As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [32]
“I give her my promised word in the presence of the Lord," Anse says. "I reckon it aint no need to worry."
But still he does not start the mules. We set there above the water. Another log bobs up over the jam and goes on; we watch it check up and swing slow for a minute where the ford used to be. Then it goes on.
"It might start falling tonight," I say. "You could lay over one more day."
Then Jewel turns sideways on the horse. He has not moved until then, and he turns and looks at me. His face is kind of green, then it would go red and then green again. "Get to hell on back to your damn plowing," he says. "Who the hell asked you to follow us here?"
"I never meant no harm," I say.
"Shut up, Jewel," Cash says. Jewel looks back at the water, his face gritted, going red and green and then red. "Well," Cash says after a while, "what you want to do?"
Anse dont say nothing. He sets humped up, mumbling his mouth. "If it was just up, we could drive across it," he says.
"Come on," Jewel says, moving the horse.
"Wait," Cash says. He looks at the bridge. We look at him, except Anse and the gal. They are looking at the water. "Dewey Dell and Vardaman and pa better walk across on the bridge," Cash says.
"Vernon can help them," Jewel says. "And we can hitch his mule ahead of ourn."
"You aint going to take my mule into that water," I say.
Jewel looks at me. His eyes look like pieces of a broken plate. I’ll pay for your damn mule. I'll buy it from you right now."
"My mule aint going into that water," I say.
"Jewel's going to use his horse," Darl says. "Why wont you risk your mule, Vernon?"
"Shut up, Darl," Cash says. "You and Jewel both."
"My mule aint going into that water," I say.
Darl
He sits the horse, glaring at Vernon, his lean face suffused up to and beyond the pale rigidity of his eyes. The summer when he was fifteen, he took a spell of sleeping. One morning when I went to feed the mules the cows were still in the tie-up and then I heard pa go back to the house and call him. When we came on back to the house for breakfast he passed us, carrying the milk buckets, stumbling along like he was drunk, and he was milking when we put the mules in and went on to the field without him. We had been there an hour and still he never showed up. When Dewey Dell came with our lunch, pa sent her back to find Jewel. They found him in the tie-up, sitting on the stool, asleep.
After that, every morning pa would go in and wake him. He would go to sleep at die supper table and soon as supper was finished he would go to bed, and when I came in to bed he would be lying there like a dead man. Yet still pa would have to wake him in the morning. He would get up, but he wouldn't hardly have half sense: he would stand for pa's jawing and complaining without a word and take the milk buckets and go to the barn, and once I found him asleep at the cow, the bucket in place and half full and his hands up to the wrists in the milk and his head against the cow's flank.
After that Dewey Dell had to do the milking. He still got up when pa waked him, going about what we told him to do in that dazed way. It was like he was trying hard to do them; that he was as puzzled as anyone else.
"Are you sick?" ma said. "Dont you feel all right?"
"Yes," Jewel said. "I feel all right."
"He's just lazy, trying me," pa said, and Jewel standing there, asleep on his feet like as not. "Aint you?” he said, waking Jewel up again to answer.
"No," Jewel said.
"You take off and stay in the house today," ma said.
"With that whole bottom piece to be busted out?" pa said. 'If you aint sick, what's the matter with you?"
"Nothing," Jewel said. "I'm all right."