The Third Generation

by Chester B Himes

  Frightened and chagrined, he fled down the street and crept to bed. But he couldn’t sleep for thinking about girls. He didn’t know why he was so unpopular. It disturbed him. He felt that he was growing unattractive. And he wanted so desperately to fit himself into this fascinating life. He wanted girls to admire him and desire his company. He couldn’t bear to go unnoticed.

  He asked Harvard Eaton what he used to make his pomp so much more attractive than the others. Harvard said he used a combination of cosmetic and vaseline. Charles bought a stick of black cosmetic and applied it to his hair. The result was a fine patent leather shine.

  That Sunday afternoon he went visiting with the fellows. It was a warm fall day, very pleasant. It affected him with a poignant melancholy he didn’t understand. The small cozy parlor was crowded. Tea was served and young men moped about with narrowed eyes like a strange assortment of sinister sheiks. Their heads glistened like lacquered gourds. The girls sat with their skirts above their knees and their legs tightly pressed together. Their bangs were like pretty painted fans above their flashing eyes and animated faces.

  “Where have you been all my life?” the male talk ran.

  “What’ll I do when you are far from me and I am blue?” the girls countered coyly.

  Conversation was marked by self-conscious pauses. Sudden silences caught the entire group. Then chatter burst out to cover their embarrassment. The young men bantered with each other when they could think of nothing else to say. The girls gossiped among themselves. For the moment the gathering was divided into two camps, male on one side, female on the other, each seemingly striving to ignore the other. Then with a concerted shifting about they rushed together again.

  “Remember the night, the night you said ‘I love you,’” the young man said to his new companion.

  “Remember you promised that you’d forget me not, then you forgot to remember,” she replied.

  Their conversation was made up from quotations from the lyrics of popular songs; without these they couldn’t converse. Cleo sat at the piano. Together they sang:

  Though my dreams are in vain

  My love will remain

  Strolling again. Memory Lane,

  With you.

  From that they went to the rhythmic chant:

  C’llegiate…c’llegiate

  Yes! We are collegiate…

  The mood passed quickly from frenzied jazz to syrupy sentiment. A famous ballad singer with his guitar and sweet, caressing voice had set the nation crying in its cups. It went with bathtub gin and adolescence.

  Through the smoke and flame

  I gotta go where you are…

  Charles kept choked up, on the brim of tears. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. The exigencies of social life filled him with apprehensions.

  It was a lovely party. But the room grew hot and sticky. The cosmetic with which he’d plastered down his hair melted and began to run. Black streaks coursed down his neck and left black blobs on his fresh white collar.

  “Turn around,” Harvard said. “What’s that on your neck?”

  “On my neck?” He dabbed at it with a white handkerchief. It came off black.

  “Little Charley’s hair is running,” Greg said heartlessly.

  The girls giggled. Charles felt the flame burning in his face. He could have gone through the floor.

  “What’d you use, shoe polish?” Greg teased mercilessly.

  Harvard took him to the bathroom and cleaned off some of the mess.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Charles said. “I mixed the cosmetic with vaseline just like you said.”

  “Oh!” A light dawned. “You used black cosmetic. That isn’t the kind. I use white cosmetic. It doesn’t run.”

  Charles couldn’t meet the others’ eyes when he came downstairs.

  “Don’t let it get you down, baby,” Thelma consoled.

  “These other sheiks have accidents with their pomps too.” But the pleasure and excitement had been destroyed for him. At such times he felt peculiarly cursed with misfortune. A twist of circumstance and suddenly he became the ugly duckling. More than all others he yearned to cut a dashing figure. But when the occasion called for pretty speeches he was inarticulate. While others danced he stood apart on two left feet. His bow ties came askew, his hair grease ran; he couldn’t understand just why he exasperated all the pretty girls. He felt a lack of something within himself.

  18

  THAT FALL, ONCE AGAIN, Charles occupied his mother’s thoughts. She reflected how strange it was that he took precedence in her emotions over her other sons. It was as if the umbilical cord still held them joined together. Even at the height of William’s need, and during that poignant time when all her soul had gone to holding Tom, it had never been really severed. And now again it throbbed with blood and worry as she pondered on the problems of his adolescence. He was so impressionable, so easily hurt, she knew. And he found it so hard to adjust to any change.

  She knew that he wasn’t getting along too well in school, that he hadn’t made any friends among the pupils. She wondered if their being white exercised some vague restraint, but she could never bring herself to ask. She visited him often and was pleased to note that he showed interest in the colored youths. She’d been so afraid he’d grow moody and introspective away from William. He seldom talked about the things he did, but Mrs. Robinson kept her informed. From the beginning, Mrs. Robinson had been exceedingly impressed by Mrs. Taylor’s white blood. It was as if, by having such illustrious white forebears, Mrs. Taylor had accomplished so much more than herself. Mrs. Taylor realized this and acted quite superior. Mrs. Robinson wasn’t resentful in the least; she would have been disappointed had Mrs. Taylor acted otherwise. She was obsequious in Mrs. Taylor’s presence and very attentive toward her son. Mrs. Taylor was appreciative and quite relieved that Charles had gotten away from the influence of the Coopers. But yet she knew he needed most of all a home.

  For a time she tried to get him to take piano lessons. Failing in this, she bought tickets to the symphony concerts and made him accompany her. With all her heart she wanted him to become cultured and learn to love the fine things in life. But he didn’t like the concerts. The next time she bought tickets he wouldn’t go.

  “But why, son?” she asked.

  “I just don’t like them.”

  “You don’t have to like them,” she said. “It’s like eating olives—you must cultivate a taste for them.”

  His dislike for the refined and aesthetic offerings of city life was a source of constant disappointment. She attributed it to his father’s blood.

  It was curious, she thought, how, of the two, William, with his handicap, was so much better able to adjust to circumstances and so much more receptive to good influences. He seemed to be getting along splendidly and scarcely ever gave her cause for worry. The young man, Ramsey Douglas, with whom he lived, had become his most devoted friend. Although no academic schools were provided for the blind, the state paid for readers, thus enabling blind children to enroll in the public schools. Ramsey spent hours reading to William from all his textbooks in preparation for his entering school.

  Practically overnight he’d grown into a charming young man, quite different from his younger brother. He was poised in social contacts and talked with ease. No furtive compulsions harassed him in his associations with young women. He was gay and witty and quite frankly liked them all. They found him a wonderful companion, and he’d learned to dance excellently in the short time he’d been away from home. There was always a girl eager to go with him to dancing parties.

  The brothers ran in different circles and seldom met. But whenever William mentioned some happy occasion he’d experienced, Charles felt compelled to boast of his own great successes. Secretly he was awed by his brother’s adjustment to the grown-up world. It was hard for him to fit with ease at any level. It seemed as if there just was no place for him, like the day he went out for football practice.

 
He’d donned a castoff uniform with the others in the locker room. Along with the more intrepid ones, he’d run the three miles to the field where drills were held, only to learn that the varsity lineup was already drawn. He lit a cigarette to prove he didn’t care and the coach put him off the field. He didn’t go to any of the games.

  There was a great deal of extracurricular activity among his classmates that fall. They had undergone a subtle change. They were seniors now, and dignity had been added. Class officers were elected, committees appointed; plans were being drawn for the senior prom. Fierce competition had developed among the honor students. Charles kept aloof, he took no part in anything. He’d never caught the spirit of the school.

  His teachers were nice but uninterested. He could have been an A student with but a little effort, but he wasn’t particular. His teachers gave him B in everything but Latin. He’d never cared for Latin—only for the stories translated into English—and had just managed to pass in Caesar the year before. Now in Cicero he was failing. Several times his teacher kept him after school.

  “I’d hate to see you fail to graduate, Charles,” she said. “If you will just make a little effort. I know you don’t like Latin and I hope that some day the school system will make it an elective course. But now it is required. And you must pass to graduate.”

  “I’ll give it more time, Miss Parker,” he promised. “I’ll concentrate on it.” He didn’t, but she became lenient because she thought he tried.

  Again the sense of futility took hold of him. Nothing seemed worthwhile. He wanted so desperately to be important, to stand out; if not that, at least to belong to something. It was mainly because of that, because he had to be different, to be seen, that he accepted his Aunt Bee’s offer to drive their car, although he knew his mother wouldn’t like it.

  His aunt had asked him to drive for them in a funeral procession. She’d gotten his father’s consent. And she seemed trying to atone for putting him out of her house. He didn’t like her any better. But he loved to drive. Sitting behind the wheel of the big old secondhand car, following the somber procession through the gray afternoon, the black-clad Coopers sitting silently in the back seat, under his control, dependent on him, he felt big and important again. His aunt was so pleased she invited him to dinner and asked him all sorts of questions about his mother. It was pleasant to be the center of attention.

  He drove them often after that, without his mother’s knowledge. One day he took the car for servicing and stopped in front of the Robinsons’ to rush importantly through the house. Greg appeared not to notice but Mrs. Robinson was curious.

  “Is that your folks’ car, Chuck?”

  “No, it’s my aunt’s. But I can drive it whenever I want,” he added proudly.

  “Greg, did you see Chuck’s car?”

  “It’s just a struggle-buggy, Mother,” he replied indifferently, and then to Charles, “Tadpole, how about sitting for me now.” He was doing a sketch of Charles sitting at the piano. It was quite unflattering and Charles knew he made it so deliberately.

  “I haven’t time now,” he called, dashing out.

  He drove off fast, passing other cars along the way, and waved to a girl he saw across the street. For an instant she couldn’t place him, then waved excitedly after he had passed. He was laughing exultantly when, looking ahead, he saw a boy on a bicycle cut across his path. The boy licked an ice cream cone and looked off in the opposite direction.

  Charles stabbed for the brake. His foot slipped off the narrow strip of shiny metal. He stabbed again, experiencing the sinking sensation of slipping on a banana peeling. In front the boy and bicycle seemed suspended in mid-motion, the picture rushing forward in growing horror. He wrenched the steering wheel to his right, hoping to pass behind the boy. But even as he did so he knew he’d never make it. With the quick reflexes of a healthy youth, he gave a mighty wrench to his left. The car struck the front wheel of the bicycle, unseating the boy who’d never stopped licking his ice cream cone, never looked, now sprawled spread-eagle on the pavement, the car rushing on as if by some evil momentum, Charles’s glance striking on ahead; and then into his vision came the sight of jam-packed men and women, waiting for an approaching streetcar, directly in front of him. Somewhere the horror stopped and never came alive.

  The car struck them frontally, knocking them down in a mass of kicking legs and flailing arms, crashed broadside into the connecting wall between the corner drugstore and adjoining meat market, shattering the plate-glass windows of both, caromed back across the sidewalk. Down the hood Charles saw a short squat man, who’d been hit before, struggling to his knees as the car struck him again, passed over him, crashed into another car parked at the curb. And out of all the incipient tragedy, this single grotesquerie became implanted in his mind, and laughter ripped from him. He couldn’t stop it. Funniest thing he ever saw. He didn’t hear the screaming.

  The door of the car was flung abruptly open. A butcher jerked him to the street, brandishing a bloody cleaver. He looked up into the hard white face, saw the brutal mouth, merciless gray eyes, and felt his consciousness leaving. He tried to hang on to himself, vaguely aware of a violent scuffle taking place as if he had no part in it. When the picture came again he was closed in by a group of colored men. Now he heard the sobbing of the wounded, strident voices raised in anger, the distant crying of the sirens. As far as he could see in all directions was a mass of jabbering people.

  The police cars came, pushing through the mob, lining up beside the accident end to end, seven in a row. Charles was taken by two officers in gold braid and placed in a long, black limousine. He sat there with the police driver and watched remotely all that was taking place. There was no order in his mind, the pictures wouldn’t register; the persons lying sobbing on the pavement had no relationship to tragedy. Only the eyes were felt, the countless staring eyes, shifting to the victims, to the policemen, back to himself. He looked at his hands. The eyes disappeared. His hands were steady.

  The two officials came and sat flanking him, and they drove away.

  “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” one remarked. “Your car hardly got a scratch. Not even a window cracked.”

  “All four tires went flat,” Charles said. The sound of his own voice startled him. He was astonished by the observation. Both of them glanced curiously at him.

  He was questioned at great length at the police station and officers were sent to bring down his parents and the Coopers. At first he thought he couldn’t tell them anything. But as he talked the entire picture came alive with startling clarity. He was amazed by his ability to recount in detail sidelights of the accident he had no recollection of having seen.

  Over and over he heard himself saying, “The brake pedal was just like grease. Every time I hit it my foot slipped off. The car just wouldn’t stop.”

  Afterwards he was placed in a waiting room. He felt as if it was all a dream. The actual tragedy hadn’t gotten him. His mind contained the photographic pictures of the accumulated grotesquerie, but no connection had been made with the resulting pain and awful hurt and terrible consequences. The victims were recalled as adagio dancers executing comic pantomime. Much of it still affected him as funny. The sheer ludicrousness of the poor guy getting knocked down twice. Little sniffs of laughter kept blowing through his nose. There was something monstrous, inhuman, in his mental rejection of the horror. It was as if the dream was known to be a dream, the horror but the artificiality of the dream.

  The Coopers were the first to come, he in his work clothes and she with rings of dried soapsuds about her wrists, their faces gray with terror. They were taken for interrogation before being permitted to speak to him. Then his mother and father arrived. Her bloodless face was etched with apprehension, her body braced rigidly against the surge of panic. His father was a study in alarm. When he told them what had happened, his mother turned against his father with uncontrollable fury.

  “You contemptible sneak. God curse the day you ever became th
e father of my children. After all that woman has done to him you let her make a lackey out of him.”

  His father wilted. The Coopers came out gray and shaken. Mrs. Taylor didn’t speak to them. Mr. Cooper wandered about in a daze. Professor and Mrs. Taylor were questioned briefly. Mrs. Taylor demanded that they prosecute her husband for permitting his son, a minor, to drive. The police officials were confused. Then the Harts arrived. The room seemed overly crowded.

  “What have you done to us?” Mrs. Cooper lashed at Charles condemningly. “What have you done to us?”

  His mother turned on her in a white rage. “Don’t you speak to him. You black evil woman. Don’t you dare speak to him. The way you’ve treated him. You’re the one who should be prosecuted.”

  “He should have gone where I sent him,” Mrs. Cooper screamed. “If he wasn’t so hardheaded we wouldn’t be in this trouble.”

  “Now, Bee. Now, sister,” Mr. Cooper muttered. “We’re all in this together.”

  “My son is not in it,” Mrs. Taylor raved. “My son is just a victim.”

  “Now, honey, I’ve called a lawyer,” Professor Taylor interjected. “Let’s just wait until he comes.”

  “We don’t know who’s dead,” Mrs. Cooper wailed. “We don’t know who’s dead.”

  “You black devil,” Mrs. Taylor screamed. Clutching Charles’s arm, she fled into the corridor.

  She sensed that as yet the horror had not affected him. She wanted to keep him in that state of mind. She was afraid for him to experience the full impact of the tragedy. Not then, not all at once. She feared a shock; perhaps his mind would become unbalanced. There was no telling how it might affect him. He was inclined toward morbid introspection anyway. And his capacities for good and evil were so delicately balanced. She feared that this might be the very thing to send him off unless she shielded him from all the terrible consequences. They had no right to do this thing to him, she thought. She wanted to protect him at any cost.