As I Lay Dying (12 page)

“You promised her,” she says. “She wouldn’t go until you promised. She thought she could depend on you. If you dont do it, it will be a curse on you.”

“Cant no man say I dont aim to keep my word,” Bundren says. “My heart is open to ere a man.”

“I dont care what your heart is,” she says. She was whispering, kind of, talking fast. “You promised her. You’ve got to. You——” then she seen me and quit, standing there. If they’d been pistols, I wouldn’t be talking now. So when I talked to him about it, he says,

“I give her my promise. Her mind is set on it.”

“But seems to me she’d rather have her ma buried close by, so she could——”

“It’s Addie I give the promise to,” he says. “Her mind is set on it.”

So I told them to drive it into the barn, because it was threatening rain again, and that supper was about ready. Only they didn’t want to come in.

“I thank you,” Bundren says. “We wouldn’t discommode you. We got a little something in the basket. We can make out.”

“Well,” I says, “since you are so particular about your
womenfolks, I am too. And when folks stops with us at meal time and wont come to the table, my wife takes it as a insult.”

So the girl went on to the kitchen to help Rachel. And then Jewel come to me.

“Sho,” I says. “Help yourself outen the loft. Feed him when you bait the mules.”

“I rather pay you for him,” he says.

“What for?” I says. “I wouldn’t begrudge no man a bait for his horse.”

“I rather pay you,” he says; I thought he said extra.

“Extra for what?” I says. “Wont he eat hay and corn?”

“Extra feed,” he says. “I feed him a little extra and I dont want him beholden to no man.”

“You cant buy no feed from me, boy,” I says. “And if he can eat that loft clean, I’ll help you load the barn onto the wagon in the morning.”

“He aint never been beholden to no man,” he says. “I rather pay you for it.”

And if I had my rathers, you wouldn’t be here a-tall, I wanted to say. But I just says, “Then it’s high time he commenced. You cant buy no feed from me.”

When Rachel put supper on, her and the girl went and fixed some beds. But wouldn’t any of them come in. “She’s been dead long enough to get over that sort of foolishness,” I says. Because I got just as much respect for the dead as ere a man, but you’ve got to respect the dead themselves, and a woman that’s been dead in a box four days, the best way to respect her is to get her into the ground as quick as you can. But they wouldn’t do it.

“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.