William Faulkner, SANCTUARY – WordPress.com - literature save 2

somebody else's wife, you start off maybe ten years behind, from somebody else's scratch
and scratching. I just wanted a hill to lie on for a while."
"The fool," the woman said. "The poor fool." She stood inside the door. Popeye
came through the hall from the back. He passed her without a word and went onto the
porch.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get it loaded." She heard the three of them go away.
She stood there. Then she heard the stranger get unsteadily out of his chair and cross the
porch. Then she saw him, in faint silhouette against the sky, the lesser darkness: a thin
man in shapeless clothes; a head of thinning and ill-kempt hair; and quite drunk. "They
dont make him eat right," the woman said.
She was motionless, leaning lightly against the wall, he facing her. "Do you like
living like this?" he said. "Why do you do it? You are young yet; you could go back to
the cities and better yourself without lifting more than an eyelid." She didn't move,
leaning lightly against the wall, her arms folded. "The poor, scared fool," she said.
"You see," he said, "I lack courage: that was left out of me. The machinery is all
here, but it wont run." His hand fumbled across her cheek. "You are young yet." She
didn't move, feeling his hand upon her face, touching her flesh as though he were trying
to learn the shape and position of her bones and the texture of the flesh. "You have your
whole life before you, practically. How old are you? You're not past thirty yet." His voice
was not loud, almost a whisper.
When she spoke she did not lower her voice at all. She had not moved, her arms
still folded across her breast. "Why did you leave your wife?" she said.
"Because she ate shrimp," he said. "I couldn't-You see, it was Friday, and I
thought how at noon I'd go to the station and get the box of shrimp off the train and walk
home with it, counting a hundred steps and changing hands with it, and it-"
"Did you do that every day?" the woman said.
"No. Just Friday. But I have done it for ten years, since we were married. And I
still dont like to smell shrimp. But I wouldn't mind the carrying it home so much. I could
stand that. It's because the package drips. All the way home it drips and drips, until after a
while I follow myself to the station and stand aside and watch Horace Benbow take that
box off the train and start home with it, changing hands every hundred steps, and I
following him, thinking Here lies Horace Benbow in a fading series of small stinking
spots on a Mississippi sidewalk."
"Oh," the woman said. She breathed quietly, her arms folded. She moved; he gave
back and followed her down the hall. They entered the kitchen where a lamp burned.
"You'll have to excuse the way I look," the woman said. She went to the box behind the
stove and drew it out and stood above it, her hands hidden in the front of her garment.
Benbow stood in the middle of the room. "I have to keep him in the box so the rats cant
get to him," she said.
"What?" Benbow said. "What is it?" He approached, where he could see into the
box. It contained a sleeping child, not a year old. He looked down at the pinched face
quietly.
"Oh," he said. "You have a son." They looked down at the pinched, sleeping face
of the child. There came a noise outside; feet came onto the back porch. The woman
shoved the box back into the corner with her knee as Goodwin entered.