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Peabody

When Anse finally sent for me of his own accord, I said " He has wore her out at last." And I said a damn good thing, and at first I would not go because there might be something I could do and I would have to haul her back, by God. I thought maybe they have the same sort of fool ethics in heaven they have in the Medical College and that it was maybe Vernon lull sending for me again, getting me there in the nick of time, as Vernom always does things, getting the most for Anse's money like he does for his own. But when it got far enough into the day for me to read weather sign I knew it couldn't have been anybody but Anse that sent. I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone. And I knew that if it had finally occurred to Anse himself that he needed one, it was already too late. When I reach the spring and get down and hitch the team, the sun has gone down behind a bank of black cloud like a topheavy mountain range, like a load of cinders dumped over there, and there is no wind. I could hear Cash sawing for a mile before I got there. Anse is standing at the top of the bluff above the path. " Where's the horse? " I say. " Jewel's taken and gone, " he says. " Cant nobody else ketch hit. You'll have to walk up, I reckon." " Me, walk up, weighing two hundred and twenty-five pounds? " I say. " Walk up that durn wall? " He stands there beside a tree. Too bad the Lord made the mistake of giving trees roots and giving the Anse Bundrens He makes feet and legs. If He'd just swapped them, there wouldn't ever be a worry about this country being deforested someday. Or any other country. " What do you aim for me to do? " I say. " Stay here and get blowed clean out.of the county when that cloud breaks? " Even with the horse it would take me fifteen minutes to ride up across the pasture to the top of the ridge and reach the house. The path looks like a crooked limb blown against the bluff. Anse has not been in town in twelve years. And how his mother ever got up there to bear him, he being his mother's son. " Vardaman's gittin the rope, " he says. After a while Vardaman appears with the plowline. He gives the end of itto Anse and comes down the path, uncoiling it. " You hold it tight, " I say. " I done already wrote this visit onto my books, so I'm going to charge you just the same, whether I get there or not." " I got hit, " Anse says. " You kin come on up." I'll be damned if I can see why I dont quit. A man seventy years old, weighing two hundred and odd pounds, being hauled up and down a damn mountain on a rope. I reckon it's because I must reach the fifty thousand dollar mark of dead accounts on my books before I can quit. " What the hell does your wife mean, " I say, " taking sick on top of a durn mountain? " " I'm right sorry, " he says. He let the rope go, just dropped it, and he has turned toward the house. There is a little daylight up here still, of the color of sulphur matches. The boards look like strips of sulphur. Cash does not look back. Vernon Tull says he brings each, board up to the window for her to see it and say it is all right. The boy overtakes us. Anse looks back at him. " Where's the rope? " he says. " It's where you left it, " I say. " But never you mind that rope. I got to get back down that bluff. I dont aim for that storm to catch me up here. I’d blow too durn far once I got started." The girl is standing by the bed, fanning her. When we enter she turns her head and looks at us. She has been dead these ten days. I suppose it's having been a part of Anse for so long that she cannot even make that change, if change it be. I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town. She looks at us. Only her eyes seem to move. It's like they touch us, not with sight or sense, but like the stream from a hose touches you, the stream at the instant of impact as dissociated from the nozzle as though it had never been there. She does not look at Anse at all. She looks at me, then at the boy. Beneath the quilt she is no more than a bundle of rotten sticks. " Well, Miss Addie, " I say. The girl does not stop the fan. " How are you, sister? " I say. Her head lies gaunt on the pillow, looking at the boy. " You picked out a fine time to get me out here and bring up a storm." Then I send Anse and the boy out. She watches the boy as he leaves the room. She has not moved save her eyes. He and Anse are on the porch when I come out, the boy sitting on the steps, Anse standing by a post, not even leaning against it, his arms dangling, the hair pushed and matted up on his head like a dipped rooster. He turns his head, blinking at me. " Why didn't you send for me sooner? " I say. " Hit was jest one thing and then another, " he says. 'That ere corn me and the boys was aimin to git up with, and Dewey Dell a-takin good keer of her, and folks comin in, a-offerin to help and sich, till I jest thought..." " Damn the money, " I say. " Did you ever hear of me worrying a fellow before he was ready to pay? " " Hit aint begrudgin the money, " he says. " I jest kept a-thinkin... She's goin, is she? " The durn little tyke is sitting on the top step, looking smaller than ever in the sulphur-colored light. That's the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the Me of man in its implacable and brooding image. " I knowed hit, " Anse says. " All the while I made sho. Her mindis sot on hit." " And a damn good thing, too, " I say. " With a trifling--" He sits on the top step, small, motionless in faded overalls. When I came out he looked up at me, then at Anse. But now he has stopped looking at us. He just sits there. " Have you told her yit? " Anse says. " What for? " I say. " What the devil for? " " Shell know hit. I knowed that when she see you she would know hit, same as writing. You wouldn't need to tell her. Her mind--" Behind us the girl says, " Paw." I look at her, at her face. " You better go quick, " I say. When we enter the room she is watching the door. She looks at me. Her eyes look like lamps blaring up just before the oil is gone. " She wants you to go out, " the girl says. " Now, Addie, " Anse says, " when he come all the way from Jefferson to git you well? " She watches me: I can feel her eyes. It's like she was shoving at me with them. I have seen it before in women. Seen them drive from the room them coming with sympathy and pity, with actual help, and clinging to some trifling animal to whom they never were more than pack-horses. That's what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again. I leave the room. Beyond the porch Cash's saw snores steadily into the board. A minute later she calls his name, her voice harsh and strong. " Cash, " she says; " you, Cash! "

Darl

Pa stands beside the bed. From behind his leg Vardaman peers, with his round head and his eyes round and his mouth beginning to open. She looks at pa; all her failing life appears to drain into her eyes, urgent, irremediable. " It's Jewel she wants, " Dewey Dell says. " Why, Addle, " pa says, " him and Darl went to make one more load. They thought there was time. That you would wait for them, and that three dollars and all...." He stoops laying his hand on hers. For a while yet she looks at him, without reproach, without anything at all, as if her eyes alone are listening to the irrevocable cessation of his voice. Then she raises herself, who has not moved in ten days. Dewey Dell leans down, trying to press her back. " Ma, " she says; " ma." She is looking out the window, at Cash stooping steadily at the board in the failing light, laboring on toward darkness and into it as though the stroking of the saw illumined its own motion, board and saw engendered. " You, Cash, " she shouts, her voice harsh, strong, and unimpaired. " You, Cash! " He looks up at the gaunt face framed by the window in the twilight. It is a composite picture of all time since he was a child. He drops the saw and lifts the board for her to see, watching the window in which the face has not moved. He drags a second plank into position and slants the two of them into their final juxtaposition, gesturing toward the ones yet on the ground, shaping with his empty hand in pantomime the finished box. For a while still she looks down at him from the composite picture, neither with censure nor approbation. Then the face disappears. She lies back and turns her head without so much as glancing at pa. Shelooks at Vardaman; her eyes, the life in them, rushing suddenly upon them; the two flames glare up for a steady instant. Then they go out as though someone had leaned down and blown upon them. " Ma, " Dewey Dell says; " ma! " Leaning above the bed, her hands lifted a little, the fan still moving like it has for ten days, she begins to keen. Her voice is strong, young, tremulous and clear, rapt with its own timbre and volume, the fan still moving steadily up and down, whispering the useless air. Then she flings herself across Addle Bundren's knees, clutching her, shaking her with the furious strength of the young before sprawling suddenly across the handful of rotten bones that Addie Bundren left, jarring the whole bed into a chattering sibilance of mattress shucks, her arms outflung and the fan in one hand still beating with expiring breath into the quilt. From behind pa's leg Vardaman peers, his mouth full open and all color draining from his face into his mouth, as though he has by some means fleshed his own teeth in himself, sucking. He begins to move slowly backward from the bed, his eyes round, his pale face fading into the dusk like a piece of paper pasted on a failing wall, and so out of the door. Pa leans above the bed in the twilight, his humped silhouette partaking of that owl-like quality of awry-feathered, disgruntled outrage within which lurks a wisdom too profound or too inert for even thought. " Durn them boys, " he says. Jewel, I say. Overhead the day drives level and gray, hiding the sun by a flight of gray spears. In the rain the mules smoke a little, splashed yellow with mud, the off one clinging in sliding lunges to the side of the road above the ditch. The tilted lumber gleams dull yellow, water-soaked and heavy as lead, tilted at a steep angle into the ditch above the broken wheel; about the shattered spokes and about Jewel's, ankles a runnel of yellow neither water nor earth swirls, curving with the yellow road neither of earth nor water, down the hill dissolving into a streaming mass of dark green neither of earth nor sky. Jewel, I say Cash comes to the door, carrying the saw. Pa stands beside the bed, humped, his arms dangling. He turns his head, his shabby profile, his chin collapsing slowly as he works the snuff against his gums. " She's gone, " Cash says. " She taken and left us, " pa says. Cash does not look at him. " How nigh are you done? " pa says. Cash does not answer. He enters, carrying the saw. " I reckon you better get at it, " pa says. " You'll have to do the best you can, with them boys gone off that-a-way." Cash looks down at her face. He is not listening to pa at all. He does not approach the bed. He stops in the middle of the floor, the saw against his leg, his sweating arms powdered lightly with sawdust, his face composed. " If you get in a tight, maybe some of themll get here tomorrow and help you, " pa says. " Vernon could." Cash is not listening. He is looking down at her peaceful, rigid face fading into the dusk as though darkness were a precursor of the ultimate earth, until at last the face seems to float detached upon it, lightly as the reflection of a dead leaf. " There is Christians enough to help you, " pa says. Cash is not listening. After a while he turns without looking at pa and leaves the room. Then the saw begins to snore again. " They will help us in our sorrow, " pa says. The sound of the saw is steady, competent, unhurried, stirring the dying light so that at each stroke her face seems to wake a little into an expression of listening and of waiting, as though she were counting the strokes. Pa looks down at the face, at the black sprawl of Dewey Dell's hair, the outflung arms, the clutched fan now motionless on the fading quilt. " I reckon you better get supper on, " he says. Dewey Dell does not move. " Git up, now, and put supper on, " pa says. " We got to keep our strength up. I reckon Doctor Pea-body's right hungry, coming all this way. And Cash'll need to eat quick and get back to work so he can finish it in time." Dewey Dell rises, heaving to her feet. She looks down at the face. It is like a casting of fading bronze upon the pillow, the hands alone still with any semblance of life: a curled, gnarled ineptness; a spent yet alert quality from which weariness, exhaustion, travail has not yet departed, as though they doubted even yet the actuality of rest, guarding with horned and penurious alertness the cessation which they know cannot last. Dewey Dell stoops and slides the quilt from beneath them and draws it up over them to the chin, smoothing it down, drawing it smooth. Then without looking at pa she goes around the bed and leaves the room. She will go out where Peabody is, where she can stand in the twilight and look at his back with such an expression that, feeling her eyes and turning, he will say: I would not let it grieve me, now. She was old, and sick too. Suffering more than we knew. She couldn't have got well. Vardaman's getting big now, and with you to take good care of them all. I would try not to let it grieve me. I expect you'd better go and get some supper ready. It dont have to be much. But they'll need to eat, and she looking at him, saying You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you dont know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me and Darl Pa stands over the bed, dangle-armed, humped, motionless. He raises his hand to his head, scouring his hair, listening to the saw. He comes nearer and rubs his hand, palm and back, on his thigh and lays it on her face and then on the hump of quilt where her hands are. He touches the quilt as he saw Dewey Dell do, trying to smoothe it up to the chin, but disarranging it instead. He tries to smoothe it again, clumsily, his hand awkward as a claw, smoothing at the wrinkles which he made and which continue to emerge beneath his hand with perverse ubiquity, so that at last he desists, his hand falling to his side and stroking itself again, palm and back, on his thigh. The sound of the saw snores steadily into the room. Pa breathes with a quiet, rasping sound, mouthing the snuff against his gums. " God's will be done, " he says. " Now I can get them teeth." Jewel's hat droops limp about his neck, channelling water onto the soaked towsack tied about his shoulders as, ankle-deep in the running ditch, he pries with a slipping two-by-four, with a piece of rotting log for fulcrum, at the axle. Jewel, I say, she is dead, Jewel. Addie Bundren is dead Vardaman Then I begin to run. I run toward the back and come to the edge of the porch and stop. Then I begin to cry. I can feel where the fish was in the dust. It is cut up into pieces of not-fish now, not-blood on my hands and overalls. Then it wasn't so. It hadn't happened then. And now she is getting so far ahead I cannot catch her. The trees look like chickens when they ruffle out into the cool dust on the hot days. If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it allcut up into not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can feel the floor shake when he walks on it that came and did it. That came and did it when she was all right but he came and did it. " The fat son of a bitch." I jump from the porch, running. The top of the barn comes swooping up out of the twilight. If I jump I can go through it like the pink lady in the circus, into the warm smelling, without having to wait My hands grab at the bushes; beneath my feet the rocks and dirt go rubbling down. Then I can breathe again, in the warm smelling. I enter the stall, trying to touch him, and then I can cry then I vomit the crying. As soon as he gets through, kicking I can and then I can cry, the crying can. " He kilt her. He kilt her." The life in him runs under the skin, under my hand, running through the splotches, smelling up into my nose where the sickness is beginning to cry, vomiting the crying, and then I can breathe, vomiting it. It makes a lot of noise. I can smell the life running up from under my hands, up my arms, and then I cart leave the stall. I cannot find it. In the dark, along the dust, the walls I cannot find it. The crying makes a lot of noise. I wish it wouldn't make so much noise. Then I find it in the wagon shed, in the dust, and I run across the lot and into the road, the stick jouncing on my shoulder. They watch me as I run up, beginning to jerk back, their eyes rolling, snorting, jerking back on the hitch-rein. I strike. I can hear the stick striking; I can see it hitting their heads, the breast-yoke, missing altogether sometimes as they rear and plunge, but I am glad. " You kilt my maw! ” The stick breaks, they rearing and snorting, their feet popping loud on the ground; loud because it is going to rain and the air is empty for the rain. But it is still long enough. I run this way and that as they rear and jerk at the hitch-rein, striking. " You kilt her! " I strike at them, striking, they wheeling in a long lunge, the buggy wheeling onto two wheels and motionless like it is nailed to the ground and the horses motionless like they are nailed by the hind feet to the center of a whirling plate. I run in the dust.. I cannot see, running in the sucking dust where the buggy vanishes tilted on two wheels. I strike, the stick hitting into the ground, bouncing, striking into the dust and then into the air again and the dust sucking on down the road faster than if a car was in it. And then I can cry, looking at the stick. It is broken down to my hand, not longer than stove wood that was a long stick. I throw it away and I can cry. It does not make so much noise now. The cow is standing in the barn door, chewing. When she sees me come into the lot she lows, her mouth full of flopping green, her tongue flopping. " I aint a-goin to milk you. I aint a-goin to do nothing for them." I hear her turn when I pass. When I turn she is just behind me with her sweet, hot, hard breath. " Didn't I tell you I wouldn't? " She nudges me, snuffing. She moans deep inside, her mouth closed. I jerk my hand, cursing her like Jewel does. " Git, now." I stoop my hand to the ground and run at her. She jumps back and whirlsaway and stops, watching me. She moans. She goes on. to the path and stands there, looking up the path. It is dark in the barn, warm, smelling, silent. I can cry quietly, watching the top of the hill. Cash comes to the hill, limping where he fell off of the church. He looks down at the spring, then up the road and back toward the barn. He comes down the path stiffly and looks at the broken hitch-rein and at the dust in the road and then up the road, where the dust is gone. " I hope they've got clean past Tull's by now. I so hope hit." Cash turns and limps up the path. " Durn him. I showed him. Durn him." I am not crying now. I am not anything. Dewey Dell comes to the hill and calls me. Vardaman. I am not anything. I am quiet. You, Vardaman. I can cry quiet now, feeling and hearing my tears. " Then hit want. Hit hadn't happened then. Hit was a-layin right there on the ground. And now she's git-tin ready to cook hit." It is dark. I can hear wood, silence: I know them. But not living sounds, not even him. It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components--snuffings and stampings; smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of a co-ordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an is different from my is. I see him dissolve--legs, a rolling eye, a gaudy splotching like cold flames and float upon the dark in fading solution; all one yet neither; all either yet none. I can see hearing coil toward him, caressing, shaping his hard shape--fetlock, hip, shoulder and head; smell and sound. I am not afraid. " Cooked and et. Cooked and et." Dewey Dell He could do so much for me if he just would. He could do everything for me. It's like everything in the world for me is inside a tub full of guts, so that you wonder how there can be any room in it for anything else very important. He is a big tub of guts and I am a little tub of guts and if there is not any room for, anything else important in a big tub of guts, how can it be room in a little tub of guts. But I know it is there because God gave women a sign when something has happened bad. It's because I am alone. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone. I would let him come in between me and Lafe, like Darl came in between me and Lafe, and so Lafe is alone too. He is Lafe and I am Dewey Dell, and when mother died I had to go beyond and outside of me and Lafe and Darl to grieve because he could do so much for me and he dont know it. He dont even know it. From the back porch I cannot see the barn. Then the sound of Cash's sawing comes in from that way. It is like a dog outside the house, going back and forth around the house to whatever door you come to, waiting to come in. He said I worry more than you do and I said You dont know what worry is so I cant worry. I try to but I cant think long enough to worry. I light the kitchen lamp. The fish, cut into jagged pieces, bleeds quietly in the pan. I put it into the cupboard quick, listening into the hall, hearing.It took her ten days to die; maybe she dont know it is yet. Maybe she wont go until Cash. Or maybe until Jewel. I take the dish of greens from the cupboard and the bread pan from the cold stove, and I stop, watching the door. " Where's Vardaman? " Cash says. In the lamp his sawdusted arms look like sand. " I dont know. I aint seen him." “Peabody's team run away. See if you can find Vardaman. The horse will let him catch him." " Well. Tell them to come to supper." I cannot see the barn. I said, I dont know how to worry. I dont know how to cry. I tried, but I cant. After a while the sound of the saw comes around, coming dark along the ground in the dust-dark. Then I can see him, going up and down above the plank. " You come in to supper, " I say. " Tell him." He could do everything for me. And he dont know it. He is his guts and I am my guts. And I am Lafe's guts. That's it. I dont see why he didn't stay in town. We are country people, not as good as town people. I dont see why he didn't. Then I can see the top of the barn. The cow stands at the foot of the path, lowing. When I turn back, Cash is gone. I carry the buttermilk in. Pa and Cash and he are at the table. " Where's that big fish Bud caught, sister? " he says. I set the milk on the table. " I never had no time to cook it." " Plain turnip greens is mighty spindling eating for a man my size, " he says. Cash is eating. About his head the print of his hat is sweated into his hair. His shirt is blotched with sweat. He has not washed his hands and arms. " You ought to took time, " pa says. " Where's Vardaman? " I go toward the door. " I cant find him." " Here, sister, " he says; " never mind about the fish. It'll save, I reckon. Come on and sit down." " I aint minding it, " I say. " I'm going to milk before it sets in to rain." Pa helps himself and pushes the dish on. But he does not begin to eat. His hands are halfclosed on either side of his plate, his head bowed a little, his awry hair standing into the lamplight. He looks like right after the maul hits the steer and it no longer alive and dont yet know that it is dead. But Cash is eating, and he is too. " You better eat something, " he says. He is looking at pa. " Like Cash and me. You'll need it." " Ay, " pa says. He rouses up, like a steer that's been kneeling in a pond and you run at it. " She would not begrudge me it." When I am out of sight of the house, I go fast. The cow lows at the foot of the bluff. She nuzzles at me, snuffing, blowing her breath in a sweet, hot blast, through my dress, against my hot nakedness, moaning. " You got to wait a little while. Then I'll tend to you." She follows me into the barn where I set the bucket down. She breathes into the bucket, moaning. " I told you. You just got to wait, now. I got more to do than I can tend to." The barn is dark. When I pass, he kicks the wall a single blow. I go on. The broken plank is like a pale plank standing on end. Then I can see the slope, feel the air moving on my face again, slow, pale with lesser dark and with empty seeing, the pine clumps blotched up the tilted slope, secret and waiting. The cow in silhouette against the door nuzzles at the silhouette of the bucket, moaning. Then I pass the stall. I have almost passed it, I listen to it saying for a long time before it can say the word and the listening part is afraid thatthere may not be time to say it I feel my body, my bones and flesh beginning to part and open upon the alone, and the process of coming unalone is terrible. Lafe. Lafe. " Lafe" Lafe. Lafe. I lean a little forward, one foot advanced with dead walking. I feel the darkness rushing past my breast, past the cow; I begin to rush upon the darkness but the cow stops me and the darkness rushes on upon the sweet blast of her moaning breath, filled with wood and with silence. " Vardaman. You, Vardaman." He comes out of the stall. " You durn little sneak! You durn little sneak! " He does not resist; the last of rushing darkness flees whistling away. " What? I aint done nothing." " You durn little sneak! " My hands shake him, hard. Maybe I couldn't stop them. I didn't know they could shake so hard. They shake both of us, shaking. " I never done it, " he says. " I never touched them." My hands stop shaking him, but I still hold him. " What are you doing here? Why didn't you answer when I called you? " " I aint doing nothing." “You go on to the house and get your supper." He draws back. I hold him. " You quit now. You leave me be." " What were you doing down here? You didn't come down here to sneak after me? " " I never. I never. You quit, now. I didn't even know you was down here. You leave me be." I hold him, leaning down to see his face, feel it with my eyes. He is about to cry. " Go on, now. I done put supper on and I'll be there soon as I milk. You better go on before he eats everything up. I hope that team runs clean back to Jefferson." " He kilt her, " he says. He begins to cry. " Hush." " She never hurt him and he come and kilt her." " Hush." He struggles. I hold him. " Hush." " He kilt her." The cow comes up behind us, moaning. I shake him again. " You stop it, now. Right this minute. You're fixing to make yourself sick and then you cant go to town. You go on to the house and eat your supper." " I dont want no supper. I dont want to go to town." " We’ll leave you here, then. Lessen you behave, we will leave you. Go on, now, before that old green-eating tub of guts eats everything up from you." He goes on, disappearing slowly into the hill. The crest, the trees, the roof of the house stand against the sky. The cow nuzzles at me, moaning. " Youll just have to wait. What you got in you aint nothing to what I got in me, even if you are a woman too." She follows me, moaning. Then the dead, hot, pale air breathes on my face again. He could fix it all right, if he just would. And he dont even know it. He could do everything for me if he just knowed it. The cow breathes upon my hips and back, her breath warm, sweet, stertorous, moaning. The sky lies flat down the slope, upon the secret dumps. Beyond the hill sheet-lightning stains upward and fades. The dead air shapes the dead earth in the dead darkness, further away than seeing shapes the dead earth. It lies dead and warm upon me, touching me naked through my clothes. I said You dont know what worry is. I dont know what it is. I dont know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not. I dont know whether I can cry or not. I dont know whether I have tried to or not. I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.Vardaman When they get it finished they are going to put her in it and then for a long time I couldn't say it. I saw the dark stand up and go whirling away and I said " Are you going to nail her up in it, Cash? Cash? Cash? ” I got shut up in the crib the new door it was too heavy for me it went shut I couldn't breathe because the rat was breathing up all the air. I said " Are you going to nail it shut, Cash? Nail it? Nail it? " Pa walks around. His shadow walks around, over Cash going up and down above the saw, at the bleeding plank. Dewey Dell said we will get some bananas. The train is behind the glass, red on the track. When it runs the track shines on and off. Pa said flour and sugar and coffee costs so much. Because I am a country boy because boys in town. Bicycles. Why do flour and sugar and coffee cost so much when he is a country boy. " Wouldn't you ruther have some bananas instead? " Bananas are gone, eaten. Gone. When it runs on the track shines again. " Why aint I a town boy, pa? " I said. God made me. I did not said to God to made me in the country. If He can make the train, why cant He make them all in the town because flour and sugar and coffee. " Wouldn't you ruther have bananas? " He walks around. His shadow walks around. It was not her. I was there, looking. I saw. I thought it was her, but it was not. It was not my mother. She went away when the other one laid down in her bed and drew the quilt up. She went away. " Did she go as far as town? ” " She went further than town." " Did all those rabbits and possums go further than town? " God made the rabbits and possums. He made the train. Why must He make a different place for them to go if she is just like the rabbit. Pa walks around. His shadow does. The saw sounds like it is asleep. And so if Cash nails the box up, she is not a rabbit. And so if she is not a rabbit I couldn't breathe in the crib and Cash is going to nail it up. And so if she lets him it is not her. I know. I was there. I saw when it did not be her. I saw. They think it is and Cash is going to nail it up. It was not her because it was laying right yonder in the dirt. And now it's all chopped up. I chopped it up. It's laying in the kitchen in the bleeding pan, waiting to be cooked and et. Then it wasn't and she was, and now it is and she wasn't. And tomorrow it will be cooked and et and she will be him and pa and Cash and Dewey Dell and there wont be anything in the box and so she can breathe. It was laying right yonder on the ground. I can get Vernon. He was there and he seen it, and with both of us it will be and then it will not be. Tull It was nigh to midnight and it had set into rain when he woke us. It had been a misdoubtful night, with the storm making; a night when a fellow looks for most anything to happen before he can get the stock fed and himself to the house and supper et and in bed with the rain starting, and when Peabody's team come up, lathered, with the broke harness dragging and the neck-yoke betwixt the off critter's legs, Cora says " It's Addie Bundren. She's gone at last." " Peabody mought have been to ere a one of a dozen houses hereabouts, " I says. " Besides, how do you know it's Peabody's team? " " Well, aint it? " she says. " You hitch up, now." " What for? " I says. " If she is gone, we cant do nothing till morning. And it fixing to storm, too." " It's my duty, " she says. " You put the team in." But I wouldn't do it. " It stands to reason they'd send for us if they needed us. You dont even know she's gone yet." " Why, dont you know that's Peabody's team? Do you claim it aint? Well, then." But I wouldn't go. When folks wants a fellow, it's best to wait till they sends for him, I've found. " It's my Christian duty, " Cora says. " Will you stand between me and my Christian duty? " " You can stay there all day tomorrow, if you want, ” I says. So when Cora waked me it had set in to rain. Even while I was going to the door with the lamp and it shining on the glass so he could see I am coming, it kept on knocking. Not loud, but steady, like he might have gone to sleep thumping, but I never noticed how low down on the door the knocking was till I opened it and never seen nothing. I held the lamp up, with the rain sparkling across it and Cora back in the hall saying " Who is it, Vernon? " but I couldn't see nobody a-tall at first until I looked down and around the door, lowering the lamp. He looked like a drownded puppy, in them overalls, without no hat, splashed up to his knees where he had walked them four miles in the mud. " Well, I’ll be durned, " I says. " Who is it, Vernon? " Cora says. He looked at me, his eyes round and black in the middle like when you throw a light in a owl's face. " You mind that ere fish, " he says. " Come in the house, " I says. " What is it? Is your maw--" " Vernon, " Cora says. He stood kind of around behind the door, in the dark. The rain was blowing onto the lamp, hissing on it so I am scared every minute it'll break. " You was there, " he says. " You seen it." Then Cora come to the door. " You come right in outen the rain, " she says, pulling him in and him watching me. He looked just like a drownded puppy. " I told you, " Cora says. " I told you it was a-happening. You go and hitch." " But he aint said--" I says. He looked at me, dripping onto the floor. " He's a-ruining the rug, " Cora says. " You go get the team while I take him to the kitchen." But he hung back, dripping, watching me with them eyes. " You was there. You seen it laying there. Cash is fixing to nail her up; and it was a-laying right there on the ground. You seen it. You seen the mark in the dirt. The rain never come up till after I was a-coming here. So we can get back in time." I be durn if it didn't give me the creeps, even when I didn't know yet. But Cora did. " You get that team quick as you can, " she says. " He's outen his head with grief and worry." I be durn if it didn't give me the creeps. Now and then a fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it's liable to strike anywhere, like lightning. I reckon it does take a powerful trust in the Lord to guard a fellow, though sometimes I think that Cora's a mite overcautious, like she was trying to crowd the other folks away and get in closer than anybody else. But then, when something like this happens, I reckon she is right and you got to keep after it and I reckon I am blessed in having a wife that ever strives for sanctify and well-doing like she says I am. Now and then a fellow gets to thinking about it. Not often, though. Which is a good thing. For the Lord aimed for him to do and not to spend too much time thinking, because his brain it's like a piece of machinery: it wont stand a whole lot of racking. It's best when it all runs along the same, doing the day's work and not no one part used no more than needful. I have said and I say again, that's ever living thing the matter with Darl: he just thinks by himself too much. Cora's right when she says all he needs is a wife to straighten him out. And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless. But I reckon Cora's right when she says the reason the Lord had to create women is because man dont know his own good when he sees it. When I come back to the house with the team, they was in the kitchen. She was dressed on top of her nightgownd, with a shawl over her head and her umbrella and her bible wrapped up in the oilcloth, and him sitting on a upturned bucket on the stove-zinc where she had put him, dripping onto the floor. I cant get nothing outen him except about a fish, " she says. It's a judgment on them. I see the hand of the Lord upon this boy for Anse Bundrens judgment and warning." " The rain never come up till after I left, " he says. " I had done left. I was on the way. And so it was there in the dust. You seen it. Cash is fixing to nail her, but you seen it." When we got there it was raining hard, and him sitting on the seat between us, wrapped up in Cora's shawl. He hadn't said nothing else, just sitting there with Cora holding the umbrella over him. Now and then Cora would stop singing long enough to say " It's a judgment on Anse Bundren. May it show him the path of sin he is a-trodding." Then she would sing again, and him sitting there between us, leaning forward a little like the mules couldn't go fast enough to suit him. " It was laying right yonder, " he says, " but the rain come up after I taken and left. So I can go and open the windows, because Cash aint nailed her yet." It was long a-past midnight when we drove the last nail, and almost dustdawn when I got back home and taken the team out and got back in bed, with Cora's nightcap laying on the other pillow. And be durned if even then it wasn't like I could still hear Cora singing and feel that boy leaning forward between us like he was ahead of the mules, and still see Cash going up and down with that saw, and Anse standing there like a scarecrow, like he was a steer standing knee-deep in a pond and somebody come by and set the pond up on edge and he aint missed it yet. It was nigh toward daybreak when we drove the last nail and toted it into the house, where she was laying on the bed with the window open and the rain blowing on her again. Twice he did it, and him so dead for sleep that Cora says his face looked like one of these here Christmas masts that had done been buried a while and then dug up, until at last they put her into it and nailed it down so he couldn't open the window on her no more. And the next morning they found him in his shirt tail, laying asleep on the floor like a felled steer, and the top of the box bored clean full of holes and Cash's new auger broke off in the last one. When they taken the lid off they found that two of them had bored on into her face. If it's a judgment, it aint right. Because the Lord's got more to do than that. He's bound to have. Because the only burden Anse Bundren's ever had is himself. And when folks talks him low, I think to myself he aint that less of a man or he couldn't a bore himself this long. It aint right. I be durn if it is. Because He said Suffer little children to come unto Me dont make it right, neither. Cora said, I have bore you what the Lord God sent me. I faced it without fear nor terror because my faith was strong in the Lord, a-bolstering and sustaining me. If you have no son, it's because the Lord has decreed otherwise in His wisdom. And my life is and has ever been a open book to ere a man or woman among His creatures because I trust in my Godand my reward." I reckon she's right. I reckon if there's ere a man or woman anywhere that He could turn it all over to and go away with His mind at rest, it would be Cora. And I reckon she would make a few changes, no matter how He was running it And I reckon they would be for man's good. Leastways, we would have to like them. Leastways, we might as well go on and make like we did. Darl The lantern sits on a stump. Rusted, grease-fouled, its cracked chimney smeared on one side with a soaring smudge of soot, it sheds a feeble and sultry glare upon the trestles and the boards and the adjacent earth. Upon the dark ground the chips look like random smears of soft pale paint on a black canvas. The boards look like long smooth tatters torn from the flat darkness and turned backside out. Cash labors about the trestles, moving back and forth, lifting and placing the planks with long clattering reverberations in the dead air as though he were lifting and dropping them at the bottom of an invisible well, the sounds ceasing without departing, as if any movement might dislodge them from the immediate air in reverberant repetition. He saws again, his elbow flashing slowly, a thin thread of fire running along the edge of the saw, lost and recovered at the top and bottom of each stroke in unbroken elongation, so that the saw appears to be six feet long, into and out of pa's shabby and aimless silhouette. " Give me that plank, " Cash says. " No; the other one." He puts the saw down and comes and picks up the plank he wants, sweeping pa away with the long swinging gleam of the balanced board. The air smells like sulphur. Upon the impalpable plane of it their shadows form as upon a wall, as though like sound they had not gone very far away in falling but had merely congealed for a moment, immediate and musing. Cash works on, half turned into the feeble light, one thigh and one pole-thin arm braced, his face sloped into the light with a rapt, dynamic immobility above his tireless elbow. Below the sky sheet-lightning slumbers lightly; against it the trees, motionless, are ruffled out to the last twig, swollen, increased as though quick with young. It begins to rain. The first harsh, sparse, swift drops rush through the leaves and across the ground in a long sigh, as though of relief from intolerable suspense. They are big as buckshot, warm as though fired from a gun; they sweep across the lantern in a vicious hissing. Pa lifts his face, slackmouthed, the wet black rim of snuff plastered close along the base of his gums; from behind his slack-faced astonishment he 'muses as though from beyond time, upon the ultimate outrage. Cash looks once at the sky, then at the lantern. The saw has not faltered, the running gleam of its pistoning edge unbroken. " Get something to cover the lantern, " he says. Pa goes to the house. The rain rushes suddenly down, without thunder, without warning of any sort; he is swept onto the porch upon the edge of it and in an instant Cash is wet to the skin. Yet the motion of the saw has not faltered, as though it and the arm functioned in a tranquil conviction that rain was an illusion of the mind. Then he puts down the saw and goes and crouches above the lantern, shielding it with his body, his back shaped lean and scrawny by his wet shirt as though he had been abruptly turned wrong, side out, shirt and all. Pa returns. He is wearing Jewel's raincoat and carrying Dewey Dell's.Squatting over the lantern, Cash reaches back and picks up four sticks and drives them into the earth and takes Dewey Dell's raincoat from pa and spreads it over the sticks, forming a roof above the lantern. Pa watches him. " I dont know what you'll do, " he says. " Darl taken his coat with him." " Get wet", Cash says. He takes up the saw again; again it moves up and down, in and out of that unhurried imperviousness as a piston moves in the oil; soaked, scrawny, tireless, with the lean light body o£ a boy or an old man. Pa watches him, blinking, his. face streaming; again he looks up at the sky with that expression of dumb and brooding outrage and yet of vindication, as though he had expected no less; now and then he stirs, moves, gaunt and streaming, picking up a board or a tool and then laying it down. Vernon Tull is there now, and Cash is wearing Mrs Tull's raincoat and he and Vernon are hunting the saw. After a while they find it in pa's hand. " Why dont you go on to the house, out of the rain? " Cash says. Pa looks at him, his face streaming slowly. It is as though upon a face carved by a savage caricaturist a monstrous " burlesque of all bereavement flowed. " You go on in, " Cash says. " Me and Vernon can finish it." Pa looks at item. The sleeves of Jewel's coat are too short for him. Upon his face the rain streams, slow as cold glycerin. " I dont begrudge her the wetting, " he says. He moves again and falls to shifting the planks, picking them up, laying them down again carefully, as though they are glass. He goes to the lantern and pulls at the propped raincoat until he knocks it down and Cash conies and fixes it back. " You get on to the house, " Cash says. He leads pa to the house and returns with the raincoat and folds it and places it beneath the shelter where the lantern sits. Vernon has not stopped. He looks up, still sawing. " You ought to done that at first, " he says. " You knowed it was fixing to rain." " It's his fever, " Cash says. He looks at the board. " Ay, " Vernon says. " He'd a come, anyway." Cash squints at the board. On the long flank of it the rain crashes steadily, myriad, fluctuant. " I'm going to bevel it, " he says. “It'll take more time, " Vernon says. Cash sets the plank on edge; a moment longer Vernon watches him, then he hands him the plane. Vernon holds the board steady while Cash, bevels the edge of it with the tedious and minute care of a jeweler. Mrs Tull comes to the edge of the porch and calls Vernon. " How near are you done? " she says. Vernon does not look up. " Not long. Some, yet." She watches Cash stooping at the plank, the turgid savage gleam of the lantern slicking on the raincoat AS he moves. " You go down and get some planks off the barn and finish it and come in out of the rain, " she says. " You'll both catch your death." Vernon does not move. " Vernon, " she says. " We wont be long, " he says. " We’ll be done after a spell." Mrs Tull watches them a while. Then she reenters the house. " If we get in a tight, we could take some of them planks, " Vernon says. " I'll help you put them back." Cash ceases the plane and squints along the plank, wiping it with his palm. " Give me the next one, " he says. Some time toward dawn the rain ceases. But it is not yet day when Cash drives the last nail and stands stiffly up and looks down at the finished coffin, the others watching him. In the lantern light his face is calm, musing; slowly he strokes his hands on his rain-coated thighs in a gesture deliberate, final and composed. Then the four of them--Cash and pa and Vernon and Peabody-- raise the coffin to their shoulders and turn toward the house. It is light, yet they move slowly; empty, yet they carry it carefully; lifeless, yet they move with hushed precautionary words to one another, speaking of it as though, complete, it now slumbered lightly alive, waiting to come awake. On the dark floor their feet clump awkwardly, as though for a long time they have not walked on floors. They set it down by the bed. Peabody says quietly: “Let's eat a snack. It's almost daylight. Where's Cash? " He has returned to the trestles, stooped again in the lantern's feeble glare as he gathers up his tools and wipes them on a cloth carefully and puts them into the box with its leather sling to go over the shoulder. Then he takes up box, lantern and raincoat and returns to the house, mounting the steps into faint silhouette against the paling east. In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I dont know what I am. I dont know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is. How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home. Cash I made it on the bevel. 1. There is more surface for the nails to grip. 2. There is twice the gripping-surface to each seam. 3. The water will have to seep into it on a slant. Water moves easiest up and down or straight across. 4. In a house people are upright two thirds of the time. So the seams and joints are made up-and-down. Because the stress is up-and-down. 5. In a bed where people lie down all the time, the joints and seams are made sideways, because the stress is sideways. 6. Except. 7. A body is not square like a crosstie. 8. Animal magnetism. 9. The animal magnetism of a dead body makes the stress come slanting, so the seams and joints of a coffin are made on the bevel. 10. You can see by an old grave that the earth sinks down on the bevel. 11. While in a natural hole it sinks by the center, the stress being upanddown. 12. So I made it on the bevel. 13. It makes a neater job.Vardaman My mother is a fish. Tull It was ten oclock when I got back, with Peabody's team hitched on to the back of the wagon. They had already dragged the buckboard back from where Quick found it upside down straddle of the ditch about a mile from the spring. It was pulled out of the road at the spring, and about a dozen wagons was already there. It was Quick found it. He said the rive was up and still rising. He said it had already covered the highest water-mark on the bridge-piling he ever seen. " That bridge wont stand a whole lot water, " I said. " Has somebody told Anse about it? " " I told him, " Quick said. " He says he reckons the boys has heard and unloaded and are on the way by now. He says they can load up and get across." " He better go on and bury her at New Hope, " Armstid said. " That bridge is old. I wouldn't monkey with it." " His mind is set on taking her to Jefferson, " Quick said. " Then he better get at it soon as he can, " Armstid said. Anse meets us at the door. He has shaved, but not good. There is a long cut on his jaw, and he is wearing his Sunday pants and a white shirt with the neckband buttoned. It is drawn smooth over his hump, making it look bigger than ever, like a white shirt will, and his face is different too. He looks folks in the eye now, dignified, his face tragic and composed, shaking us by the hand as we walk up onto the porch and scrape our shoes, a little stiff in our Sunday clothes, our Sunday clothes rustling, not looking full at him as he meets us. " The Lord giveth, " we say. " The Lord giveth." That boy is not there. Peabody told about how he come into the kitchen, hollering, swarming and clawing at Cora when he found her cooking that fish, and how Dewey Dell taken him down to the barn. " My team all right? " Peabody says. " All right, " I tell him. " I give them a bait this morning. Your buggy seems all right too. It aint hurt." " And no fault of somebody's, " he says. " I'd give a nickel to know where that boy was when that team broke away." " If it's broke anywhere, I'll fix it, " I say. The women folks go on into the house. We can hear them, talking and fanning. The fans go whish. whish. whish and them talking, the talking sounding kind of like " bees murmuring in a water bucket. The men stop on the porch, talking some, not looking at one another. " Howdy, Vernon, " they say. " Howdy, Tull." " Looks like more rain." " It does for a fact." " Yes, sir. It will rain some more." " It come up quick." " And going away slow. It dont fail." I go around to the back. Cash is filling up the holes lie bored in the top of it. He is trimming out plugs for them, one at a time, the wood wet and hard to work. He could cut up a tin can and hide the holes and nobody wouldn't know the difference. Wouldn't mind, anyway. I have seen him spend a hour trimming out a wedge like it was glass he was working, when, he could have reached around and picked tip a dozen sticks and drove them Into the joint and made it do.When we finished I go back to the front. The men have gone a little piece from the house, sitting on the ends of the boards and on the sawhorses where we made it last night, some sitting and some squatting, Whitfield aint come yet. They look up at me, their eyes asking. " It's about, " I say. " He's ready to nail." While they are getting up Anse comes to file clod and looks at us and we return to the porch. We scrape our shoes again, careful, waiting for one another to go in first, milling a little at the door. Anse stands inside the door, dignified, composed. He waves us in and leads the way into the room. They had laid her in it reversed. Cash made it clock-shape, like this seam bevelled and with every joint a scrubbed with the plane, tight as a drum and neat as a sewing basket, and they had laid her in it head to foot so it wouldn't crush her dress. It was her wedding dress and it had a flare-out bottom, and they had laid her head to foot in it so the dress could spread out, and they had made her a veil out of a mosquito bar so the auger holes in her face wouldn't show. When we are going out, Whitfield comes. He is wet and muddy to the waist, coming in. " The Lord comfort this house, " he says. " I was late because the bridge has gone. I went down to the old ford and swum my horse over, the Lord protecting me. His grace be upon this house." We go back to the trestles and plank-ends and sit or squat. " I knowed it would go, " Armstid says. “It's been there a long time, that ere bridge, " Quick says. " The Lord has kept it there, yon mean, " Uncle Billy says. " I dont know ere a man that's touched hammer to it in twenty-five years." " How long has it been there, Uncle Billy? " Quick says. " It was built in.......let me see.......It was in the year 1888, " Uncle Billy says. " I mind it because the first man to cross it was Peabody coming to my house when Jody was born." " If I'd a crossed it every time your wife littered since, it'd a been wore out long before this, Billy, " Peabody says. We laugh, suddenly loud, then suddenly quiet again. We look a little aside at one another. " Lots of folks has crossed it that wont cross no more bridges, " Houston says. " It's a fact, " Littlejohn says. It's so." " One more aint, no ways, " Armstid says. " lt'd taken them two-three days to got her to town in the wagon. They'd be gone a week, getting her to Jefferson and back." " What's Anse so itching to take her to Jefferson for, anyway? " Houston says. " He promised her, " I say. " She wanted it. She come from there. Her mind was set on it." " And Anse is set on it, too, " Quick says. " Ay, " Uncle Billy says. " It's like a man that's let everything slide all his life to get set on something that will make the most trouble for everybody he knows." " Well, it'll take the Lord to get her over that river now, " Peabody says. " Anse cant do it." " And I reckon He will, " Quick says. " He's took care of Anse a long time, now." “It's a fact, " Littlejohn says." Too long to quit now, " Armstid says. " I reckon He's like everybody else around here, Uncle Billy says. " He's done it so long now He cant quit." Cash comes out. He has put on a clean shirt; his hair wet, is combed smooth down on his brow, smooth and black as if he had painted it onto his head, squats stiffly among us, we watching him. " You feeling this weather, aint you? " Armstid says. Cash says nothing. " A broke bone always feels it, " Littlejohn says.. fellow with a broke bone can tell it a-coming." " Lucky Cash got off with just a broke leg, " Armstid says. " He might have hurt himself bed-rid. How far'd you fall, Cash? " “Twenty-eight foot, four and a half inches, about, " Cash says. I move over beside him. " A fellow can sho slip quick on wet planks, " Quick says. " It's too bad, " I say. " But you couldn't a holp it." " It's them durn women, " he says. " I made it to balance with her. I made it to her measure and weight" If it takes wet boards for folks to fall, it’s fixing to be lots of falling before this spell is done. " You couldn't have holp it" I say. I dont mind the folks falling. It's the cotton and corn I mind. Neither does Peabody mind the folks falling. How bout it, Doc? It's a fact. Washed clean outen the ground it will be. Seems like something is always happening to it. Course it does. That's why it's worth anything. If nothing didn't happen and everybody made a big crop, do you reckon it would be worth the raising? Well, I be durn if I like to see my work washed outen the ground, work I sweat over. It’s a fact. A fellow wouldn't mind seeing it washed up if he could just turn on the rain himself. Who is that man can do that? Where is the color of his eyes? Ay. The Lord made it to grow. It's Hisn to wash up if He sees it fitten so. " You couldn't have holp it, " I say. " It's them durn women, " he says. In the house the women begin to sing. We hear the first line commence, beginning to swell as they take hold, and we rise and move toward the door, taking off our hats and throwing our chews away. We do not go in. We stop at the steps, clumped, holding our hats between our lax hands in front or behind, standing with one foot advanced and our heads lowered, looking aside, down at our hats in our hands and at the earth or now and then at the sky and at one another's grave, composed face. The song ends; the voices quaver away with a rich and dying fall. Whitfield begins. His voice in bigger than him. It's like they are not the same. It's like he is one, and his voice is one, swimming on two horses side by side across the ford and coming into the house, the mud-splashed one and the one that never even got Wet, triumphant and sad. Somebody in the house begins to cry. It sounds like her eyes and her voice were turned back inside her, listening; we move, shifting to the other leg, meeting one another's eye and making like they hadn't touched. Whitfield stops at last. The women sing again. In the thick air it's liketheir voices come out of the air, flowing together and on in the sad, comforting tunes, When they cease it's like they hadn't gone away. It's like they had just disappeared into the air and when we moved we would loose them again out of the air around us, sad and comforting. Then they finish and we put on our hats, our movements stiff, like we hadn't never wore hats before. On the way home Cora is still singing. " I am bounding toward my God and my reward, " she sings, sitting on the wagon, the shawl around her shoulder and the umbrella open over her, though it is not raining. " She has hern, " I say. " Wherever she went, she has her reward in being free of Anse Bundren." She laid there three days in that box, waiting for Darl and Jewel to come clean back home and get a new wheel and go back to where the wagon was in the ditch. Take my team, Anse, I said. We'll wait for ourn, he said. She'll want it so. She was ever a particular woman. On the third day they got back and they loaded her into the wagon and started and it already too late. You'll have to go all the way round by Samson's bridge. It'll take you a day to get there. Then you'll be forty miles from Jefferson. Take my team, Anse. We'll wait for ourn. She'll want it so. It was about a mile from the house we saw him, sitting on the edge of the slough. It hadn't had a fish in it never that I knowed. He looked around at us, his eyes round and calm, his face dirty, the pole across his knees. Cora was still singing. " This aint no good day to fish, " I said, " You come on home with us and me and you'll go down to the river first thing in the morning and catch some fish." " It's one in here, ' he said. " Dewey Dell seen it." " You come on with us. The river's the best place." “It's in here, " he said. " Dewey Dell seen it." “I'm bounding toward my God and my reward, " Cora sung. Darl It's not your horse that's dead, Jewel, " I say. He sits erect on the seat, leaning a little forward, wooden-backed. The brim of his hat has soaked free of the crown in two places, drooping across his wooden face so that, head lowered, he looks through it like through the visor of a helmet, looking long across the valley to where the barn leans against the bluff, shaping the invisible horse. " See them? " I say. High above the house, against the quick thick sky, they hang in narrowing circles. From here they are no more than specks, implacable, patient, portentous. " But it's not your horse that's dead." " Goddamn you, " he says. " Goddamn you." I cannot love my mother because I have no mother. Jewel's mother is a horse. Motionless, the tall buzzards hang in soaring circles, the clouds giving them an illusion of retrograde. Motionless, wooden-backed, wooden-faced, he shapes the horse in a rigid stoop like a hawk, hook-winged. They are waiting for us, ready for the moving of it, waiting for him. He enters the stall and waits until it kicks at him so that he can slip past and mount onto the trough and pause, peering out across the intervening stall-tops toward the empty path, before he reaches into the loft. " Goddamn him. Goddamn him." Cash It wont balance. If you want it to tote and ride on a balance, we will have--" " Pick up. Goddamn you, pick up." " I'm telling you it wont tote and it wont ride on a balance unless--" " Pick up! Pick up!, goddamn your thick-nosed soul to hell, pick up! ” It wont balance. If they want it to tote and ride on a balance, they will have Darl He stoops among us above it, two of the eight hands. In his face the blood goes in waves. In between them his flesh is greenish looking, about that smooth, thick, pale green of cow's cud; his face suffocated, furious, his lip lifted upon his teeth. " Pick up! " he says. " Pick up, goddamn your thick-nosed soul! " He heaves, lifting one whole side so suddenly that we all spring into the lift to catch and balance it before he hurls it completely over. For an instant it resists,