THE PAWN
next time he saw her she shrilled accusations at him. His resentment
was aroused, and he laughed an ugly laugh. From then on her looks
were dark with hatred. She sniffed as she walked by him. Her heart
was crushed and romantically loving.
This
was all of first magnitude. He was a wolf. Delia scolded
him
frenziedly when he came home in the dark. He glowed like the
lamp, a lightning bug. She was incensed at his foolishness, and beat
him with the head of a broom.
In 1942 he stole a canned ham, and Mr. Sweeney fired him,
saying coldly, as
if
humming to himself, as he turned his back on the
dismissed Negro boy, "Well, I should have known. A Nigger. That's
a smell you can't wash off." Montague was thus terribly shaken by
his
own doublecross, yet all the time he felt as
if
there were justice in
his
actions. There was no love coming his way from Mr. Sweeney.
The war was falling like manna on many poor-whites and Ne–
groes,
for the draft was removing young first citizens to far away and
near-by camps for military training. A succession of fine jobs passed
through Chester's hands and he went to Carabelle to work at Camp
Gordon Johnston as a day laborer at fifty-one cents per hour. Delia
got a fine job working at the Florida State College for Women as
a cleaning woman. Montague worked for a bowling alley and was
able to buy a bicycle. With this bicycle he rivaled the white gods.
He flew like a bat through the dusk. His bicycle was secondhand, blue
and white. Furthermore, with the new money afloat, he and Delia
became addicts of the movies. He could be found every Saturday
night there, howling and hooting among the "dark cloud" in the bal–
cony, after which he went to work again.
In 1944 he was sixteen and he grew old. He met Julia first, on
the last row in church. Julia aged him with her beauty and unfathom–
able shyness and emotionalism. She was usually quiet. Her wide
mouth spread in serene smiles. She was neither silly nor amusing like
most girls, probably because she was lonely and a stranger. She
seemed to be about twenty-six. He thought he was in love with a
much older woman, and he palpitated sore.
Montague got alone with her in the church yard during a hymn.
They stood in a comer of the yard, in sand and sandspurs behind a
Spanish-bayonet plant. Montague was testy with yearning. "You noo
heah," he said accusingly, and throbbed.
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