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

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"Good Lord," Horace said. "Someone mistook him for a Mississippi man on the dance floor." "I think, if I were you--" Narcissa said. After a moment she said: "How much longer is this going to last, Horace?" "Not any longer than I can help. If you know of any way in which I can get him out of that jail by tomorrow." "There's only one way," she said. She looked at him for a moment. Then she turned toward the door. "Which way did Bory go? Dinner'll be ready soon." She went out. "And you know what that way is," Miss Jenny said. "If you aint got any backbone." "I'll know whether or not I have any backbone when you tell me what the other way is." "Go back to Belle," Miss Jenny said. "Go back home." The negro murderer was to be hung on a Saturday without pomp, buried without circumstance: one night he would be singing at the barred window and yelling down out of the soft myriad darkness of a May night; the next night he would be gone, leaving the window for Goodwin. Goodwin had been bound over for the June term of court, without bail. But still he would not agree to let Horace divulge Popeye's presence at the scene of the murder. "I'll tell you, they've got nothing on me," Goodwin said. "How do you know they haven't?" Horace said. "Well, no matter what they think they have on me, I stand a chance in court. But just let it get to Memphis that I said he was anywhere around there, what chance do you think I'd have to get back to this cell after I testified?" "You've got the law, justice, civilization." "Sure, if I spend the rest of my life squatting in that corner yonder. Come here." He led Horace to the window. "There are five windows in that hotel yonder that look into this one. And I've seen him light matches with a pistol at twenty feet. Why, damn it all, I'd never get back here from the courtroom the day I testified that." "But there's such a thing as obstruct--" "Obstructing damnation. Let him prove I did it. Tommy was found in the barn, shot from behind. Let them find the pistol. I was there, waiting. . . I try to run. I could have, but I didn't. It was me notified the sheriff. Of course my being there alone except for her and Pap looked bad. If it was a stall, dont common sense tell you I'd have invented a better one?" "You're not being tried by common sense," Horace said. "You're being tried by a jury." "Then let them make the best of it. That's all they'll get. The dead man is in the barn, hadn't been touched; me and my wife and child and Pap in the house; nothing in the house touched; me the one that sent for the sheriff. No, no; I know I run a chance this way, but let me just open my head about that fellow, and there's no chance to it. I know what I'll get." "But you heard the shot," Horace said. "You have already told that."
"No," he said, "I didn't. I didn't bear anything. I dont know anything about it. . . . Do you mind waiting outside a minute while I talk to Ruby?" It was five minutes before she joined him. He said: "There's something about this that I dont know yet; that you and Lee haven't told me. Something he just warned you not to tell me. Isn't there?" She walked beside him, carrying the child. It was still whimpering now and then, tossing its thin body in sudden jerks. She tried to soothe it, crooning to it, rocking it in her arms. "Maybe you carry it too much," Horace said; "maybe if you could leave it at the hotel . . ." "I guess Lee knows what to do," she said. "But the lawyer should know all the facts, everything. He is the one to decide what to tell and what not to tell. Else, why have one? That's like paying a dentist to fix your teeth and then refusing to let him look into your mouth, dont you see? You wouldn't treat a dentist or a doctor this way." She said nothing, her head bent over the child. It wailed. "Hush," she said, "hush, now." "And worse than that, there's such a thing called obstructing justice. Suppose he swears there was nobody else there, suppose he is about to be cleared--which is not likely--and somebody turns up who saw Popeye about the place, or saw his car leaving. Then they'll say, if Lee didn't tell the truth about an unimportant thing, why should we believe him when his neck's in danger?" They reached the hotel. He opened the door for her. She did not look at him. "I guess Lee knows best," she said, going in. The child wailed, a thin, whimpering, distressful cry. "Hush," she said. "Shhhhhhhh." Isom had been to fetch Narcissa from a party; it was late when the car stopped at the corner and picked him up. A few of the lights were beginning to come on, and men were already drifting back toward the square after supper, but it was still too early for the negro murderer to begin to sing. "And he'd better sing fast, too." Horace said. "He's only got two days more." But he was not there yet. The jail faced west; a last faint coppercolored light lay upon the dingy grating and upon the small, pale blob of a hand, and in scarce any wind a blue wisp of tobacco floated out and dissolved raggedly away. "If it wasn't bad enough to have her husband there, without that poor brute counting his remaining breaths at the top of his voice. . . ." "Maybe they'll wait and hang them both together," Narcissa said. "They do that sometimes, dont they?" That night Horace built a small fire in the grate. It was not cool. He was using only one room now, taking his meals at the hotel; the rest of the house was locked again. He tried to read, then he gave up and undressed and went to bed, watching the fire die in the grate. He heard the town clock strike twelve. "When this is over, I think I'll go to Europe," he said. "I need a change. Either I, or Mississippi, one." Maybe a few of them would still be gathered along the fence, since this would be his last night; the thick, small-headed shape of him would be clinging to the bars, gorillalike, singing, while upon his shadow, upon the checkered orifice of the window, the ragged grief of the heaven tree would pulse and change, the last bloom fallen now in viscid smears upon the sidewalk. Horace turned again in the bed. "They ought to clean that damn mess off the sidewalk," he said. "Damn. Damn. Damn."
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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 and 24: we stopped at Dumfries and he went
Page 25 and 26: worth, and all the rest of it you t
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: kept on talking, sitting there in h
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
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