As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [61]
It just cracked. It wouldn't come off.
"It'll take the hide, too," Mr Gillespie said. "Why in the tarnation you put it on there. Didn't none of you think to grease his leg first?"
"I just aimed to help him," pa said. "It was Darl put it on."
"Where is Darl?" they said.
"Didn't none of you have more sense than that?" Mr Gillespie said. "I'd a thought he would, anyway."
Jewel was lying on his face. His back was red. Dewey Dell put the medicine on it. The medicine was made out of butter and soot, to draw out the fire. Then his back was black.
"Does it hurt, Jewel?" I said. "Your back looks like a nigger's, Jewel," I said. Cash's foot and leg looked like a nigger's. Then they broke it off. Cash's leg bled.
"You go on back and lay down," Dewey Dell said. "You ought to be asleep." "Where is Darl?" they said.
He is out there under the apple tree with her, lying on her. He is there so the cat wont come back. I said, "Are you going to keep the cat away, Darl?"
The moonlight dappled on him too. On her it was still, but on Darl it dappled up and down.
"You needn't to cry," I said. "Jewel got her out. You needn't to cry, Darl."
The barn is still red. It used to be redder than this. Then it went swirling, making the stars run backward without falling. It hurt my heart like the train did.
When I went to find where they stay at night, I saw something that Dewey Dell says I mustn't tell nobody
Darl
We have been passing the signs for some time now: the drugstores, the clothing stores, the patent medicine and the garages and cafes, and the mile-boards diminishing, becoming more starkly raccruent: 3 mi. 2 mi. From the crest of a hill, as we get into the wagon again, we can see the somke low and flat, seemingly unmoving in the unwinded afternoon.
"Is that it, Darl?" Vardaman says. "Is that Jefferson?" He too has lost flesh; like ours, his face has an expression strained, dreamy and gaunt.
"Yes," I say. He lifts his head and looks at the sky.
High against it they hand in narrowing circles, like the smoke, with an outward semblance of from and purpose, but with no inference of motion, progress or retrograde, We mount the wagon again where Cash lies on the box, the Jagged shards of cement cracked about his leg. The shabby mules droop rattling and clanking down the hill.
“We'll have to take him to the doctor," pa says. "I reckon it aint no way around it." The back of Jewel's shirt, where it touches him, stains slow and black with grease. Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old 'despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.
Dewey Dell sits on the seat, the newspaper package on her lap. When we reach the foot of the hill where the road flattens between close walls of trees, she begins to look about quietly from one side of the road to the other. At last she says,
"I got to stop."
Pa looks at her, his shabby profile that of anticipant and disgruntled annoyance. He does not check the team. "What for?"
"I got to go to the bushes," Dewey Dell says.
Pa does not check the team. "Cant you wait till we get to town? It aint over a mile now."
"Stop," Dewey Dell says. "I got to go to the bushes."
Pa stops in the middle of the road and we watch Dewey Dell descend, carrying the package. She does not look back.
"Why not leave your cakes here?" I say. "We’ll watch them."
She descends steadily, not looking at us.
"How would she know where to go if she waited till we get to town?" Vardaman says. "Where would you go to do it in town, Dewey Dell?"
She lifts the package down and turns and disappears among the trees and undergrowth.
"Dont be no longer than you can help," pa says. "We aint got no time to waste." She does not answer. After a while we cannot hear her even. "We ought to done like Armstid and Gillespie said and sent word to town and had it dug and ready," he said.
"Why didn't you?" I say. "You could have telephoned."
"What for?" Jewel says. "Who the hell cant dig a hole in the ground?"
A car comes over the hill. It