Sanctuary

had time to touch it. Its eyes were half open, the balls rolled back into

the skull so that only the white showed, in color like weak milk. Its

face was still damp with perspiration, but its breathing was easier. It

no longer breathed in those weak, whistling gasps as it had when Horace

entered the room. On a chair beside the bed sat a tumbler half full of

faintly discolored water, with a spoon in it. Through the open window

came the myriad noises of the square-cars, wagons, footsteps on the

pavement beneathand through it Horace could see the courthouse, with men

pitching dollars back and forth between holes in the earth beneath the

locust and water Oaks.

The woman brooded above the child. "Nobody wanted her out there. Lee has

told them and told them they must not bring women out there, and I told

her before it got dark they were not her kind of people and to get away

from there. It was that fellow that brought her. He was out there on the

porch with them, still drinking, because when he came in to supper he

couldn't hardly walk, even. He hadn't even tried to wash the blood off

of his face. Little shirt-tail boys that think because Lee breaks the

law, they can come out there and treat our house like a . . . Grown

people are bad, but at least they take buying whiskey like buying

anything else; it's the ones like him, the ones that are too young to

realise that people don't break the law just for a holiday." Horace could

see her clenched hands writhing in h-er lap. "God, if I had my way, I'd

hang every man that makes it or buys it or drinks it, every one of them.

"But why must it have been me, us? What had I ever done to her, to her

kind? I told her to get away from there. I told her not to stay there

until dark. But that fellow that brought her was getting drunk again, and

him and Van picking at each other. If she'd just stopped running around

where they had to look at her. She wouldn't stay anywhere. She'd just

dash out one door, and in a minute she'd come running in from the other

direction. And if he'd just let Van alone, because Van had to go back on

the truck at midnight, and so Popeye would have made him behave. And

Saturday night too, and them 91

92 WILLIAM FAULKNER

sitting up all night drinking anyway, and I had gone through it and gone

through it and I'd tell Lee to let's get away, that he was getting nowhere,

and he would have these spells like last night, and no doctor, no telephone.

And then she had to come out there, after I had slaved for him, slaved for

him." Motionless, her head bent and her hands still in her lap, she had that

spent immobility of a chimney rising above the ruin of a house in the

aftermath of a cyclone.

"Standing there in the corner behind the bed, with that raincoat on. She

was that scared, when they brought the fellow in, all bloody again. They

laid him on the bed and Van hit him again and Lee caught Van's arm, and her

standing there with her eyes like the holes in one of these masks. The

raincoat was hanging on the wall, and she had it on, over her coat. Her

dress was all folded up on the bed. They threw the fellow right on top of

it, blood and all, and I said 'God, are you drunk too?' But Lee just looked

at me and I saw that his nose was white already, like it gets when he's

drunk.

"There wasn't any lock on the door, but I thought that pretty soon they'd

have to go and see about the truck and then I could do something. Then Lee

made me go out too, and he took the lamp out, so I had to wait until they

went back to the porch before I could go back. I stood just inside the

door. The fellow was snoring, in the bed there, breathing hard, with his

nose and mouth all battered up again, and I could hear them on the porch.

Then they would be outdoors, around the house and at the back too I could

hear them. Then they got quiet.

"I stood there, against the wall. He would snore and choke and catch his

breath and moan, sort of, and I would think about that girt lying there in

the dark, with her eyes open, listening to them, and me having to stand

there, waiting for them to go away so I could do something. I told her to

go away. I said 'What fault is it of mine if you're not married? I don't

want you here a bit more than you want to be here.' I said 'I've lived my

life without any help from people of your sort; what right have you got to

look to me for help?' Because I've done everything for him. I've been in

the dirt for him. I've put everything behind me and all I asked was to be

let alone.

"Then I heard the door open. I could tell Lee by the way he breathes. He

went to the bed and said 'I want the raincoat. Sit up and take it off' and

I could hear the shucks rattling while he took it off her, then he went

out. He just got the raincoat and went out. It was Van's coat.

"And I have walked around that house so much at night,

SANCTUARY 93

with those men there, men living off of Lee's risk, men that wouldn't lift

a finger for him if he got caught, until I could tell any of them by the way