"Go wash them hands," I say.
But couldn't no woman strove harder than Addie to make them right, man and boy: I’ll say that for her.
"It was full of blood and guts as a hog," he says.
But I just cant seem to get no heart into anything, with this here weather sapping me, too.
"Pa," he says, "is ma sick some more?"
"Go wash them hands," I say.
But I just cant seem to get no heart into it.
Darl
He has been to town this week: the back of his neck is trimmed close, with a white line between hair and sunburn like a joint of white bone. He has not once looked back.
"Jewel," I say.
Back running, tunnelled between the two sets of bobbing mule ears, the road vanishes beneath the wagon as though it were a ribbon and the front axle were a spool.
"Do you know she is going to die, Jewel?"
It takes two people to make you, and one people to die.
That's how the world is going to end.
I said to Dewey Dell:
"You want her to die so you can get to town: is that it?"
She wouldn't say what we both knew.
"The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it?
But you know it is true now.
I can almost tell you the day when you knew it is true.
Why wont you say it, even to yourself?"
She will not say it.
She just keeps on saying Are you going to tell pa?
Are you going to kill him?
"You cannot believe it is true because you cannot believe that Dewey Dell, Dewey Dell Bundren, could have such bad luck: is that it?"
The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning.
When Peabody comes, they will have to use the rope.
He has pussel-gutted himself eating cold greens.
With the rope they will haul him up the path, balloon-like up the sulphurous air.
"Jewel," I say, "do you know that Addie Bundren is going to die?
Addie Bundren is going to die?"
Peabody
When Anse finally sent for me of his own accord, I said
"He has wore her out at last."
And I said a damn good thing, and at first I would not go because there might be something I could do and I would have to haul her back, by God.
I thought maybe they have the same sort of fool ethics in heaven they have in the Medical College and that it was maybe Vernon lull sending for me again, getting me there in the nick of time, as Vernom always does things, getting the most for Anse's money like he does for his own.
But when it got far enough into the day for me to read weather sign I knew it couldn't have been anybody but Anse that sent.
I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone.
And I knew that if it had finally occurred to Anse himself that he needed one, it was already too late.
When I reach the spring and get down and hitch the team, the sun has gone down behind a bank of black cloud like a topheavy mountain range, like a load of cinders dumped over there, and there is no wind.
I could hear Cash sawing for a mile before I got there.
Anse is standing at the top of the bluff above the path.
"Where's the horse?" I say.
"Jewel's taken and gone," he says.
"Cant nobody else ketch hit.
You'll have to walk up, I reckon."
"Me, walk up, weighing two hundred and twenty-five pounds?" I say.
"Walk up that durn wall?"
He stands there beside a tree.
Too bad the Lord made the mistake of giving trees roots and giving the Anse Bundrens He makes feet and legs.