Two Brothers, One Coffin Being Built — As I Lay Dying

Jewel will not take the path the family's feet have already worn. Darl walks around the old cotton-house, following the track that turns at four soft right angles through the July field. Jewel, fifteen feet behind, looking straight ahead, steps through one window, crosses the empty floor in four strides, and steps out the other. His pale eyes sit like wood in a wooden face. In a few seconds he is in front, and they go on in single file again, five feet apart, still without a word.

That silence holds the whole walk. Nobody asks why they are leaving the field. Nobody names the house they are walking toward. At the spring, Jewel stops to drink from a gourd hung on a willow branch. Darl passes him. Two chairs sit in Tull's wagon by the water, and nobody says what they are for. Cash has already quit sawing by the time Darl reaches the top of the bluff. He kneels among boards yellow as soft gold, squints along the edge, and takes up the adze again. A good carpenter, Darl thinks, twice. Then he names the box to himself. Addie Bundren could not want a better one to lie in. It will give her confidence and comfort.

Darl goes on toward the house, followed by the chuck, chuck, chuck of the adze. Darl measured every distance. Jewel cut through the building. Cash turned care into a well-fitted box. None of them has said the word dying to anyone standing there. What happens when someone finally walks into the room and speaks the thing the adze is already saying?