Jewel Breaks a Horse While Cash Saws — As I Lay Dying

Pa asks where Jewel is. Darl drinks first. The water has sat in a cedar bucket, and he has a rule for it: water should never be drunk from metal. His mind leaves the porch. Night in the hall. Stars in the still surface. Pa's feet splayed and warped from wet homemade shoes, brogans hacked out of pig-iron. Vernon has been to town, not in overalls. Darl flings the dregs and says rain is coming. Only then does he answer. Down to the barn. Harnessing the team.

That is not where Jewel is. He is down there fooling with that horse. Darl already knows the path: a whistle, the horse dropping from the pines with mismatched eyes. Jewel walks toward him with his hands at his sides. The horse rears and slashes. Jewel moves through the hooves like a snake, finds the nostrils, and they hold. One hand shuts off the horse's wind. The other pats the neck, cursing with obscene ferocity. Then Jewel is on his back. They come down the hill in spine-jolting jumps. Well, Jewel says, you can quit now, if you got aplenty.

In the stall the horse kicks the wall. Jewel kicks back, then climbs the trough and looks out. The path is empty. From here he cannot even hear Cash sawing. He crams hay into the rack, out of sight, and calls the horse a sweet son of a bitch. Darl told Pa a job. Jewel found a silence the saw cannot reach. What happens when he has to walk back toward the window and hear the knocking in his own voice?