As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [42]
Jewel approaches. He has the plane. "Vernon just found the square," he says. He looks down at Cash, dripping too. "Aint he talked none yet?"
"He had his saw and hammer and chalk-line and rule," I say. "I know that."
Jewel lays the square down. Pa watches him. "They cant be far away," pa says. 'It all went together. Was there ere a such misfortunate man."
Jewel does not look at pa. "You better call Vardaman back here," he says. He looks at Cash. Then he turns and goes away. "Get him to talk soon as he can," he says, "so he can tell us what else there was."
We return to the river. The wagon is hauled clear, the wheels chocked (carefully: we all helped; it is as though upon the shabby, familiar, inert shape of the wagon there lingered somehow, latent yet still immediate, that violence which had slain the mules that drew it not an hour since) above the edge of the flood. In the wagon bed it lies profoundly, the long pale planks hushed a little with wetting yet still yellow, like gold seen through water, save for two long muddy smears. We pass it and go on to the bank.
One end of the rope is made fast to a tree. At the edge of the stream, knee-deep, Vardaman stands, bent forward a little, watching Vernon with rapt absorption. He has stopped yelling and he is wet to the armpits. Vernon is at the other end of the rope, shoulder-deep in the river, looking back at Vardaman, "Further back than that," he says. "You git back by the tree and hold the rope for me, so it cant slip."
Vardaman backs along the rope, to the tree, moving blindly, watching Vernon. When we come up he looks at us once, his eyes round and a little dazed.
Then Be looks at Vernon again in that posture of rapt alertness.
"I got the hammer too," Vernon says. "Looks like we ought to done already got that chalk-line. It ought to floated."
"Floated clean away," Jewel says. "We wont get it. We ought to find the saw, though."
"I reckon so," Vernon says. He looks at the water. "That chalk-line, too. What else did he have?"
"He aint talked yet," Jewel says, entering the water. He looks back at me. "You go back and get him roused up to talk," he says.
"Pa's there," I say. I follow Jewel into the water, along the rope. It feels alive in my hand, bellied faintly in a prolonged and resonant arc. Vernon is watching me.
"You better go," he says. "You better be there."
"Let's see what else we can get before it washes on down," I say.
We hold to the rope, the current curling and dimpling about our shoulders. But beneath that false blandness the true force of it leans against us lazily. I had not thought that water in July could be so cold. It is like hands molding and prodding at the very bones. Vernon is still looking back toward the bank.
"Reckon it'll hold us all?" he says. We too look back, following the rigid bar of the rope as it rises from the water to the tree and Vardaman crouched a little beside it, watching us. "Wish my mule wouldn't strike out for home." Vernon says.
"Come on," Jewel says. "Let's get outen here."
We submerge in turn, holding to the rope, Being clutched by one another while the cold wall of the water sucks the slanting mud backward and upstream from beneath our feet and we are suspended so, groping along the cold bottom. Even the mud there is not still. It has a chill, scouring quality, as though the earth under us were in motion too. We touch and fumble at one another's extended arms, letting ourselves go cautiously against the rope; or, erect in turn, watch the water suck and boil where one of the other two gropes beneath the surface. Pa has come down to the shore, watching us.
Vernon comes up, streaming, his face sloped down into his pursed blowing mouth. His mouth is bluish, like a circle of weathered rubber. He has the rule.
"He’ll be glad of that," I say. It's right new. He bought it just last month out of the catalogue."
"If we just knowed for sho what else," Vernon says, looking over his shoulder and then turning to face where Jewel had disappeared. "Didn't he go down fore