Vardaman Waits Outside the Store — As I Lay Dying

Darl he went to Jackson is my brother Darl is my brother, Vardaman says while Jefferson widens and lightens at night. Stores are dark because everyone has gone home, but lights pass on windows and roost in courthouse trees. The clock looks four ways because it is not dark. He asks Dewey Dell to go toward the shining train track. She says wait till Christmas when he brings it back, because the town boys cannot buy what they want now.

There is a light far back in a store window with two giant soda-water glasses, red and green, too big for two men or two mules or two cows. A slick-headed man comes to the door and looks at Dewey Dell. You wait out here, she tells Vardaman. He wants to come in too but she goes alone. He loops Darl went crazy and went to Jackson, thinks of bananas she promised, watches the man lock the door, and the light winks out while she stays inside.

A cow clops into the square and lows until the place feels empty after. Vardaman counts time: she has been inside longer than the cow was there but not as long as empty. Dewey Dell comes out and says it ain't going to work and that son of a bitch without looking at anything. They must slip back to the hotel late. Vardaman asks to go see the track anyway but accepts bananas instead, still looping Darl on the train while Jackson feels further away than crazy. If the youngest is left outside while the light goes off, what does fury mean when nobody will name what failed behind the door?