Sanctuary

dusk had grown in the hall. She stood on tiptoe, listening, thinking I'm

hungry. I haven't eaten all day; thinking of the school, the lighted

windows, the slow couples strolling toward the sound of the supper bell,

and of her father sitting on the porch at home, his feet on the rail,

watching a negro mow the lawn. She moved quietly on tiptoe. In the corner

beside the door the shotgun leaned and she crowded into the corner beside

it and began to cry.

Immediately she stopped and ceased breathing. Something was moving beyond

the wall against which she leaned. It crossed the room with minute,

blundering sounds, preceded by a dry tapping. It emerged into the hall and

she screamed, feeling her lungs emptying long after all the air was

expelled, and her diaphragm laboring long after her chest was empty, and

watched the old man go down the hall at a wide-legged shuffling trot, the

stick in one hand and the other elbow cocked at an acute angle from his

middle. Running, she passed hima dim spraddled figure standing at the edge

of the porch-and ran on into the kitchen and darted into the corner behind

the stove. Crouching, she drew the box out and drew it before her. Her hand

touched the child's face, then she flung her arms around the box, clutching

it, staring across it at the pale door and trying to pray. But she could

not think of a single designation for the heavenly father, so she began to

say "My father's a judge; my father's a judge" over and over until Goodwin

32 WILLIAM FAULKNER

ran lightly into the room. He struck a match and held it overhead ana looked

down at her until the flame reached his fingers.

"Hah," he said. She heard his light, swift feet twice, then his hand

touched her cheek and he lifted her from behind the box by the scruff of

the neck, like a kitten. "What are you doing in my house?" he said.

Vii

FROM SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE LAMPLIT HALL SHE COULD hear the voices-a word; now

and then a laugh: the harsh, derisive laugh of a man easily brought to mirth

by youth or by age, cutting across the spluttering of frying meat on the

stove where the woman stood. Once she heard two of them come down the hall

in their heavy shoes, and a moment later the clatter of the dipper in the

galvanized pail and the voice that had laughed, cursing. Holding her coat

close she peered around the door with the wide, abashed curiosity of a

child, and saw Gowan and a second man in khaki breeches. He's getting drunk

again, she thought. He's got drunk four times since we left Taylor.

"Is he your brother?" she said.

"Who?" the woman said. "My what?" she turned the meat on the hissing

skillet.

"I thought maybe your young brother was here."

"God," the woman said. She turned the meat with a wire fork. "I hope not."

"Where is your brother?" Temple said, peering around the door. "I've got

four brothers. Two are lawyers and one's a newspaper man. The other's still

in school. At Yale. My father's a judge. Judge Drake of Jackson." She

thought of her father sitting on the veranda, in a linen suit, a palm leaf

fan in his hand, watching the negro mow the lawn.

The woman opened the oven and looked in. "Nobody asked you to come out

here. I didn't ask you to stay. I told you to go while it was daylight."

"How could I? I asked him. Gowan wouldn't, so I had to ask him."

The woman closed the oven and turned and looked at Temple, her back to the

light. "How could you? Do you know how I get my water? I walk after it. A

mile. Six times a day. Add that up. Not because I am somewhere I am afraid

to stay." She went to the table and took up a pack of cigarettes and shook

one out.

"May I have one?" Temple said. The woman flipped the pack along the table.

She removed the chimney from the

SANCTUARY 33

lamp and lit hers at the wick. Temple took up the pack and stood listening

to Gowan and the other man go back into the house. "There are so many of

them," she said in a wailing tone, watching the cigarette crush slowly in

her fingers. "But maybe, with so many of them . . ." The woman had gone back

to the stove. She turned the meat. "Gowan kept on getting drunk again. He

got drunk three times today. He was drunk when I got off the train at Taylor

and I am on probation and I told him what would happen and I tried to get

him to throw the jar away and when we stopped at that little country store

to buy a shirt he got drunk again. And so we hadn't eaten and we stopped at

Dumfries and he went into the restaurant but I was too worried to eat and I

couldn't find him and then he came up another street and I felt the bottle

in his pocket before he knocked my hand away. He kept on saying I had his

lighter and then when he lost it and I told him he had, he swore he never

owned one in his life."

The meat hissed and spluttered in the skillet. "He got drunk three separate

time," Temple said. "Three separate times in one day. Buddy-that's Hubert,

my youngest brother -said that if he ever caught me with a drunk man, he'd

beat hell out of me. And now I'm with one that gets drunk three times in