Now I Can Get Them Teeth — As I Lay Dying

It's a hard country on man; it's hard, Anse says. Eight miles of sweat washed up outen the Lord's earth, and nowhere in this sinful world can a honest, hardworking man profit. It takes them that runs the stores in the towns, living off of them that sweats. They keep at it because there is a reward above, where every man will be equal and the Lord will take from them that have and give to them that have not.

But it's a long wait, seems like. It's bad that a fellow must earn the reward of his right-doing by flouting hisself and his dead. They drove all day and got to Samson's at dust-dark and that bridge was gone, too. The river had never run so high in the memory of man, and it's not done raining yet. I am the chosen of the Lord, Anse says, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth.

But now I can get them teeth. That will be a comfort. It will. Flood, bridge loss, and a coffin rolling through mud compress into theology, then pivot to dentures in one breath. What private prize is hiding inside the loudest suffering speech on the road?