When we were about seventeen, me and Anse were convinced that we were in love. That is why we decided to elope. But, as it always seemed to happen, my maw and his pa found out about it before we could carry it out. After that, they kept close watch on me and Anse, and after awhile we grew apart. Then he moved to this farm.
“My mother is not a duck. My mother is a fish,” said Vardaman. He had just come from helping to get the team ready to go to town.
“No hunny, your mother was a person, but she isn’t a person anymore because she is dead” I said, after a long silence. Vardaman just sat and contemplated about what I had said.
“Anse, come on. We’re fixin’ to wait too late to go,” I said. Me, Anse, and Vardaman were going to New Hope to get a horse.
“Don’t you holler at me like that,” said Anse. “If you rush me too bad, I’ll work up a sweat and when it kills me, you will be sorry.”
“Well, I just want to get home by nightfall, Anse.”
Vardaman still sat there in confusion, looking intensely at what seemed like open space and air.
It wasn’t long until we headed up the team and got into the wagon. It was hot under the summer sun, even in mid-morning. Vardaman sat looking at his pa.
“I see him just a sweatin’ and a sweatin’”, Vardaman whispered to me. “And Pa cain’t sweat! It kilt him, it kilt him!”
It was after noon when we decided to stop and eat our lunch. We decided to halt the wagon on top of a very tall bridge that stood over a rather large and deep creek, filled with jagged rocks that seemed to cut into the air.
“Come and look at the fish pa,” said Vardaman. Anse came up to the rail and looked at where Vardaman was pointing his finger.
“I don’t see nothin’,” Anse said.
“But look closer pa. There are some little ones, little shiny ones that swim around everywhere. But then there is a big ‘un that is all by itself.”
Anse looked more carefully. He still could not see the fish, and I knew it, because he was trying so hard. So Anse decided he would lean out and over the rail in order to try and find the fish. But then it happened- Vardaman came from behind him and pushed him with all his might off of the bridge to a gruesome death. His head had busted open; the life of him was flowing with the water.
Vardaman
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I saw pa sweating. I know he was sweating. But pa is a strong man, and he didn’t want me to know that it was killin’ him. He swallowed the pain right up. I didn’t wanna see that it had kilt pa though. A fish out of water will die. I reckoned that I had to save him. So I put him back in the water, where he belongs, so that he wouldn’t die. I wanted him to go live with maw.
Darl
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Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
Darl, is that why you were laughing, because your aunt and Vardaman have seen your pa die? Goddamn you. Goddamn you.
