Sanctuary

my heart were as blank as this page, this would not be

necessary at all. I will not see you again. I cannot write it,

for I have gone through with an experience which I cannot

-face. I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have

injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent

of that folly you will never learn. I need not say that the

hope that you never learn it is the sole reason why I will not

see you again. Think as well of me as you can. I wish I had

the right to say, if you learn of my folly think not the less of

me. G.

Horace read the note, the single sheet. He held it between his hand. He

did not say anything for a while.

"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?"

74 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"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..1

didn't 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, don't 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

SANCTUARY 75

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 don't 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 don't 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, don't 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