As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [23]
They had laid her in it reversed. Cash made it clock-shape, like this
seam bevelled and with every joint a scrubbed with the plane, tight as a drum and neat as a sewing basket, and they had laid her in it head to foot so it wouldn't crush her dress. It was her wedding dress and it had a flare-out bottom, and they had laid her head to foot in it so the dress could spread out, and they had made her a veil out of a mosquito bar so the auger holes in her face wouldn't show.
When we are going out, Whitfield comes. He is wet and muddy to the waist, coming in. "The Lord comfort this house," he says. "I was late because the bridge has gone. I went down to the old ford and swum my horse over, the Lord protecting me. His grace be upon this house."
We go back to the trestles and plank-ends and sit or squat.
"I knowed it would go," Armstid says.
“It's been there a long time, that ere bridge," Quick says.
"The Lord has kept it there, yon mean," Uncle Billy says. "I dont know ere a man that's touched hammer to it in twenty-five years."
"How long has it been there, Uncle Billy?" Quick says.
"It was built in. . . . . . .let me see. . . . . . .It was in the year 1888," Uncle Billy says. "I mind it because the first man to cross it was Peabody coming to my house when Jody was born."
"If I'd a crossed it every time your wife littered since, it'd a been wore out long before this, Billy," Peabody says.
We laugh, suddenly loud, then suddenly quiet again. We look a little aside at one another.
"Lots of folks has crossed it that wont cross no more bridges," Houston says.
"It's a fact," Littlejohn says. It's so."
"One more aint, no ways," Armstid says. "lt'd taken them two-three days to got her to town in the wagon. They'd be gone a week, getting her to Jefferson and back."
"What's Anse so itching to take her to Jefferson for, anyway?" Houston says.
"He promised her," I say. "She wanted it. She come from there. Her mind was set on it."
"And Anse is set on it, too," Quick says.
"Ay," Uncle Billy says. "It's like a man that's let everything slide all his life to get set on something that will make the most trouble for everybody he knows."
"Well, it'll take the Lord to get her over that river now," Peabody says. "Anse cant do it."
"And I reckon He will," Quick says. "He's took care of Anse a long time, now."
“It's a fact," Littlejohn says.
"Too long to quit now," Armstid says.
"I reckon He's like everybody else around here, Uncle Billy says. "He's done it so long now He cant quit."
Cash comes out. He has put on a clean shirt; his hair wet, is combed smooth down on his brow, smooth and black as if he had painted it onto his head, squats stiffly among us, we watching him.
"You feeling this weather, aint you?" Armstid says.
Cash says nothing.
"A broke bone always feels it," Littlejohn says. . fellow with a broke bone can tell it a-coming."
"Lucky Cash got off with just a broke leg," Armstid says. "He might have hurt himself bed-rid. How far'd you fall, Cash?"
“Twenty-eight foot, four and a half inches, about," Cash says. I move over beside him.
"A fellow can sho slip quick on wet planks," Quick says.
"It's too bad," I say. "But you couldn't a holp it."
"It's them durn women," he says. "I made it to balance with her. I made it to her measure and weight"
If it takes wet boards for folks to fall, it’s fixing to be lots of falling before this spell is done.
"You couldn't have holp it" I say.
I dont mind the folks falling. It's the cotton and corn I mind.
Neither does Peabody mind the folks falling. How bout it, Doc?
It's a fact. Washed clean outen the ground it will be. Seems like something is always happening to it.
Course it does. That's why it's worth anything. If nothing didn't happen and everybody made a big crop, do you reckon it would be worth the raising?
Well, I be durn if I like to