As I Lay Dying Page 5

  “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. “You’ll 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 clumps. 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 in to 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 look
ed 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 over-cautious, 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 sanctity 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 up-turned 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 Bundren’s 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 dust-dawn 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 God and 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, slack-mouthed, 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 i
nstant 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 of 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 them. 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 comes and fixes it back.