Sanctuary (6 page)

P
opeye 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.”

They drank. “I’ve seen you out hyer befo,” the man said. “Caint call yo name, though.”

“My name’s Stevens. I’ve been buying liquor from Lee for three years. When’ll he be back? We’ve got to get on to town.”

“He’ll be hyer soon. I’ve seen you befo. Nother feller fum Jefferson out hyer three-fo nights ago. I caint call his name neither. He sho was a talker, now. Kep on tellin how he up and quit his wife. Have some mo,” he said; then he ceased and squatted slowly, the jug in his lifted hands, his head bent with listening. After a moment the voice spoke again, from the hallway beneath.

“Jack.”

The man looked at Gowan. His jaw dropped into an expression of imbecile glee. What teeth he had were stained and ragged within his soft, tawny beard.

“You, Jack, up there,” the voice said.

“Hyear him?” the man whispered, shaking with silent glee. “Callin me Jack. My name’s Tawmmy.”

“Come on,” the voice said. “I know you’re there.”

“I reckon we better,” Tommy said. “He jest lief take a shot up through the flo as not.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Gowan said, “why didn’t you—Here,” he shouted, “here we come!”

Popeye stood in the door, his forefingers in his vest. The sun had set. When they descended and appeared in the door Temple stepped from the back porch. She paused, watching them, then she came down the hill. She began to run.

“Didn’t I tell you to get on down that road?” Popeye said.

“Me an him jest stepped down hyer a minute,” Tommy said.

“Did I tell you to get on down that road, or didn’t I?”

“Yeuh,” Tommy said. “You told me.” Popeye turned without so much as a glance at Gowan. Tommy followed. His back still shook with secret glee. Temple met Popeye halfway to the house. Without ceasing to run she appeared to pause. Even her flapping coat did not overtake her, yet for an appreciable instant she faced Popeye with a grimace of taut, toothed coquetry. He did not stop; the finicking swagger of his narrow back did not falter. Temple ran again. She passed Tommy and clutched Gowan’s arm.

“Gowan, I’m scared. She said for me not to——You’ve been drinking again; you haven’t even washed the blood———She says for us to go away from here.……” Her eyes were quite black, her face small and wan in the dusk. She looked toward the house. Popeye was just turning the corner. “She has to walk all the way to a spring for water; she——They’ve got the cutest little baby in a box behind the stove. Gowan, she said for me not to be here after dark. She said to ask him. He’s got a car. She said she didn’t think he———”

“Ask who?” Gowan said. Tommy was looking back at them. Then he went on.

“That black man. She said she didn’t think he would, but he might. Come on.” They went toward the house. A path led around it to the front. The car was parked between the path and the house, in the tall weeds. Temple faced Gowan again, her hand lying upon the door of the car. “It wont take him any time, in this. I know a boy at home has one. It will run eighty. All he would have to do is just drive us to a town, because she said if we were married and I had to say we were. Just to a railroad. Maybe there’s one closer than Jefferson,” she whispered, staring at him, stroking her hand along the edge of the door.

“Oh,” Gowan said, “I’m to do the asking. Is that it? You’re all nuts. Do you think that ape will? I’d rather stay here a week than go anywhere with him.”

“She said to. She said for me not to stay here.”

“You’re crazy as a loon. Come on here.”

“You wont ask him? You wont do it?”

“No. Wait till Lee comes, I tell you. He’ll get us a car.”

They went on in the path. Popeye was leaning against a post, lighting a cigarette. Temple ran on up the broken steps. “Say,” she said, “dont you want to drive us to town?”

He turned his head, the cigarette in his mouth, the match cupped between his hands. Temple’s mouth was fixed in that cringing grimace. Popeye leaned the cigarette to the match. “No,” he said.

“Come on,” Temple said. “Be a sport. It wont take you any time in that Packard. How about it? We’ll pay you.”

Popeye inhaled. He snapped the match into the weeds. He said, in his soft, cold voice: “Make your whore lay off of me, Jack.”

Gowan moved thickly, like a clumsy, good-tempered horse goaded suddenly. “Look here, now,” he said. Popeye exhaled, the smoke jetting downward in two thin spurts. “I dont like that,” Gowan said. “Do you know who you’re talking to?” He continued that thick movement, like he could neither stop it nor complete it. “I dont like that.” Popeye turned his head and looked at Gowan. Then he quit looking at him and Temple said suddenly:

“What river did you fall in with that suit on? Do you have to shave it off at night?” Then she was moving toward the door with Gowan’s hand in the small of her back, her head reverted, her heels clattering. Popeye leaned motionless against the post, his head turned over his shoulder in profile.

“Do you want———” Gowan hissed.

“You mean old thing!” Temple cried. “You mean old thing!”

Gowan shoved her into the house. “Do you want him to slam your damn head off?” he said.

“You’re scared of him!” Temple said. “You’re scared!”

“Shut your mouth!” Gowan said. He began to shake her. Their feet scraped on the bare floor as though they were performing a clumsy dance, and clinging together they lurched into the wall. “Look out,” he said, “you’re getting all that stuff stirred up in me again.” She broke free, running. He leaned against the wall and watched her in silhouette run out the back door.

She ran into the kitchen. It was dark save for a crack of light about the fire-door of the stove. She whirled and ran
out the door and saw Gowan going down the hill toward the barn. He’s going to drink some more, she thought; he’s getting drunk again. That makes three times today. Still more dusk had grown in the hall. She stood on tiptoe, listening, thinking I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten all day; thinking of the school, the lighted windows, the slow couples strolling toward the sound of the supper bell, and of her father sitting on the porch at home, his feet on the rail, watching a negro mow the lawn. She moved quietly on tiptoe. In the corner beside the door the shotgun leaned and she crowded into the corner beside it and began to cry.

Immediately she stopped and ceased breathing. Something was moving beyond the wall against which she leaned. It crossed the room with minute, blundering sounds, preceded by a dry tapping. It emerged into the hall and she screamed, feeling her lungs emptying long after all the air was expelled, and her diaphragm laboring long after her chest was empty, and watched the old man go down the hall at a wide-legged shuffling trot, the stick in one hand and the other elbow cocked at an acute angle from his middle. Running, she passed him—a dim, spraddled figure standing at the edge of the porch—and ran on into the kitchen and darted into the corner behind the stove. Crouching she drew the box out and drew it before her. Her hand touched the child’s face, then she flung her arms around the box, clutching it, staring across it at the pale door and trying to pray. But she could not think of a single designation for the heavenly father, so she began to say “My father’s a judge; my father’s a judge” over and over until Goodwin ran lightly
into the room. He struck a match and held it overhead and looked down at her until the flame reached his fingers.

“Hah,” he said. She heard his light, swift feet twice, then his hand touched her cheek and he lifted her from behind the box by the scruff of the neck, like a kitten. “What are you doing in my house?” he said.

F
rom somewhere beyond the lamplit hall she could hear the voices—a word; now and then a laugh: the harsh, derisive laugh of a man easily brought to mirth by youth or by age, cutting across the spluttering of frying meat on the stove where the woman stood. Once she heard two of them come down the hall in their heavy shoes, and a moment later the clatter of the dipper in the galvanised pail and the voice that had laughed, cursing. Holding her coat close she peered around the door with the wide, abashed curiosity of a child, and saw Gowan and a second man in khaki breeches. He’s
getting drunk again, she thought. He’s got drunk four times since we left Taylor.

“Is he your brother?” she said.

“Who?” the woman said. “My what?” she turned the meat on the hissing skillet.