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

"Oh," Horace said, "you have a son." Then she showed him her hands, flung them
out in a gesture at once spontaneous and diffident and self-conscious and proud, and told
him he might bring her an orange-stick.
She returned, with something wrapped discreetly in a piece of newspaper. He
knew that it was a diaper, freshly washed, even before she said: "I made a fire in the
stove. I guess I overstepped."
"Of course not," he said. "It's merely a matter of legal precaution, you see," he
said. "Better to put everybody to a little temporary discomfort than to jeopardize our
case." She did not appear to be listening. She spread the blanket on the bed and lifted the
child onto it. "You understand how it is," Horace said. "If the judge suspected that I knew
more about it than the facts would warrant-I mean, we must try to give everybody the
idea that holding Lee for that killing is just--"
"Do you live in Jefferson?" she said, wrapping the blanket about the child.
"No. I live in Kinston. I used to--I have practised here, though."
"You have kinfolks here, though. Women. That used to live n this house."
She lifted the child, tucking the blanket about it. Then she looked at him. "It's all
right. I know how it is. You've been kind."
"Damn it," he said, "do you think--Come on. Let's go on to the hotel. You get a
good night's rest, and I'll be in early in the morning. Let me take it."
"I've got him," she said. She started to say something else, looking at him quietly
for a moment, but she went on. He turned out the light and followed and locked the door.
She was already in the car. He got in.
"Hotel, Isom," he said. "I never did learn to drive one," he said.
"Sometimes, when I think of all the time I have spent not learning to do things . .
."
The street was narrow, quiet. It was paved now, though he could remember when,
after a rain, it had been a canal of blackish substance half earth, half water, with
murmuring gutters in which he and Narcissa paddled and splashed with tucked-up
garments and muddy bottoms, after the crudest of whittled boats, or made lob lollies by
treading and treading in one spot with the intense oblivion of alchemists. He could
remember when, innocent of concrete, the street was bordered on either side by paths of
red brick tediously and unevenly laid and worn in rich, random maroon mosaic into the
black earth which the noon sun never reached; at that moment pressed into the concrete
near the entrance of the drive, were the prints of his and his sister's naked feet in the
artificial stone.
The infrequent lamps mounted to crescendo beneath the arcade of a filling-station
at the comer. The woman leaned suddenly forward. "Stop here, please, boy," she said.
Isom put on the brakes. "I'll get out here and walk," she said.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," Horace said. "Go on, Isom."
"No; wait," the woman said. "We'll be passing people that know you. And then on
the square."
"Nonsense," Horace said. "Go on, Isom."
"You get out and wait, then," she said. "He can come straight back."
"You'll do no such thing," Horace said. "By heaven, I--Drive on, Isom!"
"You'd better," the woman said. She sat back in the seat. Then she leaned forward
again. "Listen. You've been kind. You mean all right, but--"