We’ll wait for ourn. She’ll want it so.
It was about a mile from the house we saw him, sitting on the edge of the slough. It hadn’t had a fish in it never that I knowed. He looked around at us, his eyes round and calm, his face dirty, the pole across his knees. Cora was still singing.
“This ain’t no good day to fish,” I said. “You come on home with us and me and you’ll go down to the river first thing in the morning and catch some fish.”
“It’s one in here,” he said. “Dewey Dell seen it.”
“You come on with us. The river’s the best place.”
“It’s in here,” he said. “Dewey Dell seen it.”
“I’m bounding toward my God and my reward,” Cora sung.
DARL
“IT’S not your horse that’s dead, Jewel,” I say. He sits erect on the seat, leaning a little forward, wooden-backed. The brim of his hat has soaked free of the crown in two places, drooping across his wooden face so that, head lowered, he looks through it like through the visor of a helmet, looking long across the valley to where the barn leans against the bluff, shaping the invisible horse. “See then?” I say. High above the house, against the quick thick sky, they hang in narrowing circles. From here they are no more than specks, implacable, patient, portentous. “But it’s not your horse that’s dead.”
“Goddamn you,” he says. “Goddamn you.”
I cannot love my mother because I have no mother. Jewel’s mother is a horse.
Motionless, the tall buzzards hang in soaring circles, the clouds giving them an illusion of retrograde.
Motionless, wooden-backed, wooden-faced, he shapes the horse in a rigid stoop like a hawk, hook-winged. They are waiting for us, ready for the moving of it, waiting for him. He enters the stall and waits until it kicks at him so that he can slip past and mount on to the trough and pause, peering out across the intervening stall-tops toward the empty path, before he reaches into the loft.
“Goddamn him. Goddamn him.”
CASH
“IT won’t balance. If you want it to tote and ride on a balance, we will have——”
“Pick up. Goddamn you, pick up.”
“I’m telling you it won’t tote and it won’t ride on a balance unless——”
“Pick up! Pick up, goddamn your thick-nosed soul to hell, pick up!”
It won’t balance. If they want it to tote and ride on a balance, they will have——
DARL
HE stoops among us above it, two of the eight hands. In his face the blood goes in waves. In between them his flesh is greenish looking, about that smooth, thick, pale green of cow’s cud; his face suffocated, furious, his lip lifted upon his teeth. “Pick up!” he says. “Pick up, goddamn your thick-nosed soul!”
He heaves, lifting one whole side so suddenly that we all spring into the lift to catch and balance it before he hurls it completely over. For an instant it resists, as though volitional, as though within it her pole-thin body clings furiously, even though dead, to a sort of modesty, as she would have tried to conceal a soiled garment that she could not prevent her body soiling. Then it breaks free, rising suddenly as though the emaciation of her body had added buoyancy to the planks or as though, seeing that the garment was about to be torn from her, she rushes suddenly after it in a passionate reversal that flouts its own desire and need. Jewel’s face goes completely green and I can hear teeth in his breath.
We carry it down the hall, our feet harsh and clumsy on the floor, moving with shuffling steps, and through the door.
“Steady it a minute, now,” pa says, letting go. He turns back to shut and lock the door, but Jewel will not wait.
“Come on,” he says in that suffocating voice. “Come on.”
We lower it carefully down the steps. We move, balancing it as though it were something infinitely precious, our faces averted, breathing through our teeth to keep our nostrils closed. We go down the path, toward the slope.
“We better wait,” Cash says. “I tell you it ain’t balanced now. We’ll need another hand on that hill.”
“Then turn loose,” Jewel says. He will not stop. Cash begins to fall behind, hobbling to keep up, breathing harshly; then he is distanced and Jewel carries the entire front end alone, so that, tilting as the path begins to slant, it begins to rush away from me and slip down the air like a sled upon 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 it coasts 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 won’t be sold because it belongs to Santa Claus and he has 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 looks at 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, can’t 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 can’t 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 ain’t respectful,” pa says. “It’s a deliberate flouting of her and of me.”
“Do you want him to come all the way back here and carry 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 ain’t 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 ain’t 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 won’t 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. She sets 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 ain’t 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 Tull’s lane.”
“He would have rid that horse, too,” pa says, “if I hadn’t a stopped him. A durn spotted critter wilder than a cattymount. A deliberate flouting of her and of me.”
The wagon moves; the mules’ ears begin to bob. Behind us, above the house, motionless in tall and soaring circles, they diminish and disappear.
ANSE
ITOLD him not to bring that horse out of respect for his dead ma, because it wouldn’t look right, him prancing along on a durn circus animal and her wanting us all to be in the wagon with her that sprung from her flesh and blood, but we hadn’t no more than passed Tull’s lane when Darl begun to laugh. Setting back there on the plank seat with Cash, with his dead ma
