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

clerk in hotels; that following his profession, he would move from town to town, as a
doctor or a lawyer might.
While he was on his way home that summer they arrested him for killing a man in
one town and at an hour when he was in another town killing somebody else-that man
who made money and had nothing he could do with it, spend it for, since he knew that
alcohol would kill him like poison, who had no friends and had never known a woman
and knew he could never--and he said. "For Christ's sake," looking about the cell in the
jail of the town where the policeman had been killed, his free hand (the other was
handcuffed to the officer who had brought him from Birmingham) finicking a cigarette
from his coat.
"Let him send for his lawyer," they said, "and get that off his chest. You want to
wire?"
"Nah," he said, his cold, soft eyes touching briefly the cot, the high small window,
the grated door through which the light fell. They removed the handcuff; Popeye's hand
appeared to flick a small flame out of thin air. He lit the cigarette and snapped the match
toward the door. "What do I want with a lawyer? I never was in--What's the name of this
dump?"
They told him. "You forgot, have you?"
"He won't forget it no more," another said.
"Except he'll remember his lawyer's name by morning," the first said.
They left him smoking on the cot. He heard doors clash. Now and then he heard
voices from the other cells; somewhere down the corridor a negro was singing. Popeye
lay on the cot, his feet crossed in small, gleaming black shoes. "For Christ's sake," he
said.
The next morning the judge asked him if he wanted a lawyer.
"What for?" he said. "I told them last night I never was here before in my life. I
dont like your town well enough to bring a stranger here for nothing."
The judge and the bailiff conferred aside.
"You'd better get your lawyer," the judge said.
"All right," Popeye said. He turned and spoke generally into the room: "Any of
you ginneys want a one-day job?"
The judge rapped on the table. Popeye turned back, his tight shoulders lifted in a
faint shrug, his hand moving toward the pocket where he carried his cigarettes. The judge
appointed him counsel, a young man just out of law school.
"And I wont bother about being sprung," Popeye said. "Get it over with all at
once."
"You wouldn't get any bail from me, anyway," the judge told him.
"Yeuh?" Popeye said. "All right, Jack," he told his lawyer, "get going. I'm due in
Pensacola right now."
"Take the prisoner back to jail," the judge said.
His lawyer had an ugly, eager, earnest face. He rattled on with a kind of gaunt
enthusiasm while Popeye lay on the cot, smoking, his hat over his eye, motionless as a
basking snake save for the periodical movement of the hand that held the cigarette. At
last he said: "Here. I aint the judge. Tell him all this."
"But I've got--"