Sanctuary

spending a cent." She had set her tankard on the table beside the chair.

Suddenly she turned her head sharply and looked at it. Uncle Bud was now

behind her chair, leaning against the table. "You aint been into my beer,

have you, boy?" she said.

"You, Uncle Bud," Miss Myrtle said. "Aint you ashamed? I declare, it's

getting so I dont dare take him nowhere. I never see such a boy for

snitching beer in my life. You come out here and play, now. Come on."

"Yessum," Uncle Bud said. He moved, in no particular direction. Miss Reba

drank and set the tankard back on the table and rose.

"Since we all been kind of tore up," she said, "maybe I can prevail on

you ladies to have a little sup of gin?"

"No; reely," Miss Myrtle said.

144 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"Miss Reba's the perfect hostess," the thin one said. "How many times you

heard me say that, Miss Myrtle?"

"I wouldn't undertake to say, dearie," Miss Myrtle said.

Miss Reba vanished behind the screen.

"Did you ever see it so warm for June, Miss Lorraine?" Miss Myrtle said.

"I never did," the thin woman said. Miss Myrtle's face began to crinkle

again. Setting her tankard down she began to fumble for her handkerchief.

"It just comes over me like this," she said, "and them singing that Sonny

Boy and all. He looked so sweet," she waded.

"Now, now," Miss Lorraine said. "Drink a little beer. You'll feel better.

Miss Myrtle's took again," she said, raising her voice.

"I got too tender a heart," Miss Myrtle said. She snuffled behind the

handkerchief, groping for her tankard. She groped for a moment, then it

touched her hand. She looked quickly up. "You, Uncle Bud!" she said.

"Didn't I tell you to come out from behind there and play? Would you

believe it? The other afternoon when we left here I was so mortified I

didn't know what to do. I was ashamed to be seen on the street with a drunk

boy like you."

Miss Reba emerged from behind the screen with three glasses of gin.

"This'll put some heart into us," she said. "We're setting here like three

old sick cats." They bowed formally and drank, patting their lips. Then

they began to talk. They were all talking at once, again in half-completed

sentences, but without pauses for agreement or affirmation.

"It's us girls," Miss Myrtle said. "Men just cant seem to take us and leave

us for what we are. They make us what we are, then they expect us to be

different. Expect us not to never look at another man, while they come and

go as they please."

"A woman that wants to fool with more than one man at a time is a fool,"

Miss Reba said. "They're all trouble, and why do you want to double your

trouble? And the woman that cant stay true to a good man when she gets him,

a freehearted spender that never give her a hour's uneasiness or a hard

word . . ." looking at them, her eyes began to fill with a sad, unutterable

expression, of baffled and patient despair.

"Now, now," Miss Myrtle said. She leaned for-ward and patted Miss Reba's

huge hand. Miss Lorraine made a faint clucking sound with her tongue.

"You'll get yourself started."

"He was such a good man," Miss Reba said. "We was like two doves. For

eleven years we was like two doves."

"Now, dearie; now, dearie," Miss Myrtle said.

SANCTUARY .145

"It's when it comes over me like this," Miss Reba said. "Seeing that boy

laying there under them flowers."

"He never had no more than Mr. Binford had," Miss Myrtle said. "Now, now.

Drink a little beer."

Miss Reba brushed her sleeve across her eyes. She drank some beer.

"He ought to known better than to take a chance with Popeye's girl," Miss

Lorraine said.

"Men dont never learn better than that, dearie," Miss Myrtle said. "Where

you reckon they went, Miss Reba?"

"I dont know and I dont care," Miss Reba said. "And how soon they catch

him and burn him for killing that boy, I dont care neither. I dont care

none."

"He goes all the way to Pensacola every summer to see his mother," Miss

Myrtle said. "A man that'll do that cant be all bad."

"I dont know how bad you like them, then," Miss Reba said. "Me trying to

run a respectable house, that's been running a shooting-gallery for

twenty years, and him trying to turn it into a peep-show."

"It's us poor girls," Miss Myrtle said, "causes all the trouble and gets

all the suffering."

"I heard two years ago he wasn't no good that way," Miss Lorraine said.

"I knew it all the time," Miss Reba said. "A young man spending his money

like water on girls and not never going to bed with one. It's against

nature. All the girls thought it was because he had a little woman out

in town somewhere, but I says mark my words, there's something funny

about him. There's a funny business somewhere."

"He was a free spender, all right," Miss Lorraine said.

"The clothes and jewelry that girl bought, it was a shame," Miss Reba

said. "There was a Chinee robe she paid a hundred dollars for-imported,

it was-and perfume at ten dollars an ounce; next morning when I went up

there, they was all wadded in the corner and the perfume and rouge busted

all over them like a cyclone. That's what she'd do when she got mad at