“We won’t be long,” he says. “We’ll be done after a spell.” Mrs. Tull watches them a while. Then she reenters the house.
“If we get in a tight, we could take some of them planks,” Vernon says. “I’ll help you put them back.”
Cash ceases the plane and squints along the plank, wiping it with his palm. “Give me the next one,” he says.
Some time toward dawn the rain ceases. But it is not yet day when Cash drives the last nail and stands stiffly up and looks down at the finished coffin, the others watching him. In the lantern-light his face is calm, musing; slowly he strokes his hands on his raincoated thighs in a gesture deliberate, final and composed. Then the four of them—Cash and pa and Vernon and Peabody—raise the coffin to their shoulders and turn toward the house. It is light, yet they move slowly; empty, yet they carry it carefully; lifeless, yet they move with hushed precautionary words to one another, speaking of it as though, complete, it now slumbered lightly alive, waiting to come awake. On the dark floor their feet clump awkwardly, as though for a long time they have not walked on floors.
They set it down by the bed. Peabody says quietly: “Let’s eat a snack. It’s almost daylight. Where’s Cash?”
He has returned to the trestles, stooped again in the lantern’s feeble glare as he gathers up his tools and wipes them on a cloth carefully and puts them into the box with its leather sling to go over the shoulder. Then he takes up box, lantern and raincoat and returns to the house, mounting the steps into faint silhouette against the paling east.
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 what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
Cash
I made it on the bevel.
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There is more surface for the nails to grip.
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There is twice the gripping-surface to each seam.
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The water will have to seep into it on a slant. Water moves easiest up and down or straight across.
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In a house people are upright two-thirds of the time. So the seams and joints are made up-and-down. Because the stress is up-and-down.
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In a bed where people lie down all the time, the joints and seams are made sideways, because the stress is sideways.
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Except.
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A body is not square like a crosstie.
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Animal magnetism.
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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.
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You can see by an old grave that the earth sinks down on the bevel.
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While in a natural hole it sinks by the centre, the stress being up-and-down.
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So I made it on the bevel.
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It makes a neater job.
Vardaman
My mother is a fish.
Tull
It was ten o’clock when I got back, with Peabody’s team hitched on to the back of the wagon. They had already dragged the buckboard back from where Quick found it upside down straddle of the ditch about a mile from the spring. It was pulled out of the road at the spring, and about a dozen wagons was already there. It was Quick found it. He said the river was up and still rising. He said it had already covered the highest watermark on the bridge-piling he had ever seen. “That bridge won’t stand a whole lot of water,” I said. “Has somebody told Anse about it?”
“I told him,” Quick said. “He says he reckons them boys has heard and unloaded and are on the way back by now. He says they can load up and get across.”
“He better go on and bury her at New Hope,” Armstid said. “That bridge is old. I wouldn’t monkey with it.”
“His mind is set on taking her to Jefferson,” Quick said.
“Then he better get at it soon as he can,” Armstid said.
Anse meets us at the door. He has shaved, but not good. There is a long cut on his jaw, and he is wearing his Sunday pants and a white shirt with the neckband buttoned. It is drawn smooth over his hump, making it look bigger than ever, like a white shirt will, and his face is different too. He looks folks in the eye now, dignified, his face tragic and composed, shaking us by the hand as we walk up on to the porch and scrape our shoes, a little stiff in our Sunday clothes, our Sunday clothes rustling, not looking full at him
