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

"Shut up, Doc," the third said. "Dont mind him," he said. "He's had a bellyache all
night."
"Son bitch," Doc said.
"Did you call me that?" Gowan said.
"'Course he didn't," the third said. "Doc's all right. Come on Doc. Take a drink."
"I dont give a damn," Doc said. "Hand it here."
They returned to town. "The shack'll be open," the first said. "At the depot."
It was a confectionery-lunchroom. It was empty save for a man in a soiled apron.
They went to the rear and entered an alcove with a table and four chairs. The man
brought four glasses and coca-colas. "Can I have some sugar and water and a lemon,
Cap?" Gowan said. The man brought them. The others watched Gowan make a whisky
sour. "They taught me to drink it this way," he said. They watched him drink. "Hasn't got
much kick, to me," he said, filling his glass from the jar. He drank that.
"You sure do drink it," the third said.
I learned in a good school." There was a high window. Beyond it the sky was
paler, fresher. "Have another, gentlemen," he said, filling his glass again. The others
helped themselves moderately. "Up at school they consider it better to go down than to
hedge," he said. They watched him drink that one. They saw his nostrils bead suddenly
with sweat.
"That's all for him, too," Doc said.
"Who says so?" Gowan said. He poured an inch into the glass. "If we just had
some decent liquor. I know a man in my county named Goodwin that makes--"
"That's what they call a drink up at school," Doc said.
Gowan looked at him. "Do you think so? Watch this." He poured into the glass.
They watched the liquor rise.
"Look out fellow," the third said. Gowan filled the glass level full and lifted it and
emptied it steadily. He remembered setting the glass down carefully, then be became
aware simultaneously of open air, of a chill gray freshness and an engine panting on a
siding at the head of a dark string of cars, and that he was trying to tell someone that he
had learned to drink like a gentleman. He was still trying to tell them, in a cramped dark
place smelling of ammonia and cresote, vomiting into a receptacle, trying to tell them that
he must be at Taylor at six-thirty, when the special arrived. The paroxysm passed; he felt
extreme lassitude, weakness, a desire to lie down which was forcibly restrained, and in
the flare of a match he leaned against the wall, his eyes focusing slowly upon a name
written there in pencil. He shut one eye, propped against the wall, swaying and drooling,
and read the name. Then he looked at them, wagging his head.
"Girl name ... Name girl I know. Good girl. Good sport. Got date take her to Stark
. . . Starkville. No chap'rone, see?" Leaning there, drooling, mumbling, he went to sleep.
At once he began to fight himself out of sleep. It seemed to him that it was
immediately, yet he was aware of time passing all the while, and that time was a factor in
his need to wake; that otherwise he would be sorry. For a long while he knew that his
eyes were open, waiting for vision to return. Then he was seeing again, without knowing
at once that he was awake.
He lay quite still. It seemed to him that, by breaking out of sleep, he had
accomplished the purpose that he had waked himself for. He was lying in a cramped
position under a low canopy, looking at the front of an unfamiliar building above which