William Faulkner, SANCTUARY â WordPress.com - literature save 2
William Faulkner, SANCTUARY â WordPress.com - literature save 2
William Faulkner, SANCTUARY â WordPress.com - literature save 2
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They went on in the path. Popeye was leaning against a post, fighting a cigarette.<br />
Temple ran on up the broken steps. "Say," she said, "dont you want to drive us to town?"<br />
He turned his head, the cigarette in his mouth, the match cupped between his<br />
hands. Temple's mouth was fixed in that cringing grimace. Popeye leaned the cigarette to<br />
the match. "No," he said.<br />
"Come on," Temple said. "Be a sport. It wont take you any time in that Packard.<br />
How about it? We'll pay you."<br />
Popeye inhaled. He snapped the match into the weeds. He said, in his soft, cold<br />
voice: "Make your whore lay off of me, Jack."<br />
Gowan moved thickly, like a clumsy, good-tempered horse goaded suddenly.<br />
"Look here, now," he said. Popeye exhaled, the smoke jetting downward in two<br />
thin spurts. "I dont like that," Gowan said. "Do you know who you're talking to?" He<br />
continued that thick movement, like he could neither stop it nor <strong>com</strong>plete it. "I dont like<br />
that." Popeye turned his head and looked at Gowan. Then he quit looking at him and<br />
Temple said suddenly:<br />
"What river did you fall in and with that suit on? Do you have to shave it off at<br />
night?" Then she was moving toward the door with Gowan's hand in the small of her<br />
back, her head reverted, her heels clattering. Popeye leaned motionless against the post,<br />
his head turned over his shoulder in profile.<br />
"Do you want--" Gowan hissed.<br />
"You mean old thing!" Temple cried. "You mean old thing!"<br />
Gowan shoved her into the house. "Do you want him to slam your damn head<br />
off?" he said.<br />
"You're scared of him!" Temple said. "You're scared!"<br />
"Shut your mouth!" Gowan said. He began to shake her. Their feet scraped on the<br />
bare floor as though they were performing a clumsy dance, and clinging together they<br />
lurched into the wall. "Look out," he said, "you're getting all that stuff stirred up in me<br />
again." She broke free, running. He leaned against the wall and watched her in silhouette<br />
run out the back door.<br />
She ran into the kitchen. It was dark <strong>save</strong> for a crack of light about the fire-door of<br />
the stove. She whirled and ran out the door and saw Gowan going down the hill toward<br />
the barn. He's going to drink some more, she thought; he's getting drunk again. That<br />
makes three times today. Still more dusk had grown in the hall. She stood on tiptoe,<br />
listening, thinking I'm hungry. I haven't eaten all day; thinking of the school, the lighted<br />
windows, the slow couples strolling toward the sound of the supper bell, and of her father<br />
sitting on the porch at home, his feet on the rail, watching a negro mow the lawn. She<br />
moved quietly on tiptoe. In the corner beside the door the shotgun leaned and she<br />
crowded into the corner beside it and began to cry.<br />
Immediately she stopped and ceased breathing. Something was moving beyond<br />
the wall against which she leaned. It crossed the room with minute, blundering sounds,<br />
preceded by a dry tapping. It emerged into the hall and she screamed, feeling her lungs<br />
emptying long after all the air was expelled, and her diaphragm laboring long after her<br />
chest was empty, and watched the old man go down the hall at a wide-legged shuffling<br />
trot, the stick in one hand and the other elbow cocked at an acute angle from his middle.<br />
Running, she passed him--a dim spraddled figure standing at the edge of the porch--and<br />
ran on into the kitchen and darted into the corner behind the stove. Crouching, she drew