Free Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson Mccullers Page A

wrought. A thorny pine cone, the flight of a bird in the
     blue windy sky, a fiery shaft of sunshine in the green gloom these the Captain saw as
     though for the first time in his life. He was conscious of the pure keen air and he felt
     the marvel of his own tense body, his laboring heart, and the miracle of blood, muscle,
     nerves, and bone. The Captain knew no terror now; he had soared to that rare level of
     consciousness where the mystic feels that the earth is he and that he is the earth.
     Clinging crabwise to the runaway horse, there was a grin of rapture on his bloody mouth.
    How long this mad ride lasted the Captain would never know. Toward the end he knew that
     they had come out from the woods and were galloping through an open plain. It seemed to
     him that from the corner of his eye he saw a man lying on a rock in the sun and a horse
     grazing. This did not surprise him and in an instant was forgotten. The only thing which
     concerned the Captain now was the fact that when they entered the forest again the horse
     was giving out. In an agony of dread the Captain thought: 'When this ends, all will be
     over for me.'
    The horse slowed to an exhausted trot and at last stopped altogether. The Captain raised
     himself in the saddle and looked about him. When he struck the horse in the face with the
     reins, they stumbled on a few paces farther. Then the Captain could make him go no
     farther. Trembling, he dismounted. Slowly and methodically he tied the horse to a tree. He
     broke off a long switch, and with the last of his spent strength he began to beat the
     horse savagely. Breathing in great gasps, his coat dark and curled with sweat, the horse
     at first moved restively about the tree. The Captain kept on beating him. Then at last the
     horse stood motionless and gave a broken sigh. A pool of sweat darkened the pine straw
     beneath him and his head hung down. The Captain threw the whip away. He was smeared with
     blood, and a rash caused by rubbing against the horse's bristly hair had come out on his
     face and neck. His anger was unappeased and he could hardly stand from exhaustion. He sank
     down on the ground and lay in a curious position with his head in his arms. Out in the
     forest there, the Captain looked like a broken doll that has been thrown away. He was
     sobbing aloud.
    For a brief time the Captain lost consciousness. Then, as he came out of his faint, he
     had a vision of the past. He looked back at the years behind him as one stares at a
     shaking image at the bottom of a well. He remembered his boyhood. He had been brought up
     by five old maid aunts. His aunts were not bitter except when alone; they laughed a great
     deal and were constantly arranging picnics, fussy excursions, and Sunday dinners to which
     they invited other old maids. Nevertheless, they had used the little boy as a sort of
     fulcrum to lift the weight of their own heavy crosses. The Captain had never known real
     love. His aunts gushed over him with sentimental effulgence and knowing no better he
     repaid them with the same counterfeit coin. In addition, the Captain was a Southerner and
     was never allowed by his aunts to forget it On his mother's side he was descended from
     Huguenots who left France in the seventeenth century, lived in Haiti until the great
     uprising, and then were planters in Georgia before the Civil War. Behind him was a history
     of barbarous splendor, ruined poverty, and family hauteur. But the present generation had
     not come to much; the Captain's only male first cousin was a policeman in the city of
     Nashville. Being a great snob, and with no real pride in him, the Captain set exaggerated
     store by the lost past.
    The Captain lacked his feet on the pine straw and sobbed with a high wail that echoed
     thinly in the woods. Then abruptly he lay still and quiet. A strange feeling that had
     lingered in him for some time took sudden shape. He was sure that there