“What you want, Darl?” Dewey Dell said, not stopping the fan, speaking up quick, keeping even him from her. He didn’t answer. He just stood and looked at his dying mother, his heart too full for words.
Dewey Dell
The first time me and Lafe picked on down the row. Pa dassent sweat because he will catch his death from the sickness so everybody that comes to help us. And Jewel don’t care about anything he is not kin to us in caring, not care-kin. And Cash like sawing the long hot sad yellow days up into planks and nailing them to something. And pa thinks because neighbours will always treat one another that way because he has always been too busy letting neighbours do for him to find out. And I did not think that Darl would, that sits at the supper-table with his eyes gone further than the food and the lamp, full of the land dug out of his skull and the holes filled with distance beyond the land.
We picked on down the row, the woods getting closer and closer and the secret shade, picking on into the secret shade with my sack and Life’s sack. Because I said will I or won’t I when the sack was half-full because I said if the sack is full when we get to the woods it won’t be me. I said if it don’t mean for me to do it the sack will not be full and I will turn up the next row but if the sack is full, I cannot help it. It will be that I had to do it all the time and I cannot help it. And we picked on toward the secret shade and our eyes would drown together touching on his hands and my hands and I didn’t say anything. I said “What are you doing?” and he said “I am picking into your sack.” And so it was full when we came to the end of the row and I could not help it.
And so it was because I could not help it. It was then, and then I saw Darl and he knew. He said he knew without the words like he told me that ma is going to die without words, and I knew he knew because if he had said he knew with the words I would not have believed that he had been there and saw us. But he said he did know and I said “Are you going to tell pa are you going to kill him?” without the words I said it and he said “Why?” without the words. And that’s why I can talk to him with knowing with hating because he knows.
He stands in the door, looking at her.
“What you want, Darl?” I say.
“She is going to die,” he says. And old turkey-buzzard Tull coming to watch her die but I can fool them.
“When is she going to die?” I say.
“Before we get back,” he says.
“Then why are you taking Jewel?” I say.
“I want him to help me load,” he says.
Tull
Anse keeps on rubbing his knees. His overalls are faded; on one knee a serge patch cut out of a pair of Sunday pants, wore iron-slick. “No man mislikes it more than me,” he says.
“A fellow’s got to guess ahead now and then,” I say. “But, come long and short, it won’t be no harm done neither way.”
“She’ll want to get started right off,” he says. “It’s far enough to Jefferson at best.”
“But the roads is good now,” I say. It’s fixing to rain tonight, too. His folks buries at New Hope, too, not three miles away. But it’s just like him to marry a woman born a day’s hard ride away and have her die on him.
He looks out over the land, rubbing his knees. “No man so mislikes it,” he says.
“They’ll get back in plenty of time,” I say. “I wouldn’t worry none.”
“It means three dollars,” he says.
“Might be it won’t be no need for them to rush back, noways,” I say. “I hope it.”
“She’s a-going,” he says. “Her mind is set on it.” It’s a hard life on women, for a fact. Some women. I mind my mammy lived to be seventy and more. Worked every day, rain or shine; never a sick day since her last chap was born until one day she kind of looked around her and then she went and taken that lace-trimmed nightgown she had had forty-five years and never wore out of the chest and put it on and laid down on the bed and pulled the covers up and shut her eyes. “You all will have to look out for pa the best you can,” she said. “I’m tired.”
Anse rubs his hands on his knees. “The Lord giveth,” he says. We can hear Cash a-hammering and sawing beyond the corner.
It’s true. Never a truer breath was ever breathed. “The Lord giveth,” I say.
That boy comes up the hill. He is carrying a fish nigh long as he is. He slings it to the ground and grunts “Hah” and spits over his shoulder like a man. Durn nigh long as he is.
“What’s that?” I say. “A hog? Where’d you get it?”
“Down to the bridge,” he says. He turns it over, the underside caked over with dust where it is wet, the eye coated over, humped under the dirt.
“Are you aiming to leave it laying there?” Anse says.
“I aim to show it to ma,” Vardaman says. He looks toward the door. We can hear the talking, coming out on the draught. Cash, too, knocking and hammering at the boards. “There’s company in there,” he says.
“Just my folks,” I say. “They’d enjoy to see it, too.”
He says nothing, watching the door. Then he
