“ ‘But on a train, honey,’ I said.
“ ‘I’ve found them in worse places than on the train.’
“ ‘I know,’ I said. ‘So have I. But you dont bring them home, you know. You just step over them and go on. You dont soil your slippers, you know.’
“We were in the living room then; it was just before dinner; just the two of us in the house then. Belle had gone down town.
“ ‘What business is it of yours who comes to see me? You’re not my father. You’re just—just——’
“ ‘What?’ I said. ‘Just what?’
“ ‘Tell Mother, then! Tell her. That’s what you’re going to do. Tell her!’
“ ‘But on the train, honey,’ I said. ‘If he’d walked into your room in a hotel, I’d just kill him. But on the train, I’m disgusted. Let’s send him along and start all over again.’
“ ‘You’re a fine one to talk about finding things on the train! You’re a fine one! Shrimp! Shrimp!’ ”
“He’s crazy,” the woman said, motionless inside the door. The stranger’s voice went on, tumbling over itself, rapid and diffuse.
“Then she was saying ‘No! No!’ and me holding her and she clinging to me. ‘I didn’t mean that! Horace! Horace!’ And I was smelling the slain flowers, the delicate dead flowers and tears, and then I saw her face in the mirror. There was a mirror behind her and another behind me, and she was watching herself in the one behind me, forgetting about the other one in which I could see her face, see her watching the back of my head with pure dissimulation. That’s why nature is ‘she’ and Progress is ‘he’; nature made the grape arbor, but Progress invented the mirror.”
“He’s crazy,” the woman said inside the door, listening.
“But that wasn’t quite it. I thought that maybe the spring, or maybe being forty-three years old, had upset me. I thought that maybe I would be all right if I just had a hill to lie on for a while—It was that country. Flat and rich and foul, so that the very winds seem to engender money out of it. Like you wouldn’t be surprised to find that you could turn in the leaves off the trees, into the banks for cash. That Delta. Five thousand square miles, without any hill save the bumps of dirt the Indians made to stand on when the River overflowed.
“So I thought it was just a hill I wanted; it wasn’t Little Belle that set me off. Do you know what it was?”
“He is,” the woman said inside the door. “Lee ought not to let——”
Benbow had not waited for any answer. “It was a rag with rouge on it. I knew I would find it before I went into Belle’s room. And there it was, stuffed behind the mirror: a handkerchief where she had wiped off the surplus paint when she dressed and stuck it behind the mantel. I put it into the clothes-bag and took my hat and walked out. I had got a lift on a truck before I found that I had no money with me. That was part of it too, you see; I couldn’t cash a check. I couldn’t get off the truck and go back to town and get some money. I couldn’t do that. So I have been walking and bumming rides ever since. I slept one night in a sawdust pile at a mill, one night at a negro cabin, one night in a freight car on a siding. I just wanted a hill to lie on, you see. Then I would be all right. When you marry your own wife, you start off from scratch.……maybe scratching. When you marry 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.
