I go toward the door.
"I cant find him."
"Here, sister," he says; "never mind about the fish.
It'll save, I reckon.
Come on and sit down."
"I aint minding it," I say.
"I'm going to milk before it sets in to rain."
Pa helps himself and pushes the dish on.
But he does not begin to eat.
His hands are halfclosed on either side of his plate, his head bowed a little, his awry hair standing into the lamplight.
He looks like right after the maul hits the steer and it no longer alive and dont yet know that it is dead.
But Cash is eating, and he is too.
"You better eat something," he says.
He is looking at pa.
"Like Cash and me.
You'll need it."
"Ay," pa says.
He rouses up, like a steer that's been kneeling in a pond and you run at it.
"She would not begrudge me it."
When I am out of sight of the house, I go fast.
The cow lows at the foot of the bluff.
She nuzzles at me, snuffing, blowing her breath in a sweet, hot blast, through my dress, against my hot nakedness, moaning.
"You got to wait a little while.
Then I'll tend to you."
She follows me into the barn where I set the bucket down.
She breathes into the bucket, moaning.
"I told you.
You just got to wait, now.
I got more to do than I can tend to."
The barn is dark.
When I pass, he kicks the wall a single blow.
I go on.
The broken plank is like a pale plank standing on end.
Then I can see the slope, feel the air moving on my face again, slow, pale with lesser dark and with empty seeing, the pine clumps blotched up the tilted slope, secret and waiting.
The cow in silhouette against the door nuzzles at the silhouette of the bucket, moaning.
Then I pass the stall.
I have almost passed it, I listen to it saying for a long time before it can say the word and the listening part is afraid that there may not be time to say it I feel my body, my bones and flesh beginning to part and open upon the alone, and the process of coming unalone is terrible.
Lafe. Lafe. "Lafe" Lafe. Lafe.
I lean a little forward, one foot advanced with dead walking.
I feel the darkness rushing past my breast, past the cow; I begin to rush upon the darkness but the cow stops me and the darkness rushes on upon the sweet blast of her moaning breath, filled with wood and with silence.
"Vardaman.
You, Vardaman."
He comes out of the stall.
"You durn little sneak!
You durn little sneak!"
He does not resist; the last of rushing darkness flees whistling away.
"What?
I aint done nothing."
"You durn little sneak!"
My hands shake him, hard.