Sanctuary

"Except he'll remember his lawyer's name by morning," the first said.

They left him smoking on the cot. He heard doors clash. Now and then he

heard voices from the other cells; somewhere down the corridor a negro was

singing. Popeye lay on the cot, his feet crossed in small, gleaming black

shoes. "For Christ's sake," he said.

The next morning the judge asked him if he wanted a lawyer.

"What for?" he said. "I told them last night I never was here before in my

life. I dont like your town well enough to bring a stranger here for

nothing."

The judge and the bailiff conferred aside.

"You'd better get your lawyer," the judge said.

"All right," Popeye said. He turned and spoke generally into the room: "Any

of you ginneys want a one-day job?"

The judge rapped on the table. Popeye turned back, his tight shoulders

lifted in a faint shrug, his hand moving toward the pocket where he carried

his cigarettes. The judge appointed him counsel, a young man just out of

law school.

"And I wont bother about being sprung," Popeye said. "Get it over with all

at once."

"You wouldn't get any bail from me, anyway," the judge told him.

"Yeuh?" Popeye said. "All right, Jack," he told his lawyer, 41get going.

I'm due in Pensacola right now."

"Take the prisoner back to jail," the judge said.

His lawyer had an ugly, eager, earnest face. He rattled on with a kind of

gaunt enthusiasm while Popeye lay on the cot, smoking, his hat over his

eye, motionless as a basking snake save for the periodical movement of the

hand that held the cigarette. At last he said: "Here. I aint the judge.

Tell him all this."

"But I've got-"

"Sure. Tell it to them. I dont know nothing about it. I wasn't even there.

Get out and walk it off."

The trial lasted one day. While a fellow policeman, a cigarclerk, a

telephone girl testified, while his own lawyer rebutted in a gaunt mixture

of uncouth enthusiasm and earnest illjudgment, Popeye lounged in his chair,

looking out the window above the jury's heads. Now and then he yawned; his

hand moved to the pocket where his cigarettes lay, then refrained and

rested idle against the black cloth of his suit, in the waxy lifelessness

of shape and size like the hand of a doll.

The jury was out eight minutes. They stood and looked at him and said he

was guilty. Motionless, his position unchanged

176 WILLIAM FAULKNER

he looked back at them in a slow silence for several moments. "Well, for

Christ's sake," he said. The judge rapped sharply with his gavel; the

officer touched his arm.

"I'll appeal," the lawyer babbled, plunging along beside him. "I'll fight

them through every court-"

.. Sure," Popeye said, lying on the cot and lighting a cigarette; "but not

in here. Beat it, now. Go take a pill."

ne District Attorney was already making his plans for the appeal. "It was

too easy," he said. "He took it- Did you see how he took it? like he might

be listening to a song he was too lazy to either like or dislike, and the

Court telling on what day they were going to break his neck. Probably got

a Memphis lawyer already there outside the supreme court door now, waiting

for a wire. I know them. It's them thugs like that have made justice a

laughing-stock, until even when we get a conviction, everybody knows it

wont hold."

Popeye sent for the turnkey and gave him a hundred dollar bill. He wanted

a shaving-kit and cigarettes. "Keep the change and let me know when it's

smoked up," he said.

"I reckon you wont be smoking with me much longer," the turnkey said.

"You'll get a good lawyer, this time."

" Dont forget that lotion," Popeye said. "Ed Pinaud." He called it

"Py-nawd."

It had been a gray summer, a little cool. Little daylight ever reached the

cell, and a light burned in the corridor all the time, falling into the

cell in a broad pale mosaic, reaching the cot where his feet lay. The

turnkey gave him a chair. He used it for a table; upon it the dollar watch

lay, and a carton of cigarettes and a cracked soup bowl of stubs, and he

lay on the cot, smoking and contemplating his feet while day after day

passed. The gleam of his shoes grew duller, and his clothes needed

pressing, because he lay in them all the time, since it was cool in the

stone cell.

One day the turnkey said: "There's folks here says that deppity invited

killing. He done two-three mean things folks know about." Popeye smoked,

his hat over his face. The turnkey said: "They might not sent your

telegram. You want me to send another one for you?" Leaning against the

grating he could see Popeye's feet, his thin, black legs motionless, merg-

ing into the delicate bulk of his prone body and the hat slanted across his

averted face, the cigarette in one small hand. His feet were in shadow, in

the shadow of the turnkey's body where it blotted out the grating. After a

while the turnkey went away quietly. When he had six days left the turnkey

offered to bring him magazines, a deck of cards.

"What for?" Popeye said. For the first time he looked at the turnkey, his

head lifted, in his smooth, pallid face his eyes

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