As I Lay Dying Read online

  “It wouldn’t be right,” Bundren says. “Course, if the boys wants to go to bed, I reckon I can set up with her. I dont begrudge her it.”

  So when I went back down there they were squatting on the ground around the wagon, all of them. “Let that chap come to the house and get some sleep, anyway,” I says. “And you better come too,” I says to the girl. I wasn’t aiming to interfere with them. And I sholy hadn’t done nothing to her that I knowed.

  “He’s done already asleep,” Bundren says. They had done put him to bed in the trough in a empty stall.

  “Well, you come on, then,” I says to her. But still she never said nothing. They just squatted there. You couldn’t hardly see them. “How about you boys?” I says. “You got a full day tomorrow.” After a while Cash says,

  “I thank you. We can make out.”

  “We wouldn’t be beholden,” Bundren says. “I thank you kindly.”

  So I left them squatting there. I reckon after four days they was used to it. But Rachel wasn’t.

  “It’s a outrage,” she says. “A outrage.”

  “What could he a done?” I says. “He give her his promised word.”

  “Who’s talking about him?” she says. “Who cares about him?” she says, crying. “I just wish that you and him and all the men in the world that torture us alive and flout us dead, dragging us up and down the country——”

  “Now, now,” I says. “You’re upset.”

  “Dont you touch me!” she says. “Dont you touch me!”

  A man cant tell nothing about them. I lived with the same one fifteen years and I be durn if I can. And I imagined a lot of things coming up between us, but I be durn if I ever thought it would be a body four days dead and that a woman. But they make life hard on them, not taking it as it comes up, like a man does.

  So I laid there, hearing it commence to rain, thinking about them down there, squatting around the wagon and the rain on the roof, and thinking about Rachel crying there until after a while it was like I could still hear her crying even after she was asleep, and smelling it even when I knowed I couldn’t. I couldn’t decide even then whether I could or not, or if it wasn’t just knowing it was what it was.

  So next morning I never went down there. I heard them hitching up and then when I knowed they must be about ready to take out, I went out the front and went down the road toward the bridge until I heard the wagon come out of the lot and go back toward New Hope. And then when I come back to the house, Rachel jumped on me because I wasn’t there to make them come in to breakfast. You cant tell about them. Just about when you decide they mean one thing, I be durn if you not only haven’t got to change your mind, like as not you got to take a rawhiding for thinking they meant it.

  But it was still like I could smell it. And so I decided then that it wasn’t smelling it, but it was just knowing it was there, like you will get fooled now and then. But when I went to the barn I knew different. When I walked into the hallway I saw something. It kind of hunkered up when I come in and I thought at first it was one of them got left, then I saw what it was. It was a buzzard. It looked around and saw me and went on down the hall, spraddle-legged, with its wings kind of hunkered out, watching me first over one shoulder and then over the other, like a old baldheaded man. When it got outdoors it begun to fly. It had to fly a long time before it ever got up into the air, with it thick and heavy and full of rain like it was.

  If they was bent on going to Jefferson, I reckon they could have gone around up by Mount Vernon, like MacCallum did. He’ll get home about day after tomorrow, horseback. Then they’d be just eighteen miles from town. But maybe this bridge being gone too has learned him the Lord’s sense and judgment.

  That MacCallum. He’s been trading with me off and on for twelve years. I have known him from a boy up; know his name as well as I do my own. But be durn if I can say it.

  DEWEY DELL

  The signboard comes in sight. It is looking out at the road now, because it can wait. New Hope. 3 mi. it will say. New Hope. 3 mi. New Hope. 3 mi. And then the road will begin, curving away into the trees, empty with waiting, saying New Hope three miles.

  I heard that my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had. It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon. It’s not that I wouldn’t and will not it’s that it is too soon too soon too soon.

  Now it begins to say it. New Hope three miles. New Hope three miles. That’s what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events Cash’s head turns slowly as we approach, his pale empty sad composed and questioning face following the red and empty curve; beside the back wheel Jewel sits the horse, gazing straight ahead.

  The land runs out of Darl’s eyes; they swim to pin points. They begin at my feet and rise along my body to my face, and then my dress is gone: I sit naked on the seat above the unhurrying mules, above the travail. Suppose I tell him to turn. He will do what I say. Dont you know he will do what I say? Once I waked with a black void rushing under me. I could not see. I saw Vardaman rise and go to the window and strike the knife into the fish, the blood gushing, hissing like steam but I could not see. He’ll do as I say. He always does. I can persuade him to anything. You know I can. Suppose I say Turn here. That was when I died that time. Suppose I do. We’ll go to New Hope. We wont have to go to town. I rose and took the knife from the streaming fish still hissing and I killed Darl.

  When I used to sleep with Vardaman I had a nightmare once I thought I was awake but I couldn’t see and couldn’t feel I couldn’t feel the bed under me and I couldn’t think what I was I couldn’t think of my name I couldn’t even think I am a girl I couldn’t even think I nor even think I want to wake up nor remember what was opposite to awake so I could do that I knew that something was passing but I couldn’t even think of time then all of a sudden I knew that something was it was wind blowing over me it was like the wind came and blew me back from where it was I was not blowing the room and Vardaman asleep and all of them back under me again and going on like a piece of cool silk dragging across my naked legs

  It blows cool out of the pines, a sad steady sound. New Hope. Was 3 mi. Was 3 mi. I believe in God I believe in God.

  “Why didn’t we go to New Hope, pa?” Vardaman says. “Mr Samson said we was, but we done passed the road.”

  Darl says, “Look, Jewel.” But he is not looking at me. He is looking at the sky. The buzzard is as still as if he were nailed to it.

  We turn into Tull’s lane. We pass the barn and go on, the wheels whispering in the mud, passing the green rows of cotton in the wild earth, and Vernon little across the field behind the plow. He lifts his hand as we pass and stands there looking after us for a long while.

  “Look, Jewel,” Darl says. Jewel sits on his horse like they were both made out of wood, looking straight ahead.

  I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.

  TULL

  After they passed I taken the mule out and looped up the trace chains and followed. They was setting in the wagon at the end of the levee. Anse was setting there, looking at the bridge where it was swagged down into the river with just the two ends in sight. He was looking at it like he had believed all the time that folks had been lying to him about it being gone, but like he was hoping all the time it really was. Kind of pleased astonishment he looked, setting on the wagon in his Sunday pants, mumbling his mouth. Looking like a uncurried horse dressed up: I dont know.

  The boy was watching the bridge where it was mid-sunk and logs and such drifted up over it and it swagging and shivering like the whole thing would go any minute, big-eyed he was watching it, like he was to a circus. And the gal too. When I come up she looked around at me, her eyes kind of blaring up and going hard like I had made to touch her. Then she looked at Anse again and then back at the water again.

  It was nigh up to the levee on both sides, the earth hid except for
the tongue of it we was on going out to the bridge and then down into the water, and except for knowing how the road and the bridge used to look, a fellow couldn’t tell where was the river and where the land. It was just a tangle of yellow and the levee not less wider than a knife-back kind of, with us setting in the wagon and on the horse and the mule.

  Darl was looking at me, and then Cash turned and looked at me with that look in his eyes like when he was figuring on whether the planks would fit her that night, like he was measuring them inside of him and not asking you to say what you thought and not even letting on he was listening if you did say it, but listening all right. Jewel hadn’t moved. He sat there on the horse, leaning a little forward, with that same look on his face when him and Darl passed the house yesterday, coming back to get her.

  “If it was just up, we could drive across,” Anse says. “We could drive right on across it.”

  Sometimes a log would get shoved over the jam and float on, rolling and turning, and we could watch it go on to where the ford used to be. It would slow up and whirl crossways and hang out of water for a minute, and you could tell by that that the ford used to be there.

  “But that dont show nothing,” I say. “It could be a bar of quicksand built up there.” We watch the log. Then the gal is looking at me again.

  “Mr Whitfield crossed it,” she says.

  “He was a horse-back,” I say. “And three days ago. It’s riz five foot since.”

  “If the bridge was just up,” Anse says.

  The log bobs up and goes on again. There is a lot of trash and foam, and you can hear the water.

  “But it’s down,” Anse says.

  Cash says, “A careful fellow could walk across yonder on the planks and logs.”

  “But you couldn’t tote nothing,” I say. “Likely time you set foot on that mess, it’ll all go, too. What you think, Darl?”

  He is looking at me. He dont say nothing; just looks at me with them queer eyes of hisn that makes folks talk. I always say it aint never been what he done so much or said or anything so much as how he looks at you. It’s like he had got into the inside of you, someway. Like somehow you was looking at yourself and your doings outen his eyes. Then I can feel that gal watching me like I had made to touch her. She says something to Anse. “.…… Mr Whitfield.…” she says.

  “I give her my promised word in the presence of the Lord,” Anse says. “I reckon it aint no need to worry.”

  But still he does not start the mules. We set there above the water. Another log bobs up over the jam and goes on; we watch it check up and swing slow for a minute where the ford used to be. Then it goes on.

  “It might start falling tonight,” I say. “You could lay over one more day.”

  Then Jewel turns sideways on the horse. He has not moved until then, and he turns and looks at me. His face is kind of green, then it would go red and then green again. “Get to hell on back to your damn plowing,” he says. “Who the hell asked you to follow us here?”

  “I never meant no harm,” I say.

  “Shut up, Jewel,” Cash says. Jewel looks back at the water, his face gritted, going red and green and then red. “Well,” Cash says after a while, “what you want to do?”

  Anse dont say nothing. He sets humped up, mumbling his mouth. “If it was just up, we could drive across it,” he says.

  “Come on,” Jewel says, moving the horse.

  “Wait,” Cash says. He looks at the bridge. We look at him, except Anse and the gal. They are looking at the water. “Dewey Dell and Vardaman and pa better walk across on the bridge,” Cash says.

  “Vernon can help them,” Jewel says. “And we can hitch his mule ahead of ourn.”

  “You aint going to take my mule into that water,” I say.

  Jewel looks at me. His eyes look like pieces of a broken plate. “I’ll pay for your damn mule. I’ll buy it from you right now.”

  “My mule aint going into that water,” I say.

  “Jewel’s going to use his horse,” Darl says. “Why wont you risk your mule, Vernon?”

  “Shut up, Darl,” Cash says. “You and Jewel both.”

  “My mule aint going into that water,” I say.

  DARL

  He sits the horse, glaring at Vernon, his lean face suffused up to and beyond the pale rigidity of his eyes. The summer when he was fifteen, he took a spell of sleeping. One morning when I went to feed the mules the cows were still in the tie-up and then I heard pa go back to the house and call him. When we came on back to the house for breakfast he passed us, carrying the milk buckets, stumbling along like he was drunk, and he was milking when we put the mules in and went on to the field without him. We had been there an hour and still he never showed up. When Dewey Dell came with our lunch, pa sent her back to find Jewel. They found him in the tie-up, sitting on the stool, asleep.

  After that, every morning pa would go in and wake him. He would go to sleep at the supper table and soon as supper was finished he would go to bed, and when I came in to bed he would be lying there like a dead man. Yet still pa would have to wake him in the morning. He would get up, but he wouldn’t hardly have half sense: he would stand for pa’s jawing and complaining without a word and take the milk buckets and go to the barn, and once I found him asleep at the cow, the bucket in place and half full and his hands up to the wrists in the milk and his head against the cow’s flank.

  After that Dewey Dell had to do the milking. He still got up when pa waked him, going about what we told him to do in that dazed way. It was like he was trying hard to do them; that he was as puzzled as anyone else.

  “Are you sick?” ma said. “Dont you feel all right?”

  “Yes,” Jewel said. “I feel all right.”

  “He’s just lazy, trying me,” pa said, and Jewel standing there, asleep on his feet like as not. “Aint you?” he said, waking Jewel up again to answer.

  “No,” Jewel said.

  “You take off and stay in the house today,” ma said.

  “With that whole bottom piece to be busted out?” pa said. “If you aint sick, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” Jewel said. “I’m all right.”

  “All right?” pa said. “You’re asleep on your feet this minute.”

  “No,” Jewel said. “I’m all right.”

  “I want him to stay at home today,” ma said.

  “I’ll need him,” pa said. “It’s tight enough, with all of us to do it.”

  “You’ll just have to do the best you can with Cash and Darl,” ma said. “I want him to stay in today.”

  But he wouldn’t do it. “I’m all right,” he said, going on. But he wasn’t all right. Anybody could see it. He was losing flesh, and I have seen him go to sleep chopping; watched the hoe going slower and slower up and down, with less and less of an arc, until it stopped and he leaning on it motionless in the hot shimmer of the sun.

  Ma wanted to get the doctor, but pa didn’t want to spend the money without it was needful, and Jewel did seem all right except for his thinness and his way of dropping off to sleep at any moment. He ate hearty enough, except for his way of going to sleep in his plate, with a piece of bread half way to his mouth and his jaws still chewing. But he swore he was all right.

  It was ma that got Dewey Dell to do his milking, paid her somehow, and the other jobs around the house that Jewel had been doing before supper she found some way for Dewey Dell and Vardaman to do them. And doing them herself when pa wasn’t there. She would fix him special things to eat and hide them for him. And that may have been when I first found it out, that Addie Bundren should be hiding anything she did, who had tried to teach us that deceit was such that, in a world where it was, nothing else could be very bad or very important, not even poverty. And at times when I went in to go to bed she would be sitting in the dark by Jewel where he was asleep. And I knew that she was hating herself for that deceit and hating Jewel because she had to love him so that she had to act the deceit.

  O
ne night she was taken sick and when I went to the barn to put the team in and drive to Tull’s, I couldn’t find the lantern. I remembered noticing it on the nail the night before, but it wasn’t there now at midnight. So I hitched in the dark and went on and came back with Mrs Tull just after daylight. And there the lantern was, hanging on the nail where I remembered it and couldn’t find it before. And then one morning while Dewey Dell was milking just before sunup, Jewel came into the barn from the back, through the hole in the back wall, with the lantern in his hand.

  I told Cash, and Cash and I looked at one another.

  “Rutting,” Cash said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But why the lantern? And every night, too. No wonder he’s losing flesh. Are you going to say anything to him?”

  “Wont do any good,” Cash said.

  “What he’s doing now wont do any good, either.”

  “I know. But he’ll have to learn that himself. Give him time to realise that it’ll save, that there’ll be just as much more tomorrow, and he’ll be all right. I wouldn’t tell anybody, I reckon.”

  “No,” I said. “I told Dewey Dell not to. Not ma, anyway.”

  “No. Not ma.”

  After that I thought it was right comical: he acting so bewildered and willing and dead for sleep and gaunt as a bean-pole, and thinking he was so smart with it. And I wondered who the girl was. I thought of all I knew that it might be, but I couldn’t say for sure.

  “ ’Taint any girl,” Cash said. “It’s a married woman somewhere. Aint any young girl got that much daring and staying power. That’s what I dont like about it.”