William Faulkner - Sanctuary

“You’d better tell me what it is, then,” he said.

He could feel Snopes watching him. “You remember one day you got on the train at Oxford, where you’d been on some bus—”

“Yes,” Horace said.

Snopes puffed the cigar to an even coal, carefully, at some length. He raised his hand and drew it across the back of his neck. “You recall speaking to me about a girl.”

“Yes. Then what?”

“That’s for you to say.”

He could smell the honeysuckle as it bore up the silver slope, and he heard the whippoorwill, liquid, plaintful, reiterant. “You mean, you know where she is?” Snopes said nothing. “And that for a price you’ll tell?” Snopes said nothing. Horace shut his hands and put them in his pockets, shut against his flanks. “What makes you think that information will interest me?”

“That’s for you to judge. I aint conducting no murder case. I wasn’t down there at Oxford looking for her. Of course, if it dont, I’ll dicker with the other party. I just give you the chance.”

Horace turned toward the steps. He moved gingerly, like an old man. “Let’s sit down,” he said. Snopes followed and sat on the step. They sat in the moonlight. “You know where she is?”

“I seen her.” Again he drew his hand across the back of his neck. “Yes, sir. If she aint—hasn’t been there, you can git your money back. I caint say no fairer, can I?”

“And what’s your price?” Horace said. Snopes puffed the cigar to a careful coal. “Go on,” Horace said. “I’m not going to haggle.” Snopes told him. “All right,” Horace said. “I’ll pay it.” He drew his knees up and set his elbows on them and laid his hands to his face. “Where is—Wait. Are you a Baptist, by any chance?”

“My folks is. I’m putty liberal, myself. I aint hidebound in no sense, as you’ll find when you know me better.”

“All right,” Horace said from behind his hands. “Where is she?”

“I’ll trust you,” Snopes said. “She’s in a Memphis ’ho’-house.”

23

As Horace entered Miss Reba’s gate and approached the lattice door, someone called his name from behind him. It was evening; the windows in the weathered, scaling wall were close pale squares. He paused and looked back. Around an adjacent corner Snopes’ head peered, turkey-like. He stepped into view. He looked up at the house, then both ways along the street. He came along the fence and entered the gate with a wary air.

“Well, Judge,” he said. “Boys will be boys, wont they?” He didn’t offer to shake hands. Instead he bulked above Horace with that air somehow assured and alert at the same time, glancing over his shoulder at the street. “Like I say, it never done no man no harm to git out now and then and—”

“What is it now?” Horace said. “What do you want with me?”

“Now, now, Judge. I aint going to tell this at home. Git that idea clean out of your mind. If us boys started telling what we know, caint none of us git off a train at Jefferson again, hey?”

“You know as well as I do what I’m doing here. What do you want with me?”

“Sure; sure,” Snopes said. “I know how a feller feels, married and all and not being sho where his wife is at.” Between jerky glances over his shoulder he winked at Horace. “Make your mind easy. It’s the same with me as if the grave knowed it. Only I hate to see a good—” Horace had gone on toward the door. “Judge,” Snopes said in a penetrant undertone. Horace turned. “Dont stay.”

“Dont stay?”

“See her and then leave. It’s a sucker place. Place for farm-boys. Higher’n Monte Carlo. I’ll wait out hyer and I’ll show you a place where—” Horace went on and entered the lattice. Two hours later, as he sat talking to Miss Reba in her room while beyond the door feet and now and then voices came and went in the hall and on the stairs, Minnie entered with a torn scrap of paper and brought it to Horace.

“What’s that?” Miss Reba said.

“That big pie-face-ted man left it fer him,” Minnie said. “He say fer you to come on down there.”

“Did you let him in?” Miss Reba said.

“Nome. He never tried to git in.”

“I guess not,” Miss Reba said. She grunted. “Do you know him?” she said to Horace.

“Yes. I cant seem to help myself,” Horace said. He opened the paper. Torn from a handbill, it bore an address in pencil in a neat, flowing hand.

“He turned up here about two weeks ago,” Miss Reba said. “Come in looking for two boys and sat around the dining-room blowing his head off and feeling the girls’ behinds, but if he ever spent a cent I dont know it. Did he ever give you an order, Minnie?”

“Nome,” Minnie said.

“And couple of nights later he was here again. Didn’t spend nuttin, didn’t do nuttin but talk, and I says to him ‘Look here, mister, folks what uses this waiting-room has got to get on the train now and then.’ So next time he brought a half-pint of whiskey with him. I dont mind that, from a good customer. But when a fellow like him comes here three times, pinching my girls and bringing one half-pint of whiskey and ordering four coca-colas.……Just a cheap, vulgar man, honey. So I told Minnie not to let him in anymore, and here one afternoon I aint no more than laid down for a nap when—I never did find out what he done to Minnie to get in. I know he never give her nuttin. How did he do it, Minnie? He must a showed you something you never seen before. Didn’t he?”

Minnie tossed her head. “He aint got nothing I wantin to see. I done seed too many now fer my own good.” Minnie’s husband had quit her. He didn’t approve of Minnie’s business. He was a cook in a restaurant and he took all the clothes and jewelry the white ladies had given Minnie and went off with a waitress in the restaurant.

“He kept on asking and hinting around about that girl,” Miss Reba said, “and me telling him to go ask Popeye if he wanted to know right bad. Not telling him nuttin except to get out and stay out, see; so this day it’s about two in the afternoon and I’m asleep and Minnie lets him in and he asks her who’s here and she tells him aint nobody, and he goes on up stairs. And Minnie says about that time Popeye comes in. She says she dont know what to do. She’s scared not to let him in, and she says she knows if she does and he spatters that big bastard all over the upstairs floor, she knows I’ll fire her and her husband just quit her and all.

“So Popeye goes on upstairs on them cat feet of his and comes on your friend on his knees, peeping through the keyhole. Minnie says Popeye stood behind him for about a minute, with his hat cocked over one eye. She says he took out a cigarette and struck a match on his thumbnail without no noise and lit it and then she says he reached over and held the match to the back of your friend’s neck, and Minnie says she stood there halfway up the stairs and watched them: that fellow kneeling there with his face like a pie took out of the oven too soon and Popeye squirting smoke through his nose and kind of jerking his head at him. Then she come on down and in about ten seconds here he comes down the stairs with both hands on top of his head, going wump-wump-wump inside like one of these here big dray-horses, and he pawed at the door for about a minute, moaning to himself like the wind in a chimney Minnie says, until she opened the door and left him out. And that’s the last time he’s even rung this bell until tonight.…Let me see that.” Horace gave her the paper. “That’s a nigger whore-house,” she said. “The lous—Minnie, tell him his friend aint here. Tell him I dont know where he went.”