into town, and then I had to get around it, skirting the back streets and alleys, and if daybreak caught me I was done for. There were very few cars on the road now and I took a chance on walking along the pavement, rather than out in the trees, to make better time. When I would see a car ahead or behind I would run into the roadside bushes and hide until it had gone past. Then I would come back out onto the road, feeling the urgency driving me, and start hurrying again, trotting and then walking and then trotting, my legs numb and without any feeling now that they were even mine. I had been walking for so long I couldn’t stop. I had the insane feeling that if I fell down and went to sleep my legs would keep right on moving because I no longer knew how to turn them off.
I turned and looked behind me, toward the east, searching for the telltale fading, the beginning of the coral flush I had watched so many times from duck blinds and fishing boats. It was still as dark as ever there, but even the thought of dawn drove me forward desperately. A car topped the slight rise ahead and the sudden, searching lights were almost upon me before I could run and plunge down off the road. I’ve got to get there first; I’ve got to beat the daylight. It ran through my mind in a sort of endless chant I couldn’t turn off any more than I could the walking movement of my legs. A gun, a car, these were the things I had to have. She had a whole roomful of guns and the fastest car in town.
The old familiar streets were quiet, the street lamps at the corners the only pools of light. I swung left, keeping to the outskirts and slipping along the alley, feeling my skin crawl and prickle with sudden cold at the barking of a dog or the sound of a car somewhere on another street. I wanted to run. I was naked, skinless, a light-tortured organism fleeing toward the dark. It was less than a dozen blocks now. Ten more. Nine. I wanted to stop counting them and couldn’t. At any one of them a car might swing around a corner, its lights flashing.…
I cut through one more alley and I was on Georgia Street and broke into a run. The windows of her apartment were dark. Suppose she wasn’t there? She must be. She had to be. She was home when I telephoned this afternoon. No, that was yesterday. It wasn’t even yesterday—it was the day before, because now it was almost dawn on Sunday. I ran up the walk and pressed the bell, waiting, listening for the sound of movement or of footsteps and hearing only the pounding of blood in my ears.
I pushed the bell again, and then I heard it. Someone was coming quietly down the stairs. The door opened a crack, there was a sharp gasp, and then she was throwing it back and reaching out for me. She led me hurriedly up the dark stairway, still holding me by the arm. There was light in the hallway, coming from the open bedroom door, and now she turned and stared at me, seeing the sodden ruin of my clothing and the blood across my face.
“Jack!” she whispered frantically. “Jack! What have they done to you?”
She had on her nightgown and robe and the coppery hair was tousled from the pillow, but I could see she hadn’t been asleep. “Thank God you’ve come. I’ve been praying…I’ve been praying all night! Ever since I heard. But you’ve been hurt!”
“No,” I said. “It’s nothing. I fell.” I swayed and almost fell now, and leaned against the wall. The whole apartment seemed to be swinging in that big whirlpool which had caught me and I wanted to hold onto something.
Then she had hold of me again, towing me down the hall. We were in the bathroom and she was tugging at my coat and then unlacing the mud-caked shoes. “Well leave them right here,” she was saying. “Right here where he’ll see them and know. I want him to know, damn him.” What was she talking about? I wanted to ask her what time it was, but she was busy at the shirt and I was too numb for thought. Then I could hear the shower blasting