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

garment. The feet went on past the door and mounted another stair and ceased. She
listened to the watch. A car started beneath the window with a grind of gears; again the
faint bell rang, shrill and prolonged. She found that the faint light yet in the room was
from a street lamp. Then she realised that it was night and the darkness beyond was full
of the sound of the city.
She heard the two dogs come up the stairs in a furious scrabble. The noise passed
the door and stopped, became utterly still; so still that she could almost see them
crouching there in the dark against the wall, watching the stairs. One of them was named
Mister something, Temple thought, waiting to hear Miss Reba's feet on the stairs. But it
was not Miss Reba; they came 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 dont 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. Binford?"
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 aint going to leave this 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 dont 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 rosecolored
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