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

"A rat?" she wailed, "a rat? Open the door! Quick!"
"Stop it! Stop it!" the woman hissed. She held Temple until she ceased. Then they
knelt side by side against the wall. After a while the woman whispered: "There's some
cottonseed-hulls over there. You can lie down." Temple didn't answer. She crouched
against the woman, shaking slowly, and they squatted there in the black darkness, against
the wall.
X
While the woman was cooking breakfast, the child still--or already--asleep in the box
behind the stove, she heard a blundering sound approaching across the porch and stop at
the door. When she looked around she saw the wild and battered and bloody apparition
which she recognized as Gowan. His face, beneath a two days' stubble, was marked, his
lip cut. One eye was closed and the front of his shirt and coat were blood-stained to the
waist. Through his swollen and stiffened lips he was trying to say something. At first the
woman could not understand a word. "Go and bathe your face," she said. "Wait. Come in
here and sit down. I'll get the basin."
He looked at her, trying to talk. "Oh," the woman said. "She's all right. She's
down there in the crib, asleep." She had to repeat it three or four times, patiently. "In the
crib. Asleep. I stayed with her until daylight. Go wash your face, now."
Gowan got a little calmer then. He began to talk about getting a car.
"The nearest one is at Tull's, two miles away," the woman said. "Wash your face
and eat some breakfast."
Gowan entered the kitchen, talking about getting the car. "I'll get it and take her
on back to school. One of the other girls will slip her in. It'll be all right then. Dent you
think it'll be all right then?" He came to the table and took a cigarette from the pack and
tried to light it with his shaking hands. He had trouble putting it into his mouth, and he
could not light it at all until the woman came and held the match. But he took but one
draw, then he stood, holding the cigarette in his hand, looking at it with his one good eye
in a kind of dull amazement, lie threw the cigarette away and turned toward the door,
staggering and catching himself. "Go get car," he said.
"Get something to eat first," the woman said. "Maybe a cup of coffee will help
you."
"Go get car," Gowan said. When he crossed the porch he paused long enough to
splash some water upon his face, without helping his appearance much.
When he left the house he was still groggy and he thought that he was still drunk.
He could remember only vaguely what had happened. He had got Van and the wreck
confused and he did not know that he had been knocked out twice. He only remembered
that he had passed out some time early in the night, and he thought that he was still
drunk. But when he reached the wrecked car and saw the path and followed it to the
spring and drank of the cold water, he found that it was a drink he wanted, and he knelt
there, bathing his face in the cold water and trying to examine his reflection in the broken
surface, whispering Jesus Christ to himself in a kind of despair. He thought about