As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [57]
"Wont we get to Jefferson tomorrow?" he says. He is watching us, his eyes interrogatory, intent, and sad. "I can last it out."
"It'll be easier on you," pa says. "It'll keep it from rubbing together."
"I can last it," Cash says. "We’ll lose time stopping."
"We done bought the cement, now," pa says.
"I could last it," Cash says. "It aint but one more day. It dont bother to speak of." He looks at us, his eyes wide in his thin gray face, questioning. "It sets up so," he says.
"We done bought it now," pa says.
I mix the cement in the can, stirring the slow water into the pale green thick coils. I bring the can to the wagon where Cash can see. He lies on his back, his thin profile in silhouette, ascetic and profound against the sky. "Does that look about right?" I say.
"You dont want too much water, or it wont work right," he says.
"Is this too much?"
"Maybe if you could get a little sand," he says. "It aint but one more day," he says. "It dont bother me none."
Vardaman goes back down the road to where we crossed the branch and returns with sand. He pours it slowly into the thick coiling in the can. I go to the wagon again.
"Does that look all right?"
"Yes," Cash says. "I could have lasted. It dont bother me none."
We loosen the splints and pour the cement over his leg, slow.
"Watch out for it," Cash says. "Dont get none on it if you can help."
"Yes," I say. Dewey Dell tears a piece of paper from the package and wipes the cement from the top of it as it drips from Cash's leg.
"How does that feel?"
“It feels fine," he says. "It's cold. It feels fine."
"If it'll just help you," pa says. "I asks your forgiveness. I never foreseen it no more than you."
"It feels fine," Cash says.
If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time.
We replace the splints, the cords, drawing them tight, the cement in thick pale green slow surges among the cords, Cash watching us quietly with that profound questioning look.
"That'll steady it," I say.
"Ay," Cash says. "I'm obliged."
Then we all turn on the wagon and watch him. He is coming up the road behind us, wooden-backed, wooden-faced, moving only from his hips down. He
comes tip without a word, with his pale rigid eyes in his high sullen face, and gets into the wagon.
"Here's a hill," pa says. "I reckon you'll have to get out and walk."
Vardaman
Darl and Jewel and Dewey Dell and I are walking tip the hill, behind the wagon. Jewel came back. He came up the road and got into the wagon. He was walking. Jewel hasn't got a horse anymore. Jewel is my brother. 'Cash is my brother. Cash has a broken leg. We fixed Cash's leg so it doesn't hurt. Cash is my brother. Jewel is my brother too, but he hasn't got a broken leg.
Now there are five of them, tall in little tall black circles.
"Where do they stay at night, Darl?" I say. "When we stop at night in the barn, where do they stay?"
The hill goes off into the sky. Then the sun comes up from behind the hill and the mules and the wagon and pa walk on the sun. You cannot watch them, walking slow on the sun. In Jefferson it is red on the track behind the glass. The track goes shining round and round. Dewey Dell says so.
Tonight I am going to see where they stay while we are in the barn.
Darl
Jewel," I say, "whose son are you?"
The breeze was setting up from the barn, so we put her under the apple tree, where the moonlight can dapple the apple tree upon the long slumbering flanks within which now and then she talks in little trickling bursts of secret and murmurous bubbling. I took Vardaman to listen. When we came up the cat leaped down from it and flicked away with silver claw and silver eye into the shadow.
"Your mother was a horse, but who was your father, Jewel?"
"You goddamn lying son of a bitch."
"Dont call me that," I say.
"You goddamn lying son of a bitch."
"Dont you call me that, Jewel." In the tall moonlight his eyes look like spots of white paper pasted on a high small football.
After supper Cash began