What Else Did He Have — As I Lay Dying

What else did he have, the family keeps asking, while Cash lies on his back on the earth grey and pole-thin with vomit at his head and teeth parted a little as if he had been laughing quietly. Dewey Dell wipes his mouth with her dress hem. Jewel walks up dripping with Vernon's square and asks if Cash has talked yet. Get him to talk soon as he can, Jewel tells Darl, so he can tell us what else there was.

At the ford the wagon sits chocked above the flood and Addie's coffin planks lie yellow like gold seen through water save for two muddy smears Anse scrubs with leaves. Vardaman holds the rope by a tree, wet to his armpits, watching Vernon shoulder-deep. Vernon and Jewel grope the cold bottom while Darl holds the line and says he never thought water in July could be so cold, like hands moulding at the very bones. They surface with the rule. Jewel swims far downstream until Dewey Dell yells him back and finds the chalk-line on the bank. Then he and Vernon argue quietly whether a hammer or a plane floats more like a saw before Jewel ducks under and comes up with the saw.

They stand above Cash holding the plane, saw, hammer, square, rule, and chalk-line up so he can see. Look, Cash, what else did you have? He opens his eyes at their inverted faces, turns to vomit, and Jewel answers for him: the saw-set, the new one he bought when he bought the rule. Anse looms above saying he don't begrudge her it while Jewel and Vernon dive again. Darl watches their torsos move on the water like quiet machinery. Will Cash finally speak from the ground about what wasn't on a balance?