THE PAWN
Montague slapped Sonny across the face. Sonny lunged, and
they fell, rolling.
Montague suddenly found that his tense muscles were actually
weak from the exhaustion of the last three weeks. Somewhere a blue
jar fell to the floor with a crash, and Sonny got hold of the end of it.
In slow agony Montague held Sonny's wrists in a tight squeezed
grip and watched the broken neck of the blue bottle descend. Mon–
tague turned
his
head and felt the puncturing of
his
cheek.
Then everybody was down on Sonny, who was twenty-six, for
cutting a boy.
Montague got to his feet. No one restrained him. He ran home
in the night, softly bleeding warm spurting blood. He was something
new again, and would be
his
new self as long as men rould see and he
wore his purple scar.
At home he had time to think about this. No laments helped
him. He lay in bed and wracked his brain for answer non-forthcoming.
Delia was bitter. Her fingers burned him. He slept trying to shut
his
world out, and succeeded in dreaming of Asia.
•
911
