William Faulkner - Sanctuary

“You dont think I made a mistake?”

“I know you didn’t. Dont you see how that explodes their case? The best they can hope for now is a hung jury. And the chances of that are not one in fifty. I tell you, he’ll walk out of that jail tomorrow a free man.”

“Then I guess it’s time to think about paying you.”

“Yes,” Horace said, “all right. I’ll come out tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. He may call you back to the stand tomorrow. We’d better prepare for it, anyway.”

At eight oclock he entered the mad woman’s yard. A single light burned in the crazy depths of the house, like a firefly caught in a brier patch, but the woman did not appear when he called. He went to the door and knocked. A shrill voice shouted something; he waited a moment. He was about to knock again when he heard the voice again, shrill and wild and faint, as though from a distance, like a reedy pipe buried by an avalanche. He circled the house in the rank, waist-high weeds. The kitchen door was open. The lamp was there, dim in a smutty chimney, filling the room—a jumble of looming shapes rank with old foul female flesh—not with light but with shadow. White eyeballs rolled in a high, tight bullet head in brown gleams above a torn singlet strapped into overalls. Beyond the negro the mad woman turned in an open cupboard, brushing her lank hair back with her forearm.

“Your bitch has gone to jail,” she said. “Go on with her.”

“Jail?” Horace said.

“That’s what I said. Where the good folks live. When you get a husband, keep him in jail where he cant bother you.” She turned to the negro, a small flask in her hand. “Come on, dearie. Give me a dollar for it. You got plenty money.”

Horace returned to town, to the jail. They admitted him. He mounted the stairs; the jailer locked a door behind him.

The woman admitted him to the cell. The child lay on the cot. Goodwin sat beside it, his arms crossed, his legs extended in the attitude of a man in the last stage of physical exhaustion.

“Why are you sitting there, in front of that slit?” Horace said. “Why not get into the corner, and we’ll put the mattress over you.”

“You come to see it done, did you?” Goodwin said. “Well, that’s no more than right. It’s your job. You promised I wouldn’t hang, didn’t you?”

“You’ve got an hour yet,” Horace said. “The Memphis train doesn’t get here until eight-thirty. He’s surely got better sense than to come here in that canary-colored car.” He turned to the woman. “But you. I thought better of you. I know that he and I are fools, but I expected better of you.”

“You’re doing her a favor,” Goodwin said. “She might have hung on with me until she was too old to hustle a good man. If you’ll just promise to get the kid a newspaper grift when he’s old enough to make change, I’ll be easy in my mind.”

The woman had returned to the cot. She lifted the child onto her lap. Horace went to her. He said: “You come on, now. Nothing’s going to happen. He’ll be all right here. He knows it. You’ve got to go home and get some sleep, because you’ll both be leaving here tomorrow. Come, now.”

“I reckon I better stay,” she said.

“Damn it, dont you know that putting yourself in the position for disaster is the surest way in the world to bring it about? Hasn’t your own experience shown you that? Lee knows it. Lee, make her stop this.”

“Go on, Ruby,” Goodwin said. “Go home and go to bed.”

“I reckon I better stay,” she said.

Horace stood over them. The woman mused above the child, her face bent and her whole body motionless. Goodwin leaned back against the wall, his brown wrists folded into the faded sleeves of his shirt. “You’re a man now,” Horace said. “Aren’t you? I wish that jury could see you now, locked up in a concrete cell, scaring women and children with fifth grade ghost stories. They’d know you never had the guts to kill anybody.”

“You better go on and go to bed yourself,” Goodwin said. “We could sleep here, if there wasn’t so much noise going on.”

“No; that’s too sensible for us to do,” Horace said. He left the cell. The jailer unlocked the door for him and he quitted the building. In ten minutes he returned, with a parcel. Goodwin had not moved. The woman watched him open the package. It contained a bottle of milk, a box of candy, a box of cigars. He gave Goodwin one of the cigars and took one himself. “You brought his bottle, didn’t you?”

The woman produced the bottle from a bundle beneath the cot. “It’s got some in it,” she said. She filled it from the bottle. Horace lit his and Goodwin’s cigars. When he looked again the bottle was gone.

“Not time to feed him yet?” he said.

“I’m warming it,” the woman said.

“Oh,” Horace said. He tilted the chair against the wall, across the cell from the cot.

“Here’s room on the bed,” the woman said. “It’s softer. Some.”

“Not enough to change, though,” Horace said.

“Look here,” Goodwin said, “you go on home. No use in you doing this.”

“We’ve got a little work to do,” Horace said. “That lawyer’ll call her again in the morning. That’s his only chance: to invalidate her testimony someway. You might try to get some sleep while we go over it.”

“All right,” Goodwin said.

Horace began to drill the woman, tramping back and forth upon the narrow floor. Goodwin finished his cigar and sat motionless again, his arms folded and his head bent. The clock above the square struck nine and then ten. The child whimpered, stirred. The woman stopped and changed it and took the bottle from beneath her flank and fed it. Then she leaned forward carefully and looked into Goodwin’s face. “He’s asleep,” she whispered.

“Shall we lay him down?” Horace whispered.

“No. Let him stay there.” Moving quietly she laid the child on the cot and moved herself to the other end of it. Horace carried the chair over beside her. They spoke in whispers.

The clock struck eleven. Still Horace drilled her, going over and over the imaginary scene. At last he said: “I think that’s all. Can you remember it, now? If he should ask you anything you cant answer in the exact words you’ve learned tonight, just say nothing for a moment. I’ll attend to the rest. Can you remember, now?”

“Yes,” she whispered. He reached across and took the box of candy from the cot and opened it, the glazed paper crackling faintly. She took a piece. Goodwin had not moved. She looked at him, then at the narrow slit of window.

“Stop that,” Horace whispered. “He couldn’t reach him through that window with a hat-pin, let alone a bullet. Dont you know that?”

“Yes,” she said. She held the bon-bon in her hand. She was not looking at him. “I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered.

“What?”

“When you got to the house and I wasn’t there. I know what you’re thinking.” Horace watched her, her averted face. “You said tonight was the time to start paying you.”

For a while longer he looked at her. “Ah,” he said. “O tempora! O mores! O hell! Can you stupid mammals never believe that any man, every man—You thought that was what I was coming for? You thought that if I had intended to, I’d have waited this long?”

She looked at him briefly. “It wouldn’t have done you any good if you hadn’t waited.”

“What? Oh. Well. But you would have tonight?”

“I thought that was what—”

“You would now, then?” She looked around at Goodwin. He was snoring a little. “Oh, I dont mean right this minute,” he whispered. “But you’ll pay on demand.”

“I thought that was what you meant. I told you we didn’t have—If that aint enough pay, I dont know that I blame you.”