The Sound and the Fury

15.3

The bones rounded out of the ditch, where the dark vines were in the black ditch, into the moonlight, like some of the shapes had stopped. Then they all stopped and it was dark, and when I stopped to start again I could hear Mother, and feet walking fast away, and I could smell it. Then the room came, but my eyes went shut. I didn't stop. I could smell it. T.P. unpinned the bed clothes.

"Hush." he said. "Shhhhhhhh."

But I could smell it. T.P. pulled me up and he put on my clothes fast.

"Hush, Benjy." he said. "We going down to our house. You want to go down to our house, where Frony is. Hush. Shhhhh."

He laced my shoes and put my cap on and we went out. There was a light in the hall. Across the hall we could hear Mother.

"Shhhhhh, Benjy." T.P. said. "We'll be out in a minute." A door opened and I could smell it more than ever, and a head came out. It wasn't Father. Father was sick there.

"Can you take him out of the house."

"That's where we going." T.P. said. Dilsey came up the stairs.

"Hush." she said. "Hush. Take him down home, T.P. Frony fixing him a bed. You all look after him, now. Hush, Benjy. Go on with T.P."

She went where we could hear Mother.

"Better keep him there." It wasn't Father. He shut the door, but I could still smell it.

We went down stairs. The stairs went down into the dark and T.P. took my hand, and we went out the door, out of the dark. Dan was sitting in the back yard, howling.

"He smell it." T.P. said. "Is that the way you found it out."

We went down the steps, where our shadows were.

"I forgot your coat." T.P. said. "You ought to had it. But I aint going back."

Dan howled.

"Hush now." T.P. said. Our shadows moved, but Dan's shadow didn't move except to howl when he did.

"I cant take you down home, bellering like you is." T.P. said. "You was bad enough before you got that bullfrog voice. Come on."

We went along the brick walk, with our shadows. The pig pen smelled like pigs. The cow stood in the lot, chewing at us. Dan howled.

"You going to wake the whole town up." T.P. said. "Cant you hush." We saw Fancy, eating by the branch. The moon shone on the water when we got there.

"Naw, sir." T.P. said. "This too close. We cant stop here. Come on. Now, just look at you. Got your whole leg wet. Come on, here." Dan howled.

The ditch came up out of the buzzing grass. The bones rounded out of the black vines.

"Now." T.P. said. "BelIer your head off if you want to. You got the whole night and a twenty acre pasture to belIer in."

T.P. lay down in the ditch and I sat down, watching the bones where the buzzards ate Nancy, flapping hlack and slow and heavy out of the ditch.