As I Lay Dying Read Free

“Shut up, Darl.”
    “That’s right,” Vernon says. “She seems more like herself today than she has in a week. Time you and Jewel get back, she’ll be setting up.”
    “You ought to know,” Jewel says. “You been here often enough looking at her. You or your folks.” Vernon looks at him. Jewel’s eyes look like pale wood in his high-blooded face. He is a head taller than any of the rest of us, always was.I told them that’s why ma always whipped him and petted him more. Because he was peakling around the house more. That’s why she named him Jewel I told them.
    “Shut up, Jewel,” pa says, but as though he is not listening much. He gazes out across the land, rubbing his knees.
    “You could borrow the loan of Vernon’s team and we could catch up with you,” I say. “If she didn’t wait for us.”
    “Ah, shut your goddamn mouth,” Jewel says.
    “She’ll want to go in ourn,” pa says. He rubs his knees. “Dont ere a man mislike it more.”
    “It’s laying there, watching Cash whittle on that damn.……” Jewel says. He says it harshly, savagely, but he does not say the word. Like a little boy in the dark to flail his courage and suddenly aghast into silence by his own noise.
    “She wanted that like she wants to go in our own wagon,” pa says. “She’ll rest easier for knowing it’s a good one, and private. She was ever a private woman. You know it well.”
    “Then let it be private,” Jewel says. “But how the hell can you expect it to be——” he looks at the back of pa’s head, his eyes like pale wooden eyes.
    “Sho,” Vernon says, “she’ll hold on till it’s finished. She’ll hold on till everything’s ready, till her own good time. And with the roads like they are now, it wont take you no time to get her to town.”
    “It’s fixing up to rain,” pa says. “I am a luckless man. I have ever been.” He rubs his hands on his knees. “It’s that durn doctor, liable to come at any time. I couldn’t get word to him till so late. If he was to come tomorrow and tell her the time was nigh, she wouldn’t wait. I know her. Wagonor no wagon, she wouldn’t wait. Then she’d be upset, and I wouldn’t upset her for the living world. With that family burying-ground in Jefferson and them of her blood waiting for her there, she’ll be impatient. I promised my word me and the boys would get her there quick as mules could walk it, so she could rest quiet.” He rubs his hands on his knees. “No man ever misliked it more.”
    “If everybody wasn’t burning hell to get her there,” Jewel says in that harsh, savage voice. “With Cash all day long right under the window, hammering and sawing at that——”
    “It was her wish,” pa says. “You got no affection nor gentleness for her. You never had. We would be beholden to no man,” he says, “me and her. We have never yet been, and she will rest quieter for knowing it and that it was her own blood sawed out the boards and drove the nails. She was ever one to clean up after herself.”
    “It means three dollars,” I say. “Do you want us to go, or not?” Pa rubs his knees. “We’ll be back by tomorrow sundown.”
    “Well.……” pa says. He looks out over the land, awry-haired, mouthing the snuff slowly against his gums.
    “Come on,” Jewel says. He goes down the steps. Vernon spits neatly into the dust.
    “By sundown, now,” pa says. “I would not keep her waiting.”
    Jewel glances back, then he goes on around the house. I enter the hall, hearing the voices before I reach the door. Tilting a little down the hill, as our house does, a breeze draws through the hall all the time, upslanting. A featherdropped near the front door will rise and brush along the ceiling, slanting backward, until it reaches the down-turning current at the back door: so with voices. As you enter the hall, they sound as though they were speaking out of the air about your head.

CORA

    It was the sweetest thing I ever saw. It was like he