William Faulkner, SANCTUARY â WordPress.com - literature save 2
William Faulkner, SANCTUARY â WordPress.com - literature save 2
William Faulkner, SANCTUARY â WordPress.com - literature save 2
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"Now, now," Miss Lorraine said. "Drink a little beer. You'll feel better. Miss<br />
Myrtle's took again," she said, raising her voice.<br />
"I got too tender a heart," Miss Myrtle said. She snuffled behind the handkerchief,<br />
groping for her tankard. She groped for a moment, then it touched her hand. She looked<br />
quickly up. "You, Uncle Bud!" she said. "Didn't I tell you to <strong>com</strong>e out from behind there<br />
and play? Would you believe it? The other afternoon when we left here I was so<br />
mortified I didn't know what to do. I was ashamed to be seen on the street with a drunk<br />
boy like you."<br />
Miss Reba emerged from behind the screen with three glasses of gin. "This'll put<br />
some heart into us," she said. "We're setting here like three old sick cats." They bowed<br />
formally and drank, patting their lips. Then they began to talk. They were all talking at<br />
once, again in half-<strong>com</strong>pleted sentences, but without pauses for agreement or affirmation.<br />
"It's us girls," Miss Myrtle said. "Men just cant seem to take us and leave us for<br />
what we are. They make us what we are, then they expect us to be different. Expect us<br />
not to never look at another man, while they <strong>com</strong>e and go as they please."<br />
"A woman that wants to fool with more than one man at a time is a fool,"<br />
Miss Reba said. "They're all trouble, and why do you want to double your<br />
trouble? And the woman that cant stay true to a good man when she gets him, a<br />
freehearted spender that never give her a hour's uneasiness or a hard word . . ." looking at<br />
them, her eyes began to fill with a sad, unutterable expression, of baffled and patient<br />
despair.<br />
"Now, now," Miss Myrtle said. She leaned for-ward and patted Miss Reba's huge<br />
hand. Miss Lorraine made a faint clucking sound with her tongue. "You'll get yourself<br />
started."<br />
"He was such a good man," Miss Reba said. "We was like two doves. For eleven<br />
years we was like two doves."<br />
"Now, dearie; now, dearie," Miss Myrtle said.<br />
"It's when it <strong>com</strong>es over me like this," Miss Reba said. "Seeing that boy laying<br />
there under them flowers."<br />
"He never had no more than Mr. Binford had," Miss Myrtle said. "Now, now.<br />
Drink a little beer."<br />
Miss Reba brushed her sleeve across her eyes. She drank some beer.<br />
"He ought to known better than to take a chance with Popeye's girl," Miss<br />
Lorraine said.<br />
"Men dont never learn better than that, dearie," Miss Myrtle said. "Where you<br />
reckon they went, Miss Reba?"<br />
"I dont know and I dont care," Miss Reba said. "And how soon they catch him<br />
and burn him for killing that boy, I dont care neither. I dont care none."<br />
"He goes all the way to Pensacola every summer to see his mother," Miss Myrtle<br />
said. "A man that'll do that cant be all bad."<br />
"I dont know how bad you like them, then," Miss Reba said. "Me trying to run a<br />
respectable house, that's been running a shooting-gallery for twenty years, and him trying<br />
to turn it into a peep-show."<br />
"It's us poor girls," Miss Myrtle said, "causes all the trouble and gets all the<br />
suffering."<br />
"I heard two years ago he wasn't no good that way," Miss Lorraine said.