From The Sound and the Fury - anthology.

« 'You'd better slip on your pants and run,' he said.

He went out. I got up and moved about, listening to him through the wall.

He entered the sitting-room, toward the door. 'Aren't you ready yet?' 'Not yet.

Run along.

I'll make it.' He went out.

The door closed.

His feet went down the corridor.

Then I could hear the watch again.

I quit moving around and went to the window and drew thecurtains aside and watched them running for chapel, the same ones fighting the same heaving coat-sleeves, the same books and flapping collars flushing past likedebris on a flood, and Spoade.

Calling Shreve my husband.

Ah let him alone, Shreve said, if he's got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts, whosebusiness.

In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin.

Boys.

Men.

They lie about it.

Because it means less to women, Father said.

He said it was men inventedvirginity not women.

Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sadabout anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn't it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That's why that's sad too; nothing is even worththe changing of it, and Shreve said if he's got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts and I said Did you ever have a sister? Did you? Did you? Spoade was in the middle of them like a terrapin in a street full of scuttering dead leaves, his collar about his ears, moving at his customary unhurried walk.

He wasfrom South Carolina, a senior.

It was his club's boast that he never ran for chapel and had never got there on time and had never been absent in four years and hadnever made either chapel or first lecture with a shirt on his back and socks on his feet.

About ten oclock he'd come in Thompson's, get two cups of coffee, sit downand take his socks out of his pocket and remove his shoes and put them on while the coffee cooled.

About noon you'd see him with a shirt and collar on, like anybodyelse.

The others passed him running, but he never increased his pace at all.

After a while the quad was empty. A sparrow slanted across the sunlight, onto the window ledge, and cocked his head at me.

His eye was round and bright.

First he'd watch me with one eye, then flick!and it would be the other one, his throat pumping faster than any pulse.

The hour began to strike.

The sparrow quit swapping eyes and watched me steadily with thesame one until the chimes ceased, as if he were listening too.

Then he flicked off the ledge and was gone. It was a while before the last stroke ceased vibrating.

It stayed in the air, more felt than heard, for a long time.

Like all the bells that ever rang still ringing in the longdying light-rays and Jesus and Saint Francis talking about his sister.

Because if it were just to hell; if that were all of it.

Finished.

If things just finished themselves.Nobody else there but her and me.

If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us.

I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames And when he put Dalton Ames.

Dalton Ames.

Dalton Ames.

When he put the pistol in my hand I didn't.

That's why I didn't.

He would be there and she would and I would.

Dalton Ames.

Dalton Ames.

Dalton Ames.

If we could have just done something so dreadful and Father said That's sadtoo people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today and Isaid, You can shirk all things and he said, Ah can you.

And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, andafter a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.

Until on the Day when He says Rise only the flat-iron would come floatingup.

It's not when you realise that nothing can help you—religion, pride, anything—it's when you realise that you dont need any aid.

Dalton Ames.

Dalton Ames.Dalton Ames.

If I could have been his mother lying with open body lifted laughing, holding his father with my hand refraining, seeing, watching him die before helived.

One minute she was standing in the door I went to the dresser and took up the watch, with the face still down.

I tapped the crystal on the corner of the dresser and caught the fragments of glass in my hand andput them into the ashtray and twisted the hands off and put them in the tray.

The watch ticked on.

I turned the face up, the blank dial with little wheels clicking andclicking behind it, not knowing any better.

Jesus walking on Galilee and Washington not telling lies.

Father brought back a watch-charm from the Saint Louis Fair toJason: a tiny opera glass into which you squinted with one eye and saw a skyscraper, a ferris wheel all spidery, Niagara Falls on a pinhead.

There was a red smear onthe dial.

When I saw it my thumb began to smart.

I put the watch down and went into Shreve's room and got the iodine and painted the cut.

I cleaned the rest of theglass out of the rim with a towel.. »