Sanctuary

The narrator describes a private party. It is full of people and music and dancing. A man offers everyone drinks, and the band begins to play different types of music. The crowd all speak over one another, calling for a good time to be had, and it is revealed that this is a kind of memorial party for Red. Miss Reba has just returned to her house from Red’s funeral and is mourning his death. She sits, drinking even more with her friends as they reminisce about Red and discuss their current goings on. Reba once again begins to mourn her dead beau, Mr. Binford. One of her friends asks where Reba thinks Temple and Popeye went, and Reba says she doesn’t care. She is extremely angry with Popeye for killing Red. She details Popeye and Temple’s relationship to her friends, hoping that word of Popeye’s crimes will spread.

Benbow has just finished writing a letter to his wife asking for a divorce. He goes into town and sees Snopes, who implies that he now knows that Benbow frequents brothels and will take him to a cheaper place. Benbow ignores him. He sees Narcissa in town, but she avoids him. She instead goes into the offices of the district attorney, Eustace Graham.

Graham is driven and career oriented, and he plans on running for state office once he has established a successful enough career. He assures Narcissa that Benbow doesn’t have a chance of winning the case and that they will be able to protect society. Narcissa wants Graham to get Benbow off the case and tells him about Snopes’s call and Benbow’s trip to Memphis. She asks how long before it is over, and Graham says two days after the trial begins. Narcissa decides to write to Belle, Benbow’s wife, and says that he will be home then. Narcissa calls Benbow and asks for his wife’s address.

Two days before the trial, Snopes stands outside a dentist’s office looking extremely beaten up. In a barbershop, he explains that he had been hit by a car before launching into a rant about the evils of Jewish people, implying that a Jewish lawyer from Memphis had paid him less for a bribe than an “American” judge would have. When the barber asks what Snopes tried to sell the person in the car that hit him, Snopes changes the subject.

The trial is set to start on June 20, and Benbow calls Reba to make sure that Temple is still there so that she can testify. Reba confirms that she is still there but says she doesn’t want Benbow to send any cops. When Benbow calls again on the 19th to check on Temple, Reba tells him that she and Popeye are both gone. The next day, the trial begins.

Benbow calls Ruby to the stand. She calmly tells the court the story of Tommy’s murder and what had happened the night before, just as she had to Benbow. When Graham cross-examines her, his first question is about her not having been married to Goodwin, which Benbow objects to and which Graham waives. After this first day, the Goodwins are nervous, but Benbow is confident, saying that the prosecution was reduced to trying to smear Ruby’s character.

That night Benbow finds out that Ruby has gone to spend the night with Goodwin in jail. Both are convinced that Goodwin is going to die, now at Popeye’s hand, and Goodwin again asks that Benbow get his son a job when he’s grown up. Benbow says there’s nothing to worry about, and the three prepare for court the next day in the jail cell.

Goodwin falls asleep, and Ruby offers to have sex with Benbow to pay him for his work. Benbow is shocked and asks if she thought that was what he wanted. She says yes, and Benbow asks if someone couldn’t just do something because they know it is the right thing to do. Ruby tells him about her past and that she acted as a mistress to a lawyer before to pay him to get Goodwin out of jail. She tells Benbow about spending all her money to get him out, leaving none for them to get married.

The next morning, Ruby and Benbow leave Goodwin, who is convinced Popeye will kill him on his way to court. Ruby asks how she can pay Benbow now, and he says he has been paid by the spiritual balm of taking on the case. At the court, Benbow finds that Temple has shown up with her own Memphis lawyer. Temple is sworn in to court.

The district attorney speaks to the court, holding a corn cob covered in dried blood. He attests that due to the (unwritten) testimony of the gynecologist and the chemist, this court case should be the matter of a lynching rather than a hanging. Benbow objects. Temple goes on the stand. Graham questions her about her past and recent whereabouts, finally asking where she was on the night of her rape.

Temple relays the story of her rape in the corn crib, but lies and says it was Goodwin who did it, with the bloodied corn cob that Graham has entered into evidence, though readers are now aware that Popeye used it. She also says that it was Goodwin who killed Tommy. At the end of her testimony, Judge Drake arrives with his four sons, and they take Temple home.

The jury takes eight minutes to declare Goodwin guilty. Narcissa takes Benbow home, and he sobs in the car as they pass the jail, where Ruby and her child are outside. Later that evening, Benbow sees a crowd gathered outside the jail. Benbow continues to the train station and lies down there. Noise outside wakes him, and he runs out to find a fire has been lit in the vacant lot beside the jail. Arriving at the lot, he finds that the crowd has lynched Goodwin, burning him alive. The crowd recognizes Benbow as Goodwin’s lawyer and threatens to lynch him too, but he is too devastated to notice.

Benbow gets off the train that has taken him back to Kinston. The driver at the station tells him that he just took Benbow’s wife to their house. The driver mentions the Goodwin trial and expresses joy at Goodwin’s death as a just ending. Benbow enters his house and finds his wife reading in bed. It is as though neither of them has left. He asks about his stepdaughter, and his wife says she is at a party. He calls her against his wife’s protests, and she answers and says she is fine. His wife tells him to lock the back door.

Popeye has been arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, for a crime he did not commit, which happened on the same day he killed Red. He was on his way to see his mother in Pensacola, Florida. She knows nothing of his criminal life and believes him to be a hotel clerk. Popeye’s father left her before Popeye was born, and his mother was sick with syphilis. As a child, Popeye was slow to develop, and his grandmother, who experienced delusions, took care of him. One day, his mother had to leave him alone with the grandmother, who took him and burned their house down, a shock from which his mother never fully recovered.

Popeye continued to develop slowly and weakly. At five years old, when invited to a children’s party, he cut up two live birds with scissors and climbed out the window. Three months later, a neighbor had him sent to a home for troubled children. As he grew up, he would come back to visit his mother every summer, keeping his escalating criminal activities a secret.

In the jail cell in Alabama, Popeye protests that he’s never been to the town before, but no one listens. The trial proceeds similarly to Goodwin’s, and Popeye is convicted. He doesn’t fight the decision or attempt to appeal it and instead lets himself be executed.

The book ends in Paris, with Temple and her father walking in the Luxembourg Gardens, both melancholy.