Three Dollars and a Goodbye Deferred — As I Lay Dying

You ready, Jewel says. Darl says wait. Pa rubs his hands on his knees and gazes out over the land. Vernon spits into the dust with decorous precision. The porch is full of speeches about wishes and duty, and Darl keeps naming the thing nobody will say plain: it means three dollars.

Pa says Addie counted on the wagon. She will want to start right away. She wanted a good private coffin, her own blood sawing the boards. Jewel snaps that Ma ain't that sick. He nearly names what Cash is whittling under the window, then goes silent, like a little boy in the dark scared by his own noise. Vernon says she seems more like herself today and will be setting up when they return. Darl offers to borrow Vernon's team and catch up later. Jewel tells him to shut his goddamn mouth. Nobody walks into her room to ask.

Darl finally asks: Do you want us to go, or not. Pa rubs his knees. Jewel says Come on and goes down the steps. Darl enters the hall, where the house tilts and a breeze carries voices upslanting until they sound as though they were speaking out of the air about your head. Two sons are leaving a dying mother for three dollars. Cora is about to tell the county who loved Addie and who sold her goodbye. What happens when the neighbor's verdict sounds sweeter than the trade the porch never owned?