The darkness sang with happiness as they sped along. Then, there in the distance was the carnival, a noisy, crowded, ecstatic wonderland. They wandered down the midway and breathed in the excitement. White people eyed them curiously, but none bothered. They swung along, hand in hand, enveloped in a dream.

But time, that old iconoclast, kept tugging at their elbows.

They made the journey home in silence, walking rapidly to keep ahead of tears. But at the end they cried anyway. She wouldn’t let him come to where her parents waited with the whipping they held in store for her. He had to say good-bye at a distance and watch her walk away alone. Briefly they embraced, clumsily as at first, clinging for dear life. And as at first, their cool, young lips searched before meeting, and the taste of each other’s tears was in their kiss.

The next night he was on the train going to St. Louis. He couldn’t stop the crying. It just kept on coming up and flooding out. These good-byes were coming too rapidly for him. He was getting so he cried easily as a baby.

He thought continuously of her. In the outside night that raced along the window he saw her face in all its exquisite moods. And her voice kept time with the thumping of the wheels over the section joints…
You’re a funny boy…a funny boy…a funny boy…a funny boy…a funny boy…a funny boy…a funny boy
…It felt as if his heart would burst with aching. He loved her so…
loved her so…loved her so…loved her…a funny boy…a funny boy…a funny boy…loved her so
…It seemed as if the turmoil in his head would flame explosively.

“Don’t cry, son,” his father gestured with vague helplessness. “It’s going to work out all right. You boys’ll be together before another year.”

Charles looked up at his father, choking back his tears. Deep, sinking lines like mutilations pulled down the full, strong features of his father’s face. And his skin had lightened, taken on a grayish pallor beneath the black. The settled look of age shocked Charles to reality.

“I’ll be all right,” he mumbled, knuckling at his eyes. “I’ll be all right, Dad, I’ll be all right.” Then later on he asked, “Can I get you a drink of water, Dad?”

“No, son, thanks…I’m not thirsty.” The wheels clacked endlessly…“I’m just tired…”

Gone!
It was gone…gone-gone-gone-gone-gone-gone…Mississippi…Then Will…Then his mother…His love had gone…And now his father…
Gone-gone-gone-gone
, the wheels clacked.
Came arapping and atapping and atapping and atapping…A funny boy…gone-gone-gone-gone-gone
…

15

S
T. LOUIS BECAME A CITY
of frustration for the Taylor family. Though they’d gotten back their house, it never became a home. Within it they became prisoners of their despair.

William was being treated by famous specialists at the great hospital. He went five times a week. But no miracle had happened. One eye could distinguish light from dark; the other could make out type print held an inch or two away, and distinguish outlines at a distance of four or five feet. Grafting corneas to both eyes was considered, but only a few such operations had been attempted, and the ratio of success was low. There was the added difficulty of obtaining corneas; they had to be taken from the eyes of living persons or from corpses shortly dead. His mother offered hers, but the doctors didn’t think it worth the risk. Charles was never told for fear he might do something rash.

The major hope was to remove sufficient scar tissue so light could penetrate. It was a slow, nerve-racking process that went on all that summer. But William never seemed discouraged, never complained. Charles was awed by his brother’s courage. In William’s presence he became inarticulate, but worshiped him across the gap.

Tom was there that summer. He did all the things for William that Charles would have liked to do—little things like walking him to the store, taking him to the barbershop, buying him something special. Their mother did the special things, like taking him to the hospital and cutting up his food. Charles felt left out. It seemed as if he was too young to be of any good at all.

Tom was working as a bus boy in a downtown restaurant. He’d come home with an armache that made him miserable. Then Charles would massage his arm and feel that he was helping.

Professor Taylor had no ability at all for city life. At heart he was a missionary. He’d lived his life in southern Negro colleges. There, a professor was somebody. He counted in the neighborhood. His family counted too. But in St. Louis he didn’t count.

He’d gotten a job waiting on tables in a roadhouse out near Carondulet.

“It’s a goddamned crying shame about that son of yours, Willie,” his boss, Joe Terry, would say, shaking his head in real lament. “You oughta be back teaching your people instead of here waiting on roughnecks like these.”

Professor Taylor would smile courageously. “Mr. Terry, the world’s not coming to an end because I’m away from teaching for a year or two.”

It was in his home that he’d been defeated. He was a pathetic figure coming home from work; a small black man hunched over and frowning, shambling in a tired-footed walk, crushed old cap pulled down over his tired, glazed eyes, a cigarette dangling from loose lips.

His occupation was never mentioned before the children. But they’d overheard their parents discussing it, and were ashamed for him. Usually they were long in bed when he returned from work. But once, going to the bathroom, Charles saw his father slowly trudging up the stairs. He looked so old and stooped and beaten. It frightened him. Suppose his father died. What would become of them?

For a short time at summer’s end, after Tom had returned to school, Charles had William to himself. The bandages had been removed from William’s eyes but the burnt lids and bluish-tinted irises were more shocking then before. Both tried desperately to recapture the old feeling. They fell into their old-time habit of playing rough, tussling with each other and doing feats of strength and agility. But suddenly William would turn to shout excitedly and Charles would catch sight of the bluish pebbles in the burnt dark flesh. Agony could cut him to the bone. He just couldn’t get over it. Or William would bump head-on into something, and the hurt would course through Charles like brackish, bitter venom. He was always keyed up, too anxious to make his playing seem natural.