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

The blind man's stick clattered again. She jerked her head back and closed the
door to a crack and watched him pass, slower now, hunching his braces onto his
shoulders. He mounted the slope and entered the house. Then she opened the door and
stepped gingerly down.
She walked swiftly to the house, her stockinged feet flinching and cringing from
the rough earth, watching the house. She mounted to the porch and entered the kitchen
and stopped, listening into the silence. The stove was cold. Upon it the blackened coffeepot
sat, and a soiled skillet; upon the table soiled dishes were piled at random. I haven't
eaten since . . . since . . . Yesterday was one day, she thought, but I didn't eat then. I
haven't eaten since . . . and that night was the dance, and I didn't eat any supper. I haven't
eaten since dinner Friday, she thought. And now it's Sunday, thinking about the bells in
cool steeples against the blue, and pigeons crooning about the belfries like echoes of the
organ's bass. She returned to the door and peered out. Then she emerged, clutching the
coat about her.
She entered the house and sped up the hall. The sun lay now on the front porch
and she ran with a craning motion of her head, watching the patch of sun framed in the
door. It was empty. She reached the door to the right of the entrance and opened it and
sprang into the room and shut the door and leaned her back against it. The bed was
empty. A faded patchwork quilt was wadded across it. A khaki-covered canteen and one
slipper lay on the bed. On the floor her dress and hat lay.
She picked up the dress and hat and tried to brush them with her hand and with
the corner of her coat. Then she sought the other slipper, moving the quilt, stooping to
look under the bed. At last she found it in the fireplace, in a litter of wood ashes between
an iron fire-dog and an overturned stack of bricks, lying on its side, half full of ashes, as
though it had been flung or kicked there. She emptied it and wiped it on her coat and laid
it on the bed and took the canteen and hung it on a nail in the wall. It bore the letters U S
and a blurred number in black stencil. Then she removed the coat and dressed.
Long legged, thin armed, with high small buttocks--a small childish figure no
longer quite a child, not yet quite a woman -she moved swiftly, smoothing her stockings
and writhing into her scant, narrow dress. Now I can stand anything, she thought quietly,
with a kind of dull, spent astonishment; I can stand just anything. From the top of one
stocking she removed a watch on a broken black ribbon. Nine o'clock. With her fingers
she combed her matted curls, combing out three or four cottonseed-hulls. She took up the
coat and hat and listened again at the door.
She returned to the back porch. In the basin was a residue of dirty water. She
rinsed it and filled it and bathed her face. A soiled towel hung from a nail. She used it
gingerly, then she took a compact from her coat and was using it when she found the
woman watching her in the kitchen door.
"Good morning," Temple said. The woman held the child on her hip. It was
asleep. "Hello, baby," Temple said, stooping; "you wan sleep all day? Look at Temple."
They entered the kitchen. The woman poured coffee into a cup.
"It's cold, I expect," she said. "Unless you want to make up a fire." From the oven
she took a pan of bread.
"No," Temple said, sipping the lukewarm coffee, feeling her insides move in
small, tickling clots, like loose shot. "I'm not hungry. I haven't eaten in two days, but I'm