Outside the county jail in Sanctuary these Negroes gather in the evenings and sing with the man inside awaiting execution. They wear "natty, shoddy suits and sweat-stained overalls" (114), and have "work-thickened shoulders" (124).
The prostitutes who work at the less expensive Memphis brothel to which Clarence takes Virgil and Fonzo in Sanctuary are described as "coffee-colored" (199). Their dresses are "bright," their hair is "ornate" and their smiles are "golden" (199).
"Somewhere down the corridor" of the Alabama jail where Popeye awaits trial for murder in Sanctuary "a negro was singing" (310) - not unlike the "negro murderer" who is awaiting his execution in the Jefferson jail where Lee awaits his trial much earlier (114).
Sanctuary does not name this man, except as the "murderer" (114) who is awaiting his execution in the jail when Goodwin is locked up there. He killed his wife with a razor. According to another unnamed black character, he is the "bes ba'ytone singer in nawth Mississippi!" His constant singing of "spirituals" and blues songs in jail, accompanied by a "chorus" of other blacks outside the window, provides a kind of soundtrack for the novel's main narrative (114-15).
This is the "wife" of the convicted murderer who is in the jail when Goodwin is arrested (114). While Sanctuary never gives her a name, or explains why her husband killed her, the narrative does provide a very vivid description of her death.
The "negro porter of the hotel" where Ruby stays in Sanctuary (135) briefly appears in three separate scenes: showing Ruby to her room in Chapter 16, fetching Horace to the hotel in Chapter 17, and showing Horace where he can wait for a train in Chapter 29. Faulkner may have been thinking of one man in all three cases, or two, or three.
The man who works in "the yard" of the Memphis orphanage in Light in August is never named, and appears in the novel only through the story that Doc Hines tells Hightower in Jefferson (383). But when, according to Hines' story, the young Joe Christmas asks him "How come you are a nigger?" (383) his anger is memorable and the response he makes is portentous. Though at first he calls Christmas a "little white trash bastard," he adds, "You are worse than that. You dont know what you are. And more than that, you wont never know . . ." (384).
