The Third Generation (29 page)

“All right, Tiger Flowers.” That was the name of a great colored prizefighter.

Charles sniggered. But inwardly he felt ashamed and cheapened by his boastful lying. There was one part of himself that wanted to share confidences with his friend, and another part that shrank from revealing any of his inner emotions. It was as if he felt his inner life would in some way be defiled. As a consequence his talk was shallow and boastful, his accounts juvenile and false.

If he could have confessed how terrified he’d been after he’d hit the rowdy; and how afterwards he’d become so excited he could scarcely breathe; and how, strangely, this taut excitement had titillated, making him feel strong and powerful as a person and invincible as a lover; or spoken truthfully of kissing Delia in the taxi—“We swapped tongues and she was so hot I could have made her promise if I’d insisted. She would have then. But I was scared to ask. I’ve never asked a girl for that. I’ve never had a girl. Do you think she would have?”—he would have been vastly relieved of all his torturing frustrations. But he couldn’t relate the things he felt. He kept it all bottled up inside himself. He’d never confessed to any of his friends that he’d never experienced sexual intercourse. He felt it was a stigma. To cover up he boasted of the girls he’d had, often giving them bad reputations by the lies he told about them. Afterwards he was ashamed and remorseful. But he couldn’t help it.

Early that morning, after the friends had gone to sleep, the Hanson family, father and mother and two sons, called at the house and demanded that Charles be sent out to them. Dick’s nose had been broken and he’d claimed that Charles had struck him with a piece of iron. The Hansons ran a trucking business; the older son, Heavy, had been a prizefighter, and the father was a powerfully built man known as a bully throughout the neighborhood. They felt intolerably mortified that anyone would dare attack a member of their family. Their prestige was at stake. For hours they’d been hunting Charles like vigilantes, going from house to house of all the club members. The father had a shotgun.

Mr. Shoemaker, Harvard’s uncle, denied that Charles was there. The Hansons demanded to search the house. The father threatened to shoot off the lock. The Shoemakers had no telephone and there was no way they could summon aid. Mrs. Shoemaker peered from the darkened curtains, faint with fright. The sinister clan milled about on the porch. But Mr. Shoemaker refused to let them enter.

“I tell you, neither of the boys is here. Harvard had to go out of town to see his mother. She’s sick. He caught the midnight bus. And Charles went on home.”

“Where does that fellow live?” Heavy demanded.

“I don’t know. Way out somewhere. Harvard knows but I’ve never asked him. Now I wish you folks would leave. My wife is sick and you’ll make her hysterical.”

Finally the Hansons became convinced and reluctantly went away. The boys hadn’t awakened. For a long time the elders sat debating whether they should rouse Charles and send him home. But they were afraid the Hansons might still be lurking outside.

At breakfast they told the boys what had happened. They sat huddled in the kitchen behind drawn shades, held in the grip of terror. By the light of day the experience became all the more frightening.

“They’re maniacs,” Mrs. Shoemaker said. “George, you should go out and notify the police this instant.”

But he was loath to antagonize the Hansons. “The first thing to do is get Charles home,” he said. “I’ll walk down the street and see if the coast is clear.”

When he returned Harvard accompanied Charles to the streetcar stop. The friends walked in tense silence, searching every nook and cranny with frightened eyes. Charles hunched his shoulders deep into his coat as if to hide. Both of them sighed with relief when the streetcar came into sight. They shook hands solemnly as if parting for the I time.

It was the outlaw quality of the Hansons’ act which terrified Charles most. He was afraid should he meet them on the street by accident they’d begin beating and shooting him without a word. And there was no one to protect him. He couldn’t tell his parents. His mother would have gone straight to the Hansons and demanded an explanation. He was afraid they might actually injure her. And his father was such a puny man to stand up against such bruisers. Since they’d left the southern colleges he’d never thought of his father as such a mighty man. He never dreamed of asking his father’s protection from anything.

For a time he kept off Cedar Avenue. And then one day as he was coming from the Y, a strong hand gripped his arm.

“Now I got you, you little son of a bitch!” Heavy Hanson exulted.

He was taken to the Hansons’ house as if under arrest and held a prisoner in the parlor until the clan assembled. They tried him as if they were a court. Charles stood before them, pleading for his life, it seemed.

“You know I didn’t hit him with any piece of iron. You think I’d carry a piece of iron in my tuxedo pocket?”

Dick wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I thought it was a piece of iron. It must have been.”

His mother looked at him scornfully. She was a sagging, heavy woman with hair like the Medusa and an ugly mouth marred from dipping snuff. “If you don’t beat this bastard I’m gonna make your brother beat you,” she threatened.

“I’ll beat him,” Dick muttered. He was the weakling of the lot.

Heavy turned on Charles. “You gotta fight Dick.”

“I’ll fight him,” Charles muttered.

“I can’t fight until my nose gets well,” Dick said.

“Then you gotta fight me,” Heavy said to Charles.

“You?” Charles’s heart sank.

“Let Dick fight ‘im,” the father said. “He’s the one claims the boy hit ‘im with a pipe.”

“He oughta be flogged first anyway,” the mother said.

Charles felt in the grip of a nightmare.

It was finally decided the boys would fight one afternoon on the playground as soon as Dick’s nose was healed. Heavy took Charles to the door and cuffed him on the head. He ran down the stairs, limp as a rag. For several weeks he could still see the old lady’s sadistic eyes. He was in a state of terror, jumping at the slightest touch. But worst of all was the dark, ugly blot on the memory of his first formal dance. The two were bound together, the triumphant ecstasy of the dance and the ugly aftermath of being hunted like a beast, and he could never think of one without the other. Afterwards a cloud of apprehension shadowed every social event. He remained wary of the Hansons for a long time. But nothing ever happened. He never learned how Dick got out of fighting him.

Delia became his girl. They were invited to several formal dances. He enjoyed taking her. But there was always this shadow of apprehension, distorting their relationship. He tried desperately to act protective and suffered agony when older men were too pointedly attentive. He wanted her to think of him as a great man of the world, but always underneath was this fear she would discover he was cowardly and weak. He was certain that he loved her deeply and developed a possessiveness that stifled her.

“You shouldn’t dance so much with John Webb,” he’d say angrily. “He’s too old.”

“I do just because he’s good. Chuck. He’s the best dancer here.”

He winced with humiliation. “He’s just showing off. You know all he wants.”

“He isn’t. He’s nice,” she defended. “And he’s not so old. He’s just a senior at Reserve.”

It infuriated him. “That’s old enough. And anyway, who brought you?”

“You don’t own me,” she snapped.

“All right,” he said crossly. “Go on and make a fool out of yourself. Everybody’s talking already.”

“But you want me to have a good time, don’t you, Chuck?” she said contritely.

He melted. “All right. But anyway, this one’s mine.”

Sometimes, after a show, when they sat together in an ice cream parlor, he’d say such sophisticated things as: “Don’t you think two people should have sex experiences before they marry? I mean with each other.” Sometimes she’d give him a shy, up-from-under look and murmur something incoherently. And he’d feel quite mature and self-assured.

But often she’d giggle suddenly and completely disconcert him.

On walking down the street he’d insist, “After all, we both want it.”

But when they sat panting in the darkened parlor he couldn’t say the words. They’d sit and talk of this and that, listening for the parents in the kitchen. The Lanes were very lenient toward their daughter and trusted her implicitly. Charles didn’t know that Delia talked quite freely with her mother. And she’d promised solemnly never to give herself away.

“Always keep your legs pressed tight together,” had been her mother’s sage advice. “And when you can’t stand it go take a drink of water.”

When finally the parents went to bed he’d say, “Gimme a slobber.” Or he’d chant the lyric:

Gimme a little kiss, will ya—huh

Oh gee—oh gosh—I’m begging for a kiss…

“Here,” she’d say, puckering up her lips.

He’d turn out the light and they’d snuggle closely, groping for each other. They put their tongues in each other’s mouths until their lips were wet with saliva. But she wouldn’t let him feel her legs. Shortly he’d be frantic, and quite often he became violent, gripping her savagely. The sweet musk scent rising from her body tantalized him and he felt driven crazily through space like a stray leaf in a high gale. But at those moments he could never ask. They struggled silently, he trying to make her yield and she resisting, as desperately as persons fighting for their lives. Yet there were rules constraining both, more felt than realized. Both knew he couldn’t take unless she gave. Mutely he tried to make her yield, to have her pant, “Yes! Yes!” because he could never ask. This she knew. It made the game all the more exciting because she kept control. Strangely, both liked it more than they would have the real thing.

They went together until the Christmas holidays. Then she went to a dance with John Webb. Charles never spoke to her after that. He didn’t call; didn’t write. She wrote and asked to see him. He didn’t answer. They met at a dance. She rushed forward and greeted him. Tears brimmed in her eyes. He wouldn’t look at her. He turned and walked away. It was always his last resort—
to hell with it!

He had learned to do this during the first months following his brother’s accident. He had developed a credo:
No matter how hurt you are, if you don’t think about it, it can’t hurt
. It helped him over many a painful situation. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. The hurt was always there, big and deep. But sometimes the hard quality of his rejection refused it recognition.

20

C
HARLES GRADUATED THAT JANUARY
. The house was filled with fuss and excitement all during the preceding week. He’d taken the lovely colored girl in his class to the Senior Prom, held in a fashionable hotel. His mother had been so proud she’d purchased a dozen of the pictures taken there and sent them to all her friends and relatives in the South. His father bought him a new blue suit for graduation. But somehow it didn’t touch him. He’d seen commencements all his life. This didn’t seem any different. He was just completing high school. Why all the fuss and bother? He attended the exercises with a remote nonchalance, slightly contemptuous of his parents’ nervous excitement.

“Relax, Mother, all I’m going to do is graduate from high school,” he said when it came time to leave them and join his class.

She held him tightly for a moment. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

He sat with the others on the stage of the auditorium, listening to the impassioned speeches with complete indifference. Out in the sea of white faces he located those of his parents and his brother and felt their excitement even from that distance. Inside he was cold as ice.

But when his name was called, and he walked forward, and the principal placed the roll of parchment tied with blue and gold ribbon in his hand, he caught fire. It was as if a miracle had happened. He flamed with one of those rare moments which bring a sense of fulfillment, and felt a confidence beyond all his wildest dreams. In some strange and indefinable manner his earth had steadied. As he walked rigidly to his seat, holding the diploma tightly in his hand, he felt he could do anything he should ever hope to do.

His mother cried. She’d lived so long in tight anxiety for fear of his doing something beyond redemption, now her very bones seemed to melt in vast relief. He’d made it, she thought. At last he’d made it. There had been so many times she’d doubted if he ever would.

William beat him on the back. His father kept saying over and over, “Now, son. Now, son,” shaking his head as when greatly moved.

“There’s nothing to stop you now,” his mother said. “You mustn’t let Mother down, son.”

“I won’t,” he promised, deeply touched by the flow of their emotion. “I won’t. I couldn’t.” He was always touched by extravagant emotion.

His confidence was contagious. It affected all of them. His parents renewed their hope in it. As long as he progressed, their own future could never die. In the past, while he was growing up, his future had been held within their lives. Now theirs was caught in his. Each night his mother prayed fervently to God to keep his ambition burning, to hold him steadily on the path.

Neither would acknowledge to themselves how greatly they depended on him. Now, after nearly a quarter-century of marriage, he was all they had. They couldn’t admit it even to themselves. But his position in the household changed. They catered to him in a number of minor ways.

He realized it and came to feel a great responsibility toward them. He had reached that delicate stage of first maturity where every son feels honor-bound to make his parents proud of him. It was a new emotion, affecting him strangely. He saw sharply the gray in his father’s hair, his old, seamed face, now fading to a saddle color; he saw the deep lines about his mother’s eyes, how the flesh had sagged down from her high cheekbones, making her jaws more pronounced, squarer. Her lips had thinned and her eyes had become sunken, the lids age-lowered, so that their steady glint was almost baleful. With advancing age her face had taken such a great sternness as to appear mean. He was stricken with pity for them. Once as he tenderly brushed her hair he felt an impulse to cry, “Don’t grow old, Mama. Please don’t grow old.” He yearned to make some great sacrifice to bring back youth to her face.