CASH
I TGillespie
wasn’t nothing else to do. It was either send him to Jackson, or have
sue us, because he knowed some way that Darl set fire to it. I don’t know how he knowed, but he did. Vardaman see him do it, but he swore he never told nobody but Dewey Dell and that she told him not to tell nobody.
But Gillespie knowed it. But he would ’a’ suspicioned it sooner or later. He could have done it that night just watching the way Darl acted.
And so pa said, “I reckon there ain’t nothing else to do,” and Jewel said,
“You want to fix him now?”
“Fix him?” pa said.
“Catch him and tie him up,” Jewel said. “Goddam it, do you want to wait until he sets fire to the goddam team and wagon?”
But there wasn’t no use in that. “There ain’t no use in that,” I said. “We can wait till she is underground.” A fellow that’s going to spend the rest of his life locked up, he ought to be let to have what pleasure he can have before he goes.
“I reckon he ought to be there,” pa says. “God knows, it’s a trial on me.
Seems like it ain’t no end to bad luck when once it starts.”
Sometimes I ain’t so sho who’s got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he ain’t. Sometimes I think it ain’t none of us pure crazy and ain’t none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it ain’t so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.
Because Jewel is too hard on him. Of course it was Jewel’s horse was traded to get her that nigh to town, and in a sense it was the value of his horse Darl tried to burn up. But I thought more than once before we crossed the river and after, how it would be God’s blessing if He did take her outen our hands and get shut of her in some clean way, and it seemed to me that when Jewel worked so to get her outen the river, he was going against God in a way, and then when Darl seen that it looked like one of us would have to do something, I can almost believe he done right in a way. But I don’t reckon nothing excuses setting fire to a man’s barn and endangering his stock and destroying his property. That’s how I reckon a man is crazy. That’s how he can’t see eye to eye with other folks. And I reckon they ain’t nothing else to do with him but what the most folks says is right.
But it’s a shame, in a way. Folks seems to get away from the olden right
teaching that says to drive the nails down and trim the edges well always like it was for your own use and comfort you were making it. It’s like some folks has the smooth, pretty boards to build a court-house with and others don’t have no more than rough lumber fitten to build a chicken coop. But it’s better to build a tight chicken coop than a shoddy court-house, and when they both build shoddy or build well, neither because it’s one or tother is going to make a man feel the better nor the worse.
So we went up the street, toward the square, and he said, “We better take Cash to the doctor first. We can leave him there and come back for him.”
That’s it. It’s because me and him was born close together, and it nigh ten years before Jewel and Dewey Dell and Vardaman begun to come along. I feel kin to them, all right, but I don’t know. And me being the oldest, and thinking already the very thing that he done: I don’t know.
Pa was looking at me, then at him, mumbling his mouth.
“Go on,” I said. “We’ll get it done first.”
“She would want us all there,” pa says.
“Let’s take Cash to the doctor first,” Darl said. “She’ll wait. She’s already waited nine days.”
“You all don’t know,” pa says. “The somebody you was young with and you growed old in her and she growed old in you, seeing the old coming on and it was the one somebody you could hear say it don’t matter and know it was the truth outen the hard world and all a man’s grief and trials. You all don’t know.”
“We got the digging to do, too,” I said.
“Armstid and Gillespie both told you to send word ahead,” Darl said.
“Don’t you want to go to Peabody’s now, Cash?”
“Go on,” I said. “It feels right easy now. It’s best to get things done in the right place.”
“If it was just dug,” pa says. “We forgot our spade, too.”
“Yes,” Darl said. “I’ll go to the hardware store. We’ll have to buy one.”
“It’ll cost money,” pa says.
“Do you begrudge her it?” Darl says.
“Go on and get a spade,” Jewel said. “Here, give me the money.”
But pa didn’t stop. “I reckon we can get a spade,” he said. “I reckon there are Christians here.” So Darl set still and we went on, with Jewel squatting on the tail-gate, watching the back of Dad’s head. He looked like one of these bulldogs, one of these dogs that don’t bark none, squatting against the rope, watching the thing he was waiting to jump at.
He set that way all the time we was in front of Mrs. Bundren’s house, hearing the music, watching the back of Darl’s head with them hard white eyes of hisn.
The music was playing in the house. It was one of them graphophones. It was natural as a music-band.
“Do you want to go to Peabody’s?” Darl said. “They can wait here and tell pa, and I’ll drive you to Peabody’s and come back for them.”
“No,” I said. It was better to get her underground, now we was this close, just waiting until pa borrowed the shovel. He drove along the street until we could hear the music.
“Maybe they got one here,” he said. He pulled up at Mrs. Bundren’s. It was like he knowed. Sometimes I think that if a working man could see work as far ahead as a lazy man can see laziness. So he stopped there like he knowed, before that little new house, where the music was. We waited there, hearing it.
I believe I could have dickered Suratt down to five dollars on that one of his.
It’s a comfortable thing, music is. “Maybe they got one here,” pa says.
“You want Jewel to go,” Darl says, “or do you reckon I better?”
“I reckon I better,” pa says. He got down and went up the path and around the house to the back. The music stopped, then it started again.
“He’ll get it, too,” Darl said.
“Ay,” I said. It was just like he knowed, like he could see through the walls and into the next ten minutes.
Only it was more than ten minutes. The music stopped and never commenced again for a good spell, where her and pa was talking at the back.
We waited in the wagon.
“You let me take you back to Peabody’s,” Darl said.
“No,” I said. “We’ll get her underground.”
“If he ever gets back,” Jewel said. He began to cuss. He started to get down from the wagon. “I’m going,” he said.
Then we saw pa coming back. He had two spades, coming around the house. He laid them in the wagon and got in and we went on. The music never started again. Pa was looking back at the house. He kind of lifted his hand a little and I saw the shade pulled back a little at the window and her face in it.
But the curiousest thing was Dewey Dell. It surprised me. I see all the while how folks could say he was queer, but that was the very reason couldn’t nobody hold it personal. It was like he was outside of it too, same as you, and getting mad as it would be kind of like getting mad at a mud-puddle that splashed you when you stepped in it. And then I always kind of had a idea that him and Dewey Dell kind of knowed things betwixt them. If I’d ’a’ said it was ere a one of us she liked better than ere a other, I’d ’a’ said it was Darl. But when we got it filled and covered and drove out the gate and turned into the lane where them fellows was waiting, when they come out and come on him and he jerked back, it was Dewey Dell that was on him before even Jewel could get at him. And then I believed I knowed how Gillespie knowed about
how his barn taken fire.
She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even looked at him, but when them fellows told him what they wanted and that they had come to get him and he throwed back, she jumped on him like a wild cat so that one of the fellows had to quit and hold her and her scratching and clawing at him like a wild cat, while the other one and pa and Jewel throwed Darl down and held him lying on his back, looking up at me.
“I thought you would have told me,” he said. “I never thought you wouldn’t have.”
“Darl,” I said. But he fought again, him and Jewel and the fellow, and the other one holding Dewey Dell and Vardaman yelling and Jewel saying,
“Kill him. Kill the son of a bitch.”
It was bad so. It was bad. A fellow can’t get away from a shoddy job. He can’t do it. I tried to tell him, but he just said, “I thought you’d ’a’ told me. It’s not that I,” he said, then he began to laugh. The other fellow pulled Jewel off of him and he sat there on the ground, laughing.
I tried to tell him. If I could have just moved, even set up. But I tried to tell him and he quit laughing, looking up at me.
“Do you want me to go?” he said.
“It’ll be better for you,” I said. “Down there it’ll be quiet, with none of the bothering and such. It’ll be better for you, Darl,” I said.
“Better,” he said. He began to laugh again. “Better,” he said. He couldn’t hardly say it for laughing. He sat on the ground and us watching him, laughing and laughing. It was bad. It was bad so. I be durn if I could see anything to laugh at. Because there just ain’t nothing justifies the deliberate destruction of what a man has built with his own sweat and stored the fruit of his sweat into.
But I ain’t so sho that ere a man has the right to say what is crazy and what ain’t. It’s like there was a fellow in every man that’s done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.
