As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [44]
"It aint so deep there," Vernon says. He does not look back. He is watching the water where Jewel went under.
When Jewel comes up he has the saw.
When we pass the wagon pa is standing beside it; scrubbing at the two mud smears with a handful of leaves. Against the jungle Jewel's horse looks like a patchwork quilt hung on a line.
Cash has not moved. We stand above him, holding the plane, the saw, the hammer, the square, the rule, the chalk-line, while Dewey Dell squats and lifts Cash's head. "Cash," she says; "Cash."
He opens his eyes, staring profoundly up at our inverted faces.
"If ever was such a misfortunate man," pa says.
"Look, Cash," we say, holding the tools up so he can see; "what else did you have?"
He tries to speak, rolling his head, shutting his eyes.
"Cash," we say; "Cash."
It is to vomit he is turning his head. Dewey Dell wipes his mouth on the wet hem of her dress; then he can speak.
"It's his saw-set," Jewel says. "The new one he bought when he bought the rule." He moves, turning away. Vernon looks tip after him, still squatting. Then he rises and follows Jewel down to the water.
"If ever was such a misfortunate man," pa says. He looms tall above us as we squat; he looks like a figure carved clumsily from tough wood by a drunken caricaturist. "It's a trial." he says. "But I doat begrudge her it. No man can say I begrudge her it" Dewey Dell-has kid Cash's head back on the folded coat twisting his head a little to avoid the vomit Beside him his tools lie. "A fellow might call ft lucky it was the same leg he broke when he fell offen that church," pa says. "But I dont begrudge her it."
Jewel and Vernon are in the river again. From here they do not appear to violate the surface at all; it is as though it had severed them both at a single blow, the two torsos moving with infinitesimal and ludicrous care upon the surface. It looks peaceful, like machinery does after you have watched it and listened to it for a long time. As though the clotting which is you had dissolved into the myriad original motion, and seeing and hearing in themselves blind and deaf; fury in itself quiet with stagnation. Squatting, Dewey Dell's wet dress shapes for the dead eyes of three blind men those mammalian ludicrosities which are the horizons and the valleys of the earth.
Cash
It wasn't on a balance. I told them that if they wanted it to tote and ride on a balance, they would have to
Cora
One day we were talking. She had never been pure religious, not even after that summer at the camp meeting when Brother Whitfield wrestled with her spirit, singled her out and strove with the vanity in her mortal heart, and I said to her many a time, "God gave you children to comfort your hard human lot and for a token of His own suffering and love, for in love you conceived and bore them." I said that because she took God's love and her duty to Him too much as a matter of course, and such conduct is not pleasing to Him. I said, "He gave us the gift to raise our voices in His undying praise" because I said there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner than over a hundred that never sinned. And she said, "My daily life is an acknowledgment and expiation of my sin" and I said "Who are you, to say what is sin and what is not sin? It is the Lord's part to judge; ours to praise His mercy and His holy name in the hearing of our fellow mortals" because He alone can see into the heart, and just because a woman's Me is right in the sight of man, she cant know if there is no sin in her heart without she opens her heart to the Lord and receives His grace. I said, "Just because you have been a faithful wife is no sign that there is no sin in your heart, and just because your Me is hard is no sign that the Lord's grace is absolving you." And she said, "I know my own sin. I know that I deserve my punishment. I do not begrudge it." And I said, 'It is out of your vanity that you would judge sin and salvation in the Lord's place. It is our mortal lot to suffer and to raise our voices in praise of Him who judges the sin