William Faulkner - Sanctuary

“Come on,” Gowan said, “let’s get going. We’ve got to get a car and get back to Jefferson by night.”

When the sand ceased Temple sat down and put her slippers on. She found the man watching her lifted thigh and she jerked her skirt down and sprang up. “Well,” she said, “go on. Dont you know the way?”

The house came into sight, above the cedar grove beyond whose black interstices an apple orchard flaunted in the sunny afternoon. It was set in a ruined lawn, surrounded by abandoned grounds and fallen outbuildings. But nowhere was any sign of husbandry—plow or tool; in no direction was a planted field in sight—only a gaunt weather-stained ruin in a sombre grove through which the breeze drew with a sad, murmurous sound. Temple stopped.

“I dont want to go there,” she said. “You go on and get the car,” she told the man. “We’ll wait here.”

“He said fer y’all to come on to the house,” the man said.

“Who did?” Temple said. “Does that black man think he can tell me what to do?”

“Ah, come on,” Gowan said. “Let’s see Goodwin and get a car. It’s getting late. Mrs Goodwin’s here, isn’t she?”

“Hit’s likely,” the man said.

“Come on,” Gowan said. They went on to the house. The man mounted to the porch and set the shotgun just inside the door.

“She’s around somewher,” he said. He looked at Temple again. “Hit aint no cause fer yo wife to fret,” he said. “Lee’ll git you to town, I reckon.”

Temple looked at him. They looked at one another soberly, like two children or two dogs. “What’s your name?”

“My name’s Tawmmy,” he said. “Hit aint no need to fret.”

The hall was open through the house. She entered.

“Where you going?” Gowan said. “Why dont you wait out here?” She didn’t answer. She went on down the hall. Behind her she could hear Gowan’s and the man’s voices. The back porch lay in sunlight, a segment of sunlight framed by the door. Beyond, she could see a weed-choked slope and a huge barn, broken-backed, tranquil in sunny desolation. To the right of the door she could see the corner either of a detached building or of a wing of the house. But she could hear no sound save the voices from the front.

She went on, slowly. Then she stopped. On the square of sunlight framed by the door lay the shadow of a man’s head, and she half spun, poised with running. But the shadow wore no hat, so she turned and on tiptoe she went to the door and peered around it. A man sat in a splint-bottom chair, in the sunlight, the back of his bald, white-fringed head toward her, his hands crossed on the head of a rough stick. She emerged onto the back porch.

“Good afternoon,” she said. The man did not move. She advanced again, then she glanced quickly over her shoulder. With the tail of her eye she thought she had seen a thread of smoke drift out the door in the detached room where the porch made an L, but it was gone. From a line between two posts in front of this door three square cloths hung damp and limp, as though recently washed, and a woman’s undergarment of faded pink silk. It had been washed until the lace resembled a ragged, fibre-like fraying of the cloth itself. It bore a patch of pale calico, neatly sewn. Temple looked at the old man again.

For an instant she thought that his eyes were closed, then she believed that he had no eyes at all, for between the lids two objects like dirty yellowish clay marbles were fixed. “Gowan,” she whispered, then she wailed “Gowan!” and turned running, her head reverted, just as a voice spoke beyond the door where she had thought to have seen smoke:

“He cant hear you. What do you want?”

She whirled again and without a break in her stride and still watching the old man, she ran right off the porch and fetched up on hands and knees in a litter of ashes and tin cans and bleached bones, and saw Popeye watching her from the corner of the house, his hands in his pockets and a slanted cigarette curling across his face. Still without stopping she scrambled onto the porch and sprang into the kitchen, where a woman sat at a table, a burning cigarette in her hand, watching the door.

6

Popeye went on around the house. Gowan was leaning over the edge of the porch, dabbing gingerly at his bloody nose. The barefooted man squatted on his heels against the wall.

“For Christ’s sake,” Popeye said, “why cant you take him out back and wash him off? Do you want him sitting around here all day looking like a damn hog with its throat cut?” He snapped the cigarette into the weeds and sat on the top step and began to scrape his muddy shoes with a platinum penknife on the end of his watch chain.

The barefoot man rose.

“You said something about——” Gowan said.

“Pssst!” the other said. He began to wink and frown at Gowan, jerking his head at Popeye’s back.

“And then you get on back down that road,” Popeye said. “You hear?”

“I thought you was fixin to watch down ther,” the man said.

“Dont think,” Popeye said, scraping at his trouser-cuffs. “You’ve got along forty years without it. You do what I told you.”

When they reached the back porch the barefoot man said: “He jest caint stand fer nobody——Aint he a cur’ us feller, now? I be dawg ef he aint better’n a circus to——He wont stand fer nobody drinkin hyer cep Lee. Wont drink none hisself, and jest let me take one sup and I be dawg ef hit dont look like he’ll have a catfit.”

“He said you were forty years old,” Gowan said.

“ ’Taint that much,” the other said.

“How old are you? Thirty?”

“I dont know. ’Taint as much as he said, though.” The old man sat in the chair, in the sun. “Hit’s jest Pap,” the man said. The azure shadow of the cedars had reached the old man’s feet. It was almost up to his knees. His hand came out and fumbled about his knees, dabbling into the shadow, and became still, wrist-deep in shadow. Then he rose and grasped the chair and, tapping ahead with the stick, he bore directly down upon them in a shuffling rush, so that they had to step quickly aside. He dragged the chair into the full sunlight and sat down again, his face lifted into the sun, his hands crossed on the head of the stick. “That’s Pap,” the man said. “Blind and deef both. I be dawg ef I wouldn’t hate to be in a fix wher I couldn’t tell and wouldn’t even keer whut I was eatin.”

On a plank fixed between two posts sat a galvanised pail, a tin basin, a cracked dish containing a lump of yellow soap. “To hell with water,” Gowan said. “How about that drink?”

“Seems to me like you done already had too much. I be dawg ef you didn’t drive that ere car straight into that tree.”

“Come on. Haven’t you got some hid out somewhere?”

“Mought be a little in the barn. But dont let him hyear us, er he’ll find hit and po hit out.” He went back to the door and peered up the hall. Then they left the porch and went toward the barn, crossing what had once been a kitchen garden choked now with cedar and blackjack saplings. Twice the man looked back over his shoulder. The second time he said:

“Yon’s yo wife wantin somethin.”

Temple stood in the kitchen door. “Gowan,” she called.

“Wave yo hand er somethin,” the man said. “Ef she dont hush, he’s goin to hyear us.” Gowan flapped his hand. They went on and entered the barn. Beside the entrance a crude ladder mounted. “Better wait twell I git up,” the man said. “Hit’s putty rotten; mought not hold us both.”

“Why dont you fix it, then? Dont you use it everyday?”

“Hit’s helt all right, so fur,” the other said. He mounted. Then Gowan followed, through the trap, into yellow-barred gloom where the level sun fell through the broken walls and roof. “Walk wher I do,” the man said. “You’ll tromp on a loose boa’d and find yoself downstairs befo you know hit.” He picked his way across the floor and dug an earthenware jug from a pile of rotting hay in the corner. “One place he wont look fer hit,” he said. “Skeered of sp’ilin them gal’s hands of hisn.”