As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [51]
There must have been a dozen of them setting along the ridge-pole of the bam, and that boy was chasing another one around the lot like it was a turkey and it just lifting enough to dodge him and go flopping bade to the roof of the shed again where he had found it setting on the coffin. It had got hot then, right, and the breeze had dropped or changed or something, so I went and found Jewel, but Lula come out.
"You got to do something,"' she said. "It's a outrage."
"That's what I aim to do," I said.
"It's a outrage," she said. "He should be lawed for treating her so."
"He's getting her into the ground the best he can," I said. So I found Jewel and asked him if he didn't want to take one of the mules and go over to the Bend and see about Anse. He didn't say nothing. He just looked at me with his jaws going bone-white and them bone-white eyes of hisn, then he went and begun to call Darl.
"What you fixing to do?" I said.
He didn't answer. Darl come out. "Come on," Jewel said.
"What you aim to do?" Darl said.
"Going to move the wagon," Jewel said over his shoulder.
"Dont be a fool," I said. "I never meant nothing. You couldn't help it." And Darl hung back too but nothing woulddn't suit Jewel.
"Shut your goddamn mouth," he says.
"It's got to be somewhere," Darl said. "We’ll take out soon as pa gets back."
"You wont help me?" Jewel says, them white eyes of hisn kind of blaring and his face shaking like he had a aguer.
"No," Darl said. "I wont. Wait till pa gets back."
So I stood in the door and watched him push and pull at that wagon. It was on a downhill, and once I thought he was fixing to beat out the back end of the shed. Then, the dinner bell rung. I called him, but he didn't look around. "Come on to dinner," I said. 'Tell that boy." But he didn't answer, so I went on to dinner. The gal went down to get that boy, but she come back without him. About half through dinner we heard him yelling again, running that buzzard out.
“It's a outrage," Lula said; "a outrage."
"He's doing the best he can," I said. "A fellow dont trade with Snopes in thirty minutes. They'll set in die shade all afternoon to dicker."
"Do?" she says. "Do? He's done too much, already."
And I reckon he had. Trouble is, his quitting was Just about to start our doing. He couldn't buy no team from nobody, let alone Snopes, withouten he had something to mortgage he didn't know would mortgage yet. And so when I went back to the field I looked at my mules and same as told them goodbye for a spell And when I come back that evening and the sun shining all day on that shed, I wasn't so sho I would regret it.
He come riding up just as I went out to the porch, where they all was. He looked kind of funny: kind of more hang-dog than common, and kind of proud too. Like he had done something he thought was cute but wasn't so sho now how other folks would take it.
"I got a team," he said.
"You bought a team from Snopes?" I said.
"I reckon Snopes aint the only man in this country that can drive a trade," he said.
"Sho," I said. He was looking at Jewel, with that funny look, but Jewel had done got down from the porch and was going toward the horse. To see what Anse had done to it, I reckon.
"Jewel," Anse says. Jewel looked back. "Come here," Anse says. Jewel come back a little and stopped again,
"What you want?" he said.
"So you got a team from Snopes," I said. "He’ll send them over tonight, I reckon? You'll want a early start tomorrow, long as you'll have to go by Mottson."
Then he quit looking like he had been for a while. He got that badgered look like he used to have, mumbling his mouth.
"I do the best I can," he said. "Fore God, if there were ere a man in the living world suffered the trials and floutings I have suffered."
"A fellow that just beat Snopes in a trade ought to feel pretty good," I said. "What did you give him, Anse?"
He didn't look at me. "I give a chattel mortgage on my cultivator and seeder," he said.
"But they aint worth forty dollars. How far do you aim to get with a forty