"What are you talking so loud for, Nancy?" Caddy said.
"Who; me?" Nancy said. "Listen at Quentin and Caddy and Jason saying I'm talking loud."
"You talk like there was five of us here," Caddy said. "You talk like father was here too."
"Who; me talking loud, Mr Jason?" Nancy said.
"Nancy called Jason 'Mister,'" Caddy said.
"Listen how Caddy and Quentin and Jason talk," Nancy said.
"We're not talking loud," Caddy said. "You're the one that's talking like father "
"Hush," Nancy said; "hush, Mr Jason."
"Nancy called Jason 'Mister' again."
"Hush," Nancy said. She was talking loud when we crossed the ditch and stooped through the fence where she used to stoop through with the clothes on her head. Then we came to her house. We were going fast then. She opened the door. The smell of the house was like the lamp and the smell of Nancy was like the wick, like they were waiting for one another to begin to smell. She lit the lamp and closed the door and put the bar up. Then she quit talking loud, looking at us.
"What're we going to do?" Caddy said.
"What do yawl want to do?" Nancy said.
"You said we would have some fun," Caddy said.
There was something about Nancy's house; something you could smell besides Nancy and the house. Jason smelled it, even. "I don't want to stay here," he said. "I want to go home."
"Go home, then," Caddy said.
"I don't want to go by myself," Jason said.
"We're going to have some fun," Nancy said.
"How?" Caddy said.
Nancy stood by the door. She was looking at us, only it was like she had emptied her eyes, like she had quit using them. "What do you want to do?" she said.
"Tell us a story," Caddy said. "Can you tell a story?"
"Yes," Nancy said.
"Tell it," Caddy said. We looked at Nancy. "You don't know any stories."
"Yes," Nancy said. "Yes, I do."
She came and sat in a chair before the hearth. There was a little fire there. Nancy built it up, when it was already hot inside. She built a good blaze. She told a story. She talked like her eyes looked, like her eyes watching us and her voice talking to us did not belong to her. Like she was living somewhere else, waiting somewhere else. She was outside the cabin. Her voice was inside and the shape of her, the Nancy that could stoop under a barbed wire fence with a bundle of clothes balanced on her head as though without weight, like a balloon, was there. But that was all. "And so this here queen come walking up to the ditch, where that bad man was hiding. She was walking up to the ditch, and she say, 'If I can just get past this here ditch,' was what she say..."
"What ditch?" Caddy said. "A ditch like that one out there? Why did a queen want to go into a ditch?"
"To get to her house," Nancy said. She looked at us. "She had to cross the ditch to get into her house quick and bar the door."
"Why did she want to go home and bar the door?" Caddy said.
IV.
NANCY LOOKED at us. She quit talking. She looked at us.
Jason's legs stuck straight out of his pants where he sat on Nancy's lap. "I don't think that's a good story," he said. "I want to go home."
"Maybe we had better," Caddy said. She got up from the floor. "I bet they are looking for us right now." She went toward the door.
"No," Nancy said. "Don't open it." She got up quick and passed Caddy. She didn't touch the door, the wooden bar.
"Why not?" Caddy said.
"Come back to the lamp," Nancy said. "We'll have fun. You don't have to go."
"We ought to go," Caddy said. "Unless we have a lot of fun." She and Nancy came back to the fire, the lamp.
"I want to go home," Jason said. "I'm going to tell."
"I know another story," Nancy said. She stood close to the lamp. She looked at Caddy, like when your eyes look up at a stick balanced on your nose. She had to look down to see Caddy, but her eyes looked like that, like when you are balancing a stick.
"I won't listen to it," Jason said. "I'll bang on the floor."
"It's a good one," Nancy said. "It's better than the other one."
"What's it about?" Caddy said. Nancy was standing by the lamp. Her hand was on the lamp, against the light, long and brown.
"Your hand is on that hot globe." Caddy said. "Don't it feel hot to your hand?"
Nancy looked at her hand on the lamp chimney. She took her hand away, slow. She stood there, looking at Caddy, wringing her long hand as though it were tied to her wrist with a string.
"Let's do something else," Caddy said.
"I want to go home," Jason said.
"I got some popcorn," Nancy said. She looked at Caddy and then at Jason and then at me and then at Caddy again.
"I got some popcorn."
"I don't like popcorn," Jason said. "I'd rather have candy."
Nancy looked at Jason. "You can hold the popper." She was still wringing her hand; it was long and limp and brown.
"All right," Jason said. "I'll stay a while if I can do that. Caddy can't hold it. I'll want to go home again if Caddy holds the popper."
Nancy built up the fire. "Look at Nancy putting her hands in the fire," Caddy said. "What's the matter with you, Nancy?"
"I got popcorn," Nancy said. "I got some." She took the popper from under the bed. It was broken. Jason began to cry.
"Now we can't have any popcorn," he said.
"We ought to go home, anyway," Caddy said. "Come on, Quentin."
"Wait," Nancy said; "wait. I can fix it. Don't you want to help me fix it?"
"I don't think I want any," Caddy said. "It's too late now."
"You help me, Jason," Nancy said. "Don't you want to help me?"
"No," Jason said. "I want to go home."
"Hush," Nancy said; "hush. Watch. Watch me. I can fix it so Jason can hold it and pop the corn." She got a piece of wire and fixed the popper.
"It won't hold good," Caddy said.
"Yes, it will," Nancy said. "Yawl watch. Yawl help me shell some corn."
The popcorn was under the bed too. We shelled it into the popper and Nancy helped Jason hold the popper over the fire.
"It's not popping," Jason said. "I want to go home."
"You wait," Nancy said. "It'll begin to pop. We'll have fun then." She was sitting close to the fire. The lamp was turned up so high it was beginning to smoke.
"Why don't you turn it down some?" I said.
"It's all right," Nancy said. "I'll clean it. Yawl wait. The popcorn will start in a minute."
"I don't believe it's going to start," Caddy said. "We ought to start home, anyway. They'll be worried."
"No," Nancy said. "It's going to pop. Dilsey will tell um yawl with me. I been working for yawl long time. They won't mind if yawl at my house. You wait, now. It'll start popping any minute now."
Then Jason got some smoke in his eyes and he began to cry. He dropped the popper into the fire. Nancy got a wet rag ard wiped Jason's face, but he didn't stop crying.
"Hush," she said. "Hush." But he didn't hush. Caddy took the popper out of the fire.
"It's burned up," she said. "You'll have to get some more popcorn, Nancy."
"Did you put all of it in?" Nancy said.
"Yes," Caddy said. Nancy looked at Caddy. Then she took the popper and opened it and poured the cinders into her apron and began to sort the grains, her hands long and brown, and we watching her.
"Haven't you got any more?" Caddy said.
"Yes," Nancy said; "yes. Look. This here ain't burnt. All we need to do is..."
"I want to go home," Jason said. "I'm going to tell"
"Hush," Caddy said. We all listened. Nancy's head was already turned toward the barred door, her eyes filled with red lamplight. "Somebody is coming," Caddy said.
Then Nancy began to make that sound again, not loud, sitting there above the fire, her long hands dangling between her knees; all of a sudden water began to come out on her face in big drops, running down her face, carrying in each one a little turning ball of firelight like a spark until it dropped off her chin. "She's not crying," I said.
"I ain't crying," Nancy said. Her eyes were closed. "I ain't crying. Who is it?"
"I don't know," Caddy said. She went to the door and looked out. "We've got to go now," she said. "Here comes father."
"I'm going to tell," Jason said. "Yawl made me come."
The water still ran down Nancy's face. She turned in her chair. "Listen. Tell him. Tell him we going to have fun. Tell him I take good care of yawl until in the morning. Tell him to let me come home with yawl and sleep on the floor. Tell him I won't need no pallet. We'll have fun. You member last time how we had so much fun?"
"I didn't have fun," Jason said. "You hurt me. You put smoke in my eyes. I'm going to tell."
V.
FATHER CAME IN. He looked at us. Nancy did not get up.
"Tell him," she said.
"Caddy made us come down here," Jason said. "I didn't want to."
Father came to the fire. Nancy looked up at him. "Can't you go to Aunt Rachel's and stay?" he said. Nancy looked up at father, her hands between her knees. "He's not here," father said. "I would have seen him. There's not a soul in sight."
"He in the ditch," Nancy said. "He waiting in the ditch yonder."
"Nonsense," father said. He looked at Nancy. "Do you know he's there?"
"I got the sign," Nancy said.
"What sign?"
"I got it. It was on the table when I come in. It was a hogbone, with blood meat still on it, laying by the lamp. He's out there. When yawl walk out that door, I gone."
"Gone where, Nancy?" Caddy said.
"I'm not a tattletale," Jason said.
"Nonsense," father said.
"He out there," Nancy said. "He looking through that window this minute, waiting for yawl to go. Then I gone."
"Nonsense," father said. "Lock up your house and we'll take you on to Aunt Rachel's."
"'Twont do no good," Nancy said. She didn't look at father now, but he looked down at her, at her long, limp, moving hands. "Putting it off won't do no good."
"Then what do you want to do?" father said.
"I don't know," Nancy said. "I can't do nothing. Just put it off. And that don't do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain't no more than mine."