Sanctuary

his business is to-"

"So the quicker he loses, the better it would be, wouldn't it?" she said.

"If they hung the man and got it over with." His hands became perfectly

still. He did not look up. She said, her tone cold and level: "I have

reasons for wanting Horace out of this case. The sooner the better. Three

nights ago the Snopes, the one in the legislature, telephoned out home,

trying to find him. The next day he went to Memphis. I dont know what

for. You'll have to find that out yourself. I just want Horace out of

this business as soon as possible."

150 WILLIAM FAULKNER

She rose and moved toward the door. He hobbled over to open it; again she

put that cold, still, unfathomable gaze upon him as though he were a dog or

a cow and she waited for it to get out of her path. Then she was gone. He

closed the door and struck a clumsy clogstep, snapping his fingers just as

the door opened again; he snapped his hands toward his tie and looked at

her in the door, holding it open.

"What day do you think it will be over with?" she said.

"Why, I cuh- Court opens the twentieth," he said. "It will be the first

case. Say . . . Two days. Or three at the most, with your kind assistance.

And I need not assure you that this will be held in strictest confidence

between us . . ." He moved toward her, but her blank calculating gaze was

like a wall, surrounding him.

"That will be the twenty-fourth." Then she was looking at him again. "Thank

you," she said, and closed the door.

That night she wrote Belle that Horace would be home on the twenty-fourth.

She telephoned Horace and asked for Belle's address.

"Why?" Horace said.

"I'm going to write her a letter," she said, her voice tranquil, without

threat. Dammit, Horace thought, holding the dead wire in his hand, How can

I be expected to combat people who will not even employ subterfuge. But

soon he forgot it, forgot that she had called. He did not see her again

before the trial opened.

Two days before it opened Snopes emerged from a dentist's office and stood

at the curb, spitting. He took a goldwrapned cigar from his pocket and

removed the foil and put the cigar gingerly between his teeth. He had a

black eye, and the bridge of his nose was bound in soiled adhesive tape.

"Got hit by a car in Jackson," he told them in the barbershop. "But I dont

think I never made the bastard pay," he said, showing a sheaf of yellow

bills. He put them into a notecase and stowed it away. "I'm an American,"

he said. "I dont brag about it, because I was born one. And I been a decent

Baptist all my life, too. Oh, I aint no preacher and I aint no old maid; I

been around with the boys now and then, but I reckon I aint no worse than

lots of folks that pretends to sing loud in church. But the lowest,

cheapest thing on this earth aint a nigger: it's a jew. We need laws

against them. Drastic laws. When a durn lowlife jew can come to a free

country like this and just because he's got a law degree, it's time to put

a stop to things. A jew is the lowest thing on this creation. And the

lowest kind of jew is a jew lawyer. And the lowest kind of jew lawyer is a

Memphis jew lawyer. When a jew lawyer can hold up an

SANCTUARY 151

American, a white man, and not give him but ten dollars for something that

two Americans, Americans, southron gentlemen; a judge living in the capital

of the State of Mississippi and a lawyer that's going to be as big a man as

his pa some day, and a judge too; when they give him ten times as much for

the same thing than the lowlife jew, we need a law. I been a liberal spender

all my life; whatever I had has always been my friends' too. But when a

durn, stinking, lowlife jew will refuse to pay an American one tenth of what

another American, and a judge at that-"

"Wby did you sell it to him, then?" the barber said.

"What?" Snopes said. The barber was looking at him.

"What was you trying to sell to that car when it run over you?" the barber

said.

"Have a cigar," Snopes said.

xxvii

THE TRIAL WAS SET FOR THE TWENTIETH OF JUNE. A WEEK after his Memphis visit,

Horace telephoned Miss Reba. "Just to know if she's still there," he said.

"So I can reach her if I need to."

"She's here," Miss Reba said. "But this reaching. I dont like it. I dont

want no cops around here unless they are on my business."

"It'll be only a bailiff," Horace said. "Someone to hand a paper into her

own hand."

"Let the postman do it, then," Miss Reba said. "He comes here anyway. In a

uniform too. He dont look no worse in it than a full-blowed cop, neither.

Let him do it."

"I wont bother you," Horace said. "I wont make you any trouble."

"I know you aint," Miss Reba said. Her voice was thin, harsh, over the

wire. "I aint going to let you. Minnie's done took a crying spell tonight,

over that bastard that left her, and me and Miss Myrtle was sitting here,

and we got started crying too. Me and Minnie and Miss Myrtle. We drunk up

a whole new bottle of gin. I cant afford that. So dont you be sending no

jay cops up here with no letters for nobody. You telephone me and I'll turn