Where Did You Get That Horse — As I Lay Dying

He sits the horse glaring at Vernon, Darl says, his lean face suffused past the pale rigidity of his eyes, and then the summer when Jewel was fifteen comes back. Jewel took a spell of sleeping: at the cow with his hands in the milk, at the hoe in the hot shimmer, at the supper table with bread halfway to his mouth. I'm all right, he kept saying while Anse called him lazy and Addie wanted him to stay home.

Addie hid special things to eat for him and sat in the dark by his bed, hating herself for the deceit and hating Jewel because she had to love him enough to lie. Darl and Cash guessed rutting when Jewel came through the back wall with the lantern before sunup. They didn't tell. Cash followed him out the window and learned it wasn't a woman at all.

In November Jewel rode up bareback on a spotted pony he bought with money he earned clearing forty acres by lantern at night. Where did you get that horse, Pa said. It was my money, Jewel said. He won't never eat a mouthful of yours, he told Anse. Not a mouthful. I'll kill him first. That night Darl found Addie crying beside sleeping Jewel and knew that he knew, as plain as he already knew about Dewey Dell. What looks like laziness when the real work happens in the dark nobody counts?