Sanctuary

shot him and said 'Get down there and sup your dirt, you whore.'

"I have been called that," Temple whispered, holding the sleeping child

in her high thin arms, gazing at the woman's back.

"But you good women. Cheap sports. Giving nothing, then when you're

caught . . . Do you know what you've got into now?" she looked across her

shoulder, the fork in her hand. "Do you think you're meeting kids now?

kids that give a d n whether you like it or not? Let me tell you whose

house you've come into without being asked or wanted; who you're expect-

ing to drop everything and carry you back where you had no business ever

leaving. When he was a soldier in the Philippines he killed another

soldier over one of those nigger women and they sent him to Leavenworth.

Then the war came and they let him out to go to it. He got two medals,

and when it was over they put him back in Leavenworth until the lawyer

got a congressman to get him out. Then I could quit jazzing again---~'

"Jazzing?" Temple whispered, holding the child, looking herself no more

than an elongated and leggy infant in her scant dress and uptilted hat.

"Yes, putty face!" the woman said. "How do you suppose I paid that

lawyer? And that's the sort of man you think will care that much-" with

the fork in her hand she came and snapped her fingers softly and

viciously in Temple's face "-what happens to you. And you, you little

doll-faced slut, that think you cant come into a room where a man is

without him . . ." Beneath the faded garment her breast moved deep and

full. With her hands on her hips she looked at Temple with cold, blazing

eyes. "Man? You've never seen a real man. You dont know what it is to be

wanted by a real man.

36 WILLIAM FAULKNER

And thank your stars you haven't and never will, for then you'd find just

what that little putty face is worth, and all the rest of it you think you

are jealous of when you're just scared of it. And if he is just man enough

to call you whore, you'll say Yes Yes and you'll crawl naked in the dirt and

the mire for him to call you that. . . . Give me that baby." Temple held the

child, gazing at the woman, her mouth moving as if she were saying Yes Yes

Yes. The woman threw the fork onto the table. "Turn loose," she said,

lifting the child. It opened its eyes and wailed. The woman drew a chair out

and sat down, the child upon her lap. "Will you hand me one of those diapers

on the line yonder?" she said. Temple stood on the floor, her lips still

moving. "You're scared to go out there, aren't you?" the woman said. She

rose.

"No," Temple said; "I'll get-"

"I'll get it." The unlaced brogans scuffed across the kitchen. She returned

and drew another chair up to the stove and spread the two remaining cloths

and the undergarments on it, and sat again and laid the child across her

lap. It wailed. "Hush," she said, "hush, now," her face in the lamplight

taking a serene, brooding quality. She changed the child and laid it in the

box. Then she took a platter down from a cupboard curtained by a split

towsack and took up the fork and came and looked into Temple's face again.

"Listen. If I get a car for you, will you get out of here?" she said.

Staring at her Temple moved her mouth as though she were experimenting with

words, tasting them. "Will you go out the back and get into it and go away

and never come back here?"

"Yes," Temple whispered, "anywhere. Anything."

Without seeming to move her cold eyes at all the woman looked Temple up and

down. Temple could feel all her muscles shrinking like severed vines in the

noon sun. "You poor little gutless fool," the woman said in her cold

undertone. "Playing at it."

"I didn't. I didn't."

"You'll have something to tell them now, when you get back. Wont you?" Face

to face, their voices were like shadows upon too close blank walls.

"Playing at it."

"Anything. Just so I get away. Anywhere."

"It's not Lee I'm afraid of. Do you think he plays the dog after every hot

little bitch that comes along? It's you."

"Yes, I'll go anywhere."

"I know your sort. I've seen them. All running, but not too fast. Not so

fast you cant tell a real man when you see him. Do you think you've got the

only one in the world?"

"Gowan," Temple whispered, "Gowan."

SANCTUARY 37

"I have slaved for that man," the woman whispered, her lips scarce

moving, in her still, dispassionate voice. It was as though she were

reciting a formula for bread. "I worked night shift as a waitress so I

could see him Sundays at the prison. I lived two years in a single room,

cooking over a gas-jet, because I promised him. I lied to him and made

money to get him out of prison, and when I told him how I made it, he

beat me. And now you must come here where you're not wanted. Nobody asked

you to come here. Nobody cares whether you are afraid or not. Afraid? You

haven't the guts to be really afraid, anymore than you have to be in

love."

"I'll pay you," Temple whispered. "Anything you say. My father will give

it to me." The woman watched her, her face motionless, as rigid as when