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

small clouds rosy with sunlight drove, quite empty of any sense. Then his abdominal
muscles completed the retch upon which he had lost consciousness and he heaved
himself up and sprawled into the foot of the car, banging his head on the door. The blow
fetched him completely to and he opened the door and half fell to the ground and dragged
himself up and turned toward the station at a stumbling run. He fell. On hands and knees
he looked at the empty siding and up at the sunfilled sky with unbelief and despair. He
rose and ran on, in his stained dinner jacket, his burst collar and broken hair. I passed out,
he thought in a kind of rage, I passed out. _I passed out._
The platform was deserted save for a negro with a broom. "Gret Gawd, white
folks," he said.
"The train," Gowan said, "the special. The one that was on that track."
"Hit done lef. But five minutes ago." With the broom still in the arrested gesture
of sweeping he watched Gowan turn and run back to the car and tumble into it.
The jar lay on the floor. He kicked it aside and started the engine. He knew that he
needed something on his stomach, but there wasn't time. He looked down at the jar. His
inside coiled coldly, but he raised the jar and drank, guzzling, choking the stuff down,
clapping a cigarette into his mouth to restrain the paroxysm. Almost at once he felt better.
He crossed the square at forty miles an hour. It was six-fifteen. He took the Taylor
road, increasing speed. He drank again from the jar without slowing down. When he
reached Taylor the train was just pulling out of the station. He slammed in between two
wagons as the last car passed. The vestibule opened; Temple sprang down and ran for a
few steps beside the car while an official leaned down and shook his fist at her.
Gowan had got out. She turned and came toward him, walking swiftly. Then she
paused, stopped, came on again, staring at his wild face and hair, at his ruined collar and
shirt.
"You're drunk," she said. "You pig. You filthy pig."
"Had a big night. You dont know the half of it."
She looked about, at the bleak yellow station, the overalled men chewing slowly
and watching her, down the track at the diminishing train, at the four puffs of vapor that
had almost died away when the sound of the whistle came back. "You filthy pig," she
said. "You cant go anywhere like this. You haven't even changed clothes." At the car she
stopped again. "What's that behind you?"
"My canteen," Gowan said. "Get in."
She looked at him, her mouth boldly scarlet, her eyes watchful and cold beneath
her brimless hat, a curled spill of red hair. She looked back at the station again, stark and
ugly in the fresh morning. "Let's get away from here." He started the car and turned it.
"You'd better take me back to Oxford," she said. She looked back at the station. It now
lay in shadow, in the shadow of a high scudding cloud. "You'd better," she said.
At two o'clock that afternoon, running at good speed through a high murmurous
desolation of pines, Gowan swung the car from the gravel into a narrow road between
eroded banks descending toward a bottom of cypress and gum. He wore a cheap blue
workshirt beneath his dinner jacket. His eyes were bloodshot, puffed, his jowls covered
by blue stubble, and looking at him, braced and clinging as the car leaped and bounced in
the worn ruts, Temple thought His whiskers have grown since we left Dumfries. It was
hair-oil he drank. He bought a bottle of hair-oil at Dumfries and drank it.