PARTISAN REVIEW
"Yeah, I come tuh live wif mah aunt," she said in her light shy
way, timidity struggling with I1espectfulness
in
her face. Silence
pierced them with its jagged beak and paralyzed them. They panted
and sweated to speak, for they each had a private yearning, a sore
tender spot, and respect for each other's fine features.
"How ole er you?" he finally blustered, in agony, whirling round
and round, afraid he would scare her and wound himself. Already
he had identified her solidly with
his
lonely and hungry soul.
"I foteen," she said sadly, thinking this was the end.
His crumbled in amazement. Then he felt good. He looked at
her with new reverence. "Foteen," he murmured, hearing celestial
winds where a tattered breeze pushed through the gray moss be·ards.
So young and cute she was. "I sixteen," he said with dignity. "Thas
mah bahcycle," and they strolled toward the church. They had fur–
ther meetings under the moss-bearded Spanish oaks
in
the church
yard.
Then Montague received a wonderful offer of a job on the ice
truck. The United States Army was absorbing men off ice trucks
all
over the forty-eight states, starching them, soiling them, pushing them
around. He accepted this job with vim and love for all those who
bossed him with the slightest charm of manner.
He felt as
if
he were living to the full. He stretched luxuriantly
in
front of Sonny, another Negro helper, and said proudly, "Man,
I'm a man." And he was only distilled sixteen.
Eighteen dollars a week. Why, he was a millionaire.
For a year and a half he "went with" Julia, and the whole time
she played emotional havoc with
him,
in
her saintly way, which
all
the while
his
outraged body grumbled at, because he thought her
goodness faintly evil. Silently turbulent, he waited on her patiently.
He grew moody; he felt unfinished.
One day she let
him
play with her, and all her admirable struc–
ture of purity and piety collap:;ed. One week later she let
him
play
too long with her, and suddenly she had lost childhood forever. She
got up, pulling her skirt down moodily, dazed and trembling. Yet the
idea had hold of her like a disease. She thought wildly of eating
saltpeter. Her imagination spilled over with strange desires to have
some dark faceless wildman come scrambling from behind rocks,
trees, whatever hid her from him, seize her and kill her in sexual
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