“Then I am not,” Darl said. “Am I?”
“No,” I said.
I am. Darl is my brother.
“But you are , Darl,” I said.
“I know it,” Darl said. “That’s why I am not is . Are is too many for one woman to foal.”
Cash is carrying his toolbox. Pa looks at him. “I’ll stop at Tull’s on the way back,” Cash says. “Get on that barn roof.”
“It ain’t respectful,” pa says. “It’s a deliberate flouting of her and of me.”
“Do you want him to come all the way back here and carry them up to Tull’s afoot?” Darl says. Pa looks at Darl, his mouth chewing. Pa shaves every day now because my mother is a fish.
“It ain’t right,” pa says.
Dewey Dell has the package in her hand. She has the basket with our dinner too.
“What’s that?” pa says.
“ Mrs. Tull’s cakes,” Dewey Dell says, getting into the wagon. “I’m taking them to town for her.”
“It ain’t right,” pa says. “It’s a flouting of the dead.”
It’ll be there. It’ll be there come Christmas, she says, shining on the track. She says he won’t sell it to no town boys.