Sanctuary (4 page)

“He’s only been coming out since he got home from Virginia last spring,” Miss Jenny said. “The one then was that Jones boy; Herschell. Yes. Herschell.”

“Ah,” Benbow said. “An
F.F.V., or just an unfortunate sojourner there?”

“At the school, the University. He went there. You dont remember him because he was still in diapers when you left Jefferson.”

“Dont let Belle hear you say that,” Benbow said. He watched the two people. They approached the house and disappeared beyond it. A moment later they came up the
stairs and into the room. Stevens came in, with his sleek head, his plump, assured face. Miss Jenny gave him her hand and he bent fatly and kissed it.

“Getting younger and prettier every day,” he said. “I was just telling Narcissa that if you’d just get up out of that chair and be my girl, she wouldn’t have a chance.”

“I’m going to tomorrow,” Miss Jenny said. “Narcissa——”

Narcissa was a big woman, with dark hair, a broad, stupid, serene face. She was in her customary white dress. “Horace, this is Gowan Stevens,” she said. “My brother, Gowan.”

“How do you do, sir,” Stevens said. He gave Benbow’s hand a quick, hard, high, close grip. At that moment the boy, Benbow Sartoris, Benbow’s nephew, came in. “I’ve heard of you,” Stevens said.

“Gowan went to Virginia,” the boy said.

“Ah,” Benbow said. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Thanks,” Stevens said. “But everybody cant go to Harvard.”

“Thank you,” Benbow said. “It was Oxford.”

“Horace is always telling folks he went to Oxford so they’ll think he means the state university, and he can tell them different,” Miss Jenny said.

“Gowan goes to Oxford a lot,” the boy said. “He’s got a jelly there. He takes her to the dances. Dont you, Gowan?”

“Right, bud,” Stevens said. “A red-headed one.”

“Hush, Bory,” Narcissa said. She looked at her brother.
“How are Belle and Little Belle?” She almost said something else, then she ceased. Yet she looked at her brother, her gaze grave and intent.

“If you keep on expecting him to run off from Belle, he will do it,” Miss Jenny said. “He’ll do it someday. But Narcissa wouldn’t be satisfied, even then,” she said. “Some women wont want a man to marry a certain woman. But all the women will be mad if he ups and leaves her.”

“You hush, now,” Narcissa said.

“Yes, sir,” Miss Jenny said. “Horace has been bucking at the halter for some time now. But you better not run against it too hard, Horace; it might not be fastened at the other end.”

Across the hall a small bell rang. Stevens and Benbow both moved toward the handle of Miss Jenny’s chair. “Will you forbear, sir?” Benbow said. “Since I seem to be the guest.”

“Why, Horace,” Miss Jenny said. “Narcissa, will you send up to the chest in the attic and get the duelling pistols?” She turned to the boy. “And you go on ahead and tell them to strike up the music, and to have two roses ready.”

“Strike up what music?” the boy said.

“There are roses on the table,” Narcissa said. “Gowan sent them. Come on to supper.”

Through the window Benbow and Miss Jenny watched the two people, Narcissa still in white, Stevens in flannels and a blue coat, walking in the garden. “The Virginia gentleman
one, who told us at supper that night about how they had taught him to drink like a gentleman. Put a beetle in alcohol, and you have a scarab; put a Mississippian in alcohol, and you have a gentleman——”

“Gowan Stevens,” Miss Jenny said. They watched the two people disappear beyond the house. It was some time before he heard the two people come down the hall. When they entered, it was the boy instead of Stevens.

“He wouldn’t stay,” Narcissa said. “He’s going to Oxford. There is to be a dance at the University Friday night. He has an engagement with a young lady.”

“He should find ample field for gentlemanly drinking there,” Horace said. “Gentlemanly anything else. I suppose that’s why he is going down ahead of time.”

“Taking an old girl to a dance,” the boy said. “He’s going to
Starkville Saturday, to the base ball game. He said he’d take me, but you wont let me go.”

T
ownspeople taking after-supper drives through the college grounds or an oblivious and bemused faculty-member or a candidate for a master’s degree on his way to the library would see Temple, a snatched coat under her arm and her long legs blonde with running, in speeding silhouette against the lighted windows of the Coop, as the women’s dormitory was known, vanishing into the shadow beside the library wall, and perhaps a final squatting swirl of knickers or whatnot as she sprang into the car waiting there with engine running on that particular night. The cars belonged
to town boys. Students in the University were not permitted to keep cars, and the men—hatless, in knickers and bright pull-overs—looked down upon the town boys who wore hats cupped rigidly upon pomaded heads, and coats a little too tight and trousers a little too full, with superiority and rage.

This was on week nights. On alternate Saturday evenings, at the Letter Club dances, or on the occasion of the three formal yearly balls, the town boys, lounging in attitudes of belligerent casualness, with their identical hats and upturned collars, watched her enter the gymnasium upon black collegiate arms and vanish in a swirling glitter upon a glittering swirl of music, with her high delicate head and her bold painted mouth and soft chin, her eyes blankly right and left looking, cool, predatory and discreet.

Later, the music wailing beyond the glass, they would watch her through the windows as she passed in swift rotation from one pair of black sleeves to the next, her waist shaped slender and urgent in the interval, her feet filling the rhythmic gap with music. Stooping they would drink from flasks and light cigarettes, then erect again, motionless against the light, the upturned collars, the hatted heads, would be like a row of hatted and muffled busts cut from black tin and nailed to the window-sills.

There would always be three or four of them there when the band played Home, Sweet Home, lounging near the exit, their faces cold, bellicose, a little drawn with sleeplessness, watching the couples emerge in a wan aftermath of motion and noise. Three of them watched Temple and Gowan Stevens come out, into the chill presage of spring
dawn. Her face was quite pale, dusted over with recent powder, her hair in spent red curls. Her eyes, all pupil now, rested upon them for a blank moment. Then she lifted her hand in a wan gesture, whether at them or not, none could have said. They did not respond, no flicker in their cold eyes. They watched Gowan slip his arm into hers, and the fleet revelation of flank and thigh as she got into his car. It was a long, low roadster, with a jacklight.

“Who’s that son bitch?” one said.

“My father’s a judge,” the second said in a bitter, lilting falsetto.

“Hell. Let’s go to town.”

They went on. Once they yelled at a car, but it did not stop. On the bridge across the railroad cutting they stopped and drank from a bottle. The last made to fling it over the railing. The second caught his arm.

“Let me have it,” he said. He broke the bottle carefully and spread the fragments across the road. They watched him.

“You’re not good enough to go to a college dance,” the first said. “You poor bastard.”

“My father’s a judge,” the other said, propping the jagged shards upright in the road.

“Here comes a car,” the third said.

It had three headlights. They leaned against the railing, slanting their hats against the light, and watched Temple and Gowan pass. Temple’s head was low and close. The car moved slowly.

“You poor bastard,” the first said.

“Am I?” the second said. He took something from his
pocket and flipped it out, whipping the sheer, faintly scented web across their faces. “Am I?”

“That’s what you say.”

“Doc got that step-in in Memphis,” the third said. “Off a damn whore.”

“You’re a lying bastard,” Doc said.

They watched the fan of light, the diminishing ruby taillamp, come to a stop at the Coop. The lights went off. After a while the car door slammed. The lights came on; the car moved away. It approached again. They leaned against the rail in a row, their hats slanted against the glare. The broken glass glinted in random sparks. The car drew up and stopped opposite them.

“You gentlemen going to town?” Gowan said, opening the door. They leaned against the rail, then the first said “Much obliged” gruffly and they got in, the two others in the rumble seat, the first beside Gowan.

“Pull over this way,” he said. “Somebody broke a bottle there.”

“Thanks,” Gowan said. The car moved on. “You gentlemen going to Starkville tomorrow to the game?”

The ones in the rumble said nothing.

“I dont know,” the first said. “I dont reckon so.”

“I’m a stranger here,” Gowan said. “I ran out of liquor tonight, and I’ve got a date early in the morning. Can you gentlemen tell me where I could get a quart?”

“It’s mighty late,” the first said. He turned to the others. “You know anybody he can find this time of night, Doc?”

“Luke might,” the third said.

“Where does he live?” Gowan said.

“Go on,” the first said. “I’ll show you.” They crossed the square and drove out of town about a half mile.

“This is the road to Taylor, isn’t it?” Gowan said.

“Yes,” the first said.

“I’ve got to drive down there early in the morning,” Gowan said. “Got to get there before the special does. You gentlemen not going to the game, you say.”

“I reckon not,” the first said. “Stop here.” A steep slope rose, crested by stunted blackjacks. “You wait here,” the first said. Gowan switched off the lights. They could hear the other scrambling up the slope.

“Does Luke have good liquor?” Gowan said.

“Pretty good. Good as any, I reckon,” the third said.

“If you dont like it, you dont have to drink it,” Doc said. Gowan turned fatly and looked at him.

“It’s as good as that you had tonight,” the third said.

“You didn’t have to drink that, neither,” Doc said.

“They cant seem to make good liquor down here like they do up at school,” Gowan said.

“Where you from?” the third said.

“Virgin——oh, Jefferson. I went to school at Virginia. Teach you how to drink, there.”

The other two said nothing. The first returned, preceded by a minute shaling of earth down the slope. He had a fruit jar. Gowan lifted it against the sky. It was pale, innocent looking. He removed the cap and extended it.

“Drink.”

The first took it and extended it to them in the rumble.

“Drink.”

The third drank, but Doc refused. Gowan drank.

“Good God,” he said, “how do you fellows drink this stuff?”

“We dont drink rotgut at Virginia,” Doc said. Gowan turned in the seat and looked at him.

“Shut up, Doc,” the third said. “Dont mind him,” he said. “He’s had a bellyache all night.”

“Son bitch,” Doc said.

“Did you call me that?” Gowan said.

“ ’Course he didn’t,” the third said. “Doc’s all right. Come on, Doc. Take a drink.”

“I dont give a damn,” Doc said. “Hand it here.”

They returned to town.
“The Shack’ll be open,” the first said. “At the depot.”

It was a confectionery-lunchroom. It was empty save for a man in a soiled apron. They went to the rear and entered an alcove with a table and four chairs. The man brought four glasses and coca-colas. “Can I have some sugar and water and a lemon, Cap?” Gowan said. The man brought them. The others watched Gowan make a whiskey sour. “They taught me to drink it this way,” he said. They watched him drink. “Hasn’t got much kick, to me,” he said, filling his glass from the jar. He drank that.

“You sure do drink it,” the third said.

“I learned in a good school.” There was a high window. Beyond it the sky was paler, fresher. “Have another, gentlemen,” he said, filling his glass again. The others helped themselves moderately. “Up at school they consider it better to go down than to hedge,” he said. They watched him drink that one. They saw his nostrils bead suddenly with sweat.

“That’s all for him, too,” Doc said.