Sanctuary (8 page)

“Go and eat your supper,” she said.

“The car,” Temple said. “I could go now, while they’re eating.”

“What car?” the woman said. “Go on and eat. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

“I’m not hungry. I haven’t eaten today. I’m not hungry at all.”

“Go and eat your supper,” she said.

“I’ll wait and eat when you do.”

“Go on and eat your supper. I’ve got to get done here some time tonight.”

T
emple entered the dining-room from the kitchen, her face fixed in a cringing, placative expression; she was quite blind when she entered, holding her coat about her, her hat thrust upward and back at that dissolute angle. After a moment she saw Tommy. She went straight toward him, as if she had been looking for him all the while. Something intervened: a hard forearm; she attempted to evade it, looking at Tommy.

“Here,” Gowan said across the table, his chair rasping back, “you come around here.”

“Outside, brother,” the one who had stopped her said, whom she recognised then as the one who had laughed so often; “you’re drunk. Come here, kid.” His hard forearm came across her middle. She thrust against it, grinning rigidly at Tommy. “Move down, Tommy,” the man said. “Aint you got no manners, you mat-faced bastard?” Tommy guffawed, scraping his chair along the floor. The man drew her toward him by the wrist. Across the table Gowan stood up, propping himself on the table. She began to resist, grinning at Tommy, picking at the man’s fingers.

“Quit that, Van,” Goodwin said.

“Right on my lap here,” Van said.

“Let her go,” Goodwin said.

“Who’ll make me?” Van said. “Who’s big enough?”

“Let her go,” Goodwin said. Then she was free. She began to back slowly away. Behind her the woman, entering with a dish, stepped aside. Still smiling her aching, rigid grimace Temple backed from the room. In the hall she whirled and ran. She ran right off the porch, into the weeds, and sped on. She ran to the road and down it for fifty yards in the darkness, then without a break she whirled and ran back to the house and sprang onto the porch and crouched against the door just as someone came up the hall. It was Tommy.

“Oh, hyer you are,” he said. He thrust something awkwardly at her. “Hyer,” he said.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Little bite of victuals. I bet you aint et since mawnin.”

“No. Not then, even,” she whispered.

“You eat a little mite and you’ll feel better,” he said,
poking the plate at her. “You set down hyer and eat a little bite wher wont nobody bother you. Durn them fellers.”

Temple leaned around the door, past his dim shape, her face wan as a small ghost in the refracted light from the dining-room. “Mrs—Mrs.……” she whispered.

“She’s in the kitchen. Want me to go back there with you?” In the dining-room a chair scraped. Between blinks Tommy saw Temple in the path, her body slender and motionless for a moment as though waiting for some laggard part to catch up. Then she was gone like a shadow around the corner of the house. He stood in the door, the plate of food in his hand. Then he turned his head and looked down the hall just in time to see her flit across the darkness toward the kitchen. “Durn them fellers.”

He was standing there when the others returned to the porch.

“He’s got a plate of grub,” Van said. “He’s trying to get his with a plate full of ham.”

“Git my whut?” Tommy said.

“Look here,” Gowan said.

Van struck the plate from Tommy’s hand. He turned to Gowan. “Dont you like it?”

“No,” Gowan said, “I dont.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Van said.

“Van,” Goodwin said.

“Do you think you’re big enough to not like it?” Van said.

“I am,” Goodwin said.

When Van went back to the kitchen Tommy followed him. He stopped at the door and heard Van in the kitchen.

“Come for a walk, little bit,” Van said.

“Get out of here, Van,” the woman said.

“Come for a little walk,” Van said. “I’m a good guy. Ruby’ll tell you.”

“Get out of here, now,” the woman said. “Do you want me to call Lee?” Van stood against the light, in a khaki shirt and breeches, a cigarette behind his ear against the smooth sweep of his blond hair. Beyond him Temple stood behind the chair in which the woman sat at the table, her mouth open a little, her eyes quite black.

When Tommy went back to the porch with the jug he said to Goodwin: “Why dont them fellers quit pesterin that gal?”

“Who’s pestering her?”

“Van is. She’s skeered. Whyn’t they leave her be?”

“It’s none of your business. You keep out of it. You hear?”

“Them fellers ought to quit pesterin her,” Tommy said. He squatted against the wall. They were drinking, passing the jug back and forth, talking. With the top of his mind he listened to them, to Van’s gross and stupid tales of city life, with rapt interest, guffawing now and then, drinking in his turn. Van and Gowan were doing the talking, and Tommy listened to them. “Them two’s fixin to have hit out with one another,” he whispered to Goodwin in a chair beside him. “Hyear em?” They were talking quite loud; Goodwin moved swiftly and lightly from his chair, his feet striking the floor with light thuds; Tommy saw Van standing and Gowan holding himself erect by the back of his chair.

“I never meant—” Van said.

“Dont say it, then,” Goodwin said.

Gowan said something. That durn feller, Tommy thought. Cant even talk no more.

“Shut up, you,” Goodwin said.

“Think talk bout my—” Gowan said. He moved, swayed against the chair. It fell over. Gowan blundered into the wall.

“By God, I’ll—” Van said.

“—ginia gentleman; I dont give a—” Gowan said. Goodwin flung him aside with a backhanded blow of his arm, and grasped Van. Gowan fell against the wall.

“When I say sit down, I mean it,” Goodwin said.

After that they were quiet for a while. Goodwin returned to his chair. They began to talk again, passing the jug, and Tommy listened. But soon he began to think about Temple again. He would feel his feet scouring on the floor and his whole body writhing in an acute discomfort. “They ought to let that gal alone,” he whispered to Goodwin. “They ought to quit pesterin her.”

“It’s none of your business,” Goodwin said. “Let every damned one of them.……”

“They ought to quit pesterin her.”

Popeye came out the door. He lit a cigarette. Tommy watched his face flare out between his hands, his cheeks sucking; he followed with his eyes the small comet of the match into the weeds. Him too, he said. Two of em; his body writhing slowly. Pore little crittur. I be dawg ef I aint a mind to go down to the barn and stay there, I be dawg ef I aint. He rose, his feet making no sound on the porch. He stepped down into the path and went around the house.
There was a light in the window there. Dont nobody never use in there, he said, stopping, then he said, That’s where she’ll be stayin, and he went to the window and looked in. The sash was down. Across a missing pane a sheet of rusted tin was nailed.

Temple was sitting on the bed, her legs tucked under her, erect, her hands lying in her lap, her hat tilted on the back of her head. She looked quite small, her very attitude an outrage to muscle and tissue of more than seventeen and more compatible with eight or ten, her elbows close to her sides, her face turned toward the door against which a chair was wedged. There was nothing in the room save the bed, with its faded patchwork quilt, and the chair. The walls had been plastered once, but the plaster had cracked and fallen in places, exposing the lathing and molded shreds of cloth. On the wall hung a raincoat and a khaki-covered canteen.

Temple’s head began to move. It turned slowly, as if she were following the passage of someone beyond the wall. It turned on to an excruciating degree, though no other muscle moved, like one of those papier-mâché Easter toys filled with candy, and became motionless in that reverted position. Then it turned back, slowly, as though pacing invisible feet beyond the wall, back to the chair against the door and became motionless there for a moment. Then she faced forward and Tommy watched her take a tiny watch from the top of her stocking and look at it. With the watch in her hand she lifted her head and looked directly at him, her eyes calm and empty as two holes. After a while she looked down at the watch again and returned it to her stocking.

She rose from the bed and removed her coat and stood
motionless, arrowlike in her scant dress, her head bent, her hands clasped before her. She sat on the bed again. She sat with her legs close together, her head bent. She raised her head and looked about the room. Tommy could hear the voices from the dark porch. They rose again, then sank to the steady murmur.

Temple sprang to her feet. She unfastened her dress, her arms arched thin and high, her shadow anticking her movements. In a single motion she was out of it, crouching a little, match-thin in her scant undergarments. Her head emerged facing the chair against the door. She hurled the dress away, her hand reaching for the coat. She scrabbled it up and swept it about her, pawing at the sleeves. Then, the coat clutched to her breast, she whirled and looked straight into Tommy’s eyes and whirled and ran and flung herself upon the chair. “Durn them fellers,” Tommy whispered, “durn them fellers.” He could hear them on the front porch and his body began again to writhe slowly in an acute unhappiness. “Durn them fellers.”

When he looked into the room again Temple was moving toward him, holding the coat about her. She took the raincoat from the nail and put it on over her own coat and fastened it. She lifted the canteen down and returned to the bed. She laid the canteen on the bed and picked her dress up from the floor and brushed it with her hand and folded it carefully and laid it on the bed. Then she turned back the quilt, exposing the mattress. There was no linen, no pillow, and when she touched the mattress it gave forth a faint dry whisper of shucks.

She removed her slippers and set them on the bed and
got in beneath the quilt. Tommy could hear the mattress crackle. She didn’t lie down at once. She sat upright, quite still, the hat tilted rakishly upon the back of her head. Then she moved the canteen, the dress and the slippers beside her head and drew the raincoat about her legs and lay down, drawing the quilt up, then she sat up and removed the hat and shook her hair out and laid the hat with the other garments and prepared to lie down again. Again she paused. She opened the raincoat and produced a compact from somewhere and, watching her motions in the tiny mirror, she spread and fluffed her hair with her fingers and powdered her face and replaced the compact and looked at the watch again and fastened the raincoat. She moved the garments one by one under the quilt and lay down and drew the quilt to her chin. The voices had got quiet for a moment and in the silence Tommy could hear a faint, steady chatter of the shucks inside the mattress where Temple lay, her hands crossed on her breast and her legs straight and close and decorous, like an effigy on an ancient tomb.

The voices were still; he had completely forgot them until he heard Goodwin say “Stop it. Stop that!” A chair crashed over; he heard Goodwin’s light thudding feet; the chair clattered along the porch as though it had been kicked aside, and crouching, his elbows out a little in squat, bear-like alertness, Tommy heard dry, light sounds like billiard balls. “Tommy,” Goodwin said.

When necessary he could move with that thick, lightning-like celerity of badgers or coons. He was around the house and on the porch in time to see Gowan slam into the wall and slump along it and plunge full length off the porch
into the weeds, and Popeye in the door, his head thrust forward. “Grab him there!” Goodwin said. Tommy sprang upon Popeye in a sidling rush.

“I got—hah!” he said as Popeye slashed savagely at his face; “you would, would you? Hole up hyer.”

Popeye ceased. “Jesus Christ. You let them sit around here all night, swilling that goddam stuff; I told you. Jesus Christ.”

Goodwin and Van were a single shadow, locked and hushed and furious. “Let go!” Van shouted. “I’ll kill—” Tommy sprang to them. They jammed Van against the wall and held him motionless.

“Got him?” Goodwin said.

“Yeuh. I got him. Hole up hyer. You done whupped him.”

“By God, I’ll—”

“Now, now; whut you want to kill him fer? You caint eat him, kin you? You want Mr Popeye to start guttin us all with that ere artermatic?”

Then it was over, gone like a furious gust of black wind, leaving a peaceful vacuum in which they moved quietly about, lifting Gowan out of the weeds with low-spoken, amicable directions to one another. They carried him into the hall, where the woman stood, and to the door of the room where Temple was.

“She’s locked it,” Van said. He struck the door, high. “Open the door,” he shouted. “We’re bringing you a customer.”

“Hush,” Goodwin said. “There’s no lock on it. Push it.”

“Sure,” Van said; “I’ll push it.” He kicked it. The chair buckled and sprang into the room. Van banged the door open and they entered, carrying Gowan’s legs. Van kicked the chair across the room. Then he saw Temple standing in the corner behind the bed. His hair was broken about his face, long as a girl’s. He flung it back with a toss of his head. His chin was bloody and he deliberately spat blood onto the floor.