Free As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Page B

invisible snow, smoothly evacuating atmosphere in which the sense of it is still shaped.
    “Wait, Jewel,” I say. But he will not wait. He is almost running now and Cash is left behind. It seems to me that the end which I now carry alone has no weight, as though itcoasts like a rushing straw upon the furious tide of Jewel’s despair. I am not even touching it when, turning, he lets it overshoot him, swinging, and stops it and sloughs it into the wagon bed in the same motion and looks back at me, his face suffused with fury and despair.
    “Goddamn you. Goddamn you.”

VARDAMAN

    We are going to town. Dewey Dell says it wont be sold because it belongs to Santa Claus and he taken it back with him until next Christmas. Then it will be behind the glass again, shining with waiting.
    Pa and Cash are coming down the hill, but Jewel is going to the barn. “Jewel,” pa says. Jewel does not stop. “Where you going?” pa says. But Jewel does not stop. “You leave that horse here,” pa says. Jewel stops and looksat pa. Jewel’s eyes look like marbles. “You leave that horse here,” pa says. “We’ll all go in the wagon with ma, like she wanted.”
    But my mother is a fish. Vernon seen it. He was there.
    “Jewel’s mother is a horse,” Darl said.
    “Then mine can be a fish, cant it, Darl?” I said.
    Jewel is my brother.
    “Then mine will have to be a horse, too,” I said.
    “Why?” Darl said. “If pa is your pa, why does your ma have to be a horse just because Jewel’s is?”
    “Why does it?” I said. “Why does it, Darl?”
    Darl is my brother.
    “Then what is your ma, Darl?” I said.
    “I haven’t got ere one,” Darl said. “Because if I had one, it is was . And if it is was, it cant be is . Can it?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Then I am not,” Darl said. “Am I?”
    “No,” I said.
    I am. Darl is my brother.
    “But you are, Darl,” I said.
    “I know it,” Darl said. “That’s why I am not is. Are is too many for one woman to foal.”
    Cash is carrying his tool box. Pa looks at him. “I’ll stop at Tull’s on the way back,” Cash says. “Get on that barn roof.”
    “It aint respectful,” pa says. “It’s a deliberate flouting of her and of me.”
    “Do you want him to come all the way back here andcarry them up to Tull’s afoot?” Darl says. Pa looks at Darl, his mouth chewing. Pa shaves every day now because my mother is a fish.
    “It aint right,” pa says.
    Dewey Dell has the package in her hand. She has the basket with our dinner too.
    “What’s that?” pa says.
    “Mrs Tull’s cakes,” Dewey Dell says, getting into the wagon. “I’m taking them to town for her.”
    “It aint right,” pa says. “It’s a flouting of the dead.”
    It’ll be there. It’ll be there come Christmas, she says, shining on the track. She says he wont sell it to no town boys.

DARL

    He goes on toward the barn, entering the lot, wooden-backed.
    Dewey Dell carries the basket on one arm, in the other hand something wrapped square in a newspaper. Her face is calm and sullen, her eyes brooding and alert; within them I can see Peabody’s back like two round peas in two thimbles: perhaps in Peabody’s back two of those worms which work surreptitious and steady through you and out the other side and you waking suddenly from sleep or from waking, with on your face an expression sudden, intent, and concerned. Shesets the basket into the wagon and climbs in, her leg coming long from beneath her tightening dress: that lever which moves the world; one of that caliper which measures the length and breadth of life. She sits on the seat beside Vardaman and sets the parcel on her lap.
    Then he enters the barn. He has not looked back.
    “It aint right,” pa says. “It’s little enough for him to do for her.”
    “Go on,” Cash says. “Leave him stay if he wants. He’ll be all right here. Maybe he’ll go up to Tull’s and stay.”
    “He’ll catch us,” I say. “He’ll cut across and meet us at