The Third Generation (11 page)

“A lady got run over right here,” he said. Then he looked at Charles queerly.

“You’ve forgotten I was there,” Tom replied.

“Chuck was lookin’ right at her,” William persisted. “Blood was comin’ all out of her mouth—”

“Hush!” his mother cried. “Hush this minute or I’ll slap you.”

“Now, honey,” their father began placatingly, but she wouldn’t let him speak.

“We won’t discuss it now.”

The little children subsided into silence. Charles looked off into the distance.

Tom was eaten up with curiosity. “What’s it all about?”

“Charles doesn’t like to hear about it.”

Soon they came to the top of the hill, and Tom waved merrily to Edith Patterson working in her flower garden. She dropped her hoe and ran into the house to tell her parents that Tom was back.

But he was very grown-up in his relations with the young folk his own age. He refused to play such childish games as tag, and only on occasion would he condescend to play baseball or go fishing with the boys. Each family tried to outdo the other entertaining him. He enjoyed the picnics and the parties, although he tried to act indifferent. On the eve of Independence Day he had his mother give a garden party such as his Aunt Lou had given for her daughter, and it became the talk of the college.

He was very devoted to his mother that summer. It was like a part in a play that he had learned in school. She was ecstatic with happiness and grew strangely youthful. She lavished affection and attention on him, and wore her prettiest things for him. She wore her hair up to please him and carried dainty parasols. Sometimes they were as gay as lovers.

All that winter she’d worried for fear the Harts would alienate his affection. And now she’d won him back. Whatever the outcome of their precarious existence, she felt she could depend on Tom to remain true to her. She had no doubt that he would make something worthwhile out of himself; he was so sure and positive in his manner. She wanted him to become a doctor but he hadn’t decided as yet. But she was certain he would choose a calling of distinction. As for herself, it seemed that she was caught. She seemed to have lost her initiative; she found it quite impossible to take an adamant stand and leave her husband as she’d once planned. She doubted if she’d ever have the strength to leave him now. She’d have to sacrifice for the sake of her children. But she felt confident that someday Tom would grow up and, like a knight in shining armor, rescue his mother from her fate.

He returned to Cleveland that fall. Before he left she talked to him again in private.

“You must never forget, my son, that your grandfather was a United States Senator and you are a direct descendant of a famous United States President and of a great Confederate General—and don’t you let anyone ever tell you differently.”

Again he was embarrassed by her strange intensity and confusing claims. But he promised to be true to her.

8

M
RS. TAYLOR TAUGHT THE CHILDREN FOR
five years. They learned easily, and without effort. William was the slower, but he was conscientious and far less trouble because he was obedient. Charles was bright but mercurial. Both boys had sprung up like weeds and now there seemed little difference in their ages. Their color had darkened beneath the hot Mississippi sun and the humid climate had kinked their hair unmanageably. During the summers they wore their heads shaved clean in the fashion of the students. Many of the natives shaved their skulls but they were mostly grownups.

The students of unmixed African ancestry had elongated, egg-shaped skulls, and the square, flat-backed heads of the Taylor children drew their derision.

“Whereat you tadpoles get yo’ heads?” one asked.

“They pa made em in his blacksmith shop,” another teased.

The children were furious. “I’m gonna tell my papa,” William cried with rage.

Charles ran up and spat at them. “Bastards!” he screamed. “Bastards! Bastards!”

“Doan you call me no basta’d, li’l ol’ boy.”

Charles kicked him on the shin. The student tussled with him, half-jokingly, holding him at arm’s length. “De hammer slipped an’ yo’ pa done knocked yo’ head so flat you got pancake brains.”

“Confound bastard!” Charles screamed. “Confound bastard!”

The student threw him down and ran off laughing.

William told his father. Professor Taylor laughed and said it didn’t matter; the fellows were just jealous of their heads.

He was an open and natural child, and when hurt went crying to his parents. He told them everything that happened and sought their approval and affection. Charles was stubborn and secretive. When their mother sought the truth she went to William.

Both had a wild, animal love of the outdoors. They roamed the fields like hunting hounds. There was always something new to be found. They never tired of the wonder of the countryside. Often they disobeyed their parents and went into the deep woods where there was danger of being injured by the wild hogs, “loco” steers and poisonous snakes. No one would know where they were. Their parents took to whipping them quite frequently then, trying to restrain this wildness in their nature. Their father used his razor strap, but Mrs. Taylor made them cut fresh green switches from the trees. William screamed bloody murder when he was whipped. The neighbors, hearing him, thought Mrs. Taylor was unreasonably cruel to her children. But Charles never cried. He gritted his teeth in silence. This made his mother whip him all the harder. Her mouth closed in a grim straight line and her deep-set eyes blazed as she lit into him. And his little mouth tightened and his eyes hardened as he faced her in silence. The grim, white-faced woman and the defiant brown boy looked a great deal alike at such times, and the intensity of their emotion for each other was overpowering. Charles loved his mother heartbreakingly, and yet he hated her. And her love for him was agonizing. She ofttimes beat him unmercifully seeking to control his will. But he stood up to her and never gave in. They tore at each other’s heartstrings, hurting each other terribly. Between them raged this love and hatred which never cooled.

Mrs. Taylor rarely kissed her youngest son. All of his intense emotion poured out through his kiss and she was shocked by her own passionate response. She didn’t want to favor one child above the others. He was a beautiful child with perfect rose-tan features and deep dimples when he smiled. His dark brown eyes were deep-set like her own, but large and very clear. They were fringed by long black shiny lashes that curled upward. Each time his mother looked at him she could see in his shockingly beautiful face the girl she had waited when he was born. But he was the most uncontrollably violent of all her children.

Sometimes she let Charles brush her long silky hair. He loved the feel of it on his hands and face. He brushed with long hard strokes until it crackled and sparked.

“It’s sparking, Mother!” he cried. “It’s sparking. I’m gonna turn out the light so I can see it spark.”

Laughingly she indulged him. Afterwards he picked up bits of paper with the magnetized comb.

“Lookit, Mother. Lookit.”

He loved to watch the quick soft motion of her arms when she plaited her hair: they were firm and white as if carved from ivory. Sometimes she let him file her nails. He fashioned gently rounded points of which he was inordinately proud.

“Aren’t they pretty, Mother? Didn’ I do a good job?”

“You did them very nicely, darling.”

As a girl Mrs. Taylor had been proud of her tiny feet. But she’d worn shoes too small for her and had developed bunions. She was quite ashamed of them, and sometimes they pained her terribly. Then Charles sat before her on the floor and, taking each foot in turn, massaged them with a strange tenderness. He was infinitely patient with her and slowly, gently rubbed in the ointment until the pain disappeared.

“Does it feel better now, Mother?”

Her love became so intense she was afraid to look at him. “Yes, darling, the pain’s all gone. Now you run along and play with William.”

William was never jealous of his little brother. But oft-times he felt neglected and would go and put his head in his mother’s lap and she would stroke it gently.

Their parents fought a great deal during that time. Hearing their screaming voices, followed by the sounds of scuffling, Charles would crawl to the head of the stairs and crouch, trembling in rage and fear. He didn’t hate his father. But when his parents quarreled he wanted to cut off his father’s head with the chopping axe. He felt violently protective toward his mother.

Both children had a complete disregard for physical injury. They were always hurting themselves. Although their father had cautioned them countless times, they’d stand barefoot on the blocks they were splitting. Once William almost chopped off his foot. A half-hour later Charles was back doing the same thing. The difference was his defiance. He challenged danger. He rolled down rocky cliffs as if his body was made of wagon wheels. If he got a few cuts on the face and skinned his hands and knees it didn’t matter. Their knees and elbows were always a mass of iodine-colored scabs. Their mother was constantly worried for fear one of them would lose an eye or limb. Charles was balancing a sharpened hoe on his shoulder and it fell and cut his Achilles tendon. A delicate operation was required to join it together. But even then he refused to stay indoors. His mother ordered crutches from Memphis and he went hopping about. They loved the crutches and played with them long after he was well.

Their father built a rope swing on the branch of an oak tree in the back pasture. Singly, each of them could loop the loop, but they had to try it double. They fell too short from the top of the turn and struck their heads against the limb.

“You’ll have to take down that swing, Mr. Taylor,” their mother said at supper. “The children are going to kill themselves.”

“Now what’ve they done this time, honey?”

“They’re not satisfied with just swinging; they want to be acrobats.”

“They’re just boys,” he began. “Just Daddy’s—”

“They’re going to be dead, and it’ll be you that killed them,” she said harshly. “If you don’t take that swing down the first thing in the morning I’m going to send for Clefus and have him chop down that tree.”

“Now, honey, I’ll move it where it’ll be safer.”

But he forgot about it. The next afternoon Charles fell trying to somersault on a backwards swing and struck his head on an old iron hitching block concealed in the grass. He was knocked unconscious. Lizzie and a passing student carried him to the hospital, with his mother trailing in the dust behind. X-rays revealed he had suffered a brain concussion. Mrs. Taylor attacked her husband like a tigress when he arrived at the hospital. She scratched his face and screamed at him while the students tried to hold her.

“You want to murder them!” she cried. “You want to kill them, then you’ll have me all alone so you can kill me too.”

“Confound it, woman, control yourself!” he shouted back at her. “He’s my son just as much as he is yours!”

Charles lay in a nearby room near death. William stood in the corner, cowed and humiliated. Dr. Wiley and his students were painfully embarrassed.

“Now Professor, now Mrs. Taylor, you’re both just upset—”

“You murderer!” Mrs. Taylor screamed. “You want to kill all of us!”

“Now hold her arm,” Dr. Wiley instructed his assistants. “Now everything’s going to be all right, Mrs. Taylor.” And he gave her an injection. “Now if you’ll just lie down a while.”

She fought them like a wild woman.

“Now Lillian, honey, now honey—”

“Take her to a room,” the doctor ordered.

The black students were loath to struggle with this wild-eyed, white-faced woman.

“Here, give me a hand, Professor.”

Finally they got her to bed.

The next day they brought Charles home. But his mother was determined to take them away.

“If it hadn’t been that it’ve been something else,” their father argued. “The boys have to have some outlet. You keep them cooped up like laying hens. You won’t let them go to school like other children. You think they’re too good to play with the country boys their age. They never go anywhere unless they slip off. They have to have something to do.”

“They don’t have to kill themselves,” she contended unrelentingly, her mouth grim and determined.

“We’ll just have to watch them closer.”

“Watch them!” she cried. “That’s all I’ve done. God knows, I’ve tried. But they’re becoming savage. I’m not going to stand for it. I’m taking them back to civilization.”

“I’ve got something to say about that,” he challenged. “They’re my boys too.”

“They won’t be yours for long,” she said. “I’m going to divorce you, Mr. Taylor.”

“You might divorce me, honey,” he replied with maddening calm. “But you’re not going to take these boys one step out of my house.”

“That we shall see,” she said, her eyes glinting dangerously.

Age and worry and discontent and too much crying had affected her eyelids so that they looked like dead brown skin laced with tiny veins; and when she was angry they dropped half-closed, giving her a particularly malevolent look.

But her husband wasn’t cowed. “We shall see,” he said.

She packed a bag and went to Vicksburg to consult a white attorney. She was told she had no grounds for a divorce.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Madam,” the attorney said. “You have a fine husband, an intelligent man, a good provider, and according to you he’s been faithful. But you want to divorce him so you can leave Mississippi. Madam, I think you are color-struck, and in this instance your husband has all my sympathy.”

She never told anyone the outcome of her interview, but afterwards she said no more of getting a divorce.

Charles was glad. He loved it there; he loved the sights and smells and seasons. He loved the hot dry summers and the rainy falls. He never saw a wagon wheel churning in the hub-deep mud without feeling all inside him the aching hurt of death. Winter was like that, like the ecstasy of pain. His mother whipping him out of her love for him and his love for her aching inside of him with the pain, their love unable to come through the hard bleakness of their hate—was like death. Winter was like death. He loved to play dead, falling in a pretended faint and lying immobile on the ground, feeling the embrace of the earth, its closeness and its chill. Several times he frightened his mother out of her wits. She knew he had never gotten over seeing the woman crushed beneath the wagon wheels, and she was always terribly afraid for him.