Listening to State Senator Clarence Snopes talk about the life he leads in the state capital of Jackson in Sanctuary, Horace conjures up images of "discreet flicks of skirts in swift closet doors" in various hotel rooms (175). That's all the narrative gives us, but it seems safe to assume that inside the skirts are women, and that the women themselves are prostitutes.
When she imagines herself dead as a way to escape Popeye's sexual assault in Sanctuary, Temple's fantasy includes "all the people sitting around the coffin, saying Dont she look sweet" (219).
In Sanctuary when Horace asks Reba "Have you any children?" she replies "Yes. . . . I'm supporting four, in a Arkansaw home now," though she adds immediately "Not mine, though" (211). If not, they are presumably the children of various women who have worked for her as prostitutes.
The second husband of Popeye's maternal grandmother appears in and disappears from Sanctuary in half a paragraph. We see "an undersized, snuffy man with a mild, rich moustache" who is very handy maintaining the boarding house his wife owns, until the day he walks out with a check to pay the butcher and instead vanishes with all the money she has saved (304).
Like Gene, the bootlegger they work for in Sanctuary, the two "young men" who bring additional alcohol for the funeral are described as "soiled" (246).
This "old half-crazed white woman" in Sanctuary is one of Jefferson's most eccentric inhabitants (200). The physical description of her is equally striking: her "lank grayish hair" hangs beside "the glittering collapse of her face" (201). She is reported to make her living by "manufactur[ing] spells for negroes" (200), though her house was also once raided by "officers searching for whiskey" (201). Horace arranges for Ruby to stay in the "lean-to shed room" attached to her house. (This woman may recur as "Mrs.
Immediately before questioning Temple during Lee Goodwin's trial in Sanctuary, the District Attorney mentions "the gynecologist" who testified earlier about "the most sacred affairs of that most sacred thing in life: womanhood" (283-84). The doctor himself does not appear in the novel.
Waiters appear in both scenes set in the Grotto club in Sanctuary. In Chapter 25, describing the funeral for Red, they are clearly identified as "negro waiters, in black shirts beneath starched jackets." In the previous chapter, however, the narrative describes the two waiters who place drinks in front of Temple and Popeye in more racially ambiguous terms: seen from Temple's perspective they appear as "a brown [hand] in a white sleeve, a soiled white one beneath a dirty cuff" (235). Also in Chapter 24, "a waiter" shows Temple to a private room, where Red joins her (238).
Musicians play at the Grotto club at two different points in Sanctuary. A second "orchestra," "from a downtown hotel," is hired to provide music at Red's funeral. A dispute arises about what kind of music they should play. "The leader" proposes "the Blue Danube" by "Strauss" (a detail which suggests these musicians are white, 244), another man proposes "jazz." But at the suggestion of the proprietor of the Grotto they first play "Nearer My God, To Thee," and then the "cornetist" plays a solo version of "In That Haven of Rest" (245).
Musicians play at the Grotto club at two different points in Sanctuary. The first time, this regular club "orchestra" provides the soundtrack to the scene in which Popeye and Red compete fatally for Temple. The dance music they play "swirls slowly about her in a bright myriad wave" (238). But the narrative never describes either the musicians or the music more particularly; given the history of music in Memphis, they may be black.
