Sanctuary

"But to walk out just like a nigger," Narcissa said. "And to mix yourself

up with moonshiners and street-walkers."

"Well, he's gone and left the street-walker too," Miss Jenny said. "Unless

you're going to walk the streets with that orangestick in your pocket until

she comes to town."

"Yes," Benbow said. He told again about the three of them, himself and

Goodwin and Tommy sitting on the porch, drinking from the jug and talking,

and Popeye lurking about the house, coming out from time to time to ask

Tommy to light a lantern and go down to the barn with him and Tommy

wouldn't do it and Popeye would curse him, and Tommy sitting on the floor,

scouring his bare feet on the boards with a faint, hissing noise,

chortling: "Aint he a sight, now?"

62 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"You could feel the pistol on him just like you knew he had a navel,"

Benbow said. "He wouldn't drink, because he said it made him sick to his

stomach like a dog; he wouldn't stay and talk with us; he wouldn't do

anything: just lurking about, smoking his cigarettes, like a sullen and

sick child.

"Goodwin and I were both talking. He had been a cavalry sergeant in the

Philippines and on the Border, and in an infantry regiment in France; he

never told me why he changed, transferred to infantry and lost his rank.

He might have killed someone, might have deserted. He was talking about

Manila and Mexican girls, and that halfwit chortling and glugging at the

jug and shoving it at me: 'Take some mo'; and then I knew that the woman

was just behind the door, listening to us. They are not married. I know

that just like I know that that little black man had that flat little

pistol in his coat pocket. But she's out there, doing a nigger's work,

that's owned diamonds and automobiles too in her day, and bought them

with a harder currency than cash. And that blind man, that old man

sitting there at the table, waiting for somebody to feed him, with that

immobility of blind people, like it was the backs of their eyeballs you

looked at while they were hearing music you couldn't hear; that Goodwin

led out of the room and completely off the earth, as far as I know. I

never saw him again. I never knew who he was, who he was kin to. Maybe

not to anybody. Maybe that old Frenchman that built the house a hundred

years ago didn't want him either and just left him there when he died or

moved away."

The next morning Benbow got the key to the house from his sister, and

went into town. The house was on a side street, unoccupied now for ten

years. He opened the house, drawing the nails from the windows. The

furniture had not been moved. In a pair of new overalls, with mops and

pails, he scoured the floors. At noon he went down town and bought

bedding and some tinned food. He was still at work at six o'clock when

his sister drove up in her car.

"Come on home, Horace," she said. "Don't you see you cant do this?"

"I found that out right after I started," Benbow said. "Until this

morning I thought that anybody with one arm and a pail of water could

wash a floor."

"Horace," she said.

"I'm the older, remember," he said. "I'm going to stay here. I have some

covers." He went to the hotel for supper. When he returned, his sister's

car was again in the drive. The negro driver had brought a bundle of

bedclothing.

"Miss Narcissa say for you to use them," the negro said.

SANCTUARY 63

Benbow put the bundle into a closet and made a bed with the ones which he

had bought.

Next day at noon, eating his cold food at the kitchen table, he saw

through the window a wagon stop in the street, three women got down and

standing on the curb they made unabashed toilets, smoothing skirts and

stockings, brushing one another's back, opening parcels and donning

various finery. The wagon had gone on. They followed, on foot, and he re-

membered that it was Saturday. He removed the overalls and dressed and

left the house.

The street opened into a broader one. To the left it went on to the

square, the opening between two buildings black with a slow, continuous

throng, like two streams of ants, above which the cupola of the

courthouse rose from a clump of oaks and locusts covered with ragged

snow. He went on toward the square. Empty wagons still passed him and he

passed still more women on foot, black and white, unmistakable by the

unease of their garments as well as by their method of walking, believing

that town dwellers would take them for town dwellers too, not even

fooling one another.

The adjacent alleys were choked with tethered wagons, the teams reversed

and nuzzling gnawed corn-ears over the tail-boards. The square was lined

two-deep with ranked cars, while the owners of them and of the wagons

thronged in slow overalls and khaki, in mail-order scarves and parasols,

in and out of the stores, soiling the pavement with fruit- and

peanut-hulls. Slow as sheep they moved, tranquil, impassable, filling the

passages, contemplating the fretful hurrying of those in urban shirts and

collars with the large, mild inscrutability of cattle or of gods,