PARTISAN REVIEW
them big enough, their eyelets drawn together with string, and he
wore a big red handkerchief around his neck like a scarf. His woman
had a white woman's black satin dress on top her brown skin. It was
ripped under the sleeves, but it had pieces of redeeming metal in the
belt.
Willie had a feed bag full of rubble swung over his shoulder,
and he looked like the traditional chicken thief.
They went to Tallahassee, where they lived in darktown. Willie
got a job at the railroads and was gone
all
day. Montague was half
out of his wits with the sight of many strange people and houses. He
and Chester stood by the side of the sallow road, Chester grinning
witlessly and Montague gazing at people with sober popeyes. Delia
began disappearing everyday to a white folks house. One September,
Montague went to school, where he was in the same grade as his
brother, who was eight years older. Chester was always swaggering
and clowning, but he was lazier than a geranium leaf. Dust collected
on his brains.
For the first few days Montague said n.ever a word, but sat in his
desk with his little hands quietly closed like little clams in his lap.
Sometimes he laid his little grimy hands with great self-consciousness
on desk lid or seat. This was ceremonious. He swung his locked feet
softly under his seat. They were bare, and they soughed the floor.
He shared his desk with a little boy called Rodduh. Sometimes
Rodduh planted
his
little elbow on the desktop, put his chin in his
cautious little hand, and turned sideways to scrutinize Montague
passively. Rodduh was languid. His mouth always rested slightly open,
in a natural breathing way, with his tongue lying stuffed out in it.
"Whuhchu name?" he would say, and Montague would stiffen his
neck and stare ahead as if his life depended on his fixity.
Rodduh's nose kept shedding little streams of mucus which he
checked now and then by hard inhalation. Then he carefully and
jealously snuffed it back up his nose. Sometimes Montague watched
this with a quiet and disturbed look.
Montague was painfully at school. This room was as strange and
terrible as a locomotive rushing by on the tracks in the countryside
Montague watching from a far hill.
Everyday Montague learned something, but only by being forced
to act or be hopelessly left in confusion. Little by little he thawed.
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