Vernon does not look up. “Not long. Some, yet.”
She watches Cash stooping at the plank, the turgid savage gleam of the lantern slicking on the raincoat as he moves. “You go down and get some planks off the barn and finish it and come in out of the rain,” she says. “You’ll both catch your death.” Vernon does not move. “Vernon,” she says.
“We won’t be long,” he says. “We’ll be done after a spell.” Mrs. Tull watches them a while. Then she reenters the house.
“If we get in a tight, we could take some of them planks,” Vernon says. “I’ll help you put them back.”
Cash ceases the plane and squints along the plank, wiping it with his palm. “Give me the next one,” he says.
Some time toward dawn the rain ceases. But it is not yet day when Cash drives the last nail and stands stiffly up and looks down at the finished coffin, the others watching him. In the lantern-light his face is calm, musing; slowly he strokes his hands on his raincoated thighs in a gesture deliberate, final and composed. Then the four of them—Cash and pa and Vernon and Peabody—raise the coffin to their shoulders and turn toward the house. It is light, yet they move slowly; empty, yet they carry it carefully; lifeless, yet they move with hushed precautionary words to one another, speaking of it as though, complete, it now slumbered lightly alive, waiting to come awake. On the dark floor their feet clump awkwardly, as though for a long time they have not walked on floors.
They set it down by the bed. Peabody says quietly: “Let’s eat a snack. It’s almost daylight. Where’s Cash?”