Sanctuary

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 copper-colored 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. . . ."

76 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"Maybe they'll wait and hang them both together," Narcissa said. "They

do that sometimes, don't 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 1, or Mississippi, one."

Maybe a few of them would still be gathered along the fence, since this

would be his last night; the thick, smallheaded 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."

He was sleeping late the next morning; he had seen daylight. He was

wakened by someone knocking at the door. It was half-past six. He went

to the door. The negro porter of the hotel stood there.

"What?" Horace said. "Is it Mrs. Goodwin?"

"She say for you to come when you up," the negro said.

"Tell her I'll be there in ten minutes."

As he entered the hotel he passed a young man with a small black bag,

such as doctors carry. Horace went on up. The woman was standing in the

half-open door, looking down the hall.

"I finally got the doctor," she said. "But I wanted anyway.

11 The child lay on the bed, its eyes shut, flushed and sweating, its

curled hands above its head in the attitude of one crucified, breathing

in short, whistling gasps. "He was sick all last night. I went and got

some medicine and I tried to keep him quiet until daylight. At last I

got the doctor." She stood beside the bed, looking down at the child.

"There was a woman there," she said. "A young girl."

"A-" Horace said. "Oh," he said. "Yes. You'd better tell me about it."

XV111

POPEYE DROVE SWIFTLY BUT WITHOUT ANY QUALITY OF

haste or of flight, down the clay road and into the sand. Temple was

beside him. Her hat was jammed onto the back of her head, her hair

escaping beneath the crumpled brim in matted

SANCTUARY 77

clots. Her face looked like a sleepwalker's as she swayed limply to the

lurching of the car. She lurched against Popeye, lifting her hand in limp

reflex. Without releasing the wheel he thrust her back with his elbow.

"Brace yourself," he said. "Come on, now."

Before they came to the tree they passed the woman. She stood beside the

road, carrying the child, the hem of her dress folded back over its face,

and she looked at them quietly from beneath the faded sunbonnet, flicking

swiftly in and out of Temple's vision without any motion, any sign.

When they reached the tree Popeye swung the car out of the road and drove

it crashing into the undergrowth and through the prone tree-top and back

into the road again in a running popping of cane-stalks like musketry

along a trench, without any diminution of speed. Beside the tree Gowan's

car lay on its side. Temple looked vaguely and stupidly at it as it too

shot behind.

Popeye swung back into the sandy ruts. Yet there was -no flight in the

action: he performed it with a certain vicious petulance, that was all.

It was a powerful car. Even in the sand it held forty miles an hour, and

up the narrow gulch to the highroad, where he turned north. Sitting

beside him, braced against jolts that had already given way to a smooth

increasing hiss of gravel, Temple gazed dully forward as the road she had

traversed yesterday began to flee backward under the wheels as onto a

spool, feeling her blood seeping slowly inside her loins. She sat limp

in the corner of the seat, watching the steady backward rush of the

land-pines in opening vistas splashed with fading dogwood; sedge; fields

green with new cotton and empty of any movement, peaceful, as though

Sunday were a quality of atmosphere, of light and shade-sitting with her