As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [8]
"Her mind is set on it," he says. "I reckon she's bound to go."
"It comes to all of us," Cora says. "Let the Lord comfort you."
"About that corn," I say. I tell him again I will help him out if he gets into a tight, with her sick and all. Like most folks around here, I done holp him so much already I cant quit now.
"I aimed to get to it today," he says. "Seems like I cant get my mind on nothing."
"Maybe she'll hold out till you are laid-by," I say.
"If God wills it," he says.
"Let Him comfort you," Cora says.
If Cash just works that careful on my barn. He looks up when we pass. "Dont reckon I'll get to you this week," he says.
"’Taint no rush," I say. "Whenever you get around to it."
We get into the wagon. Cora sets the cake box on her lap. It's fixing to rain, sho.
"I dont know what he'll do," Cora says. "I just dont know."
"Poor Anse," I say. "She kept him at work for thirty-odd years. I reckon she is tired."
"And I reckon she'll be behind him for thirty years more," Kate says. "Or if it aint her, he’ll get another one before cotton-picking."
"I reckon Cash and Darl can get married now," Eula says.
"That poor boy," Cora says. "The poor little tyke."
"What about Jewel?" Kate says.
"He can, too," Eula says.
"Hmph," Kate says. "I reckon he will. I reckon so. I reckon there's more gals than one around here that dont want to see Jewel tied down. Well, they needn't to worry."
"Why, Kate!" Cora says. The wagon begins to rattle. "The poor little tyke," Cora says.
It's fixing to rain this night. Yes, sir. A rattling wagon is mighty dry weather, for a Birdsell. But that'll be cured. It will for a fact.
"She ought to taken them cakes after she said she would," Kate says.
Anse
Durn that road. And it fixing to rain, too. I can stand here and same as see it with second-sight, a-shutting down behind them like a wall, shutting down betwixt them and my given promise. I do the best I can, much as I can get my mind on anything, but durn them boys.
A-laying there, right tip to my door, where every bad luck that comes and goes is bound to find it. I told Addie it want any luck living on a road when it come by here, and she said, for the world like a woman, "Get up and move, then." But I told her it want no luck in it, because the Lord put roads for travelling: why He laid them down flat on the earth. When He aims for something to be always a-moving, He makes it longways, like a road or a horse or a wagon, but when He aims for something to stay put, He makes it up-and-down ways, like a tree or a man. And so he never aimed for folks to live on a road, because which gets there first, I says, the road or the house? Did you ever know Him to set a road down by a house? I says. No you never, I says, because it's always men cant rest till they gets the house set where everybody that passes in a wagon can spit in the doorway, keeping the folks restless and wanting to get up and go somewheres else when He aimed for them to stay put like a tree or a stand of corn. Because if He'd a aimed for man to be always a-moving and going somewheres else, wouldn't He a put him longways on his belly, like a snake? It stands to reason He would.
Putting it where every bad luck prowling can find it and come straight to my door, charging me taxes on top of it. Making me pay for Cash having to get them carpenter notions when if it hadn't been no road come there, he wouldn't a got them; falling off of churches and lifting no hand in six months and me and Addie slaving and a-slaving, when there's plenty of sawing; on this place he could do if he's got to saw.
And Darl too. Talking me out of him, durn them. It aint that I am afraid of work; I always is fed me and mine and kept a roof above us: it's that they would short-hand me just because he tends to his own business, just because he's got his eyes full of the land all the time. I says to them, he was all right at first, with his eyes full of the land, because the land laid up-and-down ways then; it wasn't till that ere road come and switched the