“You clean it,” Anse says. He don’t look around. Vardaman comes back and picks up the fish. It slides out of his hands, smearing wet dirt on to him, and flops down, dirtying itself again, gap-mouthed, goggle-eyed, hiding into the dust like it was ashamed of being dead, like it was in a hurry to get back hid again. Vardaman cusses it. He cusses it like a grown man, standing astraddle of it. Anse don’t look around. Vardaman picks it up again. He goes on around the house, toting it in both arms like an armful of wood, it overlapping him on both ends, head and tail. Durn nigh big as he is.
Anse’s wrists dangle out of his sleeves: I never see him with a shirt on that looked like it was his in all my life. They all looked like Jewel might have give him his old ones. Not Jewel, though. He’s long-armed, even if he is spindling. Except for the lack of sweat. You could tell they ain’t been nobody else’s but Anse’s that way without no mistake. His eyes look like pieces of burnt-out cinder fixed in his face, looking out over the land.
When the shadow touches the steps he says “It’s five o’clock.”
Just as I get up Cora comes to the door and says it’s time to get on. Anse reaches for his shoes. “Now, Mr. Bundren,” Cora says, “don’t you get up now.” He puts his shoes on, stomping into them, like he does everything, like he is hoping all the time he really can’t do it and can quit trying to. When we go up the hall we can hear them clumping on the floor like they was iron shoes. He comes toward the door where she is, blinking his eyes, kind of looking ahead of hisself before he sees, like he is hoping to find her setting up, in a chair maybe or maybe sweeping, and looks into the door in that surprised way like he looks in and finds her still in bed every time and Dewey Dell still a-fanning her with the fan. He stands there, like he don’t aim to move again nor nothing else.
“Well, I reckon we better get on,” Cora says. “I got to feed the chickens.” It’s fixing to rain, too. Clouds like that don’t lie, and the cotton making