“We done bought it now,” pa says.
I mix the cement in the can, stirring the slow water into the pale-green thick coils. I bring the can to the wagon where Cash can see. He lies on his back, his thin profile in silhouette, ascetic and profound against the sky. “Does that look about right?” I say.
“You don’t want too much water, or it won’t work right,” he says.
“Is this too much?”
“Maybe if you could get a little sand,” he says. “It ain’t but one more day,” he says. “It don’t bother me none.”
Vardaman goes back down the road to where we crossed the branch and returns with sand. He pours it slowly into the thick coiling in the can. I go to the wagon again.
“Does that look all right?”
“Yes,” Cash says. “I could have lasted. It don’t bother me none.”
We loosen the splints and pour the cement over his leg, slow.
“Watch out for it,” Cash says. “Don’t get none on it if you can help.”
“Yes,” I say. Dewey Dell tears a piece of paper from the package and wipes the cement from the top of it as it drips from Cash’s leg.
“How does that feel?”
“It feels fine,” he says. “It’s cold. It feels fine.”
“If it’ll just help you,” pa says. “I asks your forgiveness. I never forseen it no more than you.”
“It feels fine,” Cash says.
If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time.
We replace the splints, the cords, drawing them tight, the cement in thick pale green slow surges among the cords, Cash watching us quietly with that profound questioning look.
“That’ll steady it,” I say.
“Ay,” Cash says. “I’m obliged.”
Then we all turn on the wagon and watch him. He is coming up the road behind us, wooden-backed, wooden-faced, moving only from his hips down. He comes up without a word, with his pale rigid eyes in his high sullen face, and gets into the wagon.
“Here’s a hill,” pa says. “I reckon you’ll have to get out and walk.”
Vardaman
Darl and Jewel and Dewey Dell and I are walking up the hill behind the wagon. Jewel came back. He came up the road and got into the wagon. He was walking. Jewel hasn’t got a horse any more. Jewel is my brother. Cash is my brother. Cash has a broken leg. We fixed Cash’s leg so it doesn’t hurt. Cash is my brother. Jewel is my brother too, but he hasn’t got a broken leg.
Now there are five of them, tall in little tall black circles.
“Where do they stay at night, Darl?” I say. “When we stop at night in the barn, where do they stay?”
The hill goes off into the sky. Then the sun comes up from behind the hill and the mules and the wagon and pa walk on the sun. You cannot watch them, walking slow on the sun. In Jefferson it is red on the track behind the glass. The track goes shining round and round. Dewey Dell says so.
Tonight I am going to see where they stay while we are in the barn.
Darl
“Jewel,” I say, “whose son are you?”
The breeze was setting up from the barn, so we put her under the apple tree, where the moonlight can dapple the apple tree upon the long slumbering flanks within which now and then she talks in little trickling bursts of secret and murmurous bubbling. I took Vardaman to listen. When we came up the cat leaped down from it and flicked away with silver claw and silver eye into the shadow.
“Your mother was a horse, but who was your father, Jewel?”
“You goddamn lying son of a bitch.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say.
“You goddamn lying son of a bitch.”
“Don’t you call me that, Jewel.” In the tall moonlight his eyes look like spots of white paper pasted on a high small football.
After supper Cash began to sweat a little. “It’s getting a little hot,” he said. “It was the sun shining on it all day, I reckon.”
“You want some water poured on it?” we say. “Maybe that will ease it some.”
“I’d be obliged,” Cash said. “It was the sun shining on it, I reckon. I ought to thought and kept it covered.”
“We ought to thought,” we said. “You couldn’t have suspicioned.”
“I never noticed it getting hot,” Cash said. “I ought to minded it.”
So we poured the water over it. His leg and foot below the cement looked like they had been boiled. “Does that feel better?” we said.
“I’m obliged,” Cash said. “It feels fine.”
Dewey Dell wipes his face with the hem of her dress.
“See if you can get some sleep,” we say.
“Sho,” Cash says. “I’m right obliged. It feels fine now.”
Jewel, I say, Who was your father, Jewel?
Goddamn you. Goddamn you.
Vardaman
She was under the apple tree and Darl and I go across the moon and the cat jumps down and runs and we can hear her inside the wood.
“Hear?” Darl says. “Put your ear close.”
I put my ear close and I can hear her. Only I can’t tell what she is saying.
“What is she saying, Darl?” I say. “Who is she talking to?”
“She’s talking to God,” Darl says. “She is calling on Him to help her.”
“What does she want Him to do?” I say.
“She wants Him to hide her away from the sight of man,” Darl says.
“Why does she want to hide her away from the sight of man, Darl?”
“So she can lay down her life,” Darl says.
“Why does she want to lay down her life, Darl?”
“Listen,” Darl says. We hear her. We hear her turn over on her side. “Listen,” Darl says.
“She’s turned over,” I say. “She’s looking at me through the wood.”
“Yes,”
