William Faulkner, SANCTUARY – WordPress.com - literature save 2

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 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 begged
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
too?' and I tried to stay in front but Frank shoved me behind him and held me and father
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 expecting 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. And thank your
stars you haven't and never will, for then you'd find just what that little putty face is