“You promised her,” she says. “She wouldn’t go until you promised. She thought she could depend on you. If you don’t do it, it will be a curse on you.”
“Can’t no man say I don’t aim to keep my word,” Bundren says. “My heart is open to ere a man.”
“I don’t care what your heart is,” she says. She was whispering, kind of, talking fast. “You promised her. You’ve got to. You——” Then she seen me and quit, standing there. If they’d been pistols, I wouldn’t be talking now. So when I talked to him about it, he says,
“I give her my promise. Her mind is set on it.”
“But seems to me she’d rather have her ma buried close by, so she could——”
“It’s Addie I give the promise to,” he says. “Her mind is set on it.”
So I told them to drive it into the barn because it was threatening rain again, and that supper was about ready. Only they didn’t want to come in.
“I thank you,” Bundren says. “We wouldn’t discommode you. We got a little something in the basket. We can make out.”
“Well,” I says, “since you are so particular about your womenfolks, I am too. And when folks stops with us at meal-time and won’t come to the table, my wife takes it as a insult.”
So the girl went on to the kitchen to help Rachel. And then Jewel come to me.
“Sho,” I says. “Help yourself outen the loft. Feed him when you bait the mules.”
“I rather pay you for him,” he says.
“What for?” I says. “I wouldn’t begrudge no man a bait for his horse.”
“I rather pay you,” he says; I thought he said extra.
“Extra for what?” I says. “Won’t he eat hay and corn?”
“Extra feed,” he says. “I feed him a little extra and I don’t want him beholden to no man.”
“You can’t buy no feed from me, boy,” I says. “And if he can eat that loft clean, I’ll help you load the barn on to the wagon in the morning.”
“He ain’t never been beholden to no man,” he says. “I rather pay you for it.”
And if I had my rathers, you wouldn’t be here a-tall, I wanted to say. But I just says, “Then it’s high time he commenced. You can’t buy no feed from me.”
When Rachel put supper on, her and the girl went and fixed some beds. But wouldn’t any of them come in. “She’s been dead long enough to get over that sort of foolishness,” I says. Because I got just as much respect for the dead as ere a man, but you’ve got to respect the dead themselves, and a woman that’s been dead in a box four days, the best way to respect her is to get her into the ground as quick as you can. But they wouldn’t do it.
“It wouldn’t be right,” Bundren says. “ ’Course, if the boys wants to go to bed, I reckon I can set up with her. I don’t begrudge her it.”
So when I went back down there they were squatting on the ground around the wagon, all of them. “Let that chap come to the house and get some sleep, anyway,” I says. “And you better come too,” I says to the girl. I wasn’t aiming to interfere with them. And I sholy hadn’t done nothing to her that I knowed.
“He’s done already asleep,” Bundren says. They had done put him to bed in the trough in a empty stall.
“Well, you come on, then,” I says to her. But still she never said nothing. They just squatted there. You couldn’t hardly see them. “How about you boys?” I says. “You got a full day to-morrow.” After a while Cash says,
“I thank you. We can make out.”
“We wouldn’t be beholden,” Bundren says. “I thank you kindly.”
So I left them squatting there. I reckon after four days they was used to it. But Rachel wasn’t.
“It’s a outrage,” she says. “A outrage.”
“What could he ’a’ done?” I says. “He give her his promised word.”
“Who’s talking about him?” she says. “Who cares about him?” she says, crying. “I just wish that you and him and all the men in the world that torture us alive and flout us dead, dragging us up and down the country——”
“Now, now,” I says. “You’re upset.”
“Don’t you touch me!” she says. “Don’t you touch me!”
A man can’t tell nothing about them. I lived with the same one fifteen years and I be durn if I can. And I imagined a lot of things coming up between us, but I be durn if I ever thought it would be a body four days dead and that a woman. But they make life hard on them not taking it as it comes up, like a man does.
So I laid there, hearing it commence to rain, thinking about them down there, squatting around the wagon and the rain on the roof, and thinking about Rachel crying there until after a while it was like I could still hear her crying even after she was asleep, and smelling it even when I knowed I couldn’t. I couldn’t decide even then whether I could or not, or if it wasn’t just knowing it was what it was.
So next morning I never went down there. I heard them hitching up and then when I knowed they must be about ready to take out, I went out the front and went down the road toward the bridge until I heard the wagon come out of the lot and go back toward New Hope. And then when I come back to the house, Rachel jumped on me because I wasn’t there to make them come in to breakfast. You can’t tell about them. Just about when you decide they mean one thing, I be durn if you not only haven’t got to change your mind, like as not you got to take a raw-hiding for thinking they meant it.
But it was still like I could smell it. And so I decided then that it wasn’t smelling it, but it was just knowing it was there, like you will get fooled now and then. But when I went to the barn I knew different. When I walked into the hallway I saw something. It kind of hunkered up when I come in and I thought at first it was one of them got left, then I saw what it was. It was a buzzard. It looked around and saw me and went on down the hall, spraddle-legged, with its wings kind of hunkered out, watching me first over one shoulder and then over the other, like a old bald-headed man. When it got outdoors it begun to fly. It had to fly a long time before it ever got up into the air, with it thick and heavy and full of rain like it was.
If they was bent on going to Jefferson, I reckon they could have gone around up by Mount Vernon, like MacCallum did. He’ll get home about day after to-morrow, horse-back. Then they’d be just eighteen miles from town. But maybe this bridge being gone too has learned him the Lord’s sense and judgment.
That MacCallum. He’s been trading with me off and on for twelve years. I have known him from a boy up; know his name as well as I do my own. But be durn if I can say it.
DEWEY DELL
THE signboard comes in sight. It is looking out at the road now, because it can wait. New Hope. 3 mi. it will say. New Hope. 3 mi. New Hope. 3 mi. And then the road will begin, curving away into the trees, empty with waiting, saying New Hope three miles.
I heard that my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had. It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon. It’s not that I wouldn’t and will not it’s that it is too soon too soon too soon.
Now it begins to say it. New Hope three miles. New Hope three miles. That’s what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events. Cash’s head turns slowly as we approach, his pale, empty, sad, composed and questioning face following the red and empty curve; beside the back wheel Jewel sits the horse, gazing straight ahead.
The land runs out of Darl’s eyes; they swim to pin-points. They begin at my feet and rise along my body to my face, and then my dress is gone: I sit naked on the seat above the unhurrying mules, above the travail. Suppose I tell him to turn. He will do what I say. Don’t you know he will do what I say? Once I waked with a black void rushing under me. I could not see. I saw Vardaman rise and go to the window and strike the knife into the fish, the blood gushing, hissing like steam but I could not see. He’ll do as I say. He always does. I can persuade him to anything. You know I can. Suppose I say Turn
