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

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"I reckon I better stay," she said. Horace stood over them. The woman mused above the child, her face bent and her whole body motionless. Goodwin leaned back against the wall, his brown wrists folded into the faded sleeves of his shirt. "You're a man now," Horace said. "Aren't you? I wish that jury could see you now, locked up in a concrete cell, scaring women and children with fifth grade ghost stories. They'd know you never had the guts to kill anybody." "You better go on and go to bed yourself," Goodwin said. "We could sleep here, if there wasn't so much noise." "No; that's too sensible for us to do," Horace said. He left the cell. The jailer unlocked the door for him and he quitted the building. In ten minutes he returned, with a parcel. Goodwin had not moved. The woman watched him open the package. It contained a bottle of milk, a box of candy, a box of cigars. He gave Goodwin one of the cigars and took one himself. "You brought his bottle, didn't you?" The woman produced the bottle from a bundle beneath the cot. "It's got some in it," she said. She filled it from the bottle. Horace lit his and Goodwin's cigars. When he looked again the bottle was gone. "Not time to feed him yet?" be said. "I'm warming it," the woman said. "Oh," Horace said. He tilted the chair against the wall, across the cell from the cot. "Here's room on the bed," the woman said. "It's softer. Some." "Not enough to change, though," Horace said. "Look here," Goodwin said, "you go on home. No use in you doing this." "We've got a little work to do," Horace said. "That lawyer'll call her again in the morning. That's his only chance: to invalidate her testimony someway. You might try to get some sleep while we go over it." "All right," Goodwin said. Horace began to drill the woman, tramping back and forth upon the narrow floor. Goodwin finished his cigar and sat motionless again, his arms folded and his head bent. The clock above the square struck nine and then ten. The child whimpered, stirred. The woman stopped and changed it and took the bottle from beneath her flank and fed it. Then she leaned forward carefully and looked into Goodwin's face. "He's asleep," she whispered. "Shall we lay him down?" Horace whispered. "No. Let him stay there." Moving quietly she laid the child on the cot and moved herself to the other end of it. Horace carried the chair over beside her. They spoke in whispers. The clock struck eleven. Still Horace drilled her, going over and over the imaginary scene. At last he said: "I think that's all. Can you remember it, now? If he should ask you anything you cant answer in the exact words you've learned tonight, just say nothing for a moment. I'll attend to the rest. Can you remember, now?" "Yes," she whispered. He reached across and took the box of candy from the cot and opened it, the glazed paper crackling faintly. She took a piece. Goodwin had not moved. She looked at him, then at the narrow slit of window. "Stop that," Horace whispered. "He couldn't reach him through that window with a hat-pin, let alone a bullet. Dont you know that?"
"Yes," she said. She held the bon-bon in her hand. She was not looking at him. "I know what you're thinking," she whispered. "What?" "When you got to the house and I wasn't there. I know what you're thinking." Horace watched her, her averted face. "You said tonight was the time to start paying you." For a while he looked at her. "Ah," he said. "O tempora! O mores! O bell! Can you stupid mammals never believe that any man, every man--You thought that was what I was coming for? You thought that if I had intended to, I'd have waited this long?" She looked at him briefly. "It wouldn't have done you any good if you hadn't waited." "What? Oh. Well. But you would have tonight?" "I thought that was what--" "You would now, then?" She looked around at Goodwin. He was snoring a little. "Oh, I dont mean right this minute," he whispered. "But you'll pay on demand." "I thought that was what you meant. I told you we didn't have--If that aint enough pay, I dont know that I blame you. "It's not that. You know it's not that. But cant you see that perhaps a man might do something just because he knew it was right, necessary to the harmony of things that it be done?" The woman turned the bon-bon slowly in her hand. "I thought you were mad about him." "Lee?" "No. Him." She touched the child. "Because I'd have to bring him with us." "You mean, with him at the foot of the bed, maybe? perhaps you holding him by the leg all the time, so he wouldn't fall off?" She looked at him, her eyes grave and blank and contemplative. Outside the clock struck twelve. "Good God," he whispered. "What kind of men have you known?" "I got him out of jail once that way. Out of Leavenworth, too. When they knew he was guilty." "You did?" Horace said. "Here. Take another piece. That one's about worn out." She looked down at her chocolate-stained fingers and the shapeless bon-bon. She dropped it behind the cot. Horace extended his handkerchief. "It'll soil it," she said. "Wait." She wiped her fingers on the child's discarded garment and sat again, her hands clasped in her lap. Goodwin was snoring regularly. "When he went to the Philippines he left me in San Francisco. I got a job and I lived in a hall room, cooking over a gas-jet, because I told him I would. I didn't know how long he'd be gone, but I promised him I would and he knew I would. When he killed that other soldier over that nigger woman, I didn't even know it. I didn't get a letter from him for five months. It was just when I happened to see an old newspaper I was spreading on a closet shelf in the place where I worked that I saw the regiment was coming home, and when I looked at the calendar it was that day. I'd been good all that time. I'd had good chances; every day I had them with the men coming in the restaurant.
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William Faulkner SANCTUARY First pu
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"Through all them trees?" Popeye sa
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and stooped above an open packing c
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somebody else's wife, you start off
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Tommy guffawed, in undertone. The r
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"Some women want a man to marry a c
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slanted against the glare. The brok
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small clouds rosy with sunlight dro
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"Putty hard walkin', aint it?" he s
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stand fer nobody drinkin' hyer cep
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They went on in the path. Popeye wa
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we stopped at Dumfries and he went
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worth, and all the rest of it you t
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"Here," Gowan said across the table
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there, he said, stopping, then he s
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They swung Gowan onto the bed. His
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at her with a quality furious and q
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"A rat?" she wailed, "a rat? Open t
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The blind man's stick clattered aga
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Temple sprang back into the kitchen
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house. Instead he went on across th
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she was about halfway back to the h
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"Goodwin and I were both talking. H
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him who was already dead singing ab
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"And go on back to Kinston until th
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"You dont think I am lawyer enough,
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kept on talking, sitting there in h
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"No," he said, "I didn't. I didn't
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together, listening to the hot minu
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They reached Memphis in mid-afterno
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glared with choleric ferocity, thei
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and hurled the covers over her head
Page 65 and 66: owl and pitcher and a row of towels
Page 67 and 68: "But that girl," Horace said. "she
Page 69 and 70: "Yes; Gowan. And, by the Lord, he'd
Page 71 and 72: Horace. He could hear them breathin
Page 73 and 74: delicate paradox, as though the Cre
Page 75 and 76: shoulders and his gestures. The tra
Page 77 and 78: She took shape vaguely, approaching
Page 79 and 80: As the train neared Memphis Virgil
Page 81 and 82: "Caint be her husband," Fonzo said.
Page 83 and 84: When they reached home Fonzo stoppe
Page 85 and 86: "This is Snopes," he said. "How're
Page 87 and 88: "And what's your price?" Horace sai
Page 89 and 90: special bed made and sent down here
Page 91 and 92: to herself sitting on the bed, list
Page 93 and 94: teacher in school and it was a litt
Page 95 and 96: Temple turned from the door and sto
Page 97 and 98: she smoked swiftly, moving about th
Page 99 and 100: toward his armpit. He caught her wr
Page 101 and 102: still alive; she felt long shudderi
Page 103 and 104: and black and navy blue, and glitte
Page 105 and 106: "Beer? Beer? Is somebody--" "Put th
Page 107 and 108: They began to talk politely, in dec
Page 109 and 110: "I knew it all the time," Miss Reba
Page 111 and 112: "Going down to Jackson for a couple
Page 113 and 114: Two days before it opened Snopes em
Page 115: "Then I guess it's time to think ab
Page 119 and 120: man is going to let me walk out of
Page 121 and 122: "Sustained," the Court said. "Strik
Page 123 and 124: "He had the pistol in his hand. Wha
Page 125 and 126: loomed. In the yard, beneath the ba
Page 127 and 128: he said, when Horace descended from
Page 129 and 130: "The strikers. I dont care a damn w
Page 131 and 132: "What's your name? Calvin Coolidge?
Page 133 and 134: "Sure. Tell it to them. I dont know
Page 135: he quit jerking his neck and stood
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