The Third Generation by Chester B. Himes Page A

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