Sanctuary

too steadily and too lightly. The door opened; the dogs surged in in two

shapeless blurs and scuttled under the bed and crouched, whimpering. "You

dawgs!" Minnie's voice said. "You make me spill this." The light came on.

Minnie carried a tray. "I got you some supper," she said. "Where them dawgs

gone to?"

"Under the bed," Temple said. "I don't want any."

Minnie came and set the tray on the bed and looked down at Temple, her

pleasant face knowing and placid. "You want me to-" she said, extending her

hand. Temple turned her face quickly away. She heard Minnie kneel, cajoling

the dogs, the dogs snarling back at her with whimpering, asthmatic snarls

and clicking teeth. "Come outen there, now," Minnie said. "They know fo

Miss Reeba do when she fixing to get drunk. You, Mr. Binfordi"

Temple raised her head. "Mr. Binford?"

"He the one with the blue ribbon," Minnie said. Stooping, she flapped her

arm at the dogs. They were backed against the wall at the head of the bed,

snapping and snarling at her in mad terror. "Mr. Binford was Miss Reba's

man. Was landlord here eleven years until he die about two years ago. Next

day Miss Reba get these dawgs, name one Mr. Binford and other Miss Reba.

Whenever she go to the cemetery she start drinking like this evening, then

they both got to run. But Mr. Binford ketch it sho nough. Last time she

throw him outen upstair window and go down and empty Mr. Binford's clothes

closet and throw everything out in the street except what he buried in."

"Oh," Temple said. "No wonder they're scared. Let them stay under there.

They won't bother me."

"Reckon I have to. Mr. Binford ain't going to leave this

88 WILLIAM FAULKNER

room, not if he know it." She stood again, looking at Temple. "Eat that

supper," she said. "You feel better. I done slip you a drink of gin, too."

"I don't want any," Temple said, turning her face away. She heard Minnie

leave the room. The door closed quietly. Under the bed the dogs crouched

against the wall in that rigid and furious terror.

The light hung from the center of the ceiling, beneath a fluted shade of

rose-colored paper browned where the bulb bulged it. The floor was

covered by a figured maroon-tinted carpet tacked down in strips; the

olive-tinted walls bore two framed lithographs. From the two windows

curtains of machine lace hung, dust-colored, like strips of lightly

congealed dust set on end. The whole room had an air of musty stoginess,

decorum; in the wavy mirror of a cheap varnished dresser, as in a

stagnant pool, there seemed to linger spent ghosts of voluptuous gestures

and dead lusts. In the corner, upon a faded scarred strip of oilcloth

tacked over the carpet, sat a washstand bearing a flowered bowl and

pitcher and a row of towels; in the corner behind it sat a slop jar

dressed also in fluted rose-colored paper.

Beneath the bed the dogs made no sound. Temple moved slightly; the dry

complaint of mattress and springs died into the terrific silence in which

they crouched. She thought of them, woolly, shapeless; savage, petulant,

spoiled, the flatulent monotony of their sheltered lives snatched up

without warning by an incomprehensible moment of terror and fear of

bodily annihilation at the very hands which symbolised by ordinary the

licensed tranquillity of their lives.

The house was full of sounds. Indistinguishable, remote, they came to her

with a quality of awakening, resurgence, as though the house itself had

been asleep, rousing itself with dark; she heard something which might

have been a burst of laughter in a shrill woman voice. Steamy odors from

the tray drifted across her face. She turned her head and looked at it,

at the covered and uncovered dishes of thick china. In the midst of them

sat the glass of pale gin, a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches. She

rose on her elbow, catching up the slipping gown. She lifted the covers

upon a thick steak, potatoes, green peas; rolls; an anonymous pinkish

mass which some sense-elimination, perhaps-identified as a sweet. She

drew the slipping gown up again, thinking about them eating down at

school in a bright uproar of voices and clattering forks; of her father

and brothers at the supper table at home; thinking about the borrowed

gown and Miss Reba saying that they would go shopping tomorrow. And I've

just got two dollars, she thought.

SANCTUARY 89

When she looked at the food she found that she was not hungry at all,

didn't even want to look at it. She lifted the glass and gulped it empty,

her face wry, and set it down and turned her face hurriedly from the

tray, fumbling for the cigarettes. When she went to strike the match she

looked at the tray again and took up a strip of potato gingerly in her

fingers and ate it. She ate another, the unlighted cigarette in her other

hand. Then she put the cigarette down and took up the knife and fork and

began to eat, pausing from time to time to draw the gown up onto her

shoulder.

When she finished eating she lit the cigarette. She heard the bell again,