Sanctuary

said. "He said he wants to go there."

"Why tell me about it?" the woman said.

"You cook. He'll want to eat."

"Yes," the woman said. She turned back to the stove. "I cook. I cook for

crimps and spungs and feebs. Yes. I cook."

SANCTUARY 9

In the door Popeye watched her, the cigarette curling across his face. His

hands were in his pockets. "You can quit. I'll take you back to Memphis

Sunday. You can go to hustling again." He watched her back. "You're getting

fat here. Laying off in the country. I wont tell them on Manuel Street."

The woman turned, the fork in her hand. "You bastard," she said.

"Sure," Popeye said. "I won't tell them that Ruby Lamar is down in the

country, wearing a pair of Lee Goodwin's throwed-away shoes, chopping her

own firewood. No. I'll tell them Lee Goodwin is big rich."

"You bastard," the woman said. "You bastard."

"Sure," Popeye said. Then he turned his head. There was a shuffling sound

across the porch, then a man entered. He was stooped, in overalls. He was

barefoot; it was his bare feet which they had heard. He had a sunburned

thatch of hair, matted and foul. He had pale furious eyes, a short soft

beard like dirty gold in color.

"I be dawg if he aint a case, now," he said.

"What do you want?" the woman said. The man in overalls didn't answer. In

passing, he looked at Popeye with a glance at once secret and alert, as

though he were ready to laugh at a joke, waiting for the time to laugh. He

crossed the kitchen with a shambling, bear-like gait, and still with that

air of alert and gleeful secrecy, though in plain sight of them, he removed

a loose board in the floor and took out a gallon jug. Popeye watched him,

his forefingers in his vest, the cigarette (he had smoked it down without

once touching it with his hand) curling across his face. His expression was

savage, perhaps baleful; contemplative, watching the man in overalls

recross the floor with a kind of alert diffidence, the jug clumsily con-

cealed below his flank; he was watching Popeye, with that expression alert

and ready for mirth, until he left the room. Again they heard his bare feet

on the porch.

"Sure," Popeye said. "I wont tell them on Manuel Street that Ruby Lamar is

cooking for a dummy and a feeb too."

"You bastard," the woman said. "You bastard."

III

WHEN THE WOMAN ENTERED THE DINING-ROOM, CARRYING

a platter of meat, Popeye and the man who had fetched the jug from the

kitchen and the stranger were already at a table made by nailing three rough

planks to two trestles. Coming into the light of the lamp which sat on the

table, her face was sullen, not old; her eyes were cold. Watching her,

Benbow

WILLIAM FAULKNER

did not see her look once at him as she set the platter on the table and

stood for a moment with that veiled look with which women make a final

survey of a table, and went and stooped above an open packing case in a

corner of the room and took from it another plate and knife and fork,

which she brought to the table and set before Benbow with a kind of abrupt

yet unhurried finality, her sleeve brushing his shoulder.

As she was doing that, Goodwin entered. He wore muddy overalls. He had

a lean, weathered face, the jaws covered by a black stubble; his hair was

gray at the temples. He was leading by the arm an old man with a long

white beard stained about the mouth. Benbow watched Goodwin seat the old

man in a chair, where he sat obediently with that tentative and abject

eagerness of a man who has but one pleasure left and whom the world can

reach only through one sense, for he was both blind and deaf: a short man

with a bald skull and a round, full-fleshed, rosy face in which his

cataracted eyes looked like two clots of phlegm. Benbow watched him take

a filthy rag from his pocket and regurgitate into the rag an almost

colorless wad of what had once been chewing tobacco, and fold the rag up

and put it into his pocket. The woman served his plate from the dish. The

others were already eating, silently and steadily, but the old man sat

there, his head bent over his plate, his beard working faintly. He

fumbled at the plate with a diffident, shaking hand and found a small

piece of meat and began to suck at it until the woman returned and rapped

his knuckles. He put the meat back on the plate then and Benbow watched

her cut up the food on the plate, meat, bread and all, and then pour

sorghum over it. Then Benbow quit looking. When the meal was over,

Goodwin led the old man out again. Benbow watched the two of them pass

out the door and heard them go up the hall.

The men returned to the porch. The women cleared the table and carried

the dishes to the kitchen. She set them on the table and she went to the

box behind the stove and she stood over it for a time. Then she returned

and put her own supper on a plate and sat down to the table and ate and

lit a cigarette from the lamp and washed the dishes and put them away.

Then she went back up the hall. She did not go out onto the porch. She

stood just inside the door, listening to them talking, listening to the