As I Lay Dying (25 page)

“Operation?” she says.

“It wont hurt you. You’ve had the same operation before. Ever hear about the hair of the dog?”

She looks at me. “Will it work?” she says.

“Sure it’ll work. If you come back and get it.”

So she drunk whatever it was without batting a eye, and went out. I went up front.

“Didn’t you get it?” Jody says.

“Get what?” I says.

“Ah, come on,” he says. “I aint going to try to beat your time.”

“Oh, her,” I says. “She just wanted a little medicine. She’s got a bad case of dysentery and she’s a little ashamed about mentioning it with a stranger there.”

It was my night, anyway, so I helped the old bastard check up and I got his hat on him and got him out of the store by eight-thirty. I went as far as the corner with him and watched him until he passed under two street lamps and went on out of sight. Then I came back to the store and waited until nine-thirty and turned out the front lights and locked
the door and left just one light burning at the back, and I went back and put some talcum powder into six capsules and kind of cleared up the cellar and then I was all ready.

She come in just at ten, before the clock had done striking. I let her in and she come in, walking fast. I looked out the door, but there wasn’t nobody but a boy in overalls sitting on the curb. “You want something?” I says. He never said nothing, just looking at me. I locked the door and turned off the light and went on back. She was waiting. She didn’t look at me now.

“Where is it?” she said.

I gave her the box of capsules. She held the box in her hand, looking at the capsules.

“Are you sure it’ll work?” she says.

“Sure,” I says. “When you take the rest of the treatment.”

“Where do I take it?” she says.

“Down in the cellar,” I says.

VARDAMAN

Now it is wider and lighter, but the stores are dark because they have all gone home. The stores are dark, but the lights pass on the windows when we pass. The lights are in the trees around the courthouse. They roost in the trees, but the courthouse is dark. The clock on it looks four ways, because it is not dark. The moon is not dark too. Not very dark.
Darl he went to Jackson is my brother Darl is my brother
   Only it was over that way, shining on the track.

“Let’s go that way, Dewey Dell,” I say.

“What for?” Dewey Dell says. The track went shining
around the window, it red on the track. But she said he would not sell it to the town boys. “But it will be there Christmas,” Dewey Dell says. “You’ll have to wait till then, when he brings it back.”

Darl went to Jackson. Lots of people didn’t go to Jackson. Darl is my brother. My brother is going to Jackson

While we walk the lights go around, roosting in the trees. On all sides it is the same. They go around the courthouse and then you cannot see them. But you can see them in the black windows beyond. They have all gone home to bed except me and Dewey Dell.

Going on the train to Jackson. My brother

There is a light in the store, far back. In the window are two big glasses of soda water, red and green. Two men could not drink them. Two mules could not. Two cows could not.
Darl

A man comes to the door. He looks at Dewey Dell.

“You wait out here,” Dewey Dell says.

“Why cant I come in?” I say. “I want to come in, too.”

“You wait out here,” she says.

“All right,” I say.

Dewey Dell goes in.

Darl is my brother. Darl went crazy

The walk is harder than sitting on the ground. He is in the open door. He looks at me. “You want something?” he says. His head is slick. Jewel’s head is slick sometimes. Cash’s head is not slick.
Darl he went to Jackson my brother Darl
In the street he ate a banana.
Wouldn’t you rather have bananas? Dewey Dell said. You wait till Christmas. It’ll be there then. Then
you can see it. So we are going to have some bananas. We are going to have a bag full, me and Dewey Dell
. He locks the door. Dewey Dell is inside. Then the light winks out.

He went to Jackson. He went crazy and went to Jackson both. Lots of people didn’t go crazy. Pa and Cash and Jewel and Dewey Dell and me didn’t go crazy. We never did go crazy. We didn’t go to Jackson either. Darl

I hear the cow a long time, clopping        on the street. Then she comes into the square. She goes across the square, her head down        clopping        . She lows. There was nothing in the square before she lowed, but it wasn’t empty. Now it is empty after she lowed. She goes on,        clopping        . She lows.
My brother is Darl. He went to Jackson on the train. He didn’t go on the train to go crazy. He went crazy in our wagon. Darl
She has been in there a long time. And the cow is gone too. A long time. She has been in there longer than the cow was. But not as long as empty.
Darl is my brother. My brother Darl

Dewey Dell comes out. She looks at me.

“Let’s go around that way now,” I say.

She looks at me. “It aint going to work,” she says. “That son of a bitch.”

“What aint going to work, Dewey Dell?”

“I just know it wont,” she says. She is not looking at anything. “I just know it.”

“Let’s go that way,” I say.

“We got to go back to the hotel. It’s late. We got to slip back in.”

“Cant we go by and see, anyway?”

“Hadn’t you rather have bananas? Hadn’t you rather?”

“All right.”
My brother he went crazy and he went to Jackson too. Jackson is further away than crazy

“It wont work,” Dewey Dell says. “I just know it wont.”

“What wont work?” I say.
He had to get on the train to go to Jackson. I have not been on the train, but Darl has been on the train. Darl. Darl is my brother. Darl. Darl

DARL

Darl has gone to Jackson. They put him on the train, laughing, down the long car laughing, the heads turning like the heads of owls when he passed. “What are you laughing at?” I said.

“Yes yes yes yes yes.”

Two men put him on the train. They wore mismatched coats, bulging behind over their right hip pockets. Their necks were shaved to a hairline, as though the recent and simultaneous barbers had had a chalk-line like Cash’s. “Is it
the pistols you’re laughing at?” I said. “Why do you laugh?” I said. “Is it because you hate the sound of laughing?”

They pulled two seats together so Darl could sit by the window to laugh. One of them sat beside him, the other sat on the seat facing him, riding backward. One of them had to ride backward because the state’s money has a face to each backside and a backside to each face, and they are riding on the state’s money which is incest. A nickel has a woman on one side and a buffalo on the other; two faces and no back. I dont know what that is. Darl had a little spy-glass he got in France at the war. In it it had a woman and a pig with two backs and no face. I know what that is. “Is that why you are laughing, Darl?”

“Yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

The wagon stands on the square, hitched, the mules motionless, the reins wrapped about the seat-spring, the back of the wagon toward the courthouse. It looks no different from a hundred other wagons there; Jewel standing beside it and looking up the street like any other man in town that day, yet there is something different, distinctive. There is about it that unmistakable air of definite and imminent departure that trains have, perhaps due to the fact that Dewey Dell and Vardaman on the seat and Cash on a pallet in the wagon bed are eating bananas from a paper bag. “Is that why you are laughing, Darl?”

Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying light in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.

“Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

DEWEY DELL

When he saw the money I said, “It’s not my money, it doesn’t belong to me.”

“Whose is it, then?”

“It’s Cora Tull’s money. It’s Mrs Tull’s. I sold the cakes for it.”

“Ten dollars for two cakes?”

“Dont you touch it. It’s not mine.”

“You never had them cakes. It’s a lie. It was them Sunday clothes you had in that package.”

“Dont you touch it! If you take it you are a thief.”

“My own daughter accuses me of being a thief. My own daughter.”

“Pa. Pa.”

“I have fed you and sheltered you. I give you love and care, yet my own daughter, the daughter of my dead wife, calls me a thief over her mother’s grave.”

“It’s not mine, I tell you. If it was, God knows you could have it.”

“Where did you get ten dollars?”

“Pa. Pa.”

“You wont tell me. Did you come by it so shameful you dare not?”

“It’s not mine, I tell you. Cant you understand it’s not mine?”

“It’s not like I wouldn’t pay it back. But she calls her own father a thief.”

“I cant, I tell you. I tell you it’s not my money. God knows you could have it.”

“I wouldn’t take it. My own born daughter that has et my food for seventeen years, begrudges me the loan of ten dollars.”

“It’s not mine, I cant.”

“Whose is it, then?”

“It was give to me. To buy something with.”

“To buy what with?”

“Pa. Pa.”

“It’s just a loan. God knows, I hate for my blooden children to reproach me. But I give them what was mine without stint. Cheerful I give them, without stint. And
now they deny me. Addie. It was lucky for you you died, Addie.”

“Pa. Pa.”

“God knows it is.”

He took the money and went out.

CASH

So when we stopped there to borrow the shovels we heard the graphophone playing in the house, and so when we got done with the shovels pa says, “I reckon I better take them back.”

So we went back to the house. “We better take Cash on to Peabody’s,” Jewel said.

“It wont take but a minute,” pa said. He got down from the wagon. The music was not playing now.

“Let Vardaman do it,” Jewel said. “He can do it in half the time you can. Or here, you let me——”

“I reckon I better do it,” pa says. “Long as it was me that borrowed them.”