Sanctuary

Gowan entered the kitchen, talking about getting the car. "I'll get it and

take her on back to school. One of the other girls will slip her in. It'll

be all right then. Dent you think it'll be all right then?" He came to the

table and took a cigarette from the pack and tried to light it with his

shaking hands. He had trouble putting it into his mouth, and he could not

light it at all until the woman came and held the match. But he took but

one draw, then he stood, holding the cigarette in his hand, looking at it

with his one good eye in a kind of dull amazement, lie threw the cigarette

away and turned toward the door, staggering and catching himself. "Go get

car," he said.

"Get something to eat first," the woman said. "Maybe a cup of coffee will

help you."

50 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"Go get car," Gowan said. When he crossed the porch he paused long enough

to splash some water upon his face, without helping his appearance much.

When he left the house he was still groggy and he thought that he was

still drunk. He could remember only vaguely what had happened. He had got

Van and the wreck confused and he did not know that he had been knocked

out twice. He only remembered that he had passed out some time early in

the night, and he thought that he was still drunk. But when he reached

the wrecked car and saw the path and followed it to the spring and drank

of the cold water, he found that it was a drink he wanted, and he knelt

there, bathing his face in the cold water and trying to examine his

reflection in the broken surface, whispering Jesus Christ to himself in

a kind of despair. He thought about returning to the house for a drink,

then he thought of having to face Temple, the men; of Temple there among

them.

When he reached the highroad the sun was well up, warm. I'll get cleaned

up some, he said. And coming back with a car. I'll decide what to say to

her on the way to town; thinking of Temple returning among people who

knew him, who might know him. I passed out twice, he said. I passed out

twice. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ he whispered, his body writhing inside

his disreputable and bloody clothes in an agony of rage and shame.

His head began to clear with air and motion, but as he began to feel

better physically the blackness of the future increased. Town, the world,

began to appear as a black cul-desac; a place in which he must walk

forever more, his whole body cringing and flinching from whispering eyes

when he had passed, and when in midmorning he reached the house he

sought, the prospect of facing Temple again was more than he could bear.

So he engaged the car and directed the man and paid him and went on. A

little later a car going in the opposite direction stopped and picked him

up.

X1

TEmPLE WAKED LYING IN A TIGHT BALL, WITH NARROW BARS

of sunlight falling across her face like the tines of a golden fork, and

while the stiffened blood trickled and tingled through her cramped muscles

she lay gazing quietly up at the ceiling. Like the walls, it was of rough

planks crudely laid, each plank separated from the next by a thin line of

blackness; in the corner a square opening above a ladder gave into a

gloomy loft shot with thin pencils of sun also. From nails in the walls

broken bits 'of desiccated harness hung, and she lay plucking

SANCTUARY 51

tentatively at the substance in which she lay. She gathered a handful of it

and lifted her head, and saw within her fallen coat naked flesh between

brassiere and knickers and knickers and stockings. Then she remembered the

rat and scrambled up and sprang to the door, clawing at it, still clutching

the fist full of cottonseed-hulls, her face puffed with the hard slumber of

seventeen.

She had expected the door to be locked and for a time she could not pull it

open, her numb hands scoring at the undressed planks until she could hear

her finger nails. It swung back and she sprang out. At once she sprang back

into the crib and banged the door to. The blind man was coming down the

slope at a scuffling trot, tapping ahead with the stick, the other hand at

his waist, clutching a wad of his trousers. He passed the crib with his

braces dangling about his hips, his gymnasium shoes scuffing in the dry

chaff of the hallway, and passed from view, the stick rattling lightly

along the rank of empty stalls.

Temple crouched against the door, clutching her coat about her. She could

hear him back there in one of the stalls. She opened the door and peered

out, at the house in the bright May sunshine, the sabbath peace, and she

thought about the girls and men leaving the dormitories in their new Spring

clothes, strolling along the shaded streets toward the cool, unhurried

sound of bells. She lifted her foot and examined the soiled sole of her

stocking, brushing at it with her palm, then at the other one.

The blind man's stick clattered again. She jerked her head back and closed

the door to a crack and watched him pass, slower now, hunching his braces

onto his shoulders. He mounted the slope and entered the house. Then she