As I Lay Dying Read online

  “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 raincoated 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.

  There is more surface for the nails to grip.

  There is twice the gripping-surface to each seam.

  The water will have to seep into it on a slant. Water moves easiest up and down or straight across.

  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.

  In a bed where people lie down all the time, the joints and seams are made sideways, because the stress is sideways.

  Except.

  A body is not square like a crosstie.

  Animal magnetism.

  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.

  You can see by an old grave that the earth sinks down on the bevel.

  While in a natural hole it sinks by the center, the stress being up-and-down.

  So I made it on the bevel.

  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 river was up and still rising. He said it had already covered the highest water-mark on the bridge-piling he had ever seen. “That bridge wont stand a whole lot of water,” I said. “Has somebody told Anse about it?”

  “I told him,” Quick said. “He says he reckons them boys has heard and unloaded and are on the way back 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 he 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 up a dozen sticks and drove them into the joint and made it do.

  When we fin
ished 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 saw-horses 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 the door 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 with every joint and seam bevelled and 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, you 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. “It’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. He 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. “A 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 is 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 like their 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 shoulders 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 De
ll 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——”