Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 165
of some stair. The blade fell from his fingers onto his shirt and in a
terrified and convulsive and clumsy lurch he let the blade slip into
the sack. Then, groping for it wildly, he cut his fingers, his trousers
and his thigh. Stroking his thigh, he could feel the wetness of the
blood, but this seemed to have happened to someone else. With
the wet blade between his fingers, he went on cutting away at his
bonds. Once his knees were free he raised them, ducked his head
and shoulders from under the crown and stepped out of his grave.
Clouds hid the light of the moon. In the windows of a watch house
he could see two men. One of them drank from a can. Near where
he had lain was a pile of stones, and trying to judge what his
weight would be in stones, he put a man’s weight into the shroud
so that they would feed stones to the fire. He walked quite simply
out of the gates into a nearby street that was narrow and where
most of the people would be poor and where most of the houses
were dark.
He put one foot in front of the other. That was about it. The
streets were brightly lighted, for this was at that time in our history
when you could read the small print in a prayerbook in any street
where the poor lived. This scrupulous light was meant to rout
rapists, muggers and men who would strangle old women of
eighty-two. The strong light and the black shadow he threw did
not alarm him, nor was he alarmed by the thought of pursuit and
capture, but what did frighten him was the possibility that some
hysteria of his brain might cripple his legs. He put one foot in
front of the other. His foot was wet with blood, but he didn’t care.
He admired the uniform darkness of the houses. No lights burned
at all—no lights of sickness, worry or love—not even those dim
lights that burn for the sake of children or their sensible fears of
the dark. Then he heard a piano. It could not, that late at night,
have been a child, but the fingers seemed stiff and ungainly and so
he guessed it was someone old. The music was some beginner’s
piece—some simple minuet or dirge read off a soiled, dog-eared
piece of sheet music—but the player was someone who could read