Requiem for a Nun

288 WILLIAM FAULKNER

baby-not her child but yours, the white one-but the trouble and

discomfort too-the hunger, the wet didy, the unfastened safety-pin-and

see to remedy it. You see. If I could just cry. There was another one,

a man this time, before my time in Jefferson but Uncle Gavin will

remember this too. His wife had just died-they had been married only

two weeksand he buried her and so at first he tried just walking the

country roads at night for exhaustion and sleep, only that failed and

then he tried getting drunk so he could sleep, and that failed and

then he tried fighting and then he cut a white man's throat with a

razor in a dice game and so at last he could sleep for a little while;

which was where the sheriff found him, asleep on the wooden floor of

the gallery of the house he had rented for his wife, his marriage, his

life, his old age. Only that waked him up, and so in the jail that

afternoon, all of a sudden it took the jailer and a deputy and five

other Negro prisoners just to throw him down and hold him while they

locked the chains on him-lying there on the floor with more than a

half dozen men panting to hold him down, and what do you think he

said? 'Look like I just cant quit thinking. Look like I just cant

quit.'

(she ceases, blinking, rubs her eyes and then extends one

hand blindly toward Stevens, who has already shaken out

his handkerchief and hands it to her. There are still no

tears on her face; she merely takes the handkerchief and

dabs, pats at her eyes with it as if it were a powderpuff,

talking again)

But we have passed the jail, haven't we? We're in the courtroom now.

It was the same there; Uncle Gavin had rehearsed her, of course, which

was easy, since all you can say when they ask you to answer to a

murder charge is, Not Guilty. Otherwise, they cant even have a trial;

they would have to hurry out and find another murderer before they

could take the next official step. So they asked her, all correct and

formal among the judges and lawyers and bailiffs and jury and the

Scales and the Sword and the flag and the ghosts of Coke upon

Littleton upon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar and all the rest of it, not

to mention the eyes and the faces which were getting a moving-