The Third Generation

by Chester B Himes

  He wondered how long she’d been laughing like that. It was a weird, mirthless sound that seemed bordering on hysteria.

  “Mama—”

  She looked around at the tone of his voice and he saw the deep oblique lines of sudden fear cut across her face. He looked down at the floor.

  “I was paroled to Dad. I was paroled to Dad for five years.”

  For a moment she was perfectly still as if her blood had frozen. It was the bitterest disappointment she had ever suffered. All for nothing! All waste! She wouldn’t have him after all. Finally she forced herself to speak. “I suppose you’d rather be with your father. He’ll let you do as you like.” She didn’t mean it. She was trying desperately to stem the hurt, to hold herself together. She knew if she broke then she’d never mend.

  “I didn’t ask for it, Mama.”

  “You’re old enough to know what you want,” she said. Instead of the old, harsh, nagging tone her voice was now light and brittle as if it might break into tiny pieces in the middle of a word. “You’ll find your things in the other room.”

  He went across the hall to the small bedroom and packed the suitcase he had taken to the university. When he returned she was sitting in the chair, painting her nails. A cork-tipped cigarette was burning in an ash tray on the dresser. He was scalded by shock, blinded. His stomach knotted with nausea and he had to fight to keep from vomiting.

  “Mama—”

  She didn’t seem to notice his agitation. “I suppose Mr. Taylor is living with his sister.”

  “No, we have a room on 100th Street.” He felt that she was slipping away into oblivion, down into the deep, dark sordid world she had so despised. He wanted to save her, to draw her back, to swear on his knees he’d love her and take care of her forever. But she gave no indication that she needed his help.

  “Now you can walk to all the dives,” she remarked, trying so hard to dam the torrent of tears welling up in her. She was nearer to defeat than she had ever been.

  He put on his overcoat and picked up his suitcase. “Yes, they’re just around the corner,” he whispered bitterly.

  His father was in bed reading a pulp magazine when he returned. The magazine cover had a gory picture of gunmen killing each other. His father wore a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles he’d never seen before and was smoking a self-made cigarette. He laid the cigarette in a saucer on the chair beside his head and greeted Charles.

  “Hello, son.”

  “Hello, Dad.”

  Smoke curled slowly from a pile of smoldering cigarette butts in the saucer, and hung in a haze at the ceiling. Charles noticed that the ends of the butts which his father had held in his lips were stained brown with spittle. The room reeked with a horrible stink of burning spit and wet tobacco.

  “Have you had your supper?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can come with me tomorrow and get your breakfast.”

  “All right.”

  He undressed and got a pair of pajamas from his suitcase. He couldn’t breathe. “You mind if I crack a window?”

  His father looked blank. After a moment he said, “You must make yourself at home, son. It isn’t much.” He took another cigarette from a paper bag resting on the chair. The one he’d just put down smoldered with the others on the saucer. He seemed to have forgotten it.

  Charles crawled into his side of the bed and looked away. The sight of that pile of smoldering butts had filled him with blind anguish. He closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. After a time he opened them. Ash hung from the end of his father’s cigarette. His eyes were open, staring at the print. Charles noticed that he hadn’t turned the page.

  “Why don’t you put out your cigarette and go to sleep, Dad?”

  His father closed the magazine and laid the cigarette atop the smoldering pile. “I was thinking of the time I lived in Savannah. I was just a raw young buck right out of college, just begun to teach but everybody called me ‘Fess.’ They’d stop by when they came up from the docks. ‘Want a li’l kittle o’ eyesters, Fess?’” He chuckled. “You like oysters, son?”

  “Sometimes.”

  There was a cord tied to the head of the bed, connected to the drop light in the center of the room. Charles reached up and pulled the cord and turned off the light. Every now and then he could hear his father chuckling in the dark.

  Professor Taylor was working as a porter for a night club on Euclid, run by two racketeers named Manny and Benny. They liked Professor Taylor and trusted him alone in the club. Charles helped with the work every morning but left before Manny and Benny came in around noon. He emptied and washed the ash trays, ran the vacuum sweeper, cleaned the dining room, dance floor and bandstand. His father cleaned the stairway and foyer, behind the tobacco counter, and scrubbed the kitchen. At eleven o’clock they ate breakfast. Charles tried to eat enough to last him for the day. He’d eat a bowl of oatmeal, six eggs, four pieces of toast and a half pound of bacon, or occasionally a steak. He was always gone by noon.

  Every afternoon he saw a moving picture show. If he became hungry again he’d eat dinner in a restaurant out on Cedar Avenue. The days were easy. He could get through the days. It was night he couldn’t fill. He couldn’t cope with his nights. After six o’clock he was always at loose ends.

  For a time he tried keeping to his room and reading. But he couldn’t bear the sight of his father reading the same page of some blood-and-thunder story hour after hour, endlessly smoking the stinking cigarettes. His father never mentioned the divorce, never mentioned his mother, not once did he ask about the trial or Charles’s sentence. He never referred to their former home, never spoke of William, never asked Charles where he went or what he did. But he often spoke reminiscently about some happening in the distant past, before he was married. He’d recount in infinite detail what someone had said to him and what he’d said in reply, as if it had happened yesterday, and often he would chuckle to himself, causing Charles’s blood to curdle.

  Charles would get up and leave. He tried visiting his mother. But that was worse. She had developed a strange new personality. She’d dyed her hair and wore her nails painted, and although Charles never saw another cigarette in her room, there was an ash tray on the dresser and he was certain that she smoked.

  She complained so often of the Morrows’ son putting stink bombs in her room that he finally persuaded her to move. But at the next place she complained that her landlady was jealous of her husband.

  “Who’d want that man?” she’d say, laughing mirthlessly. “He’s as black as your father.”

  She asked only once what he was doing.

  “I’m helping Dad in the morning. He’s got a porter’s job.”

  “What do you do the rest of your day?”

  “I go to the show. Try to read a little. I can’t find anything to do.”

  “You’re not trying,” she accused. For a moment the old harshness returned to her voice. “If you don’t intend to return to college you should at least try to get a job in some business with an opportunity for advancement, instead of wasting your time hanging around your father.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “You know how to get into trouble well enough.”

  He got up to go. “Yes, I can do that well enough.”

  Her voice came after him. “Oh, my baby, if you would only try. With your blood you should be able to do anything.”

  He turned and looked at her. It was your blood first, he thought. And what did it get you? But aloud he said, “Yes, shouldn’t I?” After that he found it very hard to visit her.

  Quite often he felt the urge to look up Poker. But he was afraid of his parole. He kept away from The Avenue. Occasionally he slipped into a whiskey joint, but he was afraid to get drunk again. He was afraid of what he might do.

  Most of the time he didn’t have anywhere to go. He began walking again through the lonely parks at night. It was then he became assailed with a sense of drifting. One night he stood on the parapet at Go
rdon Park and watched a full moon turn the lake into molten silver. Far up the bend of the lake, car lights bobbed on the Drive, turned and were lost in Bratenahl. He recalled how he used to walk out there. Here he was alone.

  Down below, the sharp-tongued waves beckoned with a strange fascination. It was as if they offered sleep—cool, deep, caressing sleep. Suddenly he felt tired. He had never been so tired, so utterly exhausted. A smell of snow was in the air. He listened to the faint sighing of the wind in the overhead crags. He felt a strong sweet longing to lay down on the waves and sleep. The thought frightened him. He found himself struggling to break the hypnotic hold of the shimmering waves.

  He turned and ran in headlong flight down the vague footpaths, as shadows of the skeletoned trees danced weirdly in the moonlight. At home he found his father lying in the middle of the bed, his blank gaze resting on the pages of an open magazine, a pile of wet brown butts smoldering in the saucer at his side. He crawled in on the edge to keep from touching him. But he hated his father with such a violence he had to get up again. He went into the bathroom and drank the tepid water from the tap. It nauseated him and he vomited into the stool. But when he returned to the room he began sweating profusely. He went back to the bathroom and took a bath.

  “Don’t you feel well, son?” his father asked.

  “I feel fine,” he said.

  He began dressing to go out. His father didn’t ask where he was going. He put on his overcoat, drew on his gloves, and put on a dark felt hat.

  “Do you have your keys, son?”

  “Yes.”

  He closed the door behind him, tiptoed down the stairs and let himself out into the night. It was snowing and he turned up the collar of his overcoat. He walked along The Avenue without any idea of where he was going. A drunken man and a drunken woman staggered along in the slush, clinging to each other to keep from falling. At first the snow felt cool and pleasant on his face. He recalled his mother’s suggestion about getting a job, turned over the possibilities in his mind. God knows he’d have to do something, he thought; he couldn’t keep this up. Then he thought of Mr. Small, at the hotel where he was hurt. Mr. Small would give him a job, he knew. He could become a waiter. That wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Many of the waiters earned a good income. He resolved to go and see Mr. Small the very first thing in the morning.

  Sometime later he found himself at 82nd Street, not far from where the Douglas family lived, with whom William had stayed that summer. He found himself thinking intently about Will. He wondered how he was getting along in college. It must have been an ordeal for him to testify at their parents’ divorce proceedings, he thought. He wondered what William had said. His mother had never discussed William’s testimony. She’d said very little about the entire action. And his father had never mentioned William’s name. It was very strange how Will had got so far away in so short a time, he thought. He had a sudden impulse to catch a train and go down and visit Will. Then he realized he would arrive there at an ungodly hour of the morning. He wasn’t certain that Will would be glad to see him. He hadn’t heard from his brother since before Christmas, when he was still in jail. Thinking about it, he realized he hadn’t written to Will since he went to college.

  “I’ll see him another time,” he said. He spoke aloud without realizing it.

  When he came to the Y, he turned and started back. Snow had collected on his hat and coat. He suffered a sudden chill. He’d never completely gotten rid of his cold and going out into the snow immediately after taking a bath had been dangerous. He’d better stop somewhere and get a drink, he told himself. Then he thought of Dave; he’d stop by Dave’s.

  At the house where Dave had lived he was told that Dave had moved to The Alley. He went around to the dark, unpaved alley back of the buildings that fronted on The Avenue and found Dave’s shack. There was a coal-burning, pot-bellied stove in the middle room and a group of half-drunken men and women stood around an oilcloth-covered table shooting dice. The air was thick with whiskey fumes and tobacco smoke. It was stifling hot. The mutter of thick voices rose from the intent players like a blasphemous miasma.

  “Whass de mattah with you, niggah, Ah bet you a fin.”

  “Ah put down a fin.”

  “Where it at?”

  “How Ah know?”

  “Doan hold up de dice, niggah.”

  Dave looked around and saw him. “Chuck! Whataya say, boy. Where you been? I been looking for you everywhere.”

  “I was in jail.”

  Several of the players turned around and looked at him.

  “What for?” Dave asked.

  “Nothing much. I’m out now, anyway, so let’s have a drink.”

  Dave put his arm about his shoulder. “Same old Chuck,” he laughed. ‘Take off your coat, man.” Then he turned toward the kitchen and called, “Hey, Veeny, bring in a pint and some ginger ale.”

  “I’ll drink it in the kitchen. It’s too hot in here,” Charles said. “Come on and drink with me.”

  They went in and sat at the kitchen table and Charles threw his coat across a chair. The woman served them. She was a well-formed woman about thirty-five years old. Her light-tan complexion had a strange indoor pallor as if she’d been in prison. Long black hair hung down her back and her dark brown eyes, fringed with long lashes, had a muddy, beaten look. She wore a black satin dress with a high collar which didn’t quite hide the thin embossed scar that circled down across her throat from ear to ear. In her face and body were signs of wanton dissipation, and, looking at her, Charles thought that she must have been ravishingly beautiful in her youth. As she bent over to pour his drink, their gazes locked, and he felt the shock of sickness run through him as if he saw himself mirrored in her beaten, lustful look. He was at once revolted and entranced.

  Dave caught their look and laughed. “Veeny, this is Chuck. He’s my pal. Take care of him.”

  “He’s a pretty boy,” she said.

  When she went out of the room for a moment Dave said, “I keep her to run this joint. I got another whore downtown.”

  Charles felt an intense revulsion toward Dave. “I think I’ll gamble,” he said abruptly.

  He went back into the middle room and squeezed into the group about the table. But he couldn’t keep his mind on the game. He kept thinking about Dave’s woman. Something about her frightened him; she seemed to smell of death. And yet she incited in him an almost uncontrollable desire. Several times he forgot to pick up the bets he’d won. Soon he was broke. He borrowed some money from Dave and when he’d lost that he went out to the kitchen to get a pint of whiskey on credit.

  Veeny was sitting at the table, drinking with another woman.

  “Where’s Dave?” he asked.

  She held his gaze. “He’s gone already. He goes about this time every night.”

  “Oh, I wanted to get a pint but I haven’t got any money with me.” He couldn’t unlock his gaze from hers. “I’ll give you a drink, baby.”

  The other woman got up. “I’m gonna try ‘em again, honey.”

  Charles took the chair she’d vacated. Veeny held his gaze. Her huge muddy eyes were glassy. She slowly licked her lips. He felt the hot sick lust come up into his own eyes like something wet and sticky.

  “I’ll give you some money if you want to keep on play-mg.

  “I just want to borrow ten.” His voice was thick as if something had caught in his throat.

  She raised her skirt and took some money from her stocking. He gulped his drink and went back to the game. The heat made him sick and the room began to blur. When he’d lost the ten he started to leave but he felt too sick. He staggered back to the kitchen. Without realizing how it had happened he felt Veeny’s body in his arms. Her face was blurred. All he could see were her huge glassy eyes. He felt her tongue move across his lips, search his nostrils, then dart between his teeth down into his mouth like a small, wet flame.

  “I want a drink first,” he begged.

  He remembered vaguely
bending over the sink to vomit. She was holding him about the waist. His next conscious thought was on awakening. Sunlight on the tan window shades filled the room with a soft yellow glow. He noticed the short black hairs on Veeny’s arm, against the yellow pallor of her skin. Her arm had a dead look, as if it were just beginning to decay, he thought. Then his gaze moved upward and he saw the dark embossed scar about her throat. He felt shock pour over him.

  “I got to go,” he said, trying frantically to escape.

  She pulled him back toward her. “You were too drunk to do anything last night.”

  He looked down at the dull yellow composition of her breasts, trying to avoid her eyes. “I know, but I got to go,” he said hysterically. “I’m late now. I got to go.”

  “Take me,” she said.

  He jerked free of her. His head seemed to split open with pain. “Goddammit, I got to go!” he shouted. “Suppose Dave came in and caught me.”

  She gave him a peculiar look. “He’s been here already, baby.”

  He felt suddenly caught in something he didn’t understand. “He was?” He felt defiled, as if he had debased himself, as if he had wallowed in pollution. But the lust surged back into him until his blood pounded. The conflict of lust and revulsion held him, he shivered with a sudden chill. The splitting headache of his hangover blinded him. He let her force him and gave in. The touch of her skin was like death. He spent himself uncontrollably over her legs and the bed.

  She said, “Oh, goddammit,” in a strange aching wail.

  He fled to the other room, found his clothes and dressed, and ran out of the house. It was past noon, too late to go and help his father. He went downtown to a show, but became so ill he had to leave. He went home. His compensation check had come that morning, but he was too sick to go out and cash it. He undressed and went to bed. When his father came in he awakened.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get over to help you, Dad. I went to see Mother and stayed for the night,” he lied.

  “That’s all right, son. Just take care of yourself.”

  His father undressed and got into bed, opened a magazine and lit a cigarette. Charles got up and dressed.