The Third Generation (45 page)

“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.

“I’m going and get something to eat, Dad.”

“All right, son.”

He started to eat in a restaurant on The Avenue, but found that he didn’t have but thirty cents besides his check.

On sudden impulse he rode out to see his mother. He was almost within sight of her house when he realized he couldn’t face her. He rode back to The Avenue and wandered about for a time. It was as if he were struggling against returning to Veeny. But finally he gave in and went back to her.

The dice game was in progress. Dave looked up and grinned.

“How’d you make out, Chuck?”

He wasn’t certain just what Dave meant. “I got broke again,” he said.

“How much you need?”

“I got a check for seventy-five dollars I want to get you to cash.”

“Sure thing.”

He paid Dave and took the change and went into the kitchen. Veeny was cooking pigs’ feet. She came up to him and ran the palms of her hands down over his waist and hips. “Hungry, baby?”

Suddenly he was very hungry. “I want a drink first.”

She mixed two drinks and sat down across from him, devouring him with her eyes. “Don’t get drunk, baby.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

By midnight he was broke and blind drunk. He vomited in the sink again. She took him into the bedroom and undressed him and put him to bed. An hour later Dave left. She stopped the game and put the people out, then came in and went to bed and held Charles’s head against her breasts. It was noon the next day when he awakened. She played her tongue over his lips. He felt too weak to struggle. He gave in. It was like a terrible horror of ecstasy; as if his blood were being sucked by a vampire.

Afterwards she fixed breakfast. While they were eating, Dave came in. He had a pair of large green dice.

“Let’s try ‘em out,” he said.

They began shooting on the kitchen floor. At first they bet a half-dollar on the roll. But as Dave began to lose he raised the bet. He lost twenty-five dollars, then took all the money Veeny had. They gambled for two hours. When Dave got even Charles said, “I quit.”

“Goddamn, all that work for nothing,” Dave cursed. “If you weren’t my pal I’d cut your throat.”

“I didn’t want to gamble against you,” Charles said.

Veeny smiled.

“I’ll be back later,” Dave said and left.

Charles couldn’t understand what was happening. He was sick and frightened.

“Why does Dave let me sleep with you?” he asked Veeny.

She came over and ran her tongue across his eyes. “He’s got to, baby. I want you. He’s got another whore and I got you.”

He wanted to leave and never come back. But he didn’t have the strength. He didn’t know what was happening to him. Instead of leaving he began drinking again. He was drunk every night for a week, awakening to be loved, fed, and begin drinking again. His thoughts became vague. He seemed floating in a nightmare of sensuality. Heat began growing in his brain in a thin, steady flame. When he couldn’t bear it he’d call her to bed. Each time he felt himself pouring out of himself into her as if giving her his life. He began to love the sensation of dying he derived from her.

He went to his room only for a change of clothes. Sometimes he saw his father. He made some vague excuse. His father never questioned him, never scolded him. He wondered if his father were sane.

He hadn’t visited his mother since the night he first met Veeny. He couldn’t understand why he felt such an intense fear whenever he thought of her. There was a period each night just before he became unconscious, when his mind seemed sharp and clear. Quite often, during this period, which sometimes lasted no longer than a fleeting moment, he thought of his mother. He’d recall an episode from his early childhood in Mississippi…

He and William had been to the store with their mother. They were returning down the long, dusty road in the magic twilight, the two tots trotting along beside their mother, vying for her attention.

“Mother, we saw a jackass.”

“We saw a guinea.”

“We saw something we didn’t know what it was.”

“Mother, there ought to be something on an animal to tell you what it is.”

“Something in its fur.”

“Suppose it’s got feathers.”

“In its feathers then.”

She had to laugh. “I’m a bear,” she said. “Be-ware.”

They laughed uproariously.

“I’m a fox—I’m sly.”

“I’m a weasel—I steal chickens.”

“I’m a rabbit—catch me.”

“I’m a rabbit—fry me.”

She laughed delightedly. “In case you’ve never cooked a rabbit here is a recipe for rabbit fricassee.”

Her gay, tinkling laugh thrilled them…

For that instant he felt happy and excited. Then the memory was gone, leaving a bitter aftermath, in which he thought it strange that he couldn’t recall ever having heard his mother laugh with his father. Suddenly he remembered her laugh as he had heard it last. The next moment he was blotto.

27

H
E HAD SLEPT DRUNKENLY
all day. on awakening he felt exhausted and helpless. Veeny was kissing his chest and the sensation of her hot sharp tongue sickened him with revulsion.

“I can’t this morning—I can’t. Please don’t make me,” he pleaded.

“Pretty-pretty,” she moaned in a thickened voice, kissing his eyes and face. Her hair fell down about his head, covering him like a shroud, and he could barely breathe.

“Don’t, please don’t,” he begged, but his voice was muffled by her mouth.

She sucked his breath, forcing her long sharp tongue between his lips. He wrenched his face away, feeling faint. Savagely she bit his neck. He struggled to push her away but she clung to him tenaciously, like a carnivorous animal, devouring his flesh.

“My baby,” she moaned, scouring his ear with her tongue. There was a paralyzing evil in her consuming desire.

A strange wanton sensation overwhelmed him. It was as if she was drawing all that was good’ from him and poisoning his blood with something that was repulsive and weird and abnormal. He tried to hold on to the good but she was the stronger and pulled it loose from himself. Finally he gave up and let his will go. He closed his eyes and felt himself sinking down into her womb.

For an instant he thought he would faint. Then suddenly his blood flooded up in a warm ecstasy of surrender as if he were the whore of the two.

“Oh, give it!” she cried, wailing as if in the throes of death.

He felt the sweet acid shock of utter evil. Then he whimpered like a child as he gave himself to her. Afterwards he lay in a trance of passivity, looking into her eyes, for the first time realizing that she was on top. Now he wanted to give himself to her again in this different way where nothing at all mattered but the strange sweet ecstasy of defeat.

But she arose and said, “I’ll fix us some breakfast, baby.”

With the sound of her normal voice his revulsion returned. He jumped out of bed and began to dress in a world suddenly gone in filth and depravity. His soul vomited up the strange sensation of surrender and, as he looked at her, death flooded from his eyes.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

He avoided her gaze. If he looked into her eyes he would kill her. “I’m going home and change clothes,” he said.

“You’ll come back, baby.” He heard the triumph singing in her voice and felt nauseated with shame.

It had been raining earlier but now it had turned to soft wet snow. He stood for a moment outside the door, breathing deeply the damp cold air, trying to orientate himself, to adjust his emotions to the normal world. His mind was enveloped in weird unreality, as if he had awakened in a world he’d never seen.

Two men passed and their soft Negroid voices sounded the tone of reality. Slowly the street took perspective in a row of shabby houses. He saw a dog sniffing a wet pile of garbage beside a broken step. He discovered with a shock he was thinking of his mother. He could hear her saying with a crying note of worry, “My little baby. What have you done now?” He closed his mind to her and began walking toward his room. He wanted to get his clean clothes before his father returned from work.

But his landlady met him in the hallway and said, “Now don’t you go disturbing your father. He’s sick.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.”

“You ain’t home enough to know anything,” she accused.

He tiptoed up to his room and found his father in bed. As he entered the room he heard his father mutter, “Don’t hurt the boy, Lillian. Don’t do it, honey…”

He bent down and shook his father. “Dad!” he said softly.

His father opened his eyes and made an effort to focus his gaze. “It’s all right, son, it’s all right,” he mumbled. His breath reeked with the odor of rotgut whiskey.

Charles drew back. He was surprised to discover that he felt no shock. It was as if he’d passed the point where degredation mattered; as if he now expected only the worst in everything.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Dad?” he heard himself ask.

His father didn’t answer. He had already closed his eyes. A moment later he was breathing stentorianly.

Charles put a pitcher of water and a glass beside the bed, and straightened the covers over his father. Then he began to change clothes. After a time he became aware of tears streaming down his face. He didn’t know how long he had been crying.

Before leaving he searched the room for whiskey. He intended to throw it away. At least he could do that much for his father. But he didn’t find any.

It had darkened outside, filling the early night with gloom. He began walking. There seemed something sacrilegious about his father drinking. He tried not to think about it. For a time he didn’t think of anything. He felt the tears trickling down his face, and every now and then he sobbed spasmodically. He blew his nose and wiped his face.

Suddenly he realized he was thinking of his mother again. She must have been in his thoughts all along. He wondered if she had begun drinking too. The thought fired him with unbearable horror. He hailed a taxi and rode out to the home where she lived. The window of her room was dark but he knocked anyway. A pleasant middle-aged woman with a kind brown face came to the door and he asked if his mother was at home.

“No, she went out early this afternoon and hasn’t returned.”

“Did—did she seem ill?” he found himself asking.

The woman looked at him strangely. “Why, no—no more than usual.”

“Oh!” He wondered what she meant but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

He thanked her and said he would return. Then, for more than two hours he walked about the neighborhood, passing the house on the opposite side of the street every fifteen or twenty minutes to look up at her window, hoping to find a light. He felt such a craving for whiskey he was tempted to return to Cedar Avenue, but the deep dark sense of dread anchored him. A movie theater loomed up before him. He went in and sat in the dark. But after an hour the urgency returned. He jumped to his feet, rushed outside and ran all the way back to her house. Her room was still dark. He wondered if she had returned while he was in the theater and had gone to bed. He was afraid the woman might think it was he who was in trouble if he inquired again, so he stationed himself across the street to wait. The soft wet snowflakes blowing against his face were like the touch of cool gentle fingers.

“Please don’t let anything happen to her,” he prayed.

The cold seeped through his clothes and he began trembling. He needed a drink the worst way. It began to snow heavily. After a time he had to give up his vigil. He rode back to Cedar Avenue on the streetcar, but the moment he alighted the dark terrifying dread returned to haunt him. He went into a whiskey joint and drank a half pint of the strong rotgut, hoping to calm his fears. But instead his emotions were intensified and the dread began roaring through his mind like a chimney afire.

He took a taxi back to her house. The jolting of the car over the bumpy streets made him sick and his mouth ballooned as he strained to keep from vomiting.