Sanctuary

on my way there now. Anybody in this country can tell you I am harmless.

If it's whiskey, I dont care how much you all make or sell or buy. I just

stopped here for a drink of water. All I want to do is to get to town,

to Jefferson."

Popeye's eyes looked like rubber knobs, like they'd give to the touch and

ithen recover with the whorled smudge of the thumb on them.

"I want to reach Jefferson before dark," Benbow said. "You cant keep me

here like this."

Without removing the cigarette Popeye spat past it into the spring.

"You cant stop me like this," Benbow said. "Suppose I break and run."

SANCTUARY 7

Popeye put his eyes on Benbow, like rubber. "Do you want to run?"

"No," Benbow said.

Popeye removed his eyes. "Well, dont, then."

Benbow heard the bird again, trying to recall the local name for it. On

the invisible highroad another car passed, died away. Between them and

the sound of it the sun was almost gone. From his trousers pocket Popeye

took a dollar watch and looked at it and put it back in his pocket, loose

like a coin.

Where the path from the spring joined the sandy byroad a tree had been

recently felled, blocking the road. They climbed over the tree and went

on, the highroad now behind them. In the sand were two shallow parallel

depressions, but no mark of hoof. Where the branch from the spring seeped

across it Benbow saw the prints of automobile tires. Ahead of him Popeye

walked, his tight suit and stiff hat all angles, like a modernistic

lampstand.

The sand ceased. The road rose, curving, out of the jungle. It was almost

dark. Popeye looked briefly over his shoulder. "Step out, Jack," he said.

"Why didn't we cut straight across up the hill?" Benbow said.

"Through all them trees?" Popeye said. His hat jerked in a dull, vicious

gleam in the twilight as he looked down the hill where the jungle already

lay like a lake of ink, "Jesus Christ."

It was almost dark. Popeye's gait had slowed. He walked now beside

Benbow, and Benbow could see the continuous jerking of the hat from side

to side as Popeye looked about with a sort of vicious cringing. The hat

just reached Benbow's chin.

Then something, a shadow shaped with speed, stooped at them and on,

leaving a rush of air upon their very faces, on a soundless feathering

of taut wings, and Benbow felt Popeye's whole body spring against him and

his hand clawing at his coat. "It's just an owl," Benbow said. "It's

nothing but an owl." Then he said: "They call that Carolina wren a

fishingbird. That's what it is. What I couldn't think of back there,"

with Popeye crouching against him, clawing at his pocket and hissing

through his teeth like a cat. He smells black, Benbow thought; he smells

like that black stuff that ran out of Bovary's mouth and down upon her

bridal veil when they raised her head.

A moment later, above a black, jagged mass of trees, the house lifted its

stark square bulk against the failing sky.

8 WILLIAM FAULKNER

The house was a gutted ruin rising gaunt and stark out of a grove of

unpruned cedar trees. It was a landmark, known as the Old Frenchman

place, built before the Civil War; a plantation house set in the middle

of a tract of land; of cotton fields and gardens and lawns long since

gone back to jungle, which the people of the neighborhood had been pull-

ing down piecemeal for firewood for fifty years or digging with secret

and sporadic optimism for the gold which the builder was reputed to have

buried somewhere about the place when Grant came through the county on

his Vicksburg campaign.

Three men were sitting in chairs on one end of the porch. In the depths

of the open hall a faint light showed. The hall went straight back

through the house. Popeye mounted the steps, the three men looking at him

and his companion. "Here's the professor," he said, without stopping. He

entered the house, the hall. He went on and crossed the back porch and

turned and entered the room where the light was. It was the kitchen. A

woman stood at the stove. She wore a faded calico dress. About her naked

ankles a worn pair of man's brogans, unlaced, flapped when she moved. She

looked back at Popeye, then to the stove again, where a pan of meat

hissed.

Popeye stood in the door. His hat was slanted across his face. He took

a cigarette from his pocket, without producing the pack, and pinched and

fretted it and put it into his mouth and snapped a match on his

thumbnail. "There's a bird out front," he said.

The woman did not look around. She turned the meat. "Why tell me?" she

said. "I dont serve Lee's customers."

"It's a professor," Popeye said.

The woman turned, an iron fork suspended in her hand. Behind the stove,

in shadow, was a wooden box. "A what?"

"Professor," Popeye said. "He's got a book with him."

"What's he doing here?"

"I dont know. I never thought to ask. Maybe to read the book."

"He came here?"

"I found him at the spring."

"Was he trying to find this house?"

"I dont know," Popeye said. "I never thought to ask." The woman was still

looking at him. "I'll send him on to Jefferson on the truck," Popeye