As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [56]
"I feel fine," Cash says. I'm obliged to you."
“Try to get some sleep," we say.
"I feel fine," Cash says. "I'm obliged to you."
And I saw something Dewey Dell told me not to tell nobody. It is not about pa and it is not about Cash and it is not about Jewel and it is not about Dewey Dell and it is not about me
Dewey Dell and I are going to sleep on the pallet It is on the back porch, where we can see the barn, and the moon shines on half of the pallet and we will lie half in the white and half in the black, with the moonlight on our legs. And then I am going to see where they stay at night while we are in the barn. We are not in the barn tonight but I can see the barn and so I am going to find where they stay at night.
We lie on the pallet, with our legs in the moon.
"Look," I say, "my legs look black. Your legs look black, too."
"Go to sleep," Dewey Dell says.
Jefferson is a far piece.
"Dewey Dell."
"What"
"If it's not Christmas now, how will it be there?"
It goes round and round on the shining track. Then the track goes shining round and round.
"Will what be there?"
"That train. In the window."
"You go to sleep. You can see tomorrow if it's there."
Maybe Santa Claus wont know they are town boys.
"Dewey Dell."
"You go to sleep. He aint going to let none of them town boys have it."
It was behind the window, red on the track, the track shining round and round. It made my heart hurt And then it was pa and Jewel and Darl and Mr Gillespie's boy. Mr Gillespie's boy's legs come down under his nightshirt When he goes into the moon, his legs fuzz. They go on around the house toward the apple tree.
"What are they going to do, Dewey Dell?"
They went around the house toward the apple tree.
“I can smell her," I say. "Can you smell her, too?"
"Hush," Dewey Dell says. "The wind's changed. Go to sleep."
And so I am going to know where they stay at night soon. They come around the house, going across the yard in the moon, carrying her on their shoulders.
they carry her down to the barn, the moon shining flat and quiet on her. Then they come back and go into the house again. While they were in the moon, Mr Gillespie's boy's legs fuzzed. And then I waited and I said Dewey Dell? and then I waited and then I went to find where they stay at night and I saw something that Dewey Dell told me not to tell nobody.
Darl
Against the dark doorway he seems to materialise out of darkness, lean as a race horse in his underclothes in the beginning of the glare. He leaps to the ground with on his face an expression of furious unbelief. He has seen me without even turning his head or his eyes in which the glare swims like two small torches. "Come on," he says, leaping down the slope toward the barn.
For an instant longer he runs silver in the moonlight, then he springs out like a flat figure cut leanly from tin against an abrupt and soundless explosion as the whole loft of the barn takes fire at once, as though it had been stuffed with powder. The front, the conical facade with the square orifice of doorway broken only by the square squat shape of the coffin on the sawhorses like a cubistic bug, conies into relief. Behind me pa and Gillespie and Mack and Dewey Dell and Vardaman emerge from the house.
He pauses at the coffin, stooping, looking at me, his face furious. Overhead the flames sound like thunder; across us rushes a cool draft: there is no heat in it at all yet, and a handful of chaff lifts suddenly and sucks swiftly along the stalls where a horse is screaming. "Quick," I say; "the horses."
He glares a moment longer at me, then at the roof overhead, then he leaps toward the stall where the horse screams. It plunges and kicks, the sound of the crashing blows sucking up into the sound of the flames. They sound like an interminable train crossing an endless trestle. Gillespie and Mack pass me, in knee-length nightshirts, shouting, their voices thin and high and meaningless and at the same time profoundly wild and sad: ". . . cow . . . stall . . ." Gillespie's nightshirt rushes ahead of him on the draft, ballooning about his hairy thighs.