Sanctuary

5

The man in overalls was barefoot also. He walked ahead of Temple and Gowan, the shotgun swinging in his hand, his splay feet apparently effortless in the sand into which Temple sank almost to the ankle at each step. From time to time he looked over his shoulder at them, at Gowan’s bloody face and splotched clothes, at Temple struggling and lurching on her high heels.

“Putty hard walkin, aint it?” he said. “Ef she’ll take off them high heel shoes, she’ll git along better.”

“Will I?” Temple said. She stopped and stood on alternate legs, holding to Gowan, and removed her slippers. The man watched her, looking at the slippers.

“Durn ef I could git ere two of my fingers into one of them things,” he said. “Kin I look at em?” She gave him one. He turned it slowly in his hand. “Durn my hide,” he said. He looked at Temple again with his pale, empty gaze. His hair grew innocent and straw-like, bleached on the crown, darkening about his ears and neck in untidy curls. “She’s a right tall gal, too,” he said. “With them skinny legs of hern. How much she weigh?” Temple extended her hand. He returned the slipper slowly, looking at her, at her belly and loins. “He aint laid no crop by yit, has he?”

“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.