The Empty Sack

by Basil King

Dragging himself to a sitting posture, his first sensation was one of relief. "I'm alive!" He hadn't done the thing he had planned last night! Merciful sleep had nailed him to the bench, keeping him motionless, unconscious. The pistol had lain within reach of his hand, and was there still; it could do duty still, but for the moment he was alive. Had he ever asked God for help or thanked Him when it came, he would have gone down on his knees and done it now; but the habit was foreign to the Follett family. He could only thank the purposeless Chance, which is the god most of us know best.

But he was glad. Twelve hours previously he had not supposed it possible ever to be glad again. It had been a nightmare, he reasoned now, or, if not a nightmare, it had been thought out of focus. He hadn't seen straight and normally. It was as if he had been drunk or mildly insane. He recalled experiences during naval nights ashore, at Brest or Bordeaux or Hampton Roads, when, after a glass or two of something, his mind had taken on this fevered twist in which all life had gone red.

Bickley had read this from the lines of his profile. "Forehead slightly concave; mouth and chin distinctly convex; tends to act before he thinks." The other traits had been satisfactory, indicating pluck, patience, fidelity, and cheerfulness of outlook.

The cheerfulness of outlook asserted itself now. Since he was alive on a glorious summer morning, the two great assets of a man, himself and the outside world, were still at his command. Nevertheless, he didn't blink the facts.

"I'm not a thief—but I took the money. They're after me, and they mustn't get me. I'll shoot myself first; but I don't have to shoot myself—yet."

He would not have to shoot himself so long as he was safe, and safety might take many turns. The abandoned, half-burnt sty in which he had found refuge was a fortress in its very loneliness. Close to the road, close to Jersey City, not very far from Pemberton Heights, it had probably no visitor but a toad or a bird or a truant boy from twelvemonth to twelvemonth.

His chief danger was that of being seen. The door and the window were both on the side toward the road. By avoiding the one and ducking under the other, he could move, but he could move very little. That little, however, would stretch his muscles and relieve the intolerable idleness.

The idleness, he knew, would be irksome. By looking at his watch, which had not run down, he found it was six o'clock. The six o'clock stir was also in the air. Motors had begun to dash along the road, and market garden teams were lumbering toward the big town. He was hungry again, but with his seven doughnuts still in the bag he couldn't starve to death.

By getting on the floor he found a peephole just above the level of the grass through which he could see without detection. This must be his spying place. Unlikely as it was that anyone would track him to this lair, he must be carefully on the lookout. What he should do if threatened with a visitor was not very clear to him. There being no exit except by the door, and the door being toward the road from which a visitor would naturally approach, there was no escape on that side. Escape being out of the question, there would only remain—the other thing. The other thing was always the great possibility. He hadn't abandoned the thought of it; he had only postponed the necessity. He would live as long as he could; and yet the necessity of the other thing would probably arise. If it arose, he hoped he should get through it by that tendency which he recognized in himself as clearly as Mr. Bickley had read it from his profile—to act before he thought.

With this as a possibility, he got down to his peephole, put the pistol near him on the floor, and began on his doughnuts. For breakfast, he allowed himself three, keeping the rest for his midday needs. When darkness fell he would steal out and buy more. He could do this as long as his money held out, and before it was spent something would probably have happened. What that something would be he did not forecast. He was in a fix where forecasting wasn't possible. The minute was the only thing, and a thing that had grown precious.