Sanctuary

and an embossed wreath in gilt, from a Georgia town. It said: "The boys

trying to fix it up here. But these folks awful slow. Will maybe move on

until we strike a good town ha ha." The word, strike, was underscored.

Three weeks after her marriage, she had begun to ail. She was pregnant

then. She did not go to a doctor, because an old negro woman told her what

was wrong. Popeye was born on the Christmas day on which the card was

received. At first they thought he was blind. Then they found that he was

not blind, although he did not learn to walk and talk until he was about

four years old. In the meantime, the second husband of her mother, an

undersized, snuffy man with a mild, rich, moustache, who pottered about the

house-he fixed all the broken steps and leaky drains and such-left home one

afternoon with a check signed in blank to pay a twelve dollar butcher's

bill. He never came back. He drew from the bank his wife's fourteen hundred

dollar savings account, and disappeared.

The daughter was still working down town, while her mother tended the

child. One afternoon one of the clients returned and found his room on

fire. He put it out; a week later he found a smudge in his waste-basket.

The grandmother was tending the child. She carried it about with her. One

evening she was not in sight. The whole household turned out. A neighbor

turned in a fire alarm and the firemen found the grandmother in the attic,

stamping out a fire in a handful of excelsior in the center of the floor,

the child asleep in a discarded mattress nearby.

"Tbem bastards are trying to get him," the old woman said. "They set the

house on fire." The next day, all the clients left.

The young woman quit her job. She stayed at home all the time. "You ought

to get out and get some air," the grandmother said.

"I get enough air," the daughter said.

"You could go out and buy the groceries," the mother said. "You could buy

them cheaper."

"We get them cheap enough."

She would watch all the fires; she would not have a match in the house. She

kept a few bidden behind a brick in the outside wall. Popeye was three

years old then. He looked about one, though he could eat pretty well. A

doctor had told his mother to feed him eggs cooked in olive oil. One after-

noon the grocer's boy, entering the area-way on a bicycle,

172 WILLIAM FAULKNER

skidded and fell. Something leaked from the package. "It aint eggs," the boy

said. "See?" It was a bottle of olive oil. "You ought to buy that oil in

cans anyway," the boy said. "He cant tell no difference in it. I'll bring

you another one. And you want to have that gate fixed. Do you want I should

break my neck on it?"

He had not returned by six o'clock. It was summer. There was no fire, not

a match in the house. "I'll be back in five minutes," the daughter said.

She left the house. The grandmother watched her disappear. Then she wrapped

the child up in a light blanket and left the house. The street was a side

street, just off a main street where there were markets, where the rich

people in limousines stopped on the way home to shop. When she reached the

corner, a car was just drawing in to the curb. A woman got out and entered

a store, leaving a negro driver behind the wheel. She went to the car.

"I want a half a dollar," she said.

The negro looked at her. "A which?"

"A half a dollar. The boy busted the bottle.,,

"Oh," the negro said. He reached in his pocket. "How am I going to keep it

straight, with you collecting out here? Did she send you for the money out

here?"

"I want a half a dollar. He busted the bottle."

"I reckon I better go in, then," the negro said. "Seem like to me you folks

would see that folks got what they buy, folks that been trading here long

as we is."

"It's a half a dollar," the woman said. He gave her a half dollar and

entered the store. The woman watched him. Then she laid the child on the

seat of the car, and followed the negro. It was a self-serve place, where

the customers moved slowly along a railing in single file. The negro was

next to the white woman who had left the car. The grandmother watched the

woman pass back to the negro a loose handful of bottles of sauce and

catsup. "That'll be a dollar and a quarter," she said. The negro gave her

the money. She took it and passed them and crossed the room. There was a

bottle of imported Italian olive oil, with a price tag. "I got twentyeight

cents more," she said. She moved on, watching the price tags, until she

found one that said twenty-eight cents. It was seven bars of bath soap.

With the two parcels she left the store. There was a policeman at the

corner. "I'm out of matches," she said.

The policeman dug into his pocket. "Why didn't you buy some while you were

there?" he said.

"I just forgot it. You know how it is, shopping with a child."

"Where is the child?" the policeman said.

SANCTUARY 173

"I traded it in," the woman said.

"You ought to be in vaudeville," the policeman said. "How many matches

do you want? I aint got but one or two."

"Just one," the woman said. "I never do light a fire with but one."