Once, in the night, during my week's stay with him, I stepped from bed, sleep-walking, moving toward the room where he and Aunt Emily lay. Imagining I held a knife in my left hand (I am left-handed) to stick him through the heart with.
But I bumped terrifically into a door half ajar, and received such a crash between the eyes that it not only brought me broad awake, but gave me a bump as big as a hen's egg, into the bargain.
The dream of my revenge had been so strong in my brain that still I could feel the butcher-knife in my hand ... and I looked into the empty palm to verify the sensation, still there, of clasping the handle.
"—that you, Johnnie?" called my uncle.
"Yep!"
"What's the matter? can't you sleep?"
"No!—got up to take a drink of water."
"You'll find a bucketful on the kitchen table, and the dipper floating in it ... and there's matches on the stand by your bed." A pause. He continued: "You must of run into something. I heard a bang."
"I did. I bumped my head into the door."