The Third Generation

by Chester B Himes

  In her desperation she tried to get control of his compensation but was told it required a court order. She tried to engage an attorney to file an action. He told her the concurrence of both parents was necessary. But her husband wouldn’t support her.

  “For God’s sake, let the boy alone,” he said. “He’s coming out of it. If you keep pushing him and nagging at him you’ll run him away from home like you did Tom.”

  She closed her mouth in a grim, hard line. They hadn’t heard from Tom in more than a year. It was a source of hurt. But she could never bring herself to admit she had run him away.

  “I’ll not sit by and see him throw away his life,” she said.

  So she went to the hotel and demanded that they give her his monthly pension so she could save it for him.

  The manager sent for Charles and told him of his mother’s visit. “If you wish we’ll be glad to mail your checks to her,” he said. “But we won’t do it unless you consent.”

  “No, I don’t want her to have them. I’ll call for them after this.”

  When his mother learned of his decision, she threatened to have the courts force them to give her his pension. She and the manager had an awful row.

  “You’ve cheated him out of a settlement,” she accused, “and now you’re trying to ruin his life.”

  “Rather than do that,” the manager said angrily, “we’ll stop it entirely.”

  Charles never learned exactly what happened. When he called for his check the first of that month the cashier told him that his pension had been discontinued. For a moment he debated whether to see Mr. Small, then decided against it. He didn’t know what his mother had done but he dreaded becoming involved; he’d rather not have it than be caught up in a long, bitter quarrel.

  Later he overheard her quarreling with his father. “I’d rather he didn’t have it,” he heard her say, “than throw it away running around with God only knows what kind of people and getting himself into all kind of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble has he got into?” his father defended.

  “He got into trouble at the university. I don’t know what it was, but if he hadn’t had too much money he’d have been better off.”

  After that she nagged his father to make him study; she nagged at him whenever he was at home. The sound of her nagging filled the house. All of them tried to escape it. William spent most of his time at his friend’s house. His father began staying out until all hours of the night; none of them knew where he went. She accused him of having a woman. He was more interested in running around with some loose woman than in his own flesh and blood, she said. By then his father had begun to realize that Charles needed some kind of discipline; but he just couldn’t bring himself to apply it.

  Without his pension from the hotel Charles was pressed for money. He missed a payment on his car. A collector from the finance company called at his house. His mother discovered he owned a car. She became desperate. Without her husband’s support there seemed nothing she could do. But Charles had to be restrained at any cost.

  So she swore out a warrant for his arrest, charging him with forging her name to a check for twenty-five dollars. The check was among those that had been returned with her bank statement; it was the only check for that large a sum. Two policemen came for him early in the day, before he’d left to pick up the band. At the time both William and his father were away.

  He was shocked. “You know I didn’t forge your name to any check,” he told his mother.

  Her mouth was grim and unrelenting, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. She looked away. “Someone did, and you’re the only one with access to my check book.”

  He turned without replying and went down the steps with the policemen. That night his father put up bail. When they came home his mother was in a mood to fuss. But no one spoke to her. Later William came to Charles’s room.

  “Don’t worry, Chuck. Mother’s just upset. She found out you’d bought a car.”

  “Hell, it wasn’t exactly a secret. I just didn’t want to have her fussing all the time.”

  He was arraigned the following morning. His mother had no evidence that he’d forged the check.

  “But he’s bought a car,” she said. “And runs around all night with God only knows what kind of people.”

  “Is that why you think he forged the check?” asked the judge.

  “It’s not only the check. He’s wasting his life. Sooner or later if he isn’t controlled he’s going to wind up in the penitentiary or on the gallows.”

  “Do you want him prosecuted for this charge? Forgery is a felony. He could go to the reformatory if convicted.”

  She relented; she didn’t want it to go that far. “I can’t swear he did it,” she admitted, “but he ought to be disciplined. He has no right to own a car; he’s still a minor. They had no right to sell him a car.”

  “That’s something else. Of course, they can be prosecuted. But this concerns itself with your charge that he forged your name to a check.”

  “Even if he didn’t this time it won’t be long before he does, unless something is done to stop him. He spends his compensation as fast as he gets it. There should be some way to make him save it.”

  “Yes, but that is more or less a problem for his parents. That is outside the jurisdiction of this court.”

  Professor Taylor came to his son’s defense. He told of how Charles had been injured, and of how it had affected his subsequent behavior.

  “My son has been sick and upset,” he admitted. “But my son is not a thief.” There were tears in his eyes. For a moment he was cloaked in the dignified humility he used to assume in years long past when talking to the white trustees of the southern colleges.

  The judge was sympathetic. He turned to Mrs. Taylor. “Unless you can present more evidence of forgery I am going to dismiss the charge.”

  She withdrew the charge herself. She hadn’t intended to have him prosecuted, but she’d thought the court would give her some sort of legal authority to control his money. She was bitterly disappointed with the outcome, and went off without looking toward either her husband or her son.

  Professor Taylor left the courtroom with his arm about his son. There was something infinitely tender in his attitude. The court attendants looked curiously at the strange couple, the old, short, black man who seemed shrunken in his seedy clothes with a son a half-head taller, lighter complexioned, wearing an expensive white flannel suit with an air of arrogance.

  Charles liked his father then; he’d always liked him in a way. What he liked most was the manner in which his father had taken up for him. He hadn’t thought his father had it in him.

  But at the same time he felt a sense of utter loss. Before, no matter what had happened, he’d always felt he could come back to his mother in the end. He’d always believed, despite everything she’d done, that she loved him most of all. He had never felt she would really hurt him. They had always fought, but he’d thought, deep down, that it was a fight of love. It was a secret between them; their own private conflict. He’d always felt he wouldn’t hurt her either; that in the end, at some time, he would have to die for her. This more than anything had kept him home; that some day she would need him to give his life for her. He’d never consciously thought about it, but he had always felt it was his one and only obligation to anyone. And now that she had taken their own sacred fight out into the callous, critical world, to be pawed over by strangers, he felt he could never go back.

  “I’m going to see a movie, Dad,” he said. “Want to come along?”

  “No, son, I’ve got work to do. But don’t stay out too late. We worry about you, son.”

  He went and sat in the darkness of the theater, thinking of his mother and himself. I guess she must have been pretty worried, he thought. He wondered what she could do to help if he told her how his textbooks affected him.

  The organist began playing Among My Souvenirs and the soft, cloying chords seeped down into his emotions, th
e plaintive melody spelling out the words:

  There’s nothing left for me

  Of things that used to be…

  He felt the warm flood of tears pouring down his cheeks. “What’s wrong with me?” he sobbed aloud, stumbling through the darkened aisles, escaping to the street. It came to him again that he’d never leave his mother. All the way home he felt a poignant overwhelming longing for her love again. He wanted to cry out his heart to her, to say, “I forgive you, Mother,” and have her say, “I forgive you too.”

  But he found her waiting for him with an agent from the finance company. “I’ve ordered them to take your car,” she said.

  The agent said, “I’ll go with you to get it.”

  For a long, bleak moment he looked at his mother, ignoring the agent. Then he said, “I’ll turn it in myself,” and turned and started out.

  He became aware that the agent was following him and stopped and faced about, “I’ll take it in by myself.”

  The agent hesitated. “Be sure and get it in by five o’clock or we’ll notify the police it is stolen.”

  He drove around for a time. Once he thought of driving to another state, of just getting on some road and going wherever it took him. But he knew they’d catch him somewhere and he’d be charged with automobile theft. He stopped by the house where the band leader lived and told him he wouldn’t be driving them about any longer.

  “What’s the matter, Pigmeat, tired of us?”

  “No, I lost my car.”

  “Lost your car? That’s it outside, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, but I got to give it up.”

  “Can’t you make the payments?”

  “I guess I could, but my mother doesn’t want me to have it.”

  “That’s tough titty, kid, but that’s your and her business.”

  He left and drove down Cedar Avenue. Exactly when it came to him he couldn’t give it up, he never knew. All he knew was that if he gave it up everything he’d ever dreaded would catch up with him again. It was already settled when he started down the hill underneath the viaduct at Ansel Road. And this seemed as good a place as any. So he stepped on the accelerator and pulled head-on into the concrete abutment beneath the railroad line.

  For a short time he was unconscious. When he came to, policemen were holding back the crowd and an ambulance was coming. He felt such a sense of frustration he was sick all down inside. There was a small cut on his forehead from broken glass and his chest hurt from the impact with the steering wheel. His back had been wrenched and it was painful when the ambulance attendants lifted him out. But he derived a perverted pleasure from sight of the smashed front end of the car.

  “Now they can have it,” he muttered.

  “What?” asked a policeman hovering over him.

  “Nothing.”

  They took his name and address and he was driven to an emergency hospital. But his injuries weren’t serious; there was no indication of hemorrhage. He could walk well enough although his back ached and his chest hurt inside. The cut was bandaged and he was put in a taxi cab and sent home with instructions to remain in bed for a couple of days.

  But he couldn’t bear his home; he couldn’t bear the sight of his mother. He had to get out. He sought the parks. He came to know the banks of Lake Erie as he knew his hand. He’d lay for hours on the ground, feeling the closeness of the earth. He couldn’t bear to be indoors anywhere. At times he wondered how it would feel to be buried alive.

  The physical pain lingered for a time. But he didn’t mind it. What he minded most was the loss of his escape. He was left walking in a world of running demons, every way he turned they had him cornered.

  When William went off to college, Charles took him down to the station. They tried to talk but it was embarrassing for both; one was going away to college and the other was staying home. What could either of them say? Both felt relieved when the train finally came.

  Charles took his brother into the coach. “Good luck, Will.” He wanted to say something wittier, but he couldn’t find the words.

  “I hope you’ll get back next quarter,” Will said.

  “Me, too, if for no more than the ride.”

  “Don’t worry, Chuck.”

  “What’s there to worry about? If we die we go to heaven, the streets are paved in gold, angels playing harps, everybody’s happy. Is that a cause for worry?” He tried to make it sound flippant, but it went another way.

  William was silent.

  “All aboard!” the trainman called.

  “So long, Will.”

  “So long, Chuck.”

  For a long and bitter moment Charles stood on the platform, watching the train pull out. When it was out of sight he raised his hand in a wide, slow wave, he didn’t know why. Then suddenly it struck him that this was the first fall he’d missed entering school. And he knew the reason he had waved. He himself was on that train, all of himself that had ever meant anything to himself, and all of himself that would ever mean anything to anyone. He was waving good-bye to himself. He was stricken by the thought.

  Like a sleepwalker he went down the steps to the tracks and walked out to where they curved over toward the lake and then turned off through a woody, undeveloped park. All about him were the signs of fall. The painted colors cried inside him and he sat down with his back against a tree until the hurt had quieted.

  It was such a perfect time of year, he thought musingly. All the disturbing heat of summer had cooled into a sort of peace. His body always felt good in the fall. And yet why was it always such a poignant time? Slowly, as he tried to reconcile the signs about him of nature dying, leaves falling, plants drying and withering, to his first feeling of respite, his thoughts turned inward again and he came face to face with death.

  And to himself, death had always been a source of hurt and bewilderment—the death of anything, even of a time. He hated all endings; he couldn’t bear finality. The giving up of any life; the senseless cessation of dreams and emotions; all the ecstasy and beauty, all the strange, deep, moving melodies that came from the sight of flowers, the feeling of early morning in the country, the sound of a running brook, all ending in death.

  Fall had always touched him thus. The end of summer had always been the death of freedom too. School had assuaged and channeled this sense of death. Now he was caught adrift without an anchor.

  After what seemed to be hours he arose to go home. His back was stiff; he could barely walk. Some section hands passing down the tracks on a handcar gave him a lift to the nearest highway crossing. He went home.

  “Did your brother get off all right?” his mother asked.

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him accusingly. “If you don’t begin studying for your examinations I’m going to put you out of the house. If you’re going to throw away your life you’ll not live here; you’ll have to eat and sleep with those people you spend your money on.”

  “What money?” he said bitterly.

  “I’ll not argue with you. If you want to—”

  He left the house and slammed the door behind him, cutting off her voice. He went over to Cedar Avenue, wandering aimlessly, stopping first in one pool hall and then in another. In one he ran across Dave.

  “How you doing, Chuck?”

  “All right.” He wanted to ask about Peggy but was too ashamed. “What you doing these days?”

  “I got a little crap game going in my pad. Why don’t you drop by later on.”

  “Okay.”

  For a moment he contemplated going down to Billie’s. But he had very little money now. Maybe he could win some in the game, he thought. He’d never gambled seriously, although he’d watched a number of games. Just the thought of risking his money on the roll of the dice gave him stage fright. He began drinking to bolster his courage, drifting from one liquor joint to another.

  It was late when he got to Dave’s. He was blind drunk. He lost his thirty dollars before the dice were passed around the table. He borrowed twent
y from Dave and lost that. At the thought of having to go home, broke and defenseless, and face his mother’s tirade, he was assailed by a sense of desperation. He felt his legs begin to tremble. His gaze slid across the stacks of money, then went off in a blind trance. When he came out of it the dice were back to him.

  “What you shoot, kid?” someone asked.

  “Not this time,” he said. His throat had contracted until his voice was barely above a whisper.

  He backed from the crowded table and left the smoke-filled room. A voice was crooning, “Shooter for the game.” A sense of unreality settled in his mind; the night turned weird. He was overwhelmed by a kind of fear he’d never known. It was the first time since his injury he’d been completely broke. He felt naked and without friends.

  As he went down the stairs a big, loutish-looking youth wearing a grass-green suit overtook him.

  “You can’t beat them chiselers, man, they use crooked dice.”

  “I didn’t lose much,” he muttered defensively and kept on walking.

  The youth fell in beside him. “I seen you down at the cabaret. They call you Pigmeat, don’t they?”

  “Sometimes.” He could scarcely remember it; something seemed to have happened to his memory.

  “They call me Poker; I used to run a poker game in the Alley. My real handle’s John—John Parker. I know where there’s a game downtown that’s jumping. Ain’t nobody but squares. You stake me to a half a C and we can win ourselves a grand.”

  It took a moment before Charles comprehended; he couldn’t think. “I got broke,” he finally said. “I haven’t got any money.”

  “Hell, get some from them whores. I tell you, man, we can win a grand.” When Charles didn’t reply he said, “You collecting from them whores, ain’t you?”

  “Collecting?” The persistent intimacy was picking at his nerves, but he didn’t have the will to send the fellow off.

  “All them whores I see you with? You mean you ain’t getting nothing from ‘em?”

  He walked a little faster as if to get away. They came into The Avenue of shabby store fronts and dingy buildings crowding on the broken pavement. Dim light spilled grotesqueness over the squalid scene. Drunken men and women, milling about the doorways, argued profanely about inconsequentials. The pungent scent of marijuana drifted in the air. Revulsion knotted in his stomach. He turned suddenly and crossed the street. But Poker stuck with him; he couldn’t get away.