I Reckon We Can Get There — As I Lay Dying

It was just before sundown on Samson's porch when the wagon came up with five in the seat and Jewel on a spotted Snopes horse behind, going past the store without stopping until Quick hollered them back. They are going to Jefferson, Quick says, with something in the wagon the neighbors only slowly remember means a coffin. Samson tells Cash they'll have to pass by New Hope again. I reckon we can get there, Cash says.

Samson offers shelter, supper, beds, and a grave dug by morning because a woman dead four days in a box ought to be in the ground. I give her my promise, Anse says. Her mind is set on it. Dewey Dell's eyes blaze like pistols when Samson suggests turning back. Jewel won't let the horse be beholden to any man. They won't come inside, put Vardaman to sleep in a trough, and squat in the dark around the wagon while Rachel calls it an outrage against women tortured alive and flouted dead.

Rain falls and Samson smells something he cannot decide is real until morning. The Bundrens leave toward New Hope. In the barn hallway Samson finds a buzzard heavy with rain, spraddle-legged and bald-headed, before it finally lifts into air. Cash said they could get there. Rachel said it was an outrage. The buzzard said the box had already been dead too long. What does a community do when every sane exit is offered and one promise sentence sends the wagon back into the heat?