The Third Generation (7 page)

“Good morning, Lizzie,” Mrs. Taylor greeted in her light, precise voice, but it was warm with pleasure and she smiled gratefully. “I’m so happy you came.” She turned toward the stove. “What are you preparing?”

“Fess Taylor thought you mout lak some grits an’ bacon. He got some new cane ‘lasses he thought the boys mout lak.”

Mrs. Taylor looked at the huge, thick slabs of side meat just beginning to sizzle in the skillet. “Do we have any cereal and milk? The children have cereal with their breakfast. And it would be nice if we had some fruit.”

“Yessum, Ah forgot,” Lizzie said, getting down a large box of corn flakes and a pitcher of milk. “Fess Taylor bought these ‘specially for them.” And then she fetched a bowl of fresh strawberries from the storeroom on the back porch. “Ah picked these ‘specially for you,” she said shyly.

Tears brimmed in Mrs. Taylor’s eyes. She put her arms about the girl and hugged her spontaneously.

Although the windows and door were opened, the heat from the wood-burning stove was stifling. Mrs. Taylor stood for a moment in the window. Flies buzzed outside the screen, drawn by the smell of frying.

The backyard was a barren square of baked clay with here and there a thistle weed and tufts of Johnson grass. Beyond was a wire-enclosed chicken coop beside a row of wooden sheds. She recognized the outhouse by the half-moons in the doors. On the other side was a fieldstone circle of the top of a well with a bucket and pulley attached. She wondered if they got their water there. Several fat, lazy Plymouth Rock hens were busy burrowing dust holes in the hard, baked dirt.

Behind the yard was a field sloping down to a point some distance away where a tall tree stood. Later she was to learn it was a pecan tree from which pecks of the fat greasy nuts were gathered in the fall. A man was plowing in the field and her two younger children ran along behind him, barefooted in the turned furrow.

She withdrew from the window and stepped out onto the screened back porch. On the other side, she found a pump and cistern and breathed relief. While Lizzie was finishing breakfast she inspected the rest of the house. Across the front were two large, identical rooms, separated by the center hallway which led back to the kitchen, each containing a fireplace. The flues had openings in the above bedrooms for winter stoves.

A porch extended across the front of the house. Except for the entrance, it was completely enclosed by morning-glory and honeysuckle vines in full bloom. Rambling bushes ran along the eaves and wandered up and down the ceiling posts. Bees were at the flowers, making a droning sound, and several hummingbirds darted in and out. At one end of the porch was a low, wide swing. It was cool out there and very pleasant in the morning. She went over and sat in the swing and rocked gently back and forth.

The front lawn had been cut and the fence recently painted but already the sun was browning out the grass. Stunted rosebushes grew as wild as weeds. At the corner of the porch was a fig tree with branches up over the roof. Beside the brick walk was an umbrella tree.

The house sat on high brick pillars because of the uneven ground, but the vines screened the opening underneath. Tom and his father came from beneath the house. Mrs. Taylor was startled by their sudden appearance.

“Call the boys,” she directed Tom. “Breakfast is ready.”

He ran off toward the field.

Professor Taylor came up on the porch and sat down beside her in the swing. “Well, honey?” he asked tentatively.

She looked beyond the picket fence at the baked clay road down which a wagon drawn by two ancient mules came slowly into sight. “It’s a comedown,” she said.

“You haven’t seen it all yet, honey.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

There were freshly plowed fields on both sides, separating them from their nearest neighbors. “The boys’ll have more room to grow up in, honey. In a few years we can build a new house.”

She arose to go to breakfast, ‘it’s your choice,” she said unforgivingly. “I’ll make the best of it.”

But as she walked back through the empty house she knew she had her work cut out. He followed humbly, a little uncertainly. The children were already eating their cereal with relish, hurrying to be finished and away again. Their eyes were bright with excitement. She looked at their bare dusty feet and sighed.

5

T
HE COLLEGE HAD ORIGINALLY
been built for white students. But some years past, through a political deal, it had been turned over to Negroes. Traces of its former charm still remained.

The original buildings had formed a horseshoe about a spacious campus of shade trees dotting a level lawn. They were built of bricks and adorned by the tremendous, two-storied verandas supported by tall marble pillars which had become the architectural landmark of the old South.

At the curve of the horseshoe, overlooking the campus, stood College Hall with its thirty-three marble steps, then in bad decay, ascending to its pillared veranda. A beautifully designed wrought-iron railing, which had been imported from Italy, enclosed the staircase, and some of the original stained-glass windows still remained in the assembly hall, where now the church services were held.

To one side was the president’s residence, a large white colonial structure with landscaped lawn and flower garden. The architect who designed this house never dreamed that a Negro would once inherit it.

Beyond was a huge wooden building containing the girls’ dormitory and domestic science school, its latticed outhouse extending like a tail behind. Further on were two of the old brick buildings and then several residences for the faculty members. At the edge of the college grounds the dirt road diverged from the horseshoe, climbed a short steep hill, and meandered for fifteen miles through cotton fields and cane brakes to Port Gibson on the Mississippi River.

Across the campus from College Hall was the flat one-storied frame mess hall; and behind it the powerhouse, waterworks, icehouse and laundry.

To the other side of College Hall were four of the original old brick buildings, verandas and all, housing classrooms and the men’s dormitories. Then came a two-storied frame structure with blistered paint which served jointly as the hospital and science building. And beyond were the doctor’s residence and several small frame shacks incidental needs.

This was the academic department. The classroom buildings were heated by wood-burning stoves placed in the hallways. There was no heat in the dormitories. Out behind each building were the outhouses, one for women and one for men.

The road on which Professor Taylor lived sprouted from the horseshoe bend and curved down a steep hill behind the science building. Here were the frame houses of most of the faculty members; the Pattersons at top, the Sherwoods next, then Professor Taylor, the Hills on the other side and the Williamses farther down. There, the low clay road, muddy all winter and dusty all summer, took a bend and a half-mile on was the general store, privately owned.

At the top of the hill, leaving the campus grounds, was the road to the railroad station, nine miles distant. Along this road, a mile out, were the barns and sheds housing the livestock and farm equipment, the cannery and silos, and the mechanical building, which comprised the agricultural and mechanical departments. Beyond, as far as the could see, extended the thirty-six hundred acres of farm land owned and cultivated by the college.

The mechanical building was the only modern structure at the college. It was a one-storied brick building with tall windows and modern lighting and contained several power saws and lathes driven by belts and pulleys from overhead shafts. Here the wagons were built, the horses shod, the tools and equipment made and repaired for all the rest of the college. This was Professor Taylor’s department.

All of the students boarded. They matriculated upon finishing the country grade schools. There were no intermediate schools. The college provided the equivalent of a high school education. Most of the men studied agriculture, the women domestic science. They were grown, eighteen and older, when they arrived. And only a very few could afford to remain four years.

The summer school was attended by country teachers. It opened shortly after Mrs. Taylor and the children arrived. Professor Taylor was away at the shop all day. Mrs. Taylor, with the help of Lizzie and several men students whom her husband sent over, got her house in order. Professor Taylor outfitted the fireplaces and made cabinets, tables and chairs. Their furniture arrived and was brought from the station in the school wagons. When all their familiar possessions had been put in place the house took on a homey atmosphere. When their piano was first unpacked, Mrs. Taylor sat playing it for hours, unmindful of all else, as if visiting with an old dear friend. It made her feel civilized again.

Her chief concern was with the children’s food. She was appalled by the diet of the natives. For breakfast Lizzie would eat fried side meat, boiled rice and sorghum molasses, scorning the milk and cereal, eggs and toast which she served the Taylors.

Fresh meat was the great problem. They had no way of keeping it. When the stock was butchered the faculty members got the choicest cuts. But it was mostly pork and Mrs. Taylor distrusted it. She didn’t eat the fresh pork herself, and only rarely fed it to the children. She ordered most of her meat in cans from Memphis and Chicago.

Ice was out of the question. A bit was made by the school, but it was scarcely enough for the mess hall. They had a rare treat when Professor Taylor brought home a cake of ice for lemonade or making ice cream. First it would be crushed in a crocus sack; and then carefully packed into the freezer, a layer of ice, then a layer of salt. Afterwards would come the children’s job, turning the handle. They’d turn and turn and turn, it getting harder and harder as the ice cream froze. Their strong little arms would ache. But they got to lick the dasher. Freezing ice cream was related to Sunday dinner, fried chicken, fresh linen and visitors.

There were vegetables in abundance. All of the faculty had land to cultivate. Professor Taylor had nine acres around his house. The field behind the sheds was planted in corn. But there was a large truck garden beside the house which he had inherited from the former resident. Already it was yielding English peas and butter beans, squash and greens and Kentucky wonder string beans. Tomatoes, carrots, radishes, spinach and scallions grew like weeds. Professor Taylor added okra, eggplant, cantaloupes and several vegetables unheard of in those parts, such as kohlrabi and artichokes.

The children filled with energy like bursting seeds. Professor Taylor laughingly said the sap had just come up in them. They longed to be out of doors, digging in ground, running through the fields. She dressed them in denim overalls and wide straw hats such as the natives wore. She couldn’t make them wear their shoes. They’d take them off the moment they got out of sight. They found birds’ nests and garter snakes and tiny terrapins and toad-frogs, all of which they brought indoors. Their lather took them to the barns to see the sows and pigs and cows and calves and mares and colts. They saw the little stud jacks and were amazed to learn that a mule had an ass for a father. There was no end to the excitement.

The first thing each morning they’d explore the garden to see what had grown overnight. They ate anything. Then they’d examine the wigglers in the rain barrels at the corners of the house. From there they’d wander to the field, always inching toward the road which was forbidden. Once Mrs. Taylor found them almost to the general store, all by themselves, walking down the middle of the road, the hot dust squishing delightfully through their toes. They loved the feel of the hot powdery dust on their feet and the taste of the mud in the road after a heavy rain.

She was at wit’s end trying to restrain them. The countryside was interlaced with deep ravines and bayous, the ground crawled with poisonous snakes, the woods abounded with delicious-looking berries and fruits that made the stomach ache. She was worried sick whenever they got out of her sight. But she couldn’t watch them every moment. And the moment she turned her gaze they were gone. Professor Taylor assured her no harm could come to them. And in the next breath he’d tell of how some full-grown student had been seriously injured.

But the children didn’t know enough to be frightened of anything. They ate worms and caterpillars on each other’s dares. Once Tom showed them how to stuff a bullfrog with bird shot. The frog would lap up the shot with his long darting tongue as if it were fish eggs, until it grew so heavy it couldn’t move. The children were anxious until Tom dangled the frog by its hind legs and shook the shot from its mouth.

They ate green persimmons from the tree in Pro! Patterson’s yard and made ugly faces when the tart brackish juice drew their mouths. One day they saw a snake fighting a lamper eel in the shallow drain beside the road. The snake and eel were tightly entwined, thrashing in the muddy water. The children got sticks and poked at them.

In front of the general store was a wild cherry tree which they soon learned to climb. One of the summer students told them that the wild cherries would make them drunk. They’d eat the cherries and pretend they were falling from the tree. Soon their mother would come running the long dusty mile, her hair undone and hanging loosely down her shoulders, her eyes harried and distraught, looking like some dusty apparition. She’d switch them all the way home. The neighbors would see them running ahead of her, William screaming as if she were killing him and Charles gritting his teeth and biting back his tears. It fretted his mother that Charles never cried.

But most fascinating of all was going with their father to the general store. If they promised not to tell their mother, he’d give them a nickel to spend. Off they’d race, peeping first into the pickle barrel, and then into the barrel containing salted mackerel floating in dirty brine. They’d filch a cracker from the cracker barrel as they saw the grownups do. And at last they’d stand before the tiny candy counter, eyeing the delicious sweets. William loved licorice sticks and Charles rock candy. They’d stand entranced by the strange formations of the rock candy in the large glass jar.