Sanctuary

him, when he'd beat her. After he shut her up and wouldn't let her leave

the house. Having the front of my house watched like it was a . . ." She

raised the tankard from the table to her lips. Then she halted it,

blinking. "Where's my-"

"Uncle Bud!" Miss Myrtle said. She grasped the boy by the arm and

snatched him out from behind Miss Reba's chair and shook him, his round

head bobbing on his shoulders with an expression of equable idiocy. "Aint

you ashamed? Aint you ashamed? Why cant you stay out of these ladies'

beer? I'm a good mind to take that dollar back and make you buy Miss

146 WILLIAM FAULKNER

Reba a can of beer, I am for a fact. Now, you go over by the window and

stay there, you hear?"

"Nonsense," Miss Reba said. "There wasn't much left. You ladies are about

ready too, aint you? Minnie!"

Miss Lorraine touched her mouth with her handkerchief. Behind her glasses

her eyes rolled aside in a veiled, secret look. She laid the other hand

to her flat spinster's breast.

"We forgot about your heart, honey," Miss Myrtle said. "Dont you reckon

you better take gin this time?"

"Reely, I-" Miss Lorraine said.

"Yes; do," Miss Reba said. She rose heavily and fetched three more

glasses of gin from behind the screen. Minnie entered and refilled the

tankards. They drank, patting their lips.

"First I knowed was when Minnie told me there was something funny going

on," Miss Reba said. "How he wasn't here hardly at all, gone about every

other night, and that when he was here, there wasn't no signs at all the

next morning when she cleaned up. She'd hear them quarrelling, and she

said it was her wanting to get out and he wouldn't let her. With all them

clothes he was buying her, mind, he didn't want her to leave the house,

and she'd get mad and lock the door and wouldn't even let him in."

"Maybe he went off and got fixed up with one of these glands, these

monkey glands, and it quit on him," Miss Myrtle said.

"Then one morning he come in with Red and took him up there. They stayed

about an hour and left, and Popeye didn't show up again until next

morning. Then him and Red come back and stayed up there about an hour.

When they left, Minnie come and told me what was going on, so next day

I waited for them. I called him in here and I says 'Look here, you son

of a buh---2 " She ceased. For an instant the three of them sat

motionless, a little forward. Then slowly their heads turned and they

looked at the boy leaning against the table.

"Uncle Bud, honey," Miss Myrtle said, "dont you want to go and play in

the yard with Reba and Mr. Binford?"

"Yessum," the boy said. He went toward the door. They watched him until

the door closed upon him. Miss Lorraine drew her chair up; they leaned

together.

"And that's what they was doing?" Miss Myrtle said.

"I say 'I been running a house for twenty years, but this is the first

time I ever had anything like this going on in it. If you want to turn

a stud in to your girl' I says 'go somewhere else to do it. I aint going

to have my house turned into no French joint."

"The son of a bitch," Miss Lorraine said.

SANCTUARY 147

"He'd ought tove had sense enough to get a old ugly man," Miss Myrtle

said. "Tempting us poor girls like that."

"Men always expects us to resist temptation," Miss Lorraine said. She was

sitting upright like a school-teacher. "The lousy son of a bitch."

"Except what they offers themselves," Miss Reba said. "Then watch them.

. . . Every morning for four days that was going on, then they didn't

come back. For a week Popeye didn't show up at all, and that girl wild

as a young mare. I thought he was out of town on business maybe until

Minnie told me he wasn't and that he give her five dollars a day not to

let that girl out of the house nor use the telephone. And me trying to

get word to him to come and take her out of my house because I didn't

want nuttin like that going on in it. Yes, Sir, Minnie said the two of

them would be nekkid as two snakes, and Popeye hanging over the foot of

the bed without even his hat off, making a kind of whinnying sound."

"Maybe he was cheering for them," Miss Lorraine said. "The lousy son of

a bitch."

Feet came up the hall; they could hear Minnie's voice lifted in

adjuration. The door opened. She entered, holding Uncle Bud erect by one

hand. Limp-kneed he dangled, his face fixed in an expression of glassy

idiocy. "Miss Reba," Minnie said, "this boy done broke in the icebox and

drunk a whole bottle of beer. You, boy!" she said, shaking him, "stan'

upl" Limply he dangled, his face rigid in a slobbering grin. Then upon

it came an expression of concern, consternation; Minnie swung him sharply

away from her as he began to vomit.

XXVI

WHEN THE SUN ROSE, HORACE HAD NOT BEEN TO RED NOR even undressed. He was

just finishing a letter to his wife, addressed to her at her f atber's in

Kentucky, asking for a divorce. He sat at the table, looking down at the

single page written neatly and illegibly over, feeling quiet and empty for

the first time since he had found Popeye watching him across the spring