“You kilt my maw!”
The stick breaks, they rearing and snorting, their feet popping loud on the ground; loud because it is going to rain and the air is empty for the rain. But it is still long enough. I run this way and that as they rear and jerk at the hitch-rein, striking.
“You kilt her!”
I strike at them, striking, they wheeling in a long lunge, the buggy wheeling on to two wheels and motionless like it is nailed to the ground and the horses motionless like they are nailed by the hind feet to the centre of a whirling-plate.
I run in the dust. I cannot see, running in the sucking dust where the buggy vanishes tilted on two wheels. I strike, the stick hitting into the ground, bouncing, striking into the dust and then into the air again and the dust sucking on down the road faster than if a car was in it. And then I can cry, looking at the stick. It is broken down to my hand, not longer than stove wood that was a long stick. I throw it away and I can cry. It does not make so much noise now.
The cow is standing in the barn door, chewing. When she sees me come into the lot she lows, her mouth full of flopping green, her tongue flopping.
“I ain’t a-goin’ to milk you. I ain’t a-goin’ to do nothing for them.”
I hear her turn when I pass. When I turn she is just behind me with her sweet, hot, hard breath.
“Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t?”
She nudges me, snuffing. She moans deep inside, her mouth closed. I jerk my hand, cursing her like Jewel does.
“Git, now.”
I stoop my hand to the ground and run at her. She jumps back and whirls away and stops, watching me. She moans. She goes on to the path and stands there, looking up the path.
It is dark in the barn, warm, smelling, silent. I can cry quietly, watching the top of the hill.
Cash comes to the hill, limping where he fell off of the church. He looks down at the spring, then up the road and back toward the barn. He comes down the path stiffly and looks at the broken hitch-rein and at the dust in the road and then up the road, where the dust is gone.
“I hope they’ve got clean past Tull’s by now. I so hope hit.”
Cash turns and limps up the path.
“Durn him. I showed him. Durn him.”
I am not crying now. I am not anything. Dewey Dell comes to the hill and calls me. “Vardaman.” I am not anything. I am quiet. “You, Vardaman.” I can cry quiet now, feeling and hearing my tears.
“Then hit want. Hit hadn’t happened then. Hit was a-layin’ right there on the ground. And now she’s gittin ready to cook hit.”
It is dark. I can hear wood, silence: I know them. But not living sounds, not even him. It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components—snuffings and stampings; smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of a coordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an is different from my is. I see him dissolve—legs, a rolling eye, a gaudy splotching like cold flames—and float upon the dark in fading solution; all one yet neither; all either yet none. I can see hearing coil toward him, caressing, shaping his hard shape—fetlock, hip, shoulder and head; smell and sound. I am not afraid.
“Cooked and et. Cooked and et.”
DEWEY DELL
HE could do so much for me if he just would. He could do everything for me. It’s like everything in the world for me is inside a tub full of guts, so that you wonder how there can be any room in it for anything else very important. He is a big tub of guts and I am a little tub of guts and if there is not any room for anything else important in a big tub of guts, how can it be room in a little tub of guts. But I know it is there because God gave women a sign when something has happened bad.
It’s because I am alone. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.
I would let him come in between me and Lafe, like Darl came in between me and Lafe, and so Lafe is alone too. He is Lafe and I am Dewey Dell, and when mother died I had to go beyond and outside of me and Lafe and Darl to grieve because he could do so much for me and he don’t know it. He don’t even know it.
From the back porch I cannot see the barn. Then the sound of Cash’s sawing comes in from that way. It is like a dog outside the house, going back and forth around the house to whatever door you come to, waiting to come in. He said I worry more than you do and I said You don’t know what worry is so I can’t worry. I try to but I can’t think long enough to worry.
I light the kitchen lamp. The fish, cut into jagged pieces, bleeds quietly in the pan. I put it into the cupboard quick, listening into the hall, hearing. It took her ten days to die; maybe she don’t know it is yet. Maybe she won’t go until Cash. Or maybe until Jewel. I take the dish of greens from the cupboard and the bread-pan from the cold stove, and I stop, watching the door.
“Where’s Vardaman?” Cash says. In the lamp his sawdusted arms look like sand.
“I don’t know. I ain’t seen him.”
“Peabody’s team run away. See if you can find Vardaman. The horse will let him catch him.”
“Well. Tell them to come to supper.”
I cannot see the barn. I said, I don’t know how to worry. I don’t know how to cry. I tried, but I can’t. After a while the sound of the saw comes around, coming dark along the ground in the dust-dark. Then I can see him, going up and down above the plank.
“You come in to supper,” I say. “Tell him.” He could do everything for me. And he don’t know it. He is his guts and I am my guts. And I am Lafe’s guts. That’s it. I don’t see why he didn’t stay in town. We are country people not as good as town people. I don’t see why he didn’t. Then I can see the top of the barn. The cow stands at the foot of the path, lowing. When I turn back, Cash is gone.
I carry the buttermilk in. Pa and Cash and he are at the table.
“Where’s that big fish Bud caught, sister?” he says.
I set the milk on the table. “I never had no time to cook it.”
“Plain turnip greens is mighty spindling eating for a man my size,” he says. Cash is eating. About his head the print of his hat is sweated into his hair. His shirt is blotched with sweat. He has not washed his hands and arms.
“You ought to took time,” pa says. “Where’s Vardaman?”
I go toward the door. “I can’t find him.”
“Here, sister,” he says; “never mind about the fish. It’ll save, I reckon. Come on and sit down.”
“I ain’t minding it,” I say. “I’m going to milk before it sets in to rain.”
Pa helps himself and pushes the dish on. But he does not begin to eat. His hands are half-closed on either side of his plate, his head bowed a little, his awry hair standing into the lamplight. He looks like right after the maul hits the steer and it no longer alive and don’t yet know that it is dead.
But Cash is eating, and he is too. “You better eat something,” he says. He is looking at pa. “Like Cash and me. You’ll need it.”
“Ay,” pa says. He rouses up, like a steer that’s been kneeling in a pond and you run at it. “She would not begrudge me it.”
When I am out of sight of the house, I go fast. The cow lows at the foot of the bluff. She nuzzles at me, snuffing, blowing her breath in a sweet, hot blast, through my dress, against my hot nakedness, moaning. “You got to wait a little while. Then I’ll tend to you.” She follows me into the barn where I set the bucket down. She breathes into the bucket, moaning. “I told you. You just got to wait, now. I got more to do than I can tend to.” The barn is dark. When I pass, he kicks the wall a single blow. I go on. The broken plank is like a pale plank standing on end. Then I can see the slope, feel the air moving on my face again, slow, pale, with lesser dark and with empty seeing, the pine clumps blotched up the tilted slope, secret and waiting.
The cow in silhouette against the door nuzzles at the silhouette of the bucket, moaning.
Then I pass
