The Coffin Rushes Downhill — As I Lay Dying

Pick up, Jewel says, pick up, goddamn your thick-nosed soul. Darl watches blood go in waves through flesh pale green as cow's cud while Jewel heaves one whole side so suddenly they all spring in to catch it before he hurls it over. For an instant the coffin resists, as though Addie's pole-thin body clings furiously inside to a sort of modesty, like a woman trying to conceal a soiled garment she could not prevent her body soiling. Then it breaks free and rises as if her emaciation had added buoyancy to the planks.

They shuffle down the hall, feet harsh and clumsy, breathing through their teeth to keep their nostrils closed. Steady it a minute, Pa says, turning to lock the door. Come on, Jewel says in that suffocating voice. Come on. On the slope Cash repeats what he tried to say before: I tell you it ain't balanced now. We'll need another hand on that hill.

Then turn loose, Jewel says, and will not stop. Cash hobbles behind on his broken leg while Jewel carries the entire front alone. The coffin tilts, rushes away from Darl, and slips down the air like a sled upon invisible snow until Darl's end has no weight at all. Jewel overshoots, swings it into the wagon-bed in one motion, and looks back: Goddamn you. Goddamn you. Cash was right about the hill. Jewel won the lift anyway. What breaks first when urgent love outruns the warning?