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

not hungry. Isn't that funny? I haven't eaten in . . ." She looked at the woman's back with
a fixed placative grimace. "You haven't got a bathroom, have you?"
"What?" the woman said. She looked at Temple across her shoulder while Temple
stared at her with that grimace of cringing and placative assurance. From a shelf the
woman took a mail-order catalogue and tore out a few leaves and handed them to
Temple. "You'll have to go to the barn, like we do."
"Will I'll' Temple said, holding the paper. "The barn."
"They're all gone," the woman said. "They wont be back this morning."
"Yes," Temple said. "The barn."
"Yes; the barn," the woman said. "Unless you're too pure to have to."
"Yes," Temple said. She looked out the door, across the weed-choked clearing.
Between the sombre spacing of the cedars the orchard lay bright in the sunlight. She
donned the coat and hat and went toward the barn, the torn leaves in her hand, splotched
over with small cuts of clothes-pins and patent wringers and washing-powder, and
entered the hallway. She stopped, folding and folding the sheets, then she went on, with
swift, cringing glances at the empty stalls. She walked right through the barn. It was open
at the back, upon a mass of jimson weed in savage white-and-lavender bloom. She
walked on into the sunlight again, into the weeds. Then she began to run, snatching her
feet up almost before they touched the earth, the weeds slashing at her with huge, moist,
malodorous blossoms. She stooped and twisted through a fence of sagging rusty wire and
ran downhill among trees.
At the bottom of the hill a narrow scar of sand divided the two slopes of a small
valley, winding in a series of dazzling splotches where the sun found it. Temple stood in
the sand, listening to the birds among the sunshot leaves, listening, looking about. She
followed the dry runlet to where a jutting shoulder formed a nook matted with briers.
Among the new green last year's dead leaves from the branches overhead clung, not yet
fallen to earth. She stood here for a while, folding and folding the sheets in her fingers, in
a kind of despair. When she rose she saw, upon the glittering mass of leaves along the
crest of the ditch, the squatting outline of a man.
For an instant she stood and watched herself run out of her body, out of one
slipper. She watched her legs twinkle against the sand, through the flecks of sunlight, for
several yards, then whirl and run back and snatch up the slipper and whirl and run again.
When she caught a glimpse of the house she was opposite the front porch. The
blind man sat in a chair, his face lifted into the sun. At the edge of the woods she stopped
and put on the slipper. She crossed the ruined lawn and sprang onto the porch and ran
down the hall. When she reached the back porch she saw a man in the door of the barn,
looking toward the house. She crossed the porch in two strides and entered the kitchen,
where the woman sat at the table, smoking, the child on her lap.
"He was watching me!" Temple said. "He was watching me all the time!" She
leaned beside the door, peering out, then she came to the woman, her face small and pale,
her eyes like holes burned with a cigar, and laid her hand on the cold stove.
"Who was?" the woman said.
"Yes," Temple said. "He was there in the bushes, watching me all the time." She
looked toward the door, then back at the woman, and saw her hand lying on the stove.
She snatched it up with a wailing shriek, clapping it against her mouth, and turned and
ran toward the door. The woman caught her arm, still carrying the child on the other, and