William Faulkner - Sanctuary

“Minnie,” she said. Minnie’s head jerked up; again her eyes rolled whitely. “Bring me a drink,” Temple said. She returned to her room. She waited fifteen minutes. She banged the door and was tramping furiously down the stairs when Minnie appeared in the hall.

“Yessum,” Minnie said, “Miss Reba say—We aint got no—” Miss Reba’s door opened. Without looking up at Temple she spoke to Minnie. Minnie lifted her voice again. “Yessum; all right. I bring it up in just a minute.”

“You’d better,” Temple said. She returned and stood just inside the door until she heard Minnie mount the stairs. Temple opened the door, holding it just ajar.

“Aint you going to eat no dinner?” Minnie said, thrusting at the door with her knee. Temple held it to.

“Where is it?” she said.

“I aint straightened your room up this mawnin,” Minnie said.

“Give it here,” Temple said, reaching her hand through the crack. She took the glass from the tray.

“You better make that un last,” Minnie said. “Miss Reba say you aint ghy git no more.……What you want to treat him this-a-way, fer? Way he spend his money on you, you ought to be ashamed. He a right pretty little man, even if he aint no John Gilbert, and way he spendin his money—” Temple shut the door and shot the bolt. She drank the gin and drew a chair up to the bed and lit a cigarette and sat down with her feet on the bed. After a while she moved the chair to the window and lifted the shade a little so she could see the street beneath. She lit another cigarette.

At five oclock she saw Miss Reba emerge, in the black silk and flowered hat, and go down the street. She sprang up and dug the hat from the mass of clothes in the corner and put it on. At the door she turned and went back to the corner and exhumed the platinum purse and descended the stairs. Minnie was in the hall.

“I’ll give you ten dollars,” Temple said. “I wont be gone ten minutes.”

“I caint do it, Miss Temple. Hit be worth my job if Miss Reba find it out, and my th’oat too, if Mist Popeye do.”

“I swear I’ll be back in ten minutes. I swear I will. Twenty dollars.” She put the bill in Minnie’s hand.

“You better come back,” Minnie said, opening the door. “If you aint back here in ten minutes, I aint going to be, neither.”

Temple opened the lattice and peered out. The street was empty save for a taxi at the curb across the way, and a man in a cap standing in a door beyond it. She went down the street, walking swiftly. At the corner a cab overtook her, slowing, the driver looking at her interrogatively. She turned into the drug store at the corner and went back to the telephone booth. Then she returned to the house. As she turned the corner she met the man in the cap who had been leaning in the door. She entered the lattice. Minnie opened the door.

“Thank goodness,” Minnie said. “When that cab over there started up, I got ready to pack up too. If you aint ghy say nothing about it, I git you a drink.”

When Minnie fetched the gin Temple started to drink it. Her hand was trembling and there was a sort of elation in her face as she stood again just inside the door, listening, the glass in her hand. I’ll need it later, she said. I’ll need more than that. She covered the glass with a saucer and hid it carefully. Then she dug into the mass of garments in the corner and found a dancing-frock and shook it out and hung it back in the closet. She looked at the other things a moment, but she returned to the bed and lay down again. At once she rose and drew the chair up and sat down, her feet on the unmade bed. While daylight died slowly in the room she sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening to every sound on the stairs.

At half-past six Minnie brought her supper up. On the tray was another glass of gin. “Miss Reba sont this un,” she said. “She say, how you feelin?”

“Tell her, all right,” Temple said. “I’m going to have a bath and then go to bed, tell her.”

When Minnie was gone Temple poured the two drinks into a tumbler and gloated over it, the glass shaking in her hands. She set it carefully away and covered it and ate her supper from the bed. When she finished she lit a cigarette. Her movements were jerky; she smoked swiftly, moving about the room. She stood for a moment at the window, the shade lifted aside, then she dropped it and turned into the room again, spying herself in the mirror. She turned before it, studying herself, puffing at the cigarette.

She snapped it behind her, toward the fireplace, and went to the mirror and combed her hair. She ripped the curtain aside and took the dress down and laid it on the bed and returned and drew out a drawer in the dresser and took a garment out. She paused with the garment in her hand, then she replaced it and closed the drawer and caught up the frock swiftly and hung it back in the closet. A moment later she found herself walking up and down the room, another cigarette burning in her hand, without any recollection of having lit it. She flung it away and went to the table and looked at her watch and propped it against the pack of cigarettes so she could see it from the bed, and lay down. When she did so she felt the pistol through the pillow. She slipped it out and looked at it, then she slid it under her flank and lay motionless, her legs straight, her hands behind her head, her eyes focussing into black pinheads at every sound on the stairs.

At nine she rose. She picked up the pistol again; after a moment she thrust it beneath the mattress and undressed and in a spurious Chinese robe splotched with gold dragons and jade and scarlet flowers she left the room. When she returned her hair curled damply about her face. She went to the washstand and took up the tumbler, holding it in her hands, but she set it down again.

She dressed, retrieving the bottles and jars from the corner. Her motions before the glass were furious yet painstaking. She went to the washstand and took up the glass, but again she paused and went to the corner and got her coat and put it on and put the platinum bag in the pocket and leaned once more to the mirror. Then she went and took up the glass and gulped the gin and left the room, walking swiftly.

A single light burned in the hall. It was empty. She could hear voices in Miss Reba’s room, but the lower hall was deserted. She descended swiftly and silently and gained the door. She believed that it would be at the door that they would stop her and she thought of the pistol with acute regret, almost pausing, knowing that she would use it without any compunction whatever, with a kind of pleasure. She sprang to the door and pawed at the bolt, her head turned over her shoulder.

It opened. She sprang out and out the lattice door and ran down the walk and out the gate. As she did so a car, moving slowly along the curb, stopped opposite her. Popeye sat at the wheel. Without any apparent movement from him the door swung open. He made no movement, spoke no word. He just sat there, the straw hat slanted a little aside.

“I wont!” Temple said. “I wont!”

He made no movement, no sound. She came to the car.

“I wont, I tell you!” Then she cried wildly: “You’re scared of him! You’re scared to!”

“I’m giving him his chance,” he said. “Will you go back in that house, or will you get in this car?”

“You’re scared to!”

“I’m giving him his chance,” he said, in his cold soft voice. “Come on. Make up your mind.”

She leaned forward, putting her hand on his arm. “Popeye,” she said; “daddy.” His arm felt frail, no larger than a child’s, dead and hard and light as a stick.

“I dont care which you do,” he said. “But do it. Come on.”

She leaned toward him, her hand on his arm. Then she got into the car. “You wont do it. You’re afraid to. He’s a better man than you are.”