As I Lay Dying

  It was Albert told me about the rest of it. He said the wagon was stopped in front of Grummet’s hardware store, with the ladies all scattering up and down the street with handkerchiefs to their noses, and a crowd of hard-nosed men and boys standing around the wagon, listening to the marshal arguing with the man. He was a kind of tall, gaunted man sitting on the wagon, saying it was a public street and he reckoned he had as much right there as anybody, and the marshal telling him he would have to move on; folks couldn’t stand it. It had been dead eight days, Albert said. They came from some place out in Yoknapatawpha county, trying to get to Jefferson with it. It must have been like a piece of rotten cheese coming into an ant-hill, in that ramshackle wagon that Albert said folks were scared would fall all to pieces before they could get it out of town, with that home-made box and another fellow with a broken leg lying on a quilt on top of it, and the father and a little boy sitting on the seat and the marshal trying to make them get out of town.

  “It’s a public street,” the man says. “I reckon we can stop to buy something same as airy other man. We got the money to pay for hit, and hit aint airy law that says a man cant spend his money where he wants.”

  They had stopped to buy some cement. The other son was in Grummet’s, trying to make Grummet break a sack and let him have ten cents’ worth, and finally Grummet broke the sack to get him out. They wanted the cement to fix the fellow’s broken leg, someway.

  “Why, you’ll kill him,” the marshal said. “You’ll cause him to lose his leg. You take him on to a doctor, and you get this thing buried soon as you can. Dont you know you’re liable to jail for endangering the public health?”

  “We’re doing the best we can,” the father said. Then he told a long tale about how they had to wait for the wagon to come back and how the bridge was washed away and how they went eight miles to another bridge and it was gone too so they came back and swum the ford and the mules got drowned and how they got another team and found that the road was washed out and they had to come clean around by Mottson, and then the one with the cement came back and told him to shut up.

  “We’ll be gone in a minute,” he told the marshal.

  “We never aimed to bother nobody,” the father said.

  “You take that fellow to a doctor,” the marshal told the one with the cement.

  “I reckon he’s all right,” he said.

  “It aint that we’re hard-hearted,” the marshal said. “But I reckon you can tell yourself how it is.”

  “Sho,” the other said. “We’ll take out soon as Dewey Dell comes back. She went to deliver a package.”

  So they stood there with the folks backed off with handkerchiefs to their faces, until in a minute the girl came up with that newspaper package.

  “Come on,” the one with the cement said, “we’ve lost too much time.” So they got in the wagon and went on. And when I went to supper it still seemed like I could smell it. And the next day I met the marshal and I began to sniff and said,

  “Smell anything?”

  “I reckon they’re in Jefferson by now,” he said.

  “Or in jail. Well, thank the Lord it’s not our jail.”

  “That’s a fact,” he said.

  DARL

  “Here’s a place,” pa says. He pulls the team up and sits looking at the house. “We could get some water over yonder.”

  “All right,” I say. “You’ll have to borrow a bucket from them, Dewey Dell.”

  “God knows,” pa says. “I wouldn’t be beholden, God knows.”

  “If you see a good-sized can, you might bring it,” I say. Dewey Dell gets down from the wagon, carrying the package. “You had more touble than you expected, selling those cakes in Mottson,” I say. How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-strings: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls. Cash broke his leg and now the sawdust is running out. He is bleeding to death is Cash.

  “I wouldn’t be beholden,” pa says. “God knows.”

  “Then make some water yourself,” I say. “We can use Cash’s hat.”

  When Dewey Dell comes back the man comes with her. Then he stops and she comes on and he stands there and after a while he goes back to the house and stands on the porch, watching us.

  “We better not try to lift him down,” pa says. “We can fix it here.”

  “Do you want to be lifted down, Cash?” I say.

  “Wont we get to Jefferson tomorrow?” he says. He is watching us, his eyes interrogatory, intent, and sad. “I can last it out.”

  “It’ll be easier on you,” pa says. “It’ll keep it from rubbing together.”

  “I can last it,” Cash says. “We’ll lose time stopping.”

  “We done bought the cement, now,” pa says.

  “I could last it,” Cash says. “It aint but one more day. It dont bother to speak of.” He looks at us, his eyes wide in his thin gray face, questioning. “It sets up so,” he says.

  “We done bought it now,” pa says.

  I mix the cement in the can, stirring the slow water into the pale green thick coils. I bring the can to the wagon where Cash can see. He lies on his back, his thin profile in silhouette, ascetic and profound against the sky. “Does that look about right?” I say.

  “You dont want too much water, or it wont work right,” he says.

  “Is this too much?”

  “Maybe if you could get a little sand,” he says. “It aint but one more day,” he says. “It dont bother me none.”

  Vardaman goes back down the road to where we crossed the branch and returns with sand. He pours it slowly into the thick coiling in the can. I go to the wagon again.

  “Does that look all right?”

  “Yes,” Cash says. “I could have lasted. It dont bother me none.”

  We loosen the splints and pour the cement over his leg slow.

  “Watch out for it,” Cash says. “Dont get none on it if you can help.”

  “Yes,” I say. Dewey Dell tears a piece of paper from the package and wipes the cement from the top of it as it drips from Cash’s leg.

  “How does that feel?”

  “It feels fine,” he says. “It’s cold. It feels fine.”

  “If it’ll just help you,” pa says. “I asks your forgiveness. I never foreseen it no more than you.”

  “It feels fine,” Cash says.

  If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time.

  We replace the splints, the cords, drawing them tight, the cement in thick pale green slow surges among the cords, Cash watching us quietly with that profound questioning look.

  “That’ll steady it,” I say.

  “Ay,” Cash says. “I’m obliged.”

  Then we all turn on the wagon and watch him. He is coming up the road behind us, wooden-backed, wooden-faced, moving only from his hips down. He comes up without a word, with his pale rigid eyes in his high sullen face, and gets into the wagon.

  “Here’s a hill,” pa says. “I reckon you’ll have to get out and walk.”

  VARDAMAN

  Darl and Jewel and Dewey Dell and I are walking up the hill, behind the wagon. Jewel came back. He came up the road and got into the wagon. He was walking. Jewel hasn’t got a horse anymore. Jewel is my brother. Cash is my brother. Cash has a broken leg. We fixed Cash’s leg so it doesn’t hurt. Cash is my brother. Jewel is my brother too, but he hasn’t got a broken leg.

  Now there are five of them, tall in little tall black circles.

  “Where do they stay at night, Darl?” I say. “When we stop at night in the barn, where do they stay?”

  The hill goes off into the sky. Then the sun comes up from behind the hill and the mules and the wagon and pa walk on the sun. You cannot watch them, walking slow on the sun. In Jefferson it is red on the track behind the glass. The track goes shining round and round. Dewey Dell says so
.

  Tonight I am going to see where they stay while we are in the barn.

  DARL

  “Jewel,” I say, “whose son are you?”

  The breeze was setting up from the barn, so we put her under the apple tree, where the moonlight can dapple the apple tree upon the long slumbering flanks within which now and then she talks in little trickling bursts of secret and murmurous bubbling. I took Vardaman to listen. When we came up the cat leaped down from it and flicked away with silver claw and silver eye into the shadow.

  “Your mother was a horse, but who was your father, Jewel?”

  “You goddamn lying son of a bitch.”

  “Dont call me that,” I say.

  “You goddamn lying son of a bitch.”

  “Dont you call me that, Jewel.” In the tall moonlight his eyes look like spots of white paper pasted on a high small football.

  After supper Cash began to sweat a little. “It’s getting a little hot,” he said. “It was the sun shining on it all day, I reckon.”

  “You want some water poured on it?” we say. “Maybe that will ease it some.”

  “I’d be obliged,” Cash said. “It was the sun shining on it, I reckon. I ought to thought and kept it covered.”

  “We ought to thought,” we said. “You couldn’t have suspicioned.”

  “I never noticed it getting hot,” Cash said. “I ought to minded it.”

  So we poured the water over it. His leg and foot below the cement looked like they had been boiled. “Does that feel better?” we said.

  “I’m obliged,” Cash said. “It feels fine.”

  Dewey Dell wipes his face with the hem of her dress.

  “See if you can get some sleep,” we say.

  “Sho,” Cash says. “I’m right obliged. It feels fine now.”

  Jewel, I say, Who was your father, Jewel?

  Goddamn you. Goddamn you.

  VARDAMAN

  She was under the apple tree and Darl and I go across the moon and the cat jumps down and runs and we can hear her inside the wood.

  “Hear?” Darl says. “Put your ear close.”

  I put my ear close and I can hear her. Only I cant tell what she is saying.

  “What is she saying, Darl?” I say. “Who is she talking to?”

  “She’s talking to God,” Darl says. “She is calling on Him to help her.”

  “What does she want Him to do?” I say.

  “She wants Him to hide her away from the sight of man,” Darl says.

  “Why does she want to hide her away from the sight of man, Darl?”

  “So she can lay down her life,” Darl says.

  “Why does she want to lay down her life, Darl?”

  “Listen,” Darl says. We hear her. We hear her turn over on her side. “Listen,” Darl says.

  “She’s turned over,” I say. “She’s looking at me through the wood.”

  “Yes,” Darl says.

  “How can she see through the wood, Darl?”

  “Come,” Darl says. “We must let her be quiet. Come.”

  “She cant see out there, because the holes are in the top,” I say. “How can she see, Darl?”

  “Let’s go see about Cash,” Darl says.

  And I saw something Dewey Dell told me not to tell nobody

  Cash is sick in his leg. We fixed his leg this afternoon, but he is sick in it again, lying on the bed. We pour water on his leg and then he feels fine.

  “I feel fine,” Cash says. “I’m obliged to you.”

  “Try to get some sleep,” we say.

  “I feel fine,” Cash says. “I’m obliged to you.”

  And I saw something Dewey Dell told me not to tell nobody. It is not about pa and it is not about Cash and it is not about Jewel and it is not about Dewey Dell and it is not about me

  Dewey Dell and I are going to sleep on the pallet. It is on the back porch, where we can see the barn, and the moon shines on half of the pallet and we will lie half in the white and half in the black, with the moonlight on our legs. And then I am going to see where they stay at night while we are in the barn. We are not in the barn tonight but I can see the barn and so I am going to find where they stay at night.

  We lie on the pallet, with our legs in the moon.

  “Look,” I say, “my legs look black. Your legs look black, too.”

  “Go to sleep,” Dewey Dell says.

  Jefferson is a far piece.

  “Dewey Dell.”

  “What.”

  “If it’s not Christmas now, how will it be there?”

  It goes round and round on the shining track. Then the track goes shining round and round.

  “Will what be there?”

  “That train. In the window.”

  “You go to sleep. You can see tomorrow if it’s there.”

  Maybe Santa Claus wont know they are town boys.

  “Dewey Dell.”

  “You go to sleep. He aint going to let none of them town boys have it.”

  It was behind the window, red on the track, the track shining round and round. It made my heart hurt. And then it was pa and Jewel and Darl and Mr. Gillespie’s boy. Mr Gillespie’s boy’s legs come down under his nightshirt. When he goes into the moon, his legs fuzz. They go on around the house toward the apple tree.

  “What are they going to do, Dewey Dell?”

  They went around the house toward the apple tree.

  “I can smell her,” I say. “Can you smell her, too?”

  “Hush,” Dewey Dell says. “The wind’s changed. Go to sleep.”

  And so I am going to know where they stay at night soon. They come around the house, going across the yard in the moon, carrying her on their shoulders. They carry her down to the barn, the moon shining flat and quiet on her. Then they come back and go into the house again. While they were in the moon, Mr Gillespie’s boy’s leg fuzzed. And then I waited and I said Dewey Dell? and then I waited and then I went to find where they stay at night and I saw something that Dewey Dell told me not to tell nobody.

  DARL

  Against the dark doorway he seems to materialise out of darkness, lean as a race horse in his underclothes in the beginning of the glare. He leaps to the ground with on his face an expression of furious unbelief. He has seen me without even turning his head or his eyes in which the glare swims like two small torches. “Come on,” he says, leaping down the slope toward the barn.

  For an instant longer he runs silver in the moonlight, then he springs out like a flat figure cut leanly from tin against an abrupt and soundless explosion as the whole loft of the barn takes fire at once, as though it had been stuffed with powder. The front, the conical façade with the square orifice of doorway broken only by the square squat shape of the coffin on the sawhorses like a cubistic bug, comes into relief. Behind me pa and Gillespie and Mack and Dewey Dell and Vardaman emerge from the house.

  He pauses at the coffin, stooping, looking at me, his face furious. Overhead the flames sound like thunder; across us rushes a cool draft: there is no heat in it at all yet, and a handful of chaff lifts suddenly and sucks swiftly along the stalls where a horse is screaming. “Quick,” I say; “the horses.”

  He glares a moment longer at me, then at the roof overhead, then he leaps toward the stall where the horse screams. It plunges and kicks, the sound of the crashing blows sucking up into the sound of the flames. They sound like an interminable train crossing an endless trestle. Gillespie and Mack pass me, in knee-length nightshirts, shouting, their voices thin and high and meaningless and at the same time profoundly wild and sad: “.……cow.……stall.……” Gillespie’s nightshirt rushes ahead of him on the draft, ballooning about his hairy thighs.

  The stall door has swung shut. Jewel thrusts it back with his buttocks and he appears, his back arched, the muscles ridged through his garment as he drags the horse out by its head. In the glare its eyes roll with soft, fleet, wild opaline fire; its muscles bunch and run as it flings its head about, lifting Jewel clear
of the ground. He drags it on, slowly, terrifically; again he gives me across his shoulder a single glare furious and brief. Even when they are clear of the barn the horse continues to fight and lash backward toward the doorway until Gillespie passes me, stark-naked, his nightshirt wrapped about the mule’s head, and beats the maddened horse on out of the door.

  Jewel returns, running; again he looks down at the coffin. But he comes on. “Where’s cow?” he cries, passing me. I follow him. In the stall Mack is struggling with the other mule. When its head turns into the glare I can see the wild rolling of its eye too, but it makes no sound. It just stands there, watching Mack over its shoulder, swinging its hind quarters toward him whenever he approaches. He looks back at us, his eyes and mouth three round holes in his face on which the freckles look like english peas on a plate. His voice is thin, high, faraway.

  “I cant do nothing.……” It is as though the sound had been swept from his lips and up and away, speaking back to us from an immense distance of exhaustion. Jewel slides past us; the mule whirls and lashes out, but he has already gained its head. I lean to Mack’s ear:

  “Nightshirt. Around his head.”

  Mack stares at me. Then he rips the nightshirt off and flings it over the mule’s head, and it becomes docile at once. Jewel is yelling at him: “Cow? Cow?”

  “Back,” Mack cries. “Last stall.”

  The cow watches us as we enter. She is backed into the corner, head lowered, still chewing though rapidly. But she makes no move. Jewel has paused, looking up, and suddenly we watch the entire floor to the loft dissolve. It just turns to fire; a faint litter of sparks rains down. He glances about. Back under the trough is a three legged milking stool. He catches it up and swings it into the planking of the rear wall. He splinters a plank, then another, a third; we tear the fragments away. While we are stooping to the opening something charges into us from behind. It is the cow; with a single whistling breath she rushes between us and through the gap and into the outer glare, her tail erect and rigid as a broom nailed upright to the end of her spine.