THE PAWN
embrace. She would put Montague off for a month. Then she would
suddenly give way to a morbid desire to go the whole way toward age,
to burn herself out, like a hot metal can plunged into water. She
yearned for one splendid moment of violence and swift and complete
collapse.
Someone had long ago told her
it
was nasty. Someone had made
her craven with fear of it. These revels had madness in them. Old
sensations she had long known, hunger to be caressed as some mother
had caressed her, hunger
to
be precious as the beribboned child, were
being fed on Montague's stimulations. Her aunt was urging her to'
marry him. But her imagination and ambition were never full con–
tent with the boy. She wanted a hard grown man to grovel at her feet .
All the Negro girls were "going" with the Negro soldiers from
Camp Gordon Johnston. At night any shadowy place was apt to con–
tain lovers. Surreptitiously Julia began walking around the blocks
where Negro soldiers were thickly found. The more she walked the
more her hunger grew. She was the kind of girl who let her secretive
and emotional face be her lure, and who withdrew to let a man
advance. In this way she got herself pregnant, and when six weeks
were past she let Montague know that she had new life within her.
Poor Montague grew wild, thinking himself responsible, and what
would Delia say. Julia looked at him with quiet and coolness. She
did not accuse him. She did not demand that he marry her. He felt
bewildered and broken in his bonds.
He got to the ice plant three days after the atom bomb was
dropped to learn that Merle Dwiggins, the white boy whose job he'd
taken, was on his way home from Europe.
While the machinery crashed and the huge pumping engines
sounded like the audible pulse of the earth, he stood still and died.
Richard Longenecker, his bossman, whom he had revered and
worked for like an eager beaver, said, "Of course, we want you to
stay on until Merle actually gets here. You see that."
"Yessuh," said Montague huskily. The atom bomb was no more
to
him.
He went to work. The white men still treated him with good–
natured unconcern, but they didn't want him or care that he wanted
them. They had a boy coming. Montague's source of spiritual and
monetary wealth was gone, sucked down a hungry drain. A white boy
who'd been fighting and occupying Europe, a hero Veteran was
909
