Anse Trades Jewel's Horse — As I Lay Dying

I give him another sup of whisky, Armstid says, and by supper Anse had already bought a team on credit, picking and choosing spans while claiming Christian blood would make Snopes help a fellow in a tight. Jewel rode to the Bend for Peabody and came back near midnight with Uncle Billy instead. Billy made Cash drink whisky, ran Anse out of the room, folded a mattress across Cash's legs, and set Jewel and Armstid on a chair while he set the same leg Cash broke last summer.

Heat brought buzzards circling the coffin in the shed while Vardaman chased one like a turkey and Lula called it an outrage. Jewel tried to move the wagon alone after Darl refused to help before pa returned. Then Anse rode back looking hangdog and proud, admitted he mortgaged the cultivator and took eight dollars from Cash's clothes, and when the room went silent added and the horse.

Darl had read the clothes theft aloud like newsprint. Jewel asked if he tried to swap his horse, heard Anse's teeth-and-nickels speech, spat Hell, and tore away on the animal like a spotted cyclone. Armstid lent his team, they laid Cash on quilts atop the coffin, and hauled the wagon a mile down the road. I be durn if Anse don't conjure a man, Armstid says, even when he knows he will want to kick himself for helping. Will Vardaman count the buzzards circling what the family keeps calling doing the best he can?