Sanctuary

4

Townspeople 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.

“Who says so?” Gowan said. He poured an inch into the glass. “If we just had some decent liquor. I know a man in my county named Goodwin that makes——”

“That’s what they call a drink up at school,” Doc said.

Gowan looked at him. “Do you think so? Watch this.” He poured into the glass. They watched the liquor rise.

“Look out, fellow,” the third said. Gowan filled the glass level full and lifted it and emptied it steadily. He remembered setting the glass down carefully, then he became aware simultaneously of open air, of a chill gray freshness and an engine panting on a siding at the head of a dark string of cars, and that he was trying to tell someone that he had learned to drink like a gentleman. He was still trying to tell them, in a cramped dark place smelling of ammonia and creosote, vomiting into a receptacle, trying to tell them that he must be at Taylor at six-thirty, when the special arrived. The paroxysm passed; he felt extreme lassitude, weakness, a desire to lie down which was forcibly restrained, and in the flare of a match he leaned against the wall, his eyes focussing slowly upon a name written there in pencil. He shut one eye, propped against the wall, swaying and drooling, and read the name. Then he looked at them, wagging his head.

“Girl name.……Name girl I know. Good girl. Good sport. Got date take her to Stark.……Starkville. No chap’rone, see?” Leaning there, drooling, mumbling, he went to sleep.

At once he began to fight himself out of sleep. It seemed to him that it was immediately, yet he was aware of time passing all the while, and that time was a factor in his need to wake; that otherwise he would be sorry. For a long while he knew that his eyes were open, waiting for vision to return. Then he was seeing again, without knowing at once that he was awake.

He lay quite still. It seemed to him that, by breaking out of sleep, he had accomplished the purpose that he had waked himself for. He was lying in a cramped position under a low canopy, looking at the front of an unfamiliar building above which small clouds rosy with sunlight drove, quite empty of any sense. Then his abdominal muscles completed the retch upon which he had lost consciousness and he heaved himself up and sprawled into the foot of the car, banging his head on the door. The blow fetched him completely to and he opened the door and half fell to the ground and dragged himself up and turned toward the station at a stumbling run. He fell. On hands and knees he looked at the empty siding and up at the sunfilled sky with unbelief and despair. He rose and ran on, in his stained dinner jacket, his burst collar and broken hair. I passed out, he thought in a kind of rage, I passed out. I passed out.

The platform was deserted save for a negro with a broom. “Gret Gawd, white folks,” he said.

“The train,” Gowan said, “the special. The one that was on that track.”

“Hit done lef. Bout five minutes ago.” With the broom still in the arrested gesture of sweeping he watched Gowan turn and run back to the car and tumble into it.

The jar lay on the floor. He kicked it aside and started the engine. He knew that he needed something on his stomach, but there wasn’t time. He looked down at the jar. His inside coiled coldly, but he raised the jar and drank, guzzling, choking the stuff down, clapping a cigarette into his mouth to restrain the paroxysm. Almost at once he felt better.

He crossed the square at forty miles an hour. It was six-fifteen. He took the Taylor road, increasing speed. He drank again from the jar without slowing down. When he reached Taylor the train was just pulling out of the station. He slammed in between two wagons as the last car passed. The vestibule opened; Temple sprang down and ran for a few steps beside the car while an official leaned down and shook his fist at her.

Gowan had got out. She turned and came toward him, walking swiftly. Then she paused, stopped, came on again, staring at his wild face and hair, at his ruined collar and shirt.

“You’re drunk,” she said. “You pig. You filthy pig.”

“Had a big night. You dont know the half of it.”

She looked about, at the bleak yellow station, the overalled men chewing slowly and watching her, down the track at the diminishing train, at the four puffs of vapor that had almost died away when the sound of the whistle came back. “You filthy pig,” she said. “You cant go anywhere like this. You haven’t even changed clothes.” At the car she stopped again. “What’s that behind you?”

“My canteen,” Gowan said. “Get in.”

She looked at him, her mouth boldly scarlet, her eyes watchful and cold beneath her brimless hat, a curled spill of red hair. She looked back at the station again, stark and ugly in the fresh morning. She sprang in, tucking her legs under her. “Let’s get away from here.” He started the car and turned it. “You’d better take me back to Oxford,” she said. She looked back at the station. It now lay in shadow, in the shadow of a high scudding cloud. “You’d better,” she said.

At two oclock that afternoon, running at good speed through a high murmurous desolation of pines, Gowan swung the car from the gravel into a narrow road between eroded banks, descending toward a bottom of cypress and gum. He wore a cheap blue workshirt beneath his dinner jacket. His eyes were bloodshot, puffed, his jowls covered by blue stubble, and looking at him, braced and clinging as the car leaped and bounced in the worn ruts, Temple thought His whiskers have grown since we left Dumfries. It was hair-oil he drank. He bought a bottle of hair-oil at Dumfries and drank it.

He looked at her, feeling her eyes. “Dont get your back up, now. It wont take a minute to run up to Goodwin’s and get a bottle. It wont take ten minutes. I said I’d get you to Starkville before the train does, and I will. Dont you believe me?”

She said nothing, thinking of the pennant-draped train already in Starkville; of the colorful stands; the band, the yawning glitter of the bass horn; the green diamond dotted with players, crouching, uttering short, yelping cries like marsh-fowl disturbed by an alligator, not certain of where the danger is, motionless, poised, encouraging one another with short meaningless cries, plaintive, wary and forlorn.

“Trying to come over me with your innocent ways. Dont think I spent last night with a couple of your barbershop jellies for nothing. Dont think I fed them my liquor just because I’m bighearted. You’re pretty good, aren’t you? Think you can play around all week with any badger-trimmed hick that owns a ford, and fool me on Saturday, dont you? Dont think I didn’t see your name where it’s written on that lavatory wall. Dont you believe me?”

She said nothing, bracing herself as the car lurched from one bank to the other of the cut, going too fast. He was still watching her, making no effort to steer it.

“By God, I want to see the woman that can——” The road flattened into sand, arched completely over, walled completely by a jungle of cane and brier. The car lurched from side to side in the loose ruts.

She saw the tree blocking the road, but she only braced herself anew. It seemed to her to be the logical and disastrous end to the train of circumstance in which she had become involved. She sat and watched rigidly and quietly as Gowan, apparently looking straight ahead, drove into the tree at twenty miles an hour. The car struck, bounded back, then drove into the tree again and turned onto its side.

She felt herself flying through the air, carrying a numbing shock upon her shoulder and a picture of two men peering from the fringe of cane at the roadside. She scrambled to her feet, her head reverted, and saw them step into the road, the one in a suit of tight black and a straw hat, smoking a cigarette, the other bareheaded, in overalls, carrying a shotgun, his bearded face gaped in slow astonishment. Still running her bones turned to water and she fell flat on her face, still running.

Without stopping she whirled and sat up, her mouth open upon a soundless wail behind her lost breath. The man in overalls was still looking at her, his mouth open in innocent astonishment within a short soft beard. The other man was leaning over the upturned car, his tight coat ridged across his shoulders. Then the engine ceased, though the lifted front wheel continued to spin idly, slowing.