Cash Saws in the Rain — As I Lay Dying

The lantern sits on a stump, rusted and grease-fouled, shedding a feeble sultry glare on trestles and boards while Cash saws with a thin thread of fire running along the edge of the saw. Darl watches the chips look like random smears of pale paint on black canvas and Pa's shabby silhouette drift in and out of the stroke. The air smells like sulphur. Sheet lightning slumbers below the swollen trees.

Rain hits without warning, buckshot drops hissing across the lantern. Cash tells Pa to cover the flame, then crouches over it with his own body before rigging sticks and Dewey Dell's raincoat into a roof. Get wet, he says when Pa worries about coats. Vernon arrives. They find the saw in Pa's hand while Cash works soaked in Mrs. Tull's coat. Cash sends Pa inside, fixes the shelter Pa knocks down, and says he is going to bevel the next plank with the tedious minute care of a jeweller even though Vernon warns it will take more time.

Toward dawn Cash drives the last nail and strokes his raincoated thighs in a gesture deliberate, final and composed. Four men carry the empty coffin into the house as if it slumbered lightly alive. Peabody says let's eat a snack. Cash returns alone to wipe his tools. Then Darl cannot empty himself for sleep: I don't know what I am, he thinks, the wagon and Addie and Jewel tangling in is and was until if I am not emptied yet, I am is. How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home. What does grief look like when one brother says get wet and another cannot tell if he exists?