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

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He held the receiver, looking at the door through which the vague, troubling wind came. He began to say something out of a book he had read: "Less oft is peace. Less oft is peace," he said. The wire answered. "Hello! Hello! Belle?" Horace said. "Yes?" her voice came back thin and faint. "What is it? Is anything wrong?" "No, no." Horace said. "I just wanted to tell you hello and good-night." "Tell what? What is it? Who is speaking?" Horace held the receiver, sitting in the dark hall. "It's me, Horace. Horace. I just wanted to--" Over the thin wire came a scuffling sound; he could hear Little Belle breathe. Then a voice said, a masculine voice: "Hello, Horace; I want you to meet a--" "Hush!" Little Belle's voice said, thin and faint; again Horace heard them scuffling; a breathless interval. "Stop it!" Little Belle's voice said. "It's Horace! I live with him!" Horace held the receiver to his ear. Little Belle's voice was breathless, controlled, cool, discreet, detached. "Hello, Horace. Is Mamma all right?" "Yes. We're all right. I just wanted to tell you. . ." "Oh. Good-night." "Good-night. Are you having a good time?" "Yes. Yes. I'll write tomorrow. Didn't Mamma get my letter today?" "I dont know. I just--" "Maybe I forgot to mail it. I wont forget tomorrow, though. I'll write tomorrow. Was that all you wanted?" "Yes. Just wanted to tell you . . ." He put the receiver back; he heard the wire die. The light from his wife's room fell across the hall. "Lock the back door," she said. XXXI While on his way to Pensacola to visit his mother, Popeye was arrested in Birmingham for the murder of a policeman in a small Alabama town on June 17 of that year. He was arrested in August. It was on the night of June 17 that Temple had passed him sitting in the parked car beside the road house on the night when Red had been killed. Each summer Popeye went to see his mother. She thought he was a night clerk in a Memphis hotel. His mother was the daughter of a boarding house keeper. His father had been a professional strike-breaker hired by the street railway company to break a strike in 1900. His mother at that time was working in a department store downtown. For three nights she rode home on the car beside the motorman's seat on which Popeye's father rode. One night the strike-breaker got off at her corner with her and walked to her home. "Wont you get fired?" she said. "By who?" the strike-breaker said. They walked along together. He was welldressed. "Them others would take me that quick. They know it, too." "Who would take you?"
"The strikers. I dont care a damn who is running the car, see. I'll ride with one as soon as another. Sooner, if I could make this route every night at this time." She walked beside him. "You dont mean that," she said. "Sure I do." He took her arm. "I guess you'd just as soon be married to one as another, the same way." "Who told you that?" he said. "Have them bastards been talking about me?" A month later she told them that they would have to be married. "How do you mean, have to?" he said. "I dont dare tell them. I have to go away. I dont dare." "Well, dont get upset. I'd just as lief. I have to pass here every night anyway." They were married. He would pass the corner at night. He would ring the footbell. Sometimes he would come home. He would give her money. Her mother liked him; he would come roaring into the house at dinner time on Sunday, calling the other clients, even the old ones, by their first names. Then one day he didn't come back; he didn't ring the foot-bell when the trolley passed. The strike was over by then. She had a Christmas card from him; a picture, with a bell and an embossed wreath in gilt, from a Georgia town. It said: "The boys trying to fix it up here. But these folks awful slow. Will maybe move on until we strike a good town ha ha." The word, strike, was underscored. Three weeks after her marriage, she had begun to ail. She was pregnant then. She did not go to a doctor, because an old negro woman told her what was wrong. Popeye was born on the Christmas day on which the card was received. At first they thought he was blind. Then they found that he was not blind, although he did not learn to walk and talk until he was about four years old. In the meantime, the second husband of her mother, an undersized, snuffy man with a mild, rich, moustache, who pottered about the house--he fixed all the broken steps and leaky drains and such--left home one afternoon with a check signed in blank to pay a twelve dollar butcher's bill. He never came back. He drew from the bank his wife's fourteen hundred dollar savings account, and disappeared. The daughter was still working down town, while her mother tended the child. One afternoon one of the clients returned and found his room on fire. He put it out; a week later he found a smudge in his waste-basket. The grandmother was tending the child. She carried it about with her. One evening she was not in sight. The whole household turned out. A neighbor turned in a fire alarm and the firemen found the grandmother in the attic, stamping out a fire in a handful of excelsior in the center of the floor, the child asleep in a discarded mattress nearby. "Them bastards are trying to get him," the old woman said. "They set the house on fire." The next day, all the clients left. The young woman quit her job. She stayed at home all the time. "You ought to get out and get some air," the grandmother said. "I get enough air," the daughter said. "You could go out and buy the groceries," the mother said. "You could buy them cheaper." "We get them cheap enough." She would watch all the fires; she would not have a match in the house. She kept a few bidden behind a brick in the outside wall. Popeye was three years old then. He looked about one, though he could eat pretty well. A doctor had told his mother to feed
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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
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owl and pitcher and a row of towels
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"But that girl," Horace said. "she
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"Yes; Gowan. And, by the Lord, he'd
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Horace. He could hear them breathin
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delicate paradox, as though the Cre
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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 and 116: "Then I guess it's time to think ab
Page 117 and 118: "Yes," she said. She held the bon-b
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: he said, when Horace descended from
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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