William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

More belated couples came up the street and entered the drug store, and other cars; other couples emerged and strolled on. The night watchman came along presently, with his star on his open vest and a pistol and a flashlight in his hip pockets; he. too stopped and joined in the slow, unhurried talk. The last couple emerged from the drug store, and the last car drove away. And presently the lights behind them flashed off and the proprietor jingled his keys in the door and rattled it, and stood for a moment among them, then went on. Ten o’clock. The Snopes rose to his feet.

“Well, I reckon I’ll turn in,” he said generally.

“Time we all did,” another said, and they rose also. “Goodnight, Buck.”

“Goodnight, gentlemen,” the night watchman replied.

The Snopes turned into the first street. He went steadily on beneath the spaced arc lights and turned into a narrower street and followed it. From this street he turned into a lane between massed honeysuckle higher than his head and sweet upon the nightair. The lane was dark, and he increased his pace. On either hand the upper stories of houses rose above the honeysuckle,with now and then a lighted window among the dark trees. He kept close to the wall arid went swiftlyon. He went now between back premises; lots and gardens, but before him another house loomed, and aserried row of cedars on the lighter sky; and he stole beside a stone wall and so came opposite thegarage. He stopped here and sought in the lush grass beneath the wall and stooped and raised a pole, which he leaned against the wall. With the help of the pole he mounted to the top of the wall and so onto the garage roof.

But the house was dark, and presently he slid tothe ground and with the desperate courage of his despair he stole across the lawn and stopped beneath awindow. There was alight somewhere toward thefront of the house, but no sound, no movement,and he stoodfor a time listening, darting his eyes thisway and that, covert and ceaseless as a cornered animal.

The screen responded easily to his knife blade and he raised it and listened again. Then with a single scrambling motion he was in the room, crouching, with his thudding heart. Still no sound, and the whole house gave off that unmistakable emanation of temporary desertion. He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his mouth.

The light was in the next room, and he went on. The stairs rose from the end of this room and he scuttled silently across it and mounted swiftly into darkness again and groped through the darkness until he touched a wall, then a door. The knob turned under his fingers.

It was the right room; he knew that at once: her presence was all about him, and for a time his heartthudded and thudded in his throat and fury and lust and despair shook him like a rag. But he pulled himself together; he must get out quickly, and he groped his way across to the bed and lay face down upon it, his head buried in the pillows, writhing and making smothered, animal-like moanings. But he must get out, and he rose and groped across the room again. What little light there was was behind him now, and instead of finding the door he blundered into a chest of drawers, and stood there a moment. Then with sudden decision he opened a drawer and fumbled in it. It was filled with a faintly scented fragility of garments, but he could not distinguish one from another.

He found a match in his pocket and struck it beneath the shelter of his palm, and by its light he chose one of the soft garments, discovering as the match died a packet of letters in one corner of the drawer. He recognized them at once and he threw the dead match to the floor and removed the letter he had just written from his pocket and put it in the drawer and put the other letters in his pocket, and he stood for a time with the garment crushed against his face; remained so for some time, until a sound caused him to jerk his head up. A car was coming up the drive, and as he turned and sprang to the window, its lights swept beneath him and fell full upon the open garage, and he crouched at the window in utter panic. Then he turned and sped to the door and stopped again crouching, panting and snarling in indecision.

He turned and ran back to the window. The garage was dark, and two darkfigures were coming toward the house and he crouched within the window .until they had passed from sight. Then, still clutching the garment, he climbed out the windowand swung from the sill for a moment, closed his eyes and dropped

There was a crash of glass and he sprawled in a dusty litter, with other lesser crashes. He had fallen into a shallow, glassed flower pit and he scrambled out someway and tried to get to his feet and fell again, while nausea swirled in him. It was his knee, and he lay sick and with snarling teeth while his trouser leg sopped slowly and damply, clutching the garment he had stolen and scaring at the dark sky with wide, mad eyes. He heard voices in lite house, and a light came on in the window above him and he dragged himself erect again, restraining his vomit, and at a scrambling hobble he crossed the lawn and plunged into the shadow of the cedars beside the garage, where he lay staring at the house where a man leaned in a window, peering out and moaning a little while his blood ran between his clasped fingers. He drove himself onward again and dragged his bleeding leg over the wall and dropped into the lane and cast the pole down. A hundred yards further he stopped and drew his torn trousers aside and tried to bandage the long gash in his leg. But the handkerchief stained over almost at once, and still his blood ran and randown his leg and into his shoe.

Once in the back room of the bank, he rolled his trouser leg up and removed the handkerchief and bathed the gash with cold water. It still bled, though not so much, and he removed his shirt and bound it as tightly as he could He still felt an inclination toward nausea, and he drank long of the tepid water from the lavatory tap. Immediately it warmed salinely inside him and he dung to the lavatory, sweating, trying not to vomit, until the spell passed. Hisleg felt numb and dead.

He entered the grilled cage. His left heel showedyet a bloody print on the floor, but no blood ran from beneath the bandage, The vault door opened soundlessly; without striking a match he found the key to the cash box and opened it He took only banknotes, which he stowed away in his inner coat pocket drat he took all he could find. Then he closed the vault and locked it returned to the lavatory and wetted a towel and removed his heel prints from the linoleum floor. He passed out the rear door, threw the latch so it would lock behind him. The dock on the courthouse rang midnight

In an alley between two negro stores he found the negro whom he had met at noon, with a battered Ford car. He gave the negro a bill and the negro cranked the car and came and stared curiously at his torn trousers and the glint of white cloth beneath.“Whut happened, boss? Y’aint hurt, is you?”

“Run into some wire,” he answered shortly, and drove on. As he crossed the square he saw the night watchman, Buck, standing beneath the light before the post office, and cursed him with silent and bitter derision. He drove on and passed from view, and presently the sound of his going had died away.

He drove through Frenchman’s Bend at two o’clock, without stopping. The village was dark; Varner’s store, the blacksmith shop (now a garage too, with a gasoline pump), Mrs. Littlejohn’s huge, unpainted boarding house—all the remembered scenes of his boyhood—were without life; he went on. He drove now along a rutted wagon road, between swampy jungle, at a snail’s pace. After a half hour the road mounted a small knoll wooded with scrub oak and indiscriminate saplings, and faded into a barren,sun-baked surface in the middle of which squatted alow, broken-backed log house. His lights sweptacross its gaping front, and a huge gaunt hound descended from the porch and bellowed at him. Hestopped and switched the lights off.