He was sitting the horse before the gate. Armstid was waiting at the gate. We stopped and he got down and we lifted Cash down and carried him into the house, where Mrs. Armstid had the bed ready. We left her and Dewey Dell undressing him.
We followed pa out to the wagon. He went back and got into the wagon and drove on, we following on foot, into the lot. The wetting had helped, because Armstid said, “You welcome to the house. You can put it there.” He followed, leading the horse, and stood beside the wagon, the reins in his hand.
“I thank you,” pa said. “We’ll use in the shed yonder. I know it’s a imposition on you.”
“You’re welcome to the house,” Armstid said. He had that wooden look on his face again; that bold, surly, high-coloured rigid look like his face and eyes were two colours of wood, the wrong one pale and the wrong one dark. His shirt was beginning to dry, but it still clung close upon him when he moved.
“She would appreciate it,” pa said.
We took the team out and rolled the wagon back under the shed. One side of the shed was open.
“It won’t rain under,” Armstid said. “But if you’d rather . . .”
Back of the barn was some rusted sheets of tin roofing. We took two of them and propped them against the open side.
“You’re welcome to the house,” Armstid said.
“I thank you,” pa said. “I’d take it right kind if you’d give them a little snack.”
“Sho,” Armstid said. “Lula’ll have supper ready soon as she gets Cash comfortable.” He had gone back to the horse and he was taking the saddle off, his damp shirt lapping flat to him when he moved.
Pa wouldn’t come in the house.
“Come in and eat,” Armstid said. “It’s nigh ready.”
“I wouldn’t crave nothing,” pa said. “I thank you.
“You come in and dry and eat,” Armstid said. “It’ll be all right here.”
“It’s for her,” pa said. “It’s for her sake I am taking the food. I got no team, no nothing. But she will be grateful to ere a one of you.”
“Sho,” Armstid said. “You folks come in and dry.”
But after Armstid gave pa a drink, he felt better, and when we went in to see about Cash he hadn’t come in with us. When I looked back he was leading the horse into the barn he was already talking about getting another team, and by supper time he had good as bought it. He is down there in the barn, sliding fluidly past the gaudy lunging swirl, into the stall with it. He climbs on to the manger and drags the hay down and leaves the stall and seeks and finds the curry-comb.
Then he returns and slips quickly past the single crashing thump and up against the horse, where it cannot over-reach. He applies the curry-comb, holding himself within the horse’s striking radius with the agility of an acrobat, cursing the horse in a whisper of obscene caress. Its head flashes back, tooth-cropped; its eyes roll in the dusk like marbles on a gaudy velvet cloth as he strikes it upon the face with the back of the curry-comb.
ARMSTID
BUT time I give him another sup of whisky and supper was about ready, he had done already bought a team from somebody, on a credit. Picking and choosing he were by then, saying how he didn’t like this span and wouldn’t put his money in nothing so-and-so owned, not even a hen coop.
“You might try Snopes,” I said. “He’s got three-four span. Maybe one of them would suit you.”
Then he begun to mumble his mouth, looking at me like it was me that owned the only span of mules in the country and wouldn’t sell them to him, when I knew that like as not it would be my team that would ever get them out of the lot at all. Only I don’t know what they would do with them, if they had a team. Littlejohn had told me that the levee through Haley bottom had done gone for two miles and that the only way to get to Jefferson would be to go around by Mottson. But that was Anse’s business.
“He’s a close man to trade with,” he says, mumbling his mouth. But when I give him another sup after supper, he cheered up some. He was aiming to go back to the barn and set up with her. Maybe he thought that if he just stayed down there ready to take out, Santa Claus would maybe bring him a span of mules. “But I reckon I can talk him around,” he says. “A man’ll always help a fellow in a tight, if he’s got ere a drop of Christian blood in him.”
“Of course you’re welcome to the use of mine,” I said, me knowing how much he believed that was the reason.
“I thank you,” he said. “She’ll want to go in ourn,” and him knowing how much I believed that was the reason.
After supper Jewel rode over to the Bend to get Peabody. I heard he was to be there to-day at Varner’s. Jewel come back about midnight. Peabody had gone down below Inverness somewhere, but Uncle Billy come back with him, with his satchel of horse-physic. Like he says, a man ain’t so different from a horse or a mule, come long come short, except a mule or a horse has got a little more sense. “What you been into now, boy?” he says, looking at Cash. “Get me a mattress and a chair and a glass of whisky,” he says.
He made Cash drink the whisky, then he run Anse out of the room. “Lucky it was the same leg he broke last summer,” Anse says, mournful, mumbling and blinking. “That’s something.”
We folded the mattress across Cash’s legs and set the chair on the mattress and me and Jewel set on the chair and the gal held the lamp and Uncle Billy taken a chew of tobacco and went to work. Cash fought pretty hard for a while, until he fainted. Then he laid still, with big balls of sweat standing on his face like they had started to roll down and then stopped to wait for him.
When he waked up, Uncle Billy had done packed up and left. He kept on trying to say something until the gal leaned down and wiped his mouth. “It’s his tools,” she said.
“I brought them in,” Darl said. “I got them.”
He tried to talk again; she leaned down. “He wants to see them,” she said. So Darl brought them in where he could see them. They shoved them under the side of the bed, where he could reach his hand and touch them when he felt better. Next morning Anse taken that horse and rode over to the Bend to see Snopes. Him and Jewel stood in the lot talking a while, then Anse got on the horse and rode off. I reckon that was the first time Jewel ever let anybody ride that horse, and until Anse come back he hung around in that swole-up way, watching the road like he was half a mind to take out after Anse and get the horse back.
Along toward nine o’clock it begun to get hot. That was when I see the first buzzard. Because of the wetting, I reckon. Anyway it wasn’t until well into the day that I see them. Lucky the breeze was setting away from the house, so it wasn’t until well into the morning. But soon as I see them it was like I could smell it in the field a mile away from just watching them, and them circling and circling for everybody in the county to see what was in my barn.
I was still a good half a mile from the house when I heard that boy yelling. I thought maybe he might have fell into the well or something, so I whipped up and come into the lot on the lope.
There must have been a dozen of them setting along the ridge-pole of the barn, and that boy was chasing another one around the lot like it was a turkey and it just lifting enough to dodge him and go flopping back to the roof of the shed again where he had found it setting on the coffin. It had got hot then, right, and the breeze had dropped or changed or something, so I went and found Jewel, but Lula come out.
“You got to do something,” she said. “It’s a outrage.”
“That’s what I aim to do,” I said.
“It’s a outrage,” she said. “He should be lawed for treating her so.”
“He’s getting her into the ground the best he can,” I said. So I found Jewel and asked him if he didn’t want to take one of the mules and go over to the Bend and see about Anse. He didn’t say nothing. He just looked at me with his jaws going bone-white and them bone-white eyes of hisn, then he went and begun to call Darl.
“What you fixing to do?” I said.
He didn’t answer. Darl come out. “Come on,” Jewel said.
“What you aim to do?” Darl said.
“Going to move the wagon,” Jewel
