As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [29]
"I give her my promise. Her mind is set on it."
"But seems to me she'd rather have her ma buried close by, so she could—"
"It's Addie I give the promise to," he says. "Her mind is set on it."
So I told them to drive it into the barn, because it was threatening rain again, and that supper was about ready. Only they didn't want to come in.
"I thank you," Bundren says. "We wouldn't discommode you. We got a little something in the basket. We can make out."
"Well," I says, "since you are so particular about your womenfolks, I am too. And when folks stops with us at meal time and wont come to the table, my wife takes it as a insult."
So the girl went on to the kitchen to help Rachel. And then Jewel come to me.
"Sho," I says. "Help yourself outen the loft. Feed him when you bait the mules."
"I ratter pay you for him," he says.
"What for?" I says. "I wouldn't begrudge no man a bait for his horse."
"I rather pay you," he says; I thought he said extra.
"Extra for what?" I says. "Wont he eat hay and corn?"
"Extra feed," he says. "I feed him a little extra and I dont want him beholden to no man."
"You cant buy no feed from me, boy," I says. "And if he can eat that loft clean, I'll help you load the ham onto the wagon in the morning."
"He aint never been beholden to no man," he says. "I rather pay you for it."
And if I had my rathers, you wouldn't be here a-tall, I wanted to say. But I just says, "Then it's high time he commenced. You cant buy no feed from me."
When Rachel put supper on, her and the girl went and fixed some beds. But wouldn't any of them come in. "She's been dead long enough to get over that sort of foolishness," I says. Because I got just as much respect for the dead as ere a man, but you've got to respect the dead themselves, and a woman that's been dead in a box four days, the best way to respect her is to get her into the ground as quick as you can. But they wouldn't do it.
"It wouldn't be right," Bundren says. "Course, if the boys wants to go to bed, I reckon I can set up with her. I dont begrudge her it."
So when I went back down there they were squatting on the ground around the wagon, all of them. "Let that chap come to the house and get some sleep, anyway," I says. "And you better come too," I says to the girl. I wasn't aiming to interfere with them. And I sholy hadn't done nothing to her that I knowed.
"He's done already asleep," Bundren says. They had done put him to bed in the trough in a empty stall.
"Well, you come on, then," I says to her. But still she never said nothing. They just squatted there. You couldn't hardly see them. "How about you boys?" I says. "You got a full day tomorrow." After a while Cash says,
"I thank you. We can make out."
"We wouldn't be beholden," Bundren says. "I thank you kindly."
So I left them squatting there. I reckon after four days they was used to it. But Rachel wasn't.
"It's a outrage," she says. "A outrage."
"What could he a done?" I says. "He give her his promised word."
"Who's talking about him?" she says. "Who cares about him?" she says, crying. "I just wish that you and him and all the men in the world that torture us alive and flout us dead, dragging us up and down the country—"
"Now, now," I says. "You're upset."
"Dont you touch me!" she says. "Dont you touch me!"
A man cant tell nothing about them. I lived with the same one fifteen years and I be durn if I can. And I imagined a lot of things coming up between us, but I be durn if I ever thought it would be a body four days dead and that a woman. But they make life hard on them, not taking it as it comes up, like a man does.
So I laid there, hearing it commence to rain, thinking about them down there, squatting around the wagon and the rain on the roof, and thinking about Rachel crying there until after a while it was like I could still hear her crying even after she was asleep, and smelling