THE PAWN
She laboriously sat up, her gown over her fat thighs and lifted the mute
sullen face of a sick woman to watch the preacher with uncompre–
hending eyes. He turned around to show her body with his elegantly
shaking hand, preaching away with industrious sonority about how
the dove of peace sat on her shoulder and the Lord had taken her to
Jordan, dipped her, and water floated away her multitude of sins.
At this moment she· wiped sweat off her brow with her flabby upper
arm, looked with woeful solemnity at her board, and lay down again
panting. Then as she lay there the preacher reached a climax.
"If
this Sister had not prayed to the Lord and Savior she would be burn–
ing in hell." "Amen," she sighed weakly, and the preacher jumped
through the window. This story, though he tell it a thousand times,
never failed to amuse Willie. He sat and chuckled like a fiend.
Sometimes Delia asked herself, Delia, why did you marry Willie?
Then she fretfully went to bed with him. He was warm. There was
rich blood feeding his muscular meat. And he laughed a lot while he
leaned back on the two hind legs of his chair. But she thought he
was a fool. Work, poverty, starvation, for she sometimes starved her–
self so her little boys could eat with mumbling lips-they'd make even
heaven dull.
Willie took great pride in Chester, the older boy. Delia favored
Montague. Willie wanted to name Montague Coolidge, but Delia
had had some schooling and run across the name he bore. Willie
encouraged tomfoolery in Chester, but Delia hugged and beat Mon–
tague with a dry-eyed sorrow which was like cement to ambition.
He was a muffled voice at her breast. Sensing the enormity of her
misery, Montague grew to be a nervous child.
When they left the farm in the Spring they dragged Montague
screaming down the dusty road, scorching the skin of
his
hind and his
feet.
He was dressed in a pair of Willie's chopped off overalls, which
bloomed around
his
slim smooth dark little body like a bucket. His
small toes peered from under the fringe like tiny brown buds of flesh
on pale soles.
His brother, Chester, was there in the worn knickers of some
white boy. Chester was "looknun aituh" Montague, dragging him
along the ground.
Willie was in clean overalls, shoes slashed at the toes to make
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