Read "Soldiers' Pay" by William Faulkner online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In the next room Cadet Lowe waked from a chaotic dream, opening his eyes and staring with detachment, impersonal as God, at lights burning about him. After a time, he recalled his body, remembering where he was and by an effort he turned his head. In the other bed the man slept beneath his terrible face. (I am Julian Lowe, I eat, I digest, evacuate: I have flown. This man. this man here, sleeping beneath his scar. Where do we touch? Oh, God, oh, God: knowing his own body, his stomach.)
Raising his hand he felt his own undamaged brow. No scar there. Near him upon a chair was his hat severed by a white band, upon the table the other man's cap with its cloth crown sloping backward from a bronze initialed crest.