Anse Blames the Road — As I Lay Dying

Durn that road, Anse says, and it fixing to rain. He builds a whole sermon out of it: the Lord made trees up-and-down and roads longways, and men were never meant to live where wagons spit in the doorway. Addie told him, for the world like a woman, Get up and move, then. He did not. He blames the road for taxes, for Cash falling off a church, for Darl's eyes full of the land, for the three dollars, for the rain coming up like a durn man at his house alone.

He remembers Addie saying I am not sick, I will get up, while he kept telling her she was just tired. Peabody said Get outen here, Anse, go set on the porch a while. Anse says he has done no wrong to be cussed by. Peace is his heart. He has fed me and mine. The road is the villain that cannot answer back.

Vardaman comes around the house bloody to his knees from cleaning the fish. It was full of blood and guts as a hog, he says. He sits on the steps, pure tired. Pa, is ma sick some more. Anse says go wash them hands. He says it twice. He just can't seem to get no heart into it. Darl is on the wagon road now, asking Jewel the same question Anse will not answer. What happens when the brother who names death plain meets the father who blames the road?