IT'S BECAUSE HE STAYS OUT THERE, RIGHT UNDER THE WIN-
dow, hammering and sawing on that goddamn box.
Where she's got to see him. Where every breath she
draws is full of his knocking and sawing where she can
see him saying See. See what a good one I am making for
you. I told him to go somewhere else. I said Good God
do you want to see her in it. It's like when he was a little
boy and she says if she had some fertilizer she would try
to raise some flowers and he taken the bread-pan and
brought it back from the barn full of dung.

And now them others sitting there, like buzzards.
Waiting, fanning themselves. Because I said If you
wouldn't keep on sawing and nailing at it until a man
can't sleep even and her hands laying on the quilt like
two of them roots dug up and tried to wash and you
couldn't get them clean. I can see the fan and Dewey
Dell's arm. I said if you'd just let her alone. Sawing and
knocking, and keeping the air always moving so fast on
her face that when you're tired you can't breathe it, and
that goddamn adze going One lick less. One lick less.
One lick less until everybody that passes in the road will
have to stop and see it and say what a fine carpenter he
is. If it had just been me when Cash fell off of that
church and if it had just been me when pa laid sick with
that load of wood fell on him, it would not be happening
with every bastard in the county coming in to stare at
her because if there is a God what the hell is He for. It
would just be me and her on a high hill and me rolling

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