The Third Generation (6 page)

He jumped to his feet, shouting with rage and frustration, “And you’re a yellow bitch who thinks she’s better than God Himself!”

Upstairs the children lay quiet and listened, scarcely breathing. They trembled with fear and hurt.

Mrs. Taylor looked up at her husband scornfully. “Better than you at least. You don’t even want it better for your own children. What kind of father are you?”

“Confound it, woman, I’ve taken your nagging and bickering for twelve years, and I’m through!”

“Then get out! I’m sick of the sight of you. Go! Get out! Go to your Mrs. Douglas. That’s where you’ve been going with whatever money you can beg and scrape together!”

“That’s a lie!” he shouted. “That’s a foul, vicious lie!”

The blood came up hot in her face. “Don’t you call me a liar!” she cried, standing to confront him. “You black devil! You’re the most depraved, despicable liar that was ever born.”

They were leaning forward toward each other with their faces jutting and their hands clenched. Their eyes were hot with hatred and their voices screamed and lashed back and forth. The listening children shuddered and prayed for them to stop.

“Woman, take that back!” he demanded threateningly. “If you don’t take back that dirty lie FU—”

“You yellow cur. If you touch me I’ll have you arrested. You make this house filthy with your presence.”

“Then get out of it!” he roared. “It’s my house. I pay the bills. Shut up or get out!”

“I will get out,” she declared, drawing herself up. “If it hadn’t been for the children I’d have been gone long ago. Don’t think I stayed because of you. I hate you! I hate all of you dirty, deceiving, conniving Taylors! You and your cabin brood. Yes, I hate you, you black despicable nigger!” Her eyes brimmed with tears of rage and impotence.

Overcome with fury he slapped her. She drew back, her face hardening and her mouth becoming thin and set. Without saying another word she clutched her shawl tightly about her shoulders and left the house. She walked swiftly to the nearest police station and swore out a warrant for his arrest, charging him with criminal assault. The two officers who accompanied her to serve the warrant tried to act as peacemakers. It seemed a shame to have to arrest one of the teachers of the colored college as if he was a common nigger wife-beater from down in the bottoms. But she was adamant. He was taken under arrest. The children peered around the upstairs banisters, whimpering and trembling in terror, as he was taken away. She sent them back to bed and took up a lonely vigil in the living room, nursing her outraged feelings.

Professor Taylor was released on his own recognizance. But he refused to spend another night under the same roof with his wife and packed his valise and left. She didn’t know where he went, and she told herself she didn’t care.

Fearful of the story creating a scandal, reflecting on the college, the magistrate postponed the hearing. But the story leaked out and created a scandal after all.

Mrs. Taylor went about with a tight mouth and a strained frightening look in her eyes. The children were afraid of her. Tom was too ashamed to go to school. She let him stay home that day, but the next she packed him off.

Meanwhile she sent telegrams to her sisters and brothers in the South, asking them for money so she could leave her husband. But they were loath to interfere in a family quarrel. They didn’t want to be accused of encouraging her to leave her husband. Nor did they want the responsibility of her and the children. Had she shown up with the children they would have taken her in; but they wouldn’t send her money to leave. She had no money of her own. She felt trapped and abandoned. But her determination to make her husband suffer hardened all the more because of it.

Soon the scandal grew to such proportions the college president had to take a hand. He persuaded Mrs. Taylor to withdraw her charge, and advised Professor Taylor to return home. They worked out a truce. For the sake of the children she would live with him, but never again as his wife. He moved into the room with Tom. She spoke to him only when necessary. The atmosphere was charged with strife and dissension and the children lived in constant fear. She worried about them and tried to act natural when they were about. But she hated her husband with such deadly fury, more for the allusion to her parents than for his striking her, that she was always on edge. How dare he cast slurs on her parents, she thought. He wasn’t good enough to mention their names.

Again they became ostracized. There was no choice left Professor Taylor but to resign and seek another post. When the school term ended they prepared to leave. He hadn’t told her when they were going and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking. Rarely did she even look at him.

He left a week in advance to prepare their house. She engaged a crew of warehousemen and supervised the packing, all the while unaware of their destination. Not until she received his letter, containing the tickets and instructions for freighting the furniture, did she learn his position was in Mississippi. Had she possessed the means to support her children she would have refused to go. But she had no choice. Closing her mouth in a grim tight line, she prepared to leave. He had won this time, but her time would come. She would put up with him until she could get away. She wouldn’t let him have the children. Where the children went, she would go.

4

I
T WAS DUSK OF A
long spring day when they finally arrived at the railroad station where Professor Taylor was to meet them. The train pulled to a stop beside a dilapidated wooden platform. Mrs. Taylor and the children peered through the windows.

Across a level patch of yellow mud stood a false-fronted general store. In lieu of a porch there were two wooden benches on which sat several long-haired white men, clad in faded and patched blue denim overalls, leaning back against the wall. They sat slumped in an indolent mobility, their faces rock red in the strange yellow light, still eyes staring balefully at the resting train, like figures of a long forgotten race carved by a demented sculptor in bas-relief. Two rickety wagons with teams of bony mules, both mules and wagons caught, it seemed, in attitudes of utter lethargy, were hitched to the slanting posts. A single hack with a team of fat gray mules, incongruous with the surrounding scene, was tied to the station platform.

There was no sign of her husband. Her heart sank. At that moment she felt as close to defeat as she ever had. Slowly she began collecting their luggage.

The brakeman came into the Jim-Crow coach to hurry them. And suddenly Professor Taylor was there, smiling at the brakeman to soothe his feelings, and trying to quiet Mrs. Taylor’s alarms.

“Now, honey, now, honey, just let me handle things.”

The baby boys rushed up and hugged him about the legs.

“My boys, my boys,” he said, patting them fondly on their heads and lifting each in turn to kiss him. “My little boys.”

They had been frightened but now they were reassured.

The brakeman recognized him as one of the teachers from the Negro college by the fact he wore a suit with a collar and tie. “Thass all right, fess,” he said indulgently.

Professor Taylor shook hands with Tom, patting him on the shoulder. And then he turned after an instant of hesitation and kissed his wife. At that moment Mrs. Taylor wanted him to kiss her. She had been without sleep for two days and was exhausted and dispirited. If only for the moment, she had to put her trust in him; she couldn’t carry on without help any longer.

In a short time he had them off the train. Tom helped with the luggage. The brakeman waved. The train began to move. They piled the luggage in the hack. Across the street the row of lookers moved, leaned forward, but only the ears of the drooping mules flickered with brief life.

The hack contained three hard wooden seats, one behind the other, covered by a crude wooden top. Professor Taylor sat in the front seat, flanked by the two baby boys, while Mrs. Taylor and Tom sat behind. He picked up the reins and flipped them lightly across the dull gray backs of the mules. The team turned in the dirt square and headed away from town.

Beside the road were fields of corn already at full height, like rows of dark green sentinels in the soft dusk. No one spoke. They could hear the gentle rustle of the cornstalks in the faint breeze. Beyond a grove of white pines a purple-orange cloud hung in the darkening sky. It had rained recently and the hoofs of the mules made suction sounds in the muddy road. The iron-tired wheels swished faintly in the mud.

An atmosphere of serenity enveloped them. Mrs. Taylor dozed, too tired to take notice. Tom stared about him with bewilderment. He felt a vague sense of foreboding. William was soothed by the peaceful scene. But Charles was enthralled. The strange quiet beauty of the long green fields drew him into a state of enchantment. He loved each new sight passionately, the smell of the mud and the mules, the pine spires in the purple sky, the softly sighing corn. It was as tangible and friendly and as wonderful to him as his mother’s breast.

The road turned and crossed a stream, the iron tires rattling the loose boards. Then slowly, at first imperceptibly, the road began to sink. The countryside rose higher; corn gave way to green rows of cotton; the banks closed in and the road became narrower. Soon the bank was as high as their heads, and then it was over the top of the hack, cutting off the light. They moved like a boat down a shallow river of darkness beneath a narrow roof of fading twilight. As the road deepened, roots of huge trees sprang naked from the banks like horrible reptilian monsters. Now high overhead the narrow strip of purple sky turned slowly black, and it became black-dark in the deep sunken road.

The mules moved down the tunnel of darkness with sure-footed confidence as if they had eyes for the night. They knew the road home. Professor Taylor tied the reins to the dashboard and gave them their head. It was so dark he couldn’t see his hand before his eyes. The black sky was starless. As they moved along the old sunken road the dense odor of earth and stagnation and rotting underbrush and age reached out from the banks and smothered them. It was a lush, clogging odor compounded of rotten vegetation, horse manure, poisonous nightshades and unchanged years. Soldiers of the Confederacy had walked this road on such a night following the fall of Vicksburg, heading for the nearby canebrakes.

The little children huddled fearfully against their father. Even Mrs. Taylor was frightened by the unrelieved darkness. Nearby an owl hooted. She gave a start. She felt as if they were coming to the end of the earth. In the distance a hound howled, the long lonesome sound hanging endlessly in the thick night. The road was like a canyon deep in the bowels of the earth, away from all life.

Finally the little children went to sleep. Tom nodded beside his mother. Professor Taylor talked desultorily, but Mrs. Taylor did not reply. She held herself rigid against the surrounding phantoms. After what seemed an eternity the road came again to the surface of the countryside and the landscape stretched out in a faint visibility. But it yielded only vague silhouettes.

They arrived at the college in the dark. The children were sleeping. They stopped before a white picket fence. Beyond, in the shadows, stood the dim outline of a two-storied house. Professor Taylor lifted down the tots. They awakened and whimpered in the strange darkness. Tom jumped to the ground and helped his mother to alight. They went in a group up the uneven walk and entered the strange house.

A fire burned low in the front living room. Their own furniture had not arrived and the room looked huge with its few pieces of homemade furniture. Mrs. Taylor went into the kitchen to warm some food for the children. But the old wood-burning stove was cold. Professor Taylor offered to build a fire, but she declined.

He went after the luggage. And then he had to return the hack and team to the college stables and walk the mile home in the dark. In the meantime she gave the children cold milk and took them up to bed. There were four bedrooms upstairs, barrenly furnished with old iron be straw mattresses and crude pine stands, each holding a pitcher of water and a washbasin. It was a cheerless reception. She felt that Professor Taylor should have had someone there to look after things. Without waiting for him she selected a room and went to bed, trying to stave off thoughts of tomorrow. She knew it would take all of her resources to cope with this frightening wilderness.

Professor Taylor returned to the darkened house to find all of them in bed. He was disappointed. He had hoped for a moment to talk with his wife and reach some kind of reconciliation. For a long time he stood in the darkness of the living room before the dying fire. It was oppressively hot. He’d built it to add cheerfulness to the barren house, not because it was needed in the hot Mississippi night. But it had been the wrong thing. He should have built a kitchen fire. Finally he went upstairs and entered the empty room. His wife could have her own room if that was the way she wanted it. At least he had his sons.

In her own room down the hall she heard him moving about. She was frightened and lonely. Had he come to her then she would have welcomed him. She needed him then. Her spirit was at its lowest ebb. She needed a husband to give her strength.

But the bright sunshine of a new day streaming through the curtainless windows across her bed made quite a difference. Even at that early hour she felt its heat penetrating her skin like rays of energy. New life came into her weary bones; her spirits lifted. She heard the children yelling downstairs, and screeching excitedly in an orgy of discovery. She arose and washed in the basin. Then she dressed and went down to the primitive kitchen to prepare their breakfast. A fire was burning hotly and the grits were already cooking. A shy, young, very black girl was setting the table. At Mrs. Taylor’s entry she looked up and smiled. She had the long beautiful face with the full mouth, sloe eyes and classical symmetry of the pure African.

“Good mawnin’, Miz Taylor. Fess Taylor got me tuh come in an’ hep. Ah woulda been heah las’ night but Ah din know when y’all wuz comin’.” Her voice was soft and melodic, humming-like, almost as if she was singing the words. Her large, strong hands with the long, spatulate fingers moved slightly in a gesture of reassurance, as if she knew what the older woman was experiencing and wished to comfort her. “You jes tell me w’ut you want done. Mah name is Lizzie,” she added.