Authors: Lorine Niedecker
PEABODY
Why didn't you send for me sooner?
ANSE
Hit was jest one thing and then another. That ere corn me and the boys was aimin to get up with, and Dewey Dell a-takin such good keer of her, till I jest thought…
PEABODY
Damn the money. Did you ever hear of me worrying a fellow before he was ready to pay?
ANSE
(low-voiced, concerned)
She's goin, is she?
Silence
ANSE
I knowed it. Her mind was sot on it. She laid down on her bed. She says:
I'm tired.
PEABODY
And a damn good thing.
PEABODY
as narrator
Suddenly Addie looks at me. Her eyes like lamps blazing up just before the oil is gone. She probably wants me to get out and everybody else. I've seen it before in women. Seen them drive from the room them coming with sympathy and pity, with actual help, and clinging to some trifling animal to whom they never were more than pack-horses. That's what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again.
ADDIE
(rather loud)
Cash. You, Cash! I want the boy.
(weaker)
Anse, Jewel, Darl?
ANSE
(kindly and close in)
The boys went for another load, Ma. Them three dollars, you know.
They thought you'd wait.
ADDIE
(weakly but clearly)
I smell wet leaves and earth
(fade to background during next two speeches)
geese flying north…
PEABODY
She seems to be talking to herself.
ANSE
I'll go out and see if them boys are coming.
(door closing)
ADDIE
(stronger, closer in)
I was young then. I was teaching school. One day in early spring a man appeared, turning his hat round and round in his hands and I said, “If you've got any womenfolks, why in the world don't they make you get your hair cut?” He said, “I ain't got none.” And that was Anse and I took him. And when I knew I had my child, Cash, I knew that living was terrible and that words are no good; words don't ever fit even what they are trying to say at. We had to use each other by words but most of all by blood, blood coursing, boiling, whipping—only by something like the whip could my blood and their blood unite in one stream. I loved Anse but my aloneness was violated. When I found I had Darl I saw only one thing—Anse had tricked me. But no, I had been tricked by words older than Anse or love and the same words had tricked Anse too. And when Darl was born I asked Anse to promise to take me back to Jefferson when I died. Father had said that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead for a long time. I knew that father had been right, even when he couldn't have known he was right any more than I could have known I was wrong. Anse was dead and didn't know it. Anse was dead. (
Falters, weaker, then suddenly tries to raise up and call
): Is Anse dead?
PEABODY
Calm yourself, Addie.
ADDIE
As I lay in the nights I heard the words that are the deeds, and the other words that are not deeds, and that are just the gaps in people's lacks, coming down like the cries of the geese out of the wild darkness. But I found it—the reason for life was the duty to the alive, to the terrible blood, the red bitter blood boiling through the land. My children were of the wild blood of me and of all that lived, of none and of all. Then I found that I had Jewel—when Jewel was two months gone. Then Dewey Dell, then Vardaman. And then I could get ready to die.
PEABODY
as narrator
So she died. The child Vardaman, was somewhere about. Dewey Dell sat motionless awhile, then Anse reminded her to get supper.
ANSE
We got to keep our strength up. And Cash'll need to eat quick and get back to work so he can finish the coffin in time.
PEABODY
as narrator
I stepped out into the twilight, Dewey Dell behind me. I could feel the 17-year-old girl's big dark eyes boring a hole through my back.
DEWEY DELL
(low, rich voice)
I'll have to look for Vardaman. (
Lower, fuller, more intimate—she always speaks from the depths but now as though to herself alone
): You, Doc Peabody, could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody'd have to know it except you and me and Darl and Lafe. You could help me if you would.
Sound of door
ANSE
God's will be done. (
sighs
) Now I can get them teeth I been needin for so long.
DEWEY DELL
(off some distance, voice raised)
Vardaman.
(Louder):
You, Vardaman. Bring that fish for supper. Come now, right away.
VARDAMAN
(little child's voice, always tiny, distinctive, thin, “talking to himself like a cricket in the grass,” Faulkner says, “a little one”):
Here I am right here by the porch. Yuh, I've got a fish, my fish, hey, where's my fish? I cut his guts out but Dewey Dell wants to cut him up for supper.
(Starts crying):
And that man—he came and kilt my Maw. He came and kilt my Maw.
DEWEY DELL
(normal voice)
Stop that.
VARDAMAN
(no longer crying)
My mother is a fish.
PEABODY
as narrator
Yes, Addie Bundren was dead but to get her into her grave how many miles away in Jefferson where she asked to be buried with her kinfolk—that was another matter. As one of the neighbours said, “It's just like Anse to marry a woman born a day's hard ride away and have her die on him.”
A day's
hard ride! With the rain falling and rivers rising up over the bridges who knows how many days.
ANSE
(as if looking out over the land, rubbing his knees)
No man mislikes it more than me. And me without a tooth in my head, hoping to get ahead enough to get my mouth fixed where I could eat God's own victuals as a man should. And her hale and well as ere a woman in the land until that day, ten days ago.
PEABODY
as narrator
Jewel, Darl and Cash came home. We ate. Cash started making the box.
Sound of sawing and, occasionally, nailing.
ANSE
(to Cash)
I aint much help carpentering, Cash.
CASH
Darl is here.
DARL
Next thing it'll do, Cash, is rain. Think you'll get the coffin made tonight? Here's a lantern.
(To himself)
: It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end. Dewey Dell wanted her to die because then she'd get to town.
DEWEY DELL
(as if to herself)
God gave woman a sign when something has happened bad.
DARL
(to himself)
Yes. Cash is nailing her up. Jewel sitting there looking disconsolate.
(To Jewel)
: It's not your horse that's dead, Jewel.
JEWEL
Goddam you. You always were a queer one.
DARL
(as narrator but as though to himself)
The air smells like sulphur. Cash works on, arm bared. Below the sky sheet-lightning slumbers lightly; against it the trees, motionless, are ruffled out to the last twig, swollen, increased as tho 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 as big as buckshot, warm as though fired from a gun; they sweep across the lantern in a vicious hissing. From behind Pa's slack-faced astonishment he muses as though from beyond time, upon the ultimate outrage.
(To Cash)
The lantern's getting wet.
(Sound of saw ceases
.) Here, you'd better put on Mrs. Tull's raincoat.
(Again as narrator):
Cash hunts the saw. After awhile we find it in Pa's hand.
(To Cash)
Going to bevel all those boards? It'll take more time.
CASH
Yuh. 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. It makes a neater job.
Sound of sawing and nailing and rain and then fade out.
PEABODY
as narrator
It's almost day when Cash finishes. Four of us carry the coffin to the house. Addie could not want a better box, Cash is a good carpenter. And why not? Didn't she pick out these boards herself? Before she died, Cash brought each board to her for her approval. Darl lies down for a couple of hours.
DARL
I know. I know. 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 don't know if I am or not. How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
Silence
PEABODY
as narrator
On the day of the funeral Brother Whitfield came in wet and muddy to the waist. He had swum the river on his horse. The rain washed the bridge out.
WHITFIELD
(chants)
The Lord comfort this house. The Lord giveth…The Lord put his grace on this house. May she rest in peace. I went down to the old ford and swam my horse over, the Lord protecting me.
SEVERAL MEN
(chanting)
The Lord giveth. The Lord giveth. The Lord giveth…
NEIGHBOR
(rough drawl)
That ere bridge was built, let's see, in 1888. I mind it because the first man to cross it was Doc Peabody coming to my house when Jody was born.
PEABODY
If I'd crossed it every time your wife littered since it'd a been wore out long before this.
Sudden laughter at this remark as release, then sudden quiet as they realize indiscretion and take sidelong glances at each other.
NEIGHBOR
Only the Lord can get Addie Bundren across the river after this rain. A misdoubtful night last night with the storm making. I knowed it was an evil day when I seen that team of Peabody's come up lathered, with the broke harness dragging and the neck-yoke betwixt the off critter's legs. Not too bad a wind but the rain. It'll take Anse a week to go to Jefferson and back. It's the cotton and corn I mind. Washed clean outen the ground it will be. 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 colour of his eyes? Ay, the Lord made it to grow, the Lord giveth….
MEN CHANTING
(not quite in unison)
The Lord giveth. The Lord giveth. The Lord giveth…
PEABODY
as narrator
And the next day they should have started off. I said, “Anse, how about the wheel for the wagon, will Jewel get it fixed?”
ANSE
Jewel will git back with it, I reckon, Doc.
NEIGHBOR
Take my wagon, Anse.
ANSE
Thank yuh, but I'll wait for ourn. She'll want it so. She was ever a particular woman.
NEIGHBOR
You'll have to go way around by Samson's bridge. It'll take you a day to get there. Then you'll be 40 miles from Jefferson. Take my team and get started right away, Anse.
ANSE
We'll wait for ourn. I'm goin fishin in the slough.
NEIGHBOR
That slough aint had a fish in it never that I knowed. Aint no good day to fish anyhow.
ANSE
It's one in here. Dewey Dell seen it.
NEIGHBOR
Tell you what—let's all get started to where you're goin and when we get to the river me and you'll take our poles and catch some fish.
ANSE
One in here. Dewey Dell seen it.
VARDAMAN
Pa shaves every day now because my mother is a fish.
Sound of wagon creaking fading in and occasionally mules snorting. Then sudden stop.
PEABODY
as narrator
At long last the wagon was ready, the mules hitched to it. Everybody gathered in the yard ready to go. Dewey Dell climbs onto the wagon, her leg coming along from beneath her tightening dress: that lever which moves the world; one of that caliper which measures the length and breadth of life. She sits on the seat beside Vardaman, drops a basket of lunch in the bottom of the wagon and holds a square package on her lap.
ANSE
You, Jewel, leave that horse behind and come sit with us in the wagon. It aint respectful to your Ma to ride that horse like you wuz goin to a circus. A durn spotted critter of a horse, wilder than a catty-mount, a deliberate flouting of her and me. Her wanting us all to be in the wagon with her that sprang from her flesh and blood.
JEWEL
(evenly but staunchly)
I'm taking my horse.
Sound of Darl laughing.
JEWEL
I didn't laugh, that was Darl.
ANSE
How many times I got to tell you, Darl, it's laughing like that that makes folks talk about yuh. Right on the plank where she's laying.
DARL
(toning down his laughter)
All right, let's go. Good-bye Doc, see you some day.
PEABODY
Good-bye, good-bye.
(Lowering voice)
And time, I'd say.
(Wagon creaking fades in and then fades out). (As narrator)
I heard the rest of the story from Darl later.