He tried to talk again; she leaned down. “He wants to see them,” she said. So Darl brought them in where he could see them. They shoved them under the side of the bed, where he could reach his hand and touch them when he felt better. Next morning Anse taken that horse and rode over to the Bend to see Snopes. Him and Jewel stood in the lot talking a while, then Anse got on the horse and rode off. I reckon that was the first time Jewel ever let anybody ride that horse, and until Anse come back he hung around in that swole-up way, watching the road like he was half a mind to take out after Anse and get the horse back.
Along toward nine o’clock it begun to get hot. That was when I see the first buzzard. Because of the wetting, I reckon. Anyway it wasn’t until well into the day that I see them. Lucky the breeze was setting away from the house, so it wasn’t until well into the morning. But soon as I see them it was like I could smell it in the field a mile away from just watching them, and them circling and circling for everybody in the county to see what was in my barn.
I was still a good half a mile from the house when I heard that boy yelling. I thought maybe he might have fell into the well or something, so I whipped up and come into the lot on the lope.
There must have been a dozen of them setting along the ridgepole of the barn, and that boy was chasing another one around the lot like it was a turkey and it just lifting enough to dodge him and go flopping back to the roof of the shed again where he had found it setting on the coffin. It had got hot then, right, and the breeze had dropped or changed or something, so I went and found Jewel, but Lula come out.
“You got to do something,” she said. “It’s a outrage.”
“That’s what I aim to do,” I said.
“It’s a outrage,” she said. “He should be lawed for treating her so.”
“He’s getting her into the ground the best he can,” I said. So I found Jewel and asked him if he didn’t want to take one of the mules and go over to the Bend and see about Anse. He didn’t say nothing. He just looked at me with his jaws going bone-white and them bone-white eyes of hisn, then he went and begun to call Darl.
“What you fixing to do?” I said.
He didn’t answer. Darl come out. “Come on,” Jewel said.
“What you aim to do?” Darl said.
“Going to move the wagon,” Jewel said over his shoulder.
“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “I never meant nothing. You couldn’t help it.” And Darl hung back too, but nothing wouldn’t suit Jewel.
“Shut your goddamn mouth,” he says.
“It’s got to be somewhere,” Darl said. “We’ll take out soon as pa gets back.”
“You won’t help me?” Jewel says, them white eyes of hisn kind of blaring and his face shaking like he had a aguer.
“No,” Darl said. “I won’t. Wait till pa gets back.”
So I stood in the door and watched him push and haul at that wagon. It was on a downhill, and once I thought he was fixing to beat out the back end of the shed. Then the dinner-bell rung. I called him, but he didn’t look around. “Come on to dinner,” I said. “Tell that boy.” But he didn’t answer, so I went on to dinner. The gal went down to get that boy, but she come back without him. About half through dinner we heard him yelling again, running that buzzard out.
“It’s a outrage,” Lula said; “a outrage.”
“He’s doing the best he can,” I said. “A fellow don’t trade with Snopes in thirty minutes. They’ll set in the shade all afternoon to dicker.”
“Do?” she says. “Do? He’s done too much, already.”
And I reckon he had. Trouble is, his quitting was just about to start our doing. He couldn’t buy no team from nobody, let alone Snopes, withouten he had something to mortgage he didn’t know would mortgage yet. And so when I went back to the field I looked at my mules and same as told them goodbye for a spell. And when I come back that evening and the sun shining all day on that shed, I wasn’t so sho I would regret it.
He come riding up just as I went out to the porch, where they all was. He looked kind of funny: kind of more hangdog than common, and kind of proud too. Like he had done something he thought was cute but wasn’t so sho now how other folks would take it.
“I got a team,” he said.
“You bought a team from Snopes?” I said.
“I reckon Snopes ain’t the only man in this country that can drive a trade,” he said.
“Sho,” I said. He was looking at Jewel, with that funny look, but Jewel had done got down from the porch and was going toward the horse. To see what Anse had done to it, I reckon.
“Jewel,” Anse says. Jewel looked back. “Come here,” Anse says. Jewel come back a little and stopped again.
“What you want?” he said.
“So you got a team from Snopes,” I said. “He’ll send them over tonight, I reckon? You’ll want a early start tomorrow, long as you’ll have to go by Mottson.”
Then he quit looking like he had been for a while. He got that badgered look like he used to have, mumbling his mouth.
“I do the best I can,” he said. “ ’Fore God, if there were ere a man in the living world suffered the trials and floutings I have suffered.”
“A fellow that just beat Snopes in a trade ought to feel pretty good,” I said. “What did you give him, Anse?”
He didn’t look at me. “I give a chattel mortgage on my
