Sanctuary

Toward dawn Horace himself slept, sitting in the chair. When he waked a

narrow rosy pencil of sunlight fell level through the window. Goodwin and

the woman were talking quietly on the cot. Goodwin looked at him bleakly.

"Morning," he said.

"I hope you slept off that nightmare of yours," Horace said.

"If I did, it's the last one I'll have. They say you dont dream there."

"You've certainly done enough not to miss it," Horace said. "I suppose

you'll believe us, after this."

"Believe, hell," Goodwin said, who had sat so quiet, so contained, with

his saturnine face, negligent in his overalls and blue shirt; "do you

think for one minute that man is going to let me walk out of that door

and up the street and into that courthouse, after yesterday? What sort

of men have you lived with all your life? In a nursery? I wouldn't do

that, myself."

"If he does, he has sprung his own trap," Horace said.

"What good will that do me? Let me tell-"

"Lee," the woman said.

-"you something: the next time you want to play dice with a man's neck-"

"Lee," she said. She was stroking her hand slowly on his head, back and

forth. She began to smooth his hair into a part, patting his collarless

shirt smooth. Horace watched them.

"Would you like to stay here today?" he said quietly. "I can fix it."

"No," Goodwin said. "I'm sick of it. I'm going to get it over with. Just

tell that goddamned deputy not to walk too close to me. You and her

better go and eat breakfast."

"I'm not hungry," the woman said.

"You go on like I told you," Goodwin said.

"Lee. 11

"Come," Horace said. "You can come back afterward."

Outside, in the fresh morning, he began to breathe deeply. "Fill your

lungs," he said. "A night in that place would give anyone the jim-jams.

The idea of three grown people . . . My Lord, sometimes I believe that

we are all children, except children themselves. But today will be the

last. By noon he'll walk out of there a free man: do you realise that?"

They walked on in the fresh sunlight, beneath the high, soft sky. High

against the blue fat little clouds blew up from the south-west, and the

cool steady breeze shivered and twinkled in the locusts where the blooms

had long since fallen.

"I dont know how you'll get paid," she said.

"Forget it. I've been paid. You wont understand it, but

SANCTUARY 159

my soul has served an apprenticeship that has lasted for fortythree years.

Forty-three years. Half again as long as you have lived. So you see that

folly, as well as poverty, cares for its own."

"And you know that he-that-"

"Stop it, now. We dreamed that away, too. God is foolish at times, but

at least He's a gentleman. Dont you know that?"

"I always thought of Him as a man," the woman said.

The bell was already ringing when Horace crossed the square toward the

courthouse. Already the square was filled with wagons and cars and the

overalls and khaki thronged slowly beneath the gothic entrance ot the

building. Overhead the clock was striking nine as he mounted the stairs.

The broad double doors at the head of the cramped stair were open. From

beyond them came a steady preliminary stir of people settling themselves.

Above the seat-backs Horace could see their heads-bald heads, gray heads,

shaggy heads and heads trimmed to recent feather-edge above sunbaked

necks, oiled heads above urban collars and here and there a sunbonnet or

a flowered hat.

The hum of their voices and movements came back upon the steady draft

which blew through the door. The air entered the open windows and blew

over the heads and back to Horace in the door, laden with smells of

tobacco and stale sweat and the earth and with that unmistakable odor of

courtrooms; that musty odor of spent lusts and greeds and bickerings and

bitterness, and withal a certain clumsy stability in lieu of anything

better. The windows gave upon balconies close under the arched porticoes.

The breeze drew through them, bearing the chirp and coo of sparrows and

pigeons that nested in the eaves, and now and then the sound of a motor

horn from the square below, rising out of and sinking back into a hollow

rumble of feet in the corridor below and on the stairs.

The Bench was empty. At one side, at the long table, he could see

Goodwin's black head and gaunt brown face, and the woman's gray hat. At

the other end of the table sat a man picking his teeth. His skull was

capped closely by tightlycurled black hair thinning upon a bald spot. He

had a long, pale nose. He wore a tan palm beach suit; upon the table near

him lay a smart leather brief-case and a straw hat with a red-and-tan

band, and he gazed lazily out a window above the ranked heads, picking

his teeth. Horace stopped just within the door. "It's a lawyer," he said.

"A Jew lawyer from Memphis." Then he was looking at the backs of the

heads about the table, where the witnesses and such would be. "I know

160 WILLIAM FAULKNER

what I'll find before I find it," he said. "She will have on a black hat."

He walked up the aisle. From beyond the balcony window where the sound of