William Faulkner - Sanctuary

“And so whenever I breathed I’d hear those shucks. I dont see how anybody ever sleeps on a bed like that. But maybe you get used to it. Or maybe they’re tired at night. Because when I breathed I could hear them, even when I was just sitting on the bed. I didn’t see how it could be just breathing, so I’d sit as still as I could, but I could still hear them. That’s because breathing goes down. You think it goes up, but it doesn’t. It goes down you, and I’d hear them getting drunk on the porch. I got to thinking I could see where their heads were leaning back against the wall and I’d say Now this one’s drinking out of the jug. Now that one’s drinking. Like the mashed-in place on the pillow after you got up, you know.

“That was when I got to thinking a funny thing. You know how you do when you’re scared. I was looking at my legs and I’d try to make like I was a boy. I was thinking about if I just was a boy and then I tried to make myself into one by thinking. You know how you do things like that. Like when you know one problem in class and when they come to that you look at him and think right hard, Call on me. Call on me. Call on me. I’d think about what they tell children, about kissing your elbow, and I tried to. I actually did. I was that scared, and I’d wonder if I could tell when it happened. I mean, before I looked, and I’d think I had and how I’d go out and show them—you know. I’d strike a match and say Look. See? Let me alone, now. And then I could go back to bed. I’d think how I could go to bed and go to sleep then, because I was sleepy. I was so sleepy I simply couldn’t hardly hold my eyes open.

“So I’d hold my eyes tight shut and say Now I am. I am now. I’d look at my legs and I’d think about how much I had done for them. I’d think about how many dances I had taken them to—crazy, like that. Because I thought how much I’d done for them, and now they’d gotten me into this. So I’d think about praying to be changed into a boy and I would pray and then I’d sit right still and wait. Then I’d think maybe I couldn’t tell it and I’d get ready to look. Then I’d think maybe it was too soon to look; that if I looked too soon I’d spoil it and then it wouldn’t, sure enough. So I’d count. I said to count fifty at first, then I thought it was still too soon, and I’d say to count fifty more. Then I’d think if I didn’t look at the right time, it would be too late.

“Then I thought about fastening myself up some way. There was a girl went abroad one summer that told me about a kind of iron belt in a museum a king or something used to lock the queen up in when he had to go away, and I thought if I just had that. That was why I got the raincoat and put it on. The canteen was hanging by it and I got it too and put it in the—”

“Canteen?” Horace said. “Why did you do that?”

“I dont know why I took it. I was just scared to leave it there, I guess. But I was thinking if I just had that French thing. I was thinking maybe it would have long sharp spikes on it and he wouldn’t know it until too late and I’d jab it into him. I’d jab it all the way through him and I’d think about the blood running on me and how I’d say I guess that’ll teach you! I guess you’ll let me alone now! I’d say. I didn’t know it was going to be just the other way.…… I want a drink.”

“I’ll get you one in a minute,” Miss Reba said. “Go on and tell him.”

“Oh, yes; this was something else funny I did.” She told about lying in the darkness with Gowan snoring beside her, listening to the shucks and hearing the darkness full of movement, feeling Popeye approaching. She could hear the blood in her veins, and the little muscles at the corners of her eyes cracking faintly wider and wider, and she could feel her nostrils going alternately cool and warm. Then he was standing over and she was saying Come on. Touch me. Touch me! You’re a coward if you dont. Coward! Coward!

“I wanted to go to sleep, you see. And he just kept on standing there. I thought if he’d just go on and get it over with, I could go to sleep. So I’d say You’re a coward if you dont! You’re a coward if you dont! and I could feel my mouth getting fixed to scream, and that little hot ball inside you that screams. Then it touched me, that nasty little cold hand, fiddling around inside the coat where I was naked. It was like alive ice and my skin started jumping away from it like those little flying fish in front of a boat. It was like my skin knew which way it was going to go before it started moving, and my skin would keep on jerking just ahead of it like there wouldn’t be anything there when the hand got there.

“Then it got down to where my insides begin, and I hadn’t eaten since yesterday at dinner and my insides started bubbling and going on and the shucks began to make so much noise it was like laughing. I’d think they were laughing at me because all the time his hand was going inside the top of my knickers and I hadn’t changed into a boy yet.

“That was the funny thing, because I wasn’t breathing then. I hadn’t breathed in a long time. So I thought I was dead. Then I did a funny thing. I could see myself in the coffin. I looked sweet—you know: all in white. I had on a veil like a bride, and I was crying because I was dead or looked sweet or something. No: it was because they had put shucks in the coffin. I was crying because they had put shucks in the coffin where I was dead, but all the time I could feel my nose going cold and hot and cold and hot, and I could see all the people sitting around the coffin, saying Dont she look sweet. Dont she look sweet.

“But I kept on saying Coward! Coward! Touch me, coward! I got mad, because he was so long doing it. I’d talk to him. I’d say Do you think I’m going to lie here all night, just waiting on you? I’d say. Let me tell you what I’ll do, I’d say. And I’d lie there with the shucks laughing at me and me jerking away in front of his hand and I’d think what I’d say to him. I’d talk to him like the teacher does in school, and then I was a teacher in school and it was a little black thing like a nigger boy, kind of, and I was the teacher. Because I’d say How old am I? and I’d say I’m forty-five years old. I had iron-gray hair and spectacles and I was all big up here like women get. I had on a gray tailored suit, and I never could wear gray. And I was telling it what I’d do, and it kind of drawing up and drawing up like it could already see the switch.

“Then I said That wont do. I ought to be a man. So I was an old man, with a long white beard, and then the little black man got littler and littler and I was saying Now. You see now. I’m a man now. Then I thought about being a man, and as soon as I thought it, it happened. It made a kind of plopping sound, like blowing a little rubber tube wrong-side outward. It felt cold, like the inside of your mouth when you hold it open. I could feel it, and I lay right still to keep from laughing about how surprised he was going to be. I could feel the jerking going on inside my knickers ahead of his hand and me lying there trying not to laugh about how surprised and mad he was going to be in about a minute. Then all of a sudden I went to sleep. I couldn’t even stay awake until his hand got there. I just went to sleep. I couldn’t even feel myself jerking in front of his hand, but I could hear the shucks. I didn’t wake up until that woman came and took me down to the crib.”

As he was leaving the house Miss Reba said: “I wish you’d get her down there and not let her come back. I’d find her folks myself, if I knowed how to go about it. But you know how.…… She’ll be dead, or in the asylum in a year, way him and her go on up there in that room. There’s something funny about it that I aint found out about yet. Maybe it’s her. She wasn’t born for this kind of life. You have to be born for this like you have to be born a butcher or a barber, I guess. Wouldn’t anybody be either of them just for money or fun.”