Sanctuary

one day." Leaning her hip against the table, her hand crushing the

cigarette, she began to laugh. "Dont you think that's funny?" she said.

Then she quit laughing by holding her breath, and she could hear the faint

guttering the lamp made, and the meat in the skillet and the hissing of the

kettle on the stove, and the voices, the harsh, abrupt, meaningless

masculine sounds from the house. "And you have to cook for all of them

every night. All those men eating here, the house full of them at night, in

the dark . . ." She dropped the crushed cigarette. "May I hold the baby? I

know how; I'll hold him good." She ran to the box, stooping, and lifted the

sleeping child. It opened its eyes, whimpering. "Now, now; Temple's got

it." She rocked it, held high and awkward in her thin arms. "Listen," she

said, looking at the woman's back, "will you ask him? your husband, I mean.

He can get a car and take me somewhere. Will you? Will you ask him?" The

child had stopped whimpering. Its lead-colored eyelids showed a thin line

of eyeball. "I'm not afraid," Temple said. "Things like that dont happen.

Do they? They're just like other people. You're just like other people.

With a little baby. And besides, my father's a ju-judge. The gu-governor

comes to our house to e-eat-What a cute little bu-ba-a-by," she wailed,

lifting the child to her face; "if bad mans hurts Temple, us'll tell the

governor's soldiers, won't us?"

"Like what people?" the woman said, turning the meat.

34 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"Do you think Lee hasn't anything better to do than chase after every one

of you cheap little-" She opened the fire door and threw her cigarette in

and slammed the door. In nuzzling at the child Temple had pushed her hat

onto the back of her head at a precarious dissolute angle above her

clotted curls. "Why did you come here?"

"It was Gowan. I begged him. We had already missed the ball game, but I

begged him if he'd just get me to Starkville before the special started

back, they wouldn't know I wasn't on it, because the ones that saw me get

off wouldn't tell. But he wouldn't. He said we'd stop here just a minute

and get some more whisky and he was already drunk then. He had gotten

drunk again since we left Taylor and I'm on probation and Daddy would

just die. But he wouldn't do it. He got drunk again while I was begging

him to take me to a town anywhere and let me out."

"On probation?" the woman said.

"For slipping out at night. Because only town boys can have cars, and

when you had a date with a town boy on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, the

boys in school wouldn't have a date with you, because they cant have

cars. So I had to slip out. And a girl that didn't like me told the Dean,

because I had a date with a boy she liked and he never asked her for

another date. So I had to."

"If you didn't slip out, you wouldn't get to go riding," the woman said.

"Is that it? And now when you slipped out once too often, you're

squealing."

"Gowan's not a town boy. He's from Jefferson. He went to Virginia. He

kept on saying how they had taught him to drink like a gentleman, and I

begged him just to let me out anywhere and lend me enough money for a

ticket because I only had two dollars, but he-"

"Oh, I know your sort," the woman said. "Honest women. Too good to have

anything to do with common people. You'll slip out at night with the

kids, but just let a man come along." She turned the meat. "Take all you

can get, and give nothing. 'I'm a pure girl; I dont do that.' You'll slip

out with the kids and bum their gasoline and eat their food, but just let

a man so much as look at you and you faint away because your father's the

judge and your four brothers might not like it. But just let you get into

a jam, then who do you come crying to? to us, the ones that are not good

enough to lace the judge's almighty shoes." Across the child Temple gazed

at the woman's back, her face like a small pale mask beneath the pre-

carious hat.

"My brother said he would kill Frank. He didn't say he would give me a

whipping if he caught me with him; he said

SANCTUARY 35

he would kill the goddam son of a bitch in his yellow buggy and my father

cursed my brother and said he could run his family a while longer and he

drove me into the house and locked me in and went down to the bridge to

wait for Frank. But I wasn't a coward. I climbed down the gutter and

headed Frank off and told him. I begged him to go away, but he said we'd

both go. When we got back in the buggy I knew it had been the last time.

I knew it, and I begged him again to go away, but he said he'd drive me

home to get my suitcase and we'd tell father. He wasn't a coward either.

My father was sitting on the porch. He said 'Get out of that buggy' and

I got out and I bekged Frank to go on, but he got out too and we came up

the path and father reached around inside the door and got the shotgun.

I got in front of Frank and father said 'Do you want it tooT and I tried

to stay in front but Frank shoved me behind him and held me and father