"Dat's de troof," Versh said. "I reckon Unc' Louis done caught mo possums than aihy man in dis country." "Yes, suh," Louis said. "I got plenty light fer possums to see, all right.
I aint heard none o dem complainin.
Hush, now.
Dar he.
Whooey.
Hum awn, dawg." And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis' voice dying away.
He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard it from our front porch.
When he called the dogs in he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were a part of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo. WhoOooooooooooooooo.
Got to marry somebody
Have there been very many Caddy
I dont know too many will you look after Benjy and Father
You dont know whose it is then does he know
Dont touch me will you look after Benjy and Father
I began to feel the water before I came to the bridge.
The bridge was of gray stone, lichened, dappled with slow moisture where the fungus crept.
Beneath it the water was clear and still in the shadow, whispering and clucking about the stone in fading swirls of spinning sky.
Caddy that
I've got to marry somebody Versh told me about a man who mutilated himself.
He went into the woods and did it with a razor, sitting in a ditch.
A broken razor flinging them backward over his shoulder the same motion complete the jerked skein of blood backward not looping.
But that's not it.
It's not not having them.
It's never to have had them then I could say O That That's Chinese I dont know Chinese.
And Father said it's because you are a virgin: dont you see?
Women are never virgins.
Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.
It's nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That's just words and he said So is virginity and I said you dont know.
You cant know and he said Yes.
On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.
Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom.
When you leave a leaf in water a long time after a while the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow as the motion of sleep.
They dont touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones.
And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too, out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory.
And after a while the flat irons would come floating up.
I hid them under the end of the bridge and went back and leaned on the rail.
I could not see the bottom, but I could see a long way into the motion of the water before the eye gave out, and then I saw a shadow hanging like a fat arrow stemming into the current.
Mayflies skimmed in and out of the shadow of the bridge just above the surface.
If it could just be a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead.
Then you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing and the horror beyond the clean flame The arrow increased without motion, then in a quick swirl the trout lipped a fly beneath the surface with that sort of gigantic delicacy of an elephant picking up a peanut.
The fading vortex drifted away down stream and then I saw the arrow again, nose into the current, wavering delicately to the motion of the water above which the May flies slanted and poised.
Only you and me then amid the pointing and the horror walled by the clean flame
The trout hung, delicate and motionless among the wavering shadows.
Three boys with fishing poles came onto the bridge and we leaned on the rail and looked down at the trout.
They knew the fish.
He was a neighborhood character.
"They've been trying to catch that trout for twenty-five years.
There's a store in Boston offers a twenty-five dollar fishing rod to anybody that can catch him."
"Why dont you all catch him, then?
Wouldn't you like to have a twenty-five dollar fishing rod?"
"Yes," they said. They leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout. "I sure would," one said.