Sanctuary

she had been speaking. "I'll send you clothes. I have a new fur coat. I

just wore it since Christmas. It's as good as new."

The woman laughed. Her mouth laughed, with no sound, no movement of her

face. "Clothes? I had three fur coats once. I gave one of them to a woman

in an alley by a saloon. Clothes? God." She turned suddenly. "I'll get

a car. You get away from here and dont you ever come back. Do you hear?"

"Yes," Temple whispered. Motionless, pale, like a sleepwalker she watched

the woman transfer the meat to the platter and pour the gravy over it.

From the oven she took a pan of biscuits and put them on a plate. "Can

I help you?" Temple whispered. The woman said nothing. She took up the

two plates and went out. Temple went to the table and took a cigarette

from the pack and stood staring stupidly at the lamp. One side of the

chimney was blackened. Across it a crack ran in a thin silver curve. She

lit hers at the lamp, someway, Temple thought, holding the cigarette in

her hand, staring at the uneven flame. The woman returned. She caught up

the corner of her skirt and lifted the smutty coffee-pot from the stove.

"Can I take that?" Temple said.

"No. Come on and get your supper." She went out.

Temple stood at the table, the cigarette in her hand. The shadow of the

stove fell upon the box where the child lay. Upon the lumpy wad of

bedding it could be distinguished only by a series of pale shadows in

soft small curves, and she went and stood over the box and looked down

at its putty-colored face and bluish eyelids. A thin whisper of shadow

cupped its head and lay moist upon its brow; one thin arm, upflung, lay

curl-palmed beside its cheek. Temple stooped above the box.

"He's going to die," Temple whispered. Bending, her shadow loomed high

upon the wall, her coat shapeless, her hat tilted monstrously above a

monstrous escaping of hair. "Poor little baby," she whispered, "poor

little baby." The men's

38 WILLIAM FAULKNER

voices grew louder. She heard a trampling of feet in the hall, a rasping

of chairs, the voice of the man who had laughed above them, laughing

again. She turned, motionless again, watching the door. The woman entered.

"Go and eat your supper," she said.

"The car," Temple said. "I could go now, while they're eating."

"What car?" the woman said. "Go on and eat. Nobody's going to hurt you."

"I'm not hungry. I haven't eaten today. I'm not hungry at all."

"Go and eat your supper," she said.

"I'll wait and eat when you do."

"Go on and eat your supper. I've got to get done here some time tonight."

Vill

TEMPLE ENTERED THE DINING-ROOM FROM THE KITCHEN, HER face fixed in a

cringing, placative expression; she was quite blind when she entered,

holding her coat about her, her hat thrust upward and back at that

dissolute angle. After a moment she saw Tommy. She went straight toward

him, as if she had been looking for him all the while. Something

intervened: a hard forearm; she attempted to evade it, looking at Tommy.

"Here," Gowan said across the table, his chair rasping back, you come

around here."

"Outside, brother," the one who had stopped her said, whom she recognised

then as the one who had laughed so often; "you're drunk. Come here, kid."

His hard forearm came across her middle. She thrust against it, grinning

rigidly at Tommy. "Move down, Tommy," the man said. "Ain't you got no

manners, you mat-faced bastard?" Tommy guffawed, scraping his chair along

the floor. The man drew her toward him by the wrist. Across the table

Gowan stood up, propping himself on the table. She began to resist,

grinning at Tommy, picking at the man's fingers.

"Quit that, Van," Goodwin said.

"Right on my lap here," Van said.

"Let her go," Goodwin said.

"Who'll make me?" Van said. "Who's big enough?"

"Let her go," Goodwin said. Then she was free. She began to back slowly

away. Behind her the woman, entering with a dish, stepped aside. Still

smiling her aching, rigid grimace, Temple backed from the room. In the

hall she whirled and ran. She ran right off the porch, into the weeds and

sped on. She ran to the road and down it for fifty yards in the darkness,

SANCTUARY 39

then without a break she whirled and ran back to the house and sprang onto

the porch and crouched against the door just as someone came up the hall.

It was Tommy.

"Oh, hyer you are," he said. He thrust something awkwardly at her.

"Hyer," he said.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Little bite of victuals. I bet you aint et since mawnin'."

"No. Not then, even," she whispered.

"You eat a little mite and you'll feel better," he said, poking the plate

at her. "You set down hyer and eat a little bite wher wont nobody bother

you. Durn them fellers."

Temple leaned around the door, past his dim shape, her face wan as a

small ghost in the refracted light from the dining-room. "Mrs.-Mrs. . .

." she whispered.

"She's in the kitchen. Want me to go back there with you?" In the

dining-room a chair scraped. Between blinks Tommy saw Temple in the path,

her body slender and motionless for a moment as though waiting for some