Sanctuary

get into the corner, and we'll put the mattress over you."

"You come to see it done, did you?" Goodwin said. "Well, that's no more

than right. It's your job. You promised I wouldn't hang, didn't you?"

154 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"You've got an hour yet," Horace said. "The Memphis train doesn't get

here until eight-thirty. He's surely got better sense than to come here

in that canary-colored car." He turned to the woman. "But you. I thought

better of you. I know that he and I are fools, but I expected better of

you."

"You're doing her a favor," Goodwin said. "She might have hung on with

me until she was too old to hustle a good man. If you'll just promise to

get the kid a newspaper grift when he's old enough to make change, I'll

be easy in my mind."

The woman had returned to the cot. She lifted the child onto her lap.

Horace went to her. He said: "You come on, now. Nothing's going to

happen. He'll be all right here. He knows it. You've got to go home and

get some sleep, because you'll both be leaving here tomorrow. Come, now."

"I reckon I better stay," she said.

"Damn it, dont you know that putting yourself in the position for

disaster is the surest way in the world to bring it about? Hasn't your

own experience shown you that? Lee knows it. Lee, make her stop this."

"Go on, Ruby," Goodwin said. "Go home and go to bed."

"I reckon I better stay," she said.

Horace stood over them. The woman mused above the child, her face bent

and her whole body motionless. Goodwin leaned back against the wall, his

brown wrists folded into the faded sleeves of his shirt. "You're a man

now," Horace said. "Aren't you? I wish that jury could see you now,

locked up in a concrete cell, scaring women and children with fifth grade

ghost stories. They'd know you never had the guts to kill anybody."

"You better go on and go to bed yourself," Goodwin said. "We could sleep

here, if there wasn't so much noise."

"No; that's too sensible for us to do," Horace said. He left the cell.

The jailer unlocked the door for him and he quitted the building. In ten

minutes he returned, with a parcel. G ' oodwin had not moved. The woman

watched him open the package. It contained a bottle of milk, a box of

candy, a box of cigars. He gave Goodwin one of the cigars and took one

himself. "You brought his bottle, didn't you?"

The woman produced the bottle from a bundle beneath the cot. "It's got

some in it," she said. She filled it from the bottle. Horace lit his and

Goodwin's cigars. When he looked again the bottle was gone.

"Not time to feed him yet?" be said.

"I'm warming it," the woman said.

"Oh," Horace said. He tilted the chair against the wall, across the cell

from the cot.

SANCTUARY 155

"Here's room on the bed," the woman said. "It's softer. Some."

"Not enough to change, though," Horace said.

"Look here," Goodwin said, "you go on home. No use in you doing this."

"We've got a little work to do," Horace said. "That lawyer'll call her

again in the morning. That's his only chance: to invalidate her testimony

someway. You might try to get some sleep while we go over it."

"All right," Goodwin said.

Horace began to drill the woman, tramping back and forth upon the narrow

floor. Goodwin finished his cigar and sat motionless again, his arms folded

and his head bent. The clock above the square struck nine and then ten. The

child whimpered, stirred. The woman stopped and changed it and took the

bottle from beneath her flank and fed it. Then she leaned forward carefully

and looked into Goodwin's face. "He's asleep," she whispered.

"Shall we lay him down?" Horace whispered.

"No. Let him stay there." Moving quietly she laid the child

on the cot and moved herself to the other end of it. Horace

carrie ' d the chair over beside her. They spoke in whispers.

The clock struck eleven. Still Horace drilled her, going over and over the

imaginary scene. At last he said: "I think that's all. Can you remember it,

now? If he should ask you anything you cant answer in the exact words

you've learned tonight, just say nothing for a moment. I'll attend to the

rest. Can you remember, now?"

"Yes," she whispered. He reached across and took the box of candy from the

cot and opened it, the glazed paper crackling faintly. She took a piece.

Goodwin had not moved. She looked at him, then at the narrow slit of

window.

"Stop that," Horace whispered. "He couldn't reach him through that window

with a hat-pin, let alone a bullet. Dont you know that?"

"Yes," she said. She held the bon-bon in her hand. She was not looking at

him. "I know what you're thinking," she whispered.

"What?"

"When you got to the house and I wasn't there. I know what you're

thinking." Horace watched her, her averted face. "You said tonight was the

time to start paying you."

For a while he looked at her. "Ah," he said. "0 temporal 0 mores! 0 bell!

Can you stupid mammals never believe that any man, every man- You thought

that was what I was coming for? You thought that if I had intended to, I'd

have waited this long?"

156 WILLIAM FAULKNER