William Faulkner, SANCTUARY – WordPress.com - literature save 2

left, each carrying no occupant save the liveried driver. The street was broad and now
infrequent, with a white line down the center that diminished on ahead and into the
smooth asphalt emptiness. Soon the hearse was making forty miles an hour, then fortyfive
and then fifty.
One of the cabs drew up at Miss Reba's door. She got out, followed a thin woman
in sober, severe clothes and gold nose-glasses, and a short plump woman in a plumed hat,
her face hidden by a handkerchief, and a small bullet-headed boy of five or six. The
woman with the handkerchief continued to sob in snuffy gasps as they went up the walk
and entered the lattice. Beyond the house door the dogs set up a falsetto uproar. When
Minnie opened the door they surged about Miss Reba's feet. She kicked them aside.
Again they assailed her with snapping eagerness; again she flung them back against the
wall in muted thuds.
"Come in, come in," she said, her hand to her breast. Once inside the house the
woman with the handkerchief began to weep aloud.
"Didn't he look sweet?" she wailed. "Didn't he look sweet!"
"Now, now," Miss Reba said, leading the way to her room, come in and have
some beer. You'll feel better. Minnie!" They entered the room with the decorated dresser,
the safe, the screen, the draped portrait. "Sit down, sit down," she panted, shoving the
chairs forward. She lowered herself into one and stooped terrifically toward her feet.
"Uncle Bud, honey," the weeping woman said, dabbing at her eyes, "come and
unlace Miss Reba's shoes."
The boy felt and removed Miss Reba's shoes. "And if you'll just reach me them
house slippers under the bed there, honey," Miss Reba said. The boy fetched the slippers.
Minnie entered, followed by the dogs. They rushed at Miss Reba and began to worry the
shoes she had just removed.
"Scat!" the boy said, striking at one of them with his hand. The dog's head
snapped around, it's teeth clicking, it's half-hidden eyes bright and malevolent. The boy
recoiled. "You bite me, you thon bitch," he said.
"Uncle Bud!" the fat woman said, her round face, rigid in fatty folds and streaked
with tears, turned upon the boy in shocked surprise, the plumes nodding precariously
above it. Uncle Bud's head was quite round, his Dose bridged with freckles like splotches
of huge summer rain on a sidewalk. The other woman sat primly erect, in gold noseglasses
on a gold chain and neat iron-gray hair. She looked like a schoolteacher. "The
very ideal" the fat woman said. "How in the world can he learn such words on an
Arkansaw farm, I dont know."
"They'll learn meanness anywhere," Miss Reba said. Minnie leaned down a tray
bearing three frosted tankards. Uncle Bud watched with round cornflower eyes as they
took one each. The fat woman began to cry again. "He looked so sweet!" she wailed.
"We all got to suffer it," Miss Reba said. "Well, may it be a long day," lifting her
tankard. They drank, bowing formally to one another. The fat woman dried her eyes; the
two guests wiped their lips with prim decorum. The thin one coughed delicately aside,
behind her hand.
"Such good beer," she said.
"Aint it?" the fat one said. "I always say it's the greatest pleasure I have to call on
Miss Reba."