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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

out anywhere and lend me enough money for a ticket because I only had two dollars, but he-" "Oh, I know your sort," the woman said. "Honest women. Too good to have anything to do with common people. You'll slip out at night with the kids, but just let a man come along." She turned the meat. "Take all you can get, and give nothing. 'I'm a pure girl; I dont do that.' You'll slip out with the kids and bum their gasoline and eat their food, but just let a man so much as look at you and you faint away because your father's the judge and your four brothers might not like it. But just let you get into a jam, then who do you come crying to? to us, the ones that are not good enough to lace the judge's almighty shoes." Across the child Temple gazed at the woman's back, her face like a small pale mask beneath the pre- carious hat. "My brother said he would kill Frank. He didn't say he would give me a whipping if he caught me with him; he said he would kill the goddam son of a bitch in his yellow buggy and my father cursed my brother and said he could run his family a while longer and he drove me into the house and locked me in and went down to the bridge to wait for Frank. But I wasn't a coward. I climbed down the gutter and headed Frank off and told him. I begged him to go away, but he said we'd both go. When we got back in the buggy I knew it had been the last time. I knew it, and I begged him again to go away, but he said he'd drive me home to get my suitcase and we'd tell father. He wasn't a coward either. My father was sitting on the porch. He said 'Get out of that buggy' and I got out and I begged Frank to go on, but he got out too and we came up the path and father reached around inside the door and got the shotgun. I got in front of Frank and father said 'Do you want it too?' and I tried to stay in front but Frank shoved me behind him and held me and father shot him and said 'Get down there and sup your dirt, you whore.'" "I have been called that," Temple whispered, holding the sleeping child in her high thin arms, gazing at the woman's back. "But you good women. Cheap sports. Giving nothing, then when you're caught . . . Do you know what you've got into now?" she looked across her shoulder, the fork in her hand. "Do you think you're meeting kids now? kids that give a d n whether you like it or not? Let me tell you whose house you've come into without being asked or wanted; who you're expecting to drop everything and carry you back where you had no business ever leaving. When he was a soldier in the Philippines he killed another soldier over one of those nigger women and they sent him to Leavenworth. Then the war came and they let him out to go to it. He got two medals, and when it was over they put him back in Leavenworth until the lawyer got a congressman to get him out. Then I could quit jazzing again--" "Jazzing?" Temple whispered, holding the child, looking herself no more than an elongated and leggy infant in her scant dress and uptilted hat. "Yes, putty face!" the woman said. "How do you suppose I paid that lawyer? And that's the sort of man you think will care that much--" with the fork in her hand she came and snapped her fingers softly and viciously in Temple's face "--what happens to you. And you, you little doll-faced slut, that think you cant come into a room where a man is without him . . ." Beneath the faded garment her breast moved deep and full. With her hands on her hips she looked at Temple with cold, blazing eyes. "Man? You've never seen a real man. You dont know what it is to be wanted by a real man. And thank your stars you haven't and never will, for then you'd find just what that little putty face is
worth, and all the rest of it you think you are jealous of when you're just scared of it. And if he is just man enough to call you whore, you'll say Yes Yes and you'll crawl naked in the dirt and the mire for him to call you that. . . . Give me that baby." Temple held the child, gazing at the woman, her mouth moving as if she were saying Yes Yes Yes. The woman threw the fork onto the table. "Turn loose," she said, lifting the child. It opened its eyes and wailed. The woman drew a chair out and sat down, the child upon her lap. "Will you hand me one of those diapers on the line yonder?" she said. Temple stood on the floor, her lips still moving. "You're scared to go out there, aren't you?" the woman said. She rose. "No," Temple said; "I'll get-" "I'll get it." The unlaced brogans scuffed across the kitchen. She returned and drew another chair up to the stove and spread the two remaining cloths and the undergarments on it, and sat again and laid the child across her lap. It wailed. "Hush," she said, "hush, now," her face in the lamplight taking a serene, brooding quality. She changed the child and laid it in the box. Then she took a platter down from a cupboard curtained by a split towsack and took up the fork and came and looked into Temple's face again. "Listen. If I get a car for you, will you get out of here?" she said. Staring at her Temple moved her mouth as though she were experimenting with words, tasting them. "Will you go out the back and get into it and go away and never come back here?" "Yes," Temple whispered, "anywhere. Anything." Without seeming to move her cold eyes at all the woman looked Temple up and down. Temple could feel all her muscles shrinking like severed vines in the noon sun. "You poor little gutless fool," the woman said in her cold undertone. "Playing at it." "I didn't. I didn't." "You'll have something to tell them now, when you get back. Wont you?" Face to face, their voices were like shadows upon too close blank walls. "Playing at it." "Anything. Just so I get away. Anywhere." "It's not Lee I'm afraid of. Do you think he plays the dog after every hot little bitch that comes along? It's you." "Yes, I'll go anywhere." "I know your sort. I've seen them. All running, but not too fast. Not so fast you cant tell a real man when you see him. Do you think you've got the only one in the world?" "Gowan," Temple whispered, "Gowan." "I have slaved for that man," the woman whispered, her lips scarce moving, in her still, dispassionate voice. It was as though she were reciting a formula for bread. "I worked night shift as a waitress so I could see him Sundays at the prison. I lived two years in a single room, cooking over a gas-jet, because I promised him. I lied to him and made money to get him out of prison, and when I told him how I made it, he beat me. And now you must come here where you're not wanted. Nobody asked you to come here. Nobody cares whether you are afraid or not. Afraid? You haven't the guts to be really afraid, anymore than you have to be in love." "I'll pay you," Temple whispered. "Anything you say. My father will give it to me." The woman watched her, her face motionless, as rigid as when she had been
Page 1 and 2: William Faulkner SANCTUARY First pu
Page 3 and 4: "Through all them trees?" Popeye sa
Page 5 and 6: and stooped above an open packing c
Page 7 and 8: somebody else's wife, you start off
Page 9 and 10: Tommy guffawed, in undertone. The r
Page 11 and 12: "Some women want a man to marry a c
Page 13 and 14: slanted against the glare. The brok
Page 15 and 16: small clouds rosy with sunlight dro
Page 17 and 18: "Putty hard walkin', aint it?" he s
Page 19 and 20: stand fer nobody drinkin' hyer cep
Page 21 and 22: They went on in the path. Popeye wa
Page 23: we stopped at Dumfries and he went
Page 27 and 28: "Here," Gowan said across the table
Page 29 and 30: there, he said, stopping, then he s
Page 31 and 32: They swung Gowan onto the bed. His
Page 33 and 34: at her with a quality furious and q
Page 35 and 36: "A rat?" she wailed, "a rat? Open t
Page 37 and 38: The blind man's stick clattered aga
Page 39 and 40: Temple sprang back into the kitchen
Page 41 and 42: house. Instead he went on across th
Page 43 and 44: she was about halfway back to the h
Page 45 and 46: "Goodwin and I were both talking. H
Page 47 and 48: him who was already dead singing ab
Page 49 and 50: "And go on back to Kinston until th
Page 51 and 52: "You dont think I am lawyer enough,
Page 53 and 54: kept on talking, sitting there in h
Page 55 and 56: "No," he said, "I didn't. I didn't
Page 57 and 58: together, listening to the hot minu
Page 59 and 60: They reached Memphis in mid-afterno
Page 61 and 62: glared with choleric ferocity, thei
Page 63 and 64: and hurled the covers over her head
Page 65 and 66: owl and pitcher and a row of towels
Page 67 and 68: "But that girl," Horace said. "she
Page 69 and 70: "Yes; Gowan. And, by the Lord, he'd
Page 71 and 72: Horace. He could hear them breathin
Page 73 and 74: delicate paradox, as though the Cre
Page 75 and 76:
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 and 128:
he said, when Horace descended from
Page 129 and 130:
"The strikers. I dont care a damn w
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
show all

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

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?

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