Sanctuary

barefoot, and whipped out that little artermatic pistol and shot it dead as

a door-nail. I be burn if he didn't."

"Whose dog was it?" Horace said.

"Hit was mine," Tommy said. He chortled. "A old dog that wouldn't hurt a

flea if hit could."

The road descended and flattened; Benbow's feet whispered into sand,

walking carefully. Against the pale sand he could now see Tommy, moving at

a shuffling shamble like a mule walks in sand, without seeming effort, his

bare feet hissing,

SANCTUARY 15

flicking the sand back in faint spouting gusts from each inward flick of

his toes.

The bulky shadow of the felled tree blobbed across the road. Tommy

climbed over it and Benbow followed, still carefully, gingerly, hauling

himself through a mass of foliage not yet withered, smelling still green.

"Some more of----" Tommy said. He turned. "Can you make it?"

"I'm all right," Horace said. He got his balance again. Tommy went on.

"Some more of Popeye's doin's," Tommy said. "'Twarn't no use, blocking

this road like this. Just fixed it so we'd have to walk a mile to the

trucks. I told him folks been coming out here to buy from Lee for four

years now, and aint nobody bothered Lee yet. Besides gettin' that car of

his'n outen here again, big as it is. But 'twarn't no stoppin' him. I be

dog if he ain't skeered of his own shadow."

"I'd be scared of it too," Benbow said. "If his shadow was mine."

Tommy guffawed, in undertone. The road was now a black tunnel floored

with the impalpable defunctive glare of the sand. "It was about here that

the path turned off to the spring," Benbow thought, trying to discern

where the path notched into the jungle wall. They went on.

"Who drives the truck?" Benbow said. "Some more Memphis fellows?"

"Sho," Tommy said. "Hit's Popeye's truck."

"Why can't those Memphis folks stay in Memphis and let you all make your

liquor in peace?"

"That's where the money is," Tommy said. "Aint no money in these here

piddlin' little quarts and half-a-gallons. Lee just does that for

a-commodation, to pick up a extry dollar or two. It's in making a run and

getting shut of it quick, where the money is."

"Oh," Benbow said. "Well, I think I'd rather starve than have that man

around me."

Tommy guffawed. "Popeye's all right. He's just a little curious." He

walked on, shapeless against the bushed glare of the road, the sandy

road. "I be dog if he aint a case, now. Aint he?"

"Yes," Benbow said. "He's all of that."

The truck was waiting where the road, clay again, began to mount toward

the gravel highway. Two men sat on the fender, smoking cigarettes;

overhead the trees thinned against the stars of more than midnight.

"You took your time," one of the men said. "Didn't you? I aimed to be

halfway to town by now. I got a woman waiting for me."

16 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"Sure," the other man said. "Waiting on her back." The first man cursed

him.

"We come as fast as we could," Tommy said. "Whyn't you fellows hang out

a lantern? If me and him had a been the Law, we'd had you, sho."

"Ah, go climb a tree, you mat-faced bastard," the first man said. They

snapped their cigarettes away and got into the truck. Tommy guffawed, in

undertone. Benbow turned and extended his hand.

"Goodbye," he said. "And much obliged, Mister--"

"My name's Tawmmy," the other said. His limp, calloused hand fumbled into

Benbow's and pumped it solemnly once and fumbled away. He stood there,

a squat, shapeless figure against the faint glare of the road, while

Benbow lifted his foot for the step. He stumbled, catching himself.

"Watch yourself, Doc," a voice from the cab of the truck said. Benbow got

in. The second man was laying a shotgun along the back of the seat. The

truck got into motion and ground terrifically up the gutted slope and

into the gravelled highroad and turned toward Jefferson and Memphis.

III

ON THE NEXT AFTERNOON BENBOW WAS AT HIS SISTER'S home. It was in the

country, four miles from Jefferson; the home of her husband's people. She

was a widow, with a boy ten years old, living in a big house with her son

and the great aunt of her husband: a woman of ninety, who lived in a wheel

chair, who was known as Miss Jenny. She and Benbow were at the window,

watching his sister and a young man walking in the garden. His sister had

been a widow for ten years.

"Why hasn't she ever married again?" Benbow said.

"I ask you," Miss Jenny said. "A young woman needs a man."

"But not that one," Benbow said. He looked at the two people. The man

wore flannels and a blue coat; a broad, plumpish young man with a

swaggering air, vaguely collegiate. "She seems to like children. Maybe

because she has one of her own now. Which one is that? Is that the same

one she had last fall?"

"Gowan Stevens," Miss Jenny said. "You ought to remember Gowan."

"Yes," Benbow said. "I do now. I remember last October." At that time he

had passed through Jefferson on his way home, and he had stopped

overnight at his sister's. Through the same window he and Miss Jenny had

watched the same two people walking in the same garden, where at that

time

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