Sanctuary

beyond the wall, back to the chair against the door and became motionless

there for a moment. Then she faced forward and Tommy watched her take a

tiny watch from the top of her stocking and look at it. With the watch

in her hand she lifted her head and looked directly at him, her eyes calm

and empty as two holes. After a while she looked down at the watch again

and returned it to her stocking.

She rose from the bed and removed her coat and stood motionless,

arrowlike in her scant dress, her head bent, her hands clasped before

her. She sat on the bed again. She sat with her legs close together, her

head bent. She raised her head and looked about the room. Tommy could

hear the voices from the dark porch. They rose again, then sank to the

steady murmur.

Temple sprang to her feet. She unfastened her dress, her arms arched thin

and high, her shadow anticking her movements. In a single motion she was

out of it, crouching a little, match-thin in her scant undergarments. Her

head emerged facing the chair against the door. She hurled the dress

away, her hand reaching for the coat. She scrabbled it up and swept it

about her, pawing at the sleeves. Then, the coat clutched to her breast,

she whirled and looked straight into Tommy's eyes and whirled and ran and

flung herself upon the chair. "Durn them fellers," Tommy whispered, "durn

them fellers."

42 WILLIAM FAULKNER

He could hear them on the front porch and his body began to writhe slowly in

an acute unhappiness. "Durn them fellers."

When he looked into the room again Temple was moving toward him, holding

the coat about her. She took the raincoat from the nail and put it on over

her own coat and fastened it. She lifted the canteen down and returned to

the bed. She laid the canteen on the bed and picked her dress up from the

floor and brushed it with her hand and folded it carefully and laid it on

the bed. Then she turned back the quilt, exposing the mattress. There was

no linen, no pillow, and when she touched the mattress it gave forth a

faint dry whisper of shucks.

She removed her slippers and set them on the bed and got in beneath the

quilt. Tommy could hear the mattress crackle. She didn't lie down at once.

She sat upright, quite still, the hat tilted rakishly upon the back of her

head. Then she moved the canteen, the dress and the slippers beside her

head and drew the raincoat about her legs and lay down, drawing the quilt

up, then she sat up and removed the hat and shook her hair out and laid the

hat with the other garments and prepared to lie down again. Again she

paused. She opened the raincoat and produced a compact from somewhere and,

watching her motions in the tiny mirror, she spread and fluffed her hair

with her fingers and powdered her face and replaced the compact and looked

at the watch again and fastened the raincoat. She moved the garments one by

one under the quilt and lay down and drew the quilt to her chin. The voices

had got quiet for a moment and in the silence Tommy could hear a faint,

steady chatter of the shucks inside the mattress where Temple lay, her

hands crossed on her breast and her legs straight and close and decorous,

like an effigy on an ancient tomb.

The voices were still; he had completely forgot them until he heard Goodwin

say "Stop it. Stop that!" A chair crashed over; he heard Goodwin's light

thudding feet; the chair clattered along the porch as though it had been

kicked aside, and crouching, his elbows out a little in squat, bear-Ue

alertness, Tommy heard dry, light sounds like billiard balls. "Tommy,"

Goodwin said.

When necessary he could move with that thick, lightninglike celerity of

badgers or coons. He was around the house and on the porch in time to see

Gowan slam into the wall and slump along it and plunge full length off the

porch into the weeds, and Popeye in the door, his head thrust forward.

"Grab him there!" Goodwin said. Tommy sprang upon Popeye in a sidling rush.

SANCTUARY ' 43

"I got-hah!" he said as Popeye slashed savagely at his face; "you would,

would you? Hole up hyer."

Popeye ceased. "Jesus Christ. You let them sit around here all night,

swilling that goddarn stuff; I told you. Jesus Christ."

Goodwin and Van were a single shadow, locked and hushed and furious. "Let

go!" Van shouted. "I'll kill . . ." Tommy sprang to them. They jammed Van

against the wall and held him motionless.

"Got him?" Goodwin said.

"Yeuh. I got him. Hole up hyer. You done whupped him."

"By God, I'll-"

"Now, now; whut you want to kill him fer? You caint eat him, kin you? You

want Mr. Popeye to start guttin' us all with that ere artermatic?"

Then it was over, gone like a furious gust of black wind, leaving a

peaceful vacuum in which they moved quietly about, lifting Gowan out of the

weeds with low-spoken, amicable directions to one another. They carried him

into the hall, where the woman stood, and to the door of the room where

Temple was.

"She's locked it," Van said. He struck the door, high. "Open the door," he

shouted. "We're bringing you a customer."