As I Lay Dying Page 10

  “There it is,” I say.

  “Ay,” Cash says. “It’s there.” We look at Vernon again. He is now flapping his arms up and down. We move on down stream, slowly and carefully, watching Vernon. He drops his hands. “This is the place,” Cash says.

  “Well, goddamn it, let’s get across, then,” Jewel says. He moves the horse on.

  “You wait,” Cash says. Jewel stops again.

  “Well, by God——” he says. Cash looks at the water, then he looks back at Addie. “It aint on a balance,” he says.

  “Then go on back to the goddamn bridge and walk across,” Jewel says. “You and Darl both. Let me on that wagon.”

  Cash does not pay him any attention. “It aint on a balance,” he says. “Yes, sir. We got to watch it.”

  “Watch it, hell,” Jewel says. “You get out of that wagon and let me have it. By God, if you’re afraid to drive it over.……” His eyes are pale as two bleached chips in his face. Cash is looking at him.

  “We’ll get it over,” he says. “I tell you what you do. You ride on back and walk across the bridge and come down the other bank and meet us with the rope. Vernon’ll take your horse home with him and keep it till we get back.”

  “You go to hell,” Jewel says.

  “You take the rope and come down the bank and be ready with it,” Cash says. “Three cant do no more than two can—one to drive and one to steady it.”

  “Goddamn you,” Jewel says.

  “Let Jewel take the end of the rope and cross upstream of us and brace it,” I say. “Will you do that, Jewel?”

  Jewel watches me, hard. He looks quick at Cash, then back at me, his eyes alert and hard. “I dont give a damn. Just so we do something. Setting here, not lifting a goddamn hand.…”

  “Let’s do that, Cash,” I say.

  “I reckon we’ll have to,” Cash says.

  The river itself is not a hundred yards across, and pa and Vernon and Vardaman and Dewey Dell are the only things in sight not of that single monotony of desolation leaning with that terrific quality a little from right to left, as though we had reached the place where the motion of the wasted world accelerates just before the final precipice. Yet they appear dwarfed. It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between. The mules stand, their fore quarters already sloped a little, their rumps high. They too are breathing now with a deep groaning sound; looking back once, their gaze sweeps across us with in their eyes a wild, sad, profound and despairing quality as though they had already seen in the thick water the shape of the disaster which they could not speak and we could not see.

  Cash turns back into the wagon. He lays his hands flat on Addie, rocking her a little. His face is calm, down-sloped, calculant, concerned. He lifts his box of tools and wedges it forward under the seat; together we shove Addie forward, wedging her between the tools and the wagon bed. Then he looks at me.

  “No,” I say. “I reckon I’ll stay. Might take both of us.”

  From the tool box he takes his coiled rope and carries the end twice around the seat stanchion and passes the end to me without tying it. The other end he pays out to Jewel, who takes a turn about his saddle horn.

  He must force the horse down into the current. It moves, highkneed, archnecked, boring and chafing. Jewel sits lightly forward, his knees lifted a little; again his swift alert calm gaze sweeps upon us and on. He lowers the horse into the stream, speaking to it in a soothing murmur. The horse slips, goes under to the saddle, surges to its feet again, the current building up against Jewel’s thighs.

  “Watch yourself,” Cash says.

  “I’m on it now,” Jewel says. “You can come ahead now.”

  Cash takes the reins and lowers the team carefully and skillfully into the stream.

  I felt the current take us and I knew we were on the ford by that reason, since it was only by means of that slipping contact that we could tell that we were in motion at all. What had once been a flat surface was now a succession of troughs and hillocks lifting and falling about us, shoving at us, teasing at us with light lazy touches in the vain instants of solidity underfoot. Cash looked back at me, and then I knew that we were gone. But I did not realise the reason for the rope until I saw the log. It surged up out of the water and stood for an instant upright upon that surging and heaving desolation like Christ. Get out and let the current take you down to the bend, Cash said, You can make it all right. No, I said, I’d get just as wet that way as this

  The log appears suddenly between two hills, as if it had rocketed suddenly from the bottom of the river. Upon the end of it a long gout of foam hangs like the beard of an old man or a goat. When Cash speaks to me I know that he has been watching it all the time, watching it and watching Jewel ten feet ahead of us. “Let the rope go,” he says. With his other hand he reaches down and reeves the two turns from the stanchion. “Ride on, Jewel,” he says; “see if you can pull us ahead of the log.”

  Jewel shouts at the horse; again he appears to lift it bodily between his knees. He is just above the top of the ford and the horse has a purchase of some sort for it surges forward, shining wetly half out of water, crashing on in a succession of lunges. It moves unbelievably fast; by that token Jewel realises at last that the rope is free, for I can see him sawing back on the reins, his head turned, as the log rears in a long sluggish lunge between us, bearing down upon the team. They see it too; for a moment they also shine black out of water. Then the downstream one vanishes, dragging the other with him; the wagon sheers crosswise, poised on the crest of the ford as the log strikes it, tilting it up and on. Cash is half turned, the reins running taut from his hand and disappearing into the water, the other hand reached back upon Addie, holding her jammed over against the high side of the wagon. “Jump clear,” he says quietly. “Stay away from the team and dont try to fight it. It’ll swing you into the bend all right.”

  “You come too,” I say. Vernon and Vardaman are running along the bank, pa and Dewey Dell stand watching us, Dewey Dell with the basket and the package in her arms. Jewel is trying to fight the horse back. The head of one mule appears, its eyes wide; it looks back at us for an instant, making a sound almost human. The head vanishes again.

  “Back, Jewel,” Cash shouts. “Back, Jewel.” For another instant I see him leaning to the tilting wagon, his arm braced back against Addie and his tools; I see the bearded head of the rearing log strike up again, and beyond it Jewel holding the horse upreared, its head wrenched around, hammering its head with his fist. I jump from the wagon on the downstream side. Between two hills I see the mules once more. They roll up out of the water in succession, turning completely over, their legs stiffly extended as when they had lost contact with the earth.

  VARDAMAN

  Cash tried but she fell off and Darl jumped going under he went under and Cash hollering to catch her and I hollering running and hollering and Dewey Dell hollering at me Vardaman you vardaman you vardaman and Vernon passed me because he was seeing her come up and she jumped into the water again and Darl hadn’t caught her yet

  He came up to see and I hollering catch her Darl catch her and he didn’t come back because she was too heavy he had to go on catching at her and I hollering catch her darl catch her darl because in the water she could go faster than a man and Darl had to grabble for her so I knew he could catch her because he is the best grabbler even with the mules in the way again they dived up rolling their feet stiff rolling down again and their backs up now and Darl had to again because in the water she could go faster than a man or a woman and I passed Vernon and he wouldn’t get in the water and help Darl he wouldn’t grabble for her with Darl he knew but he wouldn’t help

  The mules dived up again diving their legs stiff their stiff legs rolling slow and then Darl again and I hollering catch her
darl catch her head her into the bank darl and Vernon wouldn’t help and then Darl dodged past the mules where he could he had her under the water coming in to the bank coming in slow because in the water she fought to stay under the water but Darl is strong and he was coming in slow and so I knew he had her because he came slow and I ran down into the water to help and I couldn’t stop hollering because Darl was strong and steady holding her under the water even if she did fight he would not let her go he was seeing me and he would hold her and it was all right now it was all right now it was all right

  Then he comes up out of the water. He comes a long way up slow before his hands do but he’s got to have her got to so I can bear it. Then his hands come up and all of him above the water. I cant stop. I have not got time to try. I will try to when I can but his hands came empty out of the water emptying the water emptying away

  “Where is ma, Darl?” I said. “You never got her. You knew she is a fish but you let her get away. You never got her. Darl. Darl. Darl.” I began to run along the bank, watching the mules dive up slow again and then down again.

  TULL

  When I told Cora how Darl jumped out of the wagon and left Cash sitting there trying to save it and the wagon turning over, and Jewel that was almost to the bank fighting that horse back where it had more sense than to go, she says “And you’re one of the folks that says Darl is the queer one, the one that aint bright, and him the only one of them that had sense enough to get off that wagon. I notice Anse was too smart to been on it a-tall.”

  “He couldn’t a done no good, if he’d been there,” I said. “They was going about it right and they would have made it if it hadn’t a been for that log.”

  “Log, fiddlesticks,” Cora said. “It was the hand of God.”

  “Then how can you say it was foolish?” I said. “Nobody cant guard against the hand of God. It would be sacrilege to try to.”

  “Then why dare it?” Cora says. “Tell me that.”

  “Anse didn’t,” I said. “That’s just what you faulted him for.”

  “His place was there,” Cora said. “If he had been a man, he would a been there instead of making his sons do what he dursn’t.”

  “I dont know what you want, then,” I said. “One breath you say they was daring the hand of God to try it, and the next breath you jump on Anse because he wasn’t with them.” Then she begun to sing again, working at the washtub, with that singing look in her face like she had done give up folks and all their foolishness and had done went on ahead of them, marching up the sky, singing.

  The wagon hung for a long time while the current built up under it, shoving it off the ford, and Cash leaning more and more, trying to keep the coffin braced so it wouldn’t slip down and finish tilting the wagon over. Soon as the wagon got tilted good, to where the current could finish it, the log went on. It headed around the wagon and went on good as a swimming man could have done. It was like it had been sent there to do a job and done it and went on.

  When the mules finally kicked loose, it looked for a minute like maybe Cash would get the wagon back. It looked like him and the wagon wasn’t moving at all, and just Jewel fighting that horse back to the wagon. Then that boy passed me, running and hollering at Darl and the gal trying to catch him, and then I see the mules come rolling slow up out of the water, their legs spraddled stiff like they had balked upside down, and roll on into the water again.

  Then the wagon tilted over and then it and Jewel and the horse was all mixed up together. Cash went outen sight, still holding the coffin braced, and then I couldn’t tell anything for the horse lunging and splashing. I thought that Cash had give up then and was swimming for it and I was yelling at Jewel to come on back and then all of a sudden him and the horse went under too and I thought they was all going. I knew that the horse had got dragged off the ford too, and with that wild drowning horse and that wagon and that loose box, it was going to be pretty bad, and there I was, standing knee deep in the water, yelling at Anse behind me: “See what you done now? See what you done now?”

  The horse come up again. It was headed for the bank now, throwing its head up, and then I saw one of them holding to the saddle on the downstream side, so I started running along the bank, trying to catch sight of Cash because he couldn’t swim, yelling at Jewel where Cash was like a durn fool, bad as that boy that was on down the bank still hollering at Darl.

  So I went down into the water so I could still keep some kind of a grip in the mud, when I saw Jewel. He was middle deep, so I knew he was on the ford, anyway, leaning hard upstream, and then I see the rope, and then I see the water building up where he was holding the wagon snubbed just below the ford.

  So it was Cash holding to the horse when it come splashing and scrambling up the bank, moaning and groaning like a natural man. When I come to it it was just kicking Cash loose from his holt on the saddle. His face turned up a second when he was sliding back into the water. It was gray, with his eyes closed and a long swipe of mud across his face. Then he let go and turned over in the water. He looked just like a old bundle of clothes kind of washing up and down against the bank. He looked like he was laying there in the water on his face, rocking up and down a little, looking at something on the bottom.

  We could watch the rope cutting down into the water, and we could feel the weight of the wagon kind of blump and lunge lazy like, like it just as soon as not, and that rope cutting down into the water hard as a iron bar. We could hear the water hissing on it like it was red hot. Like it was a straight iron bar stuck into the bottom and us holding the end of it, and the wagon lazing up and down, kind of pushing and prodding at us like it had come around and got behind us, lazy like, like it just as soon as not when it made up its mind. There was a shoat come by, blowed up like a balloon: one of them spotted shoats of Lon Quick’s. It bumped against the rope like it was a iron bar and bumped off and went on, and us watching that rope slanting down into the water. We watched it.

  DARL

  Cash lies on his back on the earth, his head raised on a rolled garment. His eyes are closed, his face is gray, his hair plastered in a smooth smear across his forehead as though done with a paint brush. His face appears sunken a little, sagging from the bony ridges of eye sockets, nose, gums, as though the wetting had slacked the firmness which had held the skin full; his teeth, set in pale gums, are parted a little as if he had been laughing quietly. He lies pole-thin in his wet clothes, a little pool of vomit at his head and a thread of it running from the corner of his mouth and down his cheek where he couldn’t turn his head quick or far enough, until Dewey Dell stoops and wipes it away with the hem of her dress.

  Jewel approaches. He has the plane. “Vernon just found the square,” he says. He looks down at Cash, dripping too. “Aint he talked none yet?”

  “He had his saw and hammer and chalk-line and rule,” I say. “I know that.”

  Jewel lays the square down. Pa watches him. “They cant be far away,” pa says. “It all went together. Was there ere a such misfortunate man.”

  Jewel does not look at pa. “You better call Vardaman back here,” he says. He looks at Cash. Then he turns and goes away. “Get him to talk soon as he can,” he says, “so he can tell us what else there was.”

  We return to the river. The wagon is hauled clear, the wheels chocked (carefully: we all helped; it is as though upon the shabby, familiar, inert shape of the wagon there lingered somehow, latent yet still immediate, that violence which had slain the mules that drew it not an hour since) above the edge of the flood. In the wagon bed it lies profoundly, the long pale planks hushed a little with wetting yet still yellow, like gold seen through water, save for two long muddy smears. We pass it and go on to the bank.

  One end of the rope is made fast to a tree. At the edge of the stream, knee-deep, Vardaman stands, bent forward a little, watching Vernon with rapt absorption. He has stopped yelling and he is wet to the armpits. Vernon is at the other end of the rope, shoulder-deep in the river, looking back at Vardam
an. “Further back than that,” he says. “You git back by the tree and hold the rope for me, so it cant slip.”

  Vardaman backs along the rope, to the tree, moving blindly, watching Vernon. When we come up he looks at us once, his eyes round and a little dazed. Then he looks at Vernon again in that posture of rapt alertness.

  “I got the hammer too,” Vernon says. “Looks like we ought to done already got that chalk-line. It ought to floated.”

  “Floated clean away,” Jewel says. “We wont get it. We ought to find the saw, though.”

  “I reckon so,” Vernon says. He looks at the water. “That chalk-line, too. What else did he have?”

  “He aint talked yet,” Jewel says, entering the water. He looks back at me. “You go back and get him roused up to talk,” he says.

  “Pa’s there,” I say. I follow Jewel into the water, along the rope. It feels alive in my hand, bellied faintly in a prolonged and resonant arc. Vernon is watching me.

  “You better go,” he says. “You better be there.”

  “Let’s see what else we can get before it washes on down,” I say.

  We hold to the rope, the current curling and dimpling about our shoulders. But beneath that false blandness the true force of it leans against us lazily. I had not thought that water in July could be so cold. It is like hands molding and prodding at the very bones. Vernon is still looking back toward the bank.

  “Reckon it’ll hold us all?” he says. We too look back, following the rigid bar of the rope as it rises from the water to the tree and Vardaman crouched a little beside it, watching us. “Wish my mule wouldn’t strike out for home,” Vernon says.

  “Come on,” Jewel says. “Let’s get outen here.”

  We submerge in turn, holding to the rope, being clutched by one another while the cold wall of the water sucks the slanting mud backward and upstream from beneath our feet and we are suspended so, groping along the cold bottom. Even the mud there is not still. It has a chill, scouring quality, as though the earth under us were in motion too. We touch and fumble at one another’s extended arms, letting ourselves go cautiously against the rope; or, erect in turn, watch the water suck and boil where one of the other two gropes beneath the surface. Pa has come down to the shore, watching us.