As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [26]
Jewel is my brother.
"Then mine will have to be a horse, too," I said.
"Why?" Darl said. "If pa is your pa, why does your ma have to be a horse just because Jewel's is?"
"Why does it?" I said. "Why does it, Darl?"
Darl is my brother.
"Then what is your ma, Darl?" I said.
"I haven't got ere one," Darl said. "Because if I had one, it is was. And if it is was, it cant be is. Can it?"
"No," I said.
"Then I am not," Darl said. "Am I?"
"No," I said.
I am. Darl is my brother.
"But you are, Darl," I said.
"I know it," Darl said. "That's why I am not is. Are is too many for one woman to foal."
Cash is carrying his tool box. Pa looks at him. "Ill stop at Tull's on the way back," Cash. says. "Get on that barn roof."
"It aint respectful," pa says. "It's a deliberate flouting of her and of me."
"Do you want him to come all the way back hero and carry them up to Tull's afoot?" Darl says. Pa look's at Darl, his mouth chewing. Pa shaves every day now because my mother is a fish.
"It aint right," pa says.
Dewey Dell has the package in her hand. She has the basket with our dinner too.
"What's that?" pa says.
"Mrs Tull's cakes," Dewey Dell says, getting into the wagon. "I'm taking them to town for her."
“It aint right," pa says. "It's a flouting of the dead."
It'll be there. It'll be there come Christmas, she says, shining on the track. She says he wont sell it to no town boys.
Darl
He goes on toward the barn, entering the lot, wooden-backed.
Dewey Dell carries the basket on one arm, in the other hand something wrapped square in a newspaper. Her face is calm and sullen, her eyes brooding and alert; within them I can see Peabody's back like two round peas in two thimbles: perhaps in Peabody's back two of those worms which work surreptitious and steady through you and out the other side and you waking suddenly from sleep or from waking, with on your face an expression sudden, intent, and concerned. She sets the basket into the wagon and climbs in, her leg coming long from beneath her tightening dress: that lever which moves the world; one of that caliper which measures the length and breadth of life. She sits on the seat beside Vardaman and sets the parcel on her lap.
Then he enters the barn. He has not looked back.
"It aint rights" pa says. It’s little enough for him to do for her."
"Go on," Cash says. "Leave him stay if he wants. He’ll be all right here. Maybe he’ll go up to Tull's and stay."
"He’ll catch us," I say. "He’ll cut across and meet us at Tull's lane."
"He would have rid that horse, too," pa says, "if I hadn't a stopped him. A durn spotted critter wilder than a cattymount. A deliberate flouting of her and of me."
The wagon moves; the mules' ears begin to bob. Behind us, above the house, motionless in tall and soaring circles, they diminish and disappear.
Anse
I told him not to bring that horse out of respect for his dead ma, because it wouldn't look right, him prancing along on a durn circus animal and her wanting us all to be in the wagon with her that sprung; from her flesh and blood, but we hadn't no more than passed Tuffs lane when Darl begun to laugh. Setting: back there on the plank seat with Cash, with his dead ma laying in her coffin at his feet, laughing. How many times I told him if s doing such things as that that makes folks talk about him, I dont know. I says I got some regard for what folks says about my flesh, and blood even if you haven't, even if I have raised such a durn passel of boys, and when you fixes it so folks can say such about you, it's a reflection on your ma, I says, not me: I am a man and I can stand it; it's on your womenfolks, your ma and sister that you should care for, and I turned and looked back at him and him setting there, laughing.
“I dont expect you to have no respect for me," I says. "But with your own ma not cold in her coffin yet."
“Yonder," Cash says, jerking his head toward the lane. The horse is still a right smart piece away, coming up at a good pace, but I dont have to be told who it is. I just looked back at Darl, setting