As I Lay Dying

Darl watches Jewel ride to Armistid’s house and come back with Armistid and his team, who mount Addie’s coffin and ailing Cash on top of it.

The Bundrens are to stay with Armistid and his wife, Lula. As with Samson’s house, Anse says that they will make use of the shed and that they will have no need of the house. Anse finally accepts, and they go into the house and receive hospitality. There is talk of getting another team of mules together.

Jewel, however, stays outside with his horse, baiting it and striking it in the face with the back of a curry comb.

Anse takes Jewel’s horse and rides off to purchase a new team of mules on credit to complete the journey. He refuses Armistid’s offer of his own team of mules, affirming that Addie would have only consented to travel in one owned by the family. When he returns, he states that he has offered Jewel’s horse in exchange for the team of mules. His motivations are both to do right by Addie and to buy himself a set of teeth in town. Jewel’s response is to take the horse and ride off on it.

Meanwhile, Armistid knows that the only way to get to Jefferson would be to go around by Mottson. The Bundrens insist on taking sick Cash, who has broken the same leg as he did last summer, piling him on top of Addie’s coffin.

Eustace Grimm who works for Snopes, turns up the next morning with a team of mules. They speculate that Jewel will have ridden off on his horse all the way to Texas.

Vardaman sees increasing numbers of buzzards in the sky as the Bundrens move on with their journey. Jewel is still gone. He is still convinced that Jewel’s mother is a horse and that his own is a fish who escaped from the coffin and went into the water. When they are next near water, he will see his fish mother.

They are going to Mottson, where they will buy medicine for Cash, and Dewey Dell will sell Cora’s rotting cakes. The new team of mules are weak, and the able-bodied members of the family must walk behind the wagon whenever there are hills.

Moseley is the Mottson drugstore owner, who Dewey Dell approaches with 10 dollars in exchange for an abortion. She tells Moseley that Lafe, the father of her child, said that for 10 dollars she could get the illegal solution and would never compromise the pharmacist’s reputation. Moseley, however, feigns moral outrage and says that she should use the money to buy a marriage license and marry Lafe.

Meanwhile, Moseley hears how the Bundrens with their reeking coffin and injured man lying on top of it, are causing outrage for their expedition. They, however, insist on continuing.

On the road, Darl observes that Dewey Dell still has her package and so did not get her medicine, and that Cash risks bleeding to death on the way. They fix his leg to the best of their ability before going on the road. They are surprised by the presence of Jewel, who comes to find them and gets in the wagon. He is without his horse.

Vardaman wonders about the buzzards in the sky and is determined to find out where Anse and his brothers sleep while he is with Dewey Dell.

Darl asks Jewel who his father is, and Jewel damns him in return. Darl is still angry and wonders who Jewel’s father is. They rest the coffin under the apple tree.

The family are staying with the Gillespies that night. As Addie is laid under the apple tree, Vardaman attempts to talk to her through the wood. Darl tells him that Addie is talking to God and asking “Him to hide her away from the sight of man” so that she can die in peace (130). They go to check on Cash with bad leg, and then Vardaman who wants to see where Anse and his brothers stay at night, sees something that Dewey Dell tells him to share with nobody.

Gillespie’s barn is on fire. Darl observes with horror as Jewel saves the mules, Gillespie’s animals, and Addie’s coffin from inside the barn single-handedly. Jewel rides on the coffin as though it is a rodeo horse until it crashes down.

Vardaman sees that the barn has gone up in flames, although the adults have retrieved Addie and set her back beneath the apple tree. When Darl cries, Vardaman attempts to comfort him by stating that Jewel managed to save the coffin. Vardaman overhears Dewey Dell’s refrain that he “mustn’t never tell nobody” what he saw when he went to investigate where the others stayed at night (137)

They are approaching Jefferson when Dewey Dell asks to pause the wagon. She goes into some bushes and re-emerges in her Sunday clothes. One of the hills on the way to Jefferson is made of a red sand which slows the wagon down. Jewel calls the white man and group of African Americans who watch them sons of bitches. The white man becomes incensed, and he takes out a knife and aims it at Jewel. Darl makes an excuse about Jewel being burned in a fire the previous night to diffuse the situation. However, when the others get back on the wagon, Jewel refuses, and taking the rear wheel of the wagon, squats there, staring straight ahead.

Cash confirms that Darl is the one who set fire to Gillespie’s barn, and that this was the secret that Vardaman could tell no-one about. There is talk of having to send Darl to Jackson or risking having Gillespie sue them. They try to decide in which order to proceed: they have to send Cash to the doctor, send Darl to goal, and bury Addie. They have not made sufficient preparations for burying Addie and will have to go to the hardware store for the tools they lost.

Cash tries to understand his brother’s motives. Cash contemplates that it might have been God’s will that the family did not get to Jefferson and that Darl’s setting fire to the barn was one way of relieving them from the journey.

Dewey Dell is the first to physically attack Darl, followed by Jewel. Jewel tells Darl that “I thought you would have told me […] I never thought you wouldn’t have” (145). Jewel then implores that Darl should be killed. Darl turns to Cash and asks if he wants him to go. Cash makes some excuse about it being quieter and less troublesome if Darl goes, at which Darl bursts out laughing.

When Peabody sees Cash, he is horrified that Anse put cement on Cash’s leg. He does not believe Cash when he tells him that he was unbothered by his trials on the wagon. Still, he tells Cash that he is lucky that he broke the same leg as he previously did. Peabody judges Anse harshly for throwing Darl into the street and sending him off to gaol. Anse has gone to return the spades he used for burying his wife.

Skeet Macgowan, the doctor’s assistant, hears about Dewey Dell’s arrival from his colleague, Jody. He is impressed by how pretty she is, but he assumes that as a country girl, she must be unintelligent. Although Dewey Dell questions his claim that he is the real doctor, she offers him 10 dollars and urges him to help her fix her unwanted child problem. He gives her turpentine-smelling potion and says that the rest of the cure involves capsules and an “operation” that she has to return for later (152). As it is the same operation Dewey Dell had before, Macgowan likely intends sexual intercourse. Dewey Dell only wants to know that the operation will work, and she comes back at the due time. Macgowan says she is to go down to the cellar for her cure. He sees a boy in overalls outside in the street.

Vardaman waits outside while Dewey Dell is having her appointment with Macgowan. He contemplates how Darl “went crazy and went to Jackson both” (155). After a long time, Dewey Dell emerges, saying that she does not believe that Macgowan’s cure will work. She repeats this idea, but Vardaman does not know what she is talking about.

Darl’s chapter is narrated in the third person and recounts the news that he was put on the train to Jackson and chaperoned by pistol-carrying men. He was laughing the whole way. The reader also learns that “Darl had a little spy-glass he got in France at the war” (156), a detail that alerts us to the fact that Darl has not only traveled and fought in the First World War but has potentially returned shell-shocked or with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The chapter offers a view to the wagon and the Bundren family, who are sitting in it eating bananas from a paper bag. The account ends with the image of “our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson” (156).

When Anse sees that Dewey Dell has 10 dollars, she tells him that it is not her money. At first, she pretends that she is keeping the money for Cora, whose cakes she sold. However, Anse does not believe her. He then figures that the package Dewey Dell was carrying was Sunday clothes and not the cakes. He asks what the money was for and how she earned it. He resents that he is so broke, and she will not loan it to him. She tells him it is for her to buy something with, but she is cagey about what. He takes the money for himself and leaves her.

The Bundrens go to a house to return their borrowed shovels. A gramophone plays, and the sound of the music seduces Cash.

The next day, Anse goes off to the barber shop to get a shave and attend to some business. The business is getting his teeth and finding a new wife, whom he presents to his children as Mrs. Bundren. The new Mrs. Bundren is carrying a graphophone, and Cash thinks it is a shame that Darl would not be there to also enjoy it, though he concludes “this world is not his world; this life his life” (162).