Yes. This is my job. I watch after drooling mad men during the day, transporting them on the train, keeping them quiet, and I have to do the same to my children when I get home. Look at him, mumbling to himself. Yes. He pops his neck, throwing his face side to side, up and down. Sits still and mumbles. Something about his family? Pathetic lot. But that poor man… I've broken my arm twice. My skin has never been torn off though.
The sun pours on my body, burning the flesh not covered by my coat, heating the flesh covered by it. I tug my collar down and sideways. The mad man watches me and laughs. He shakes his head and chuckles into his lap.
"Yes yes yes," he says.
I glance over to my companion who appears to be not there. His face is slack, and parts of his right side are in the sun. Beads of sweat make their way down his face, resting above his lips or the edge of his chin. He doesn't wipe his face with the handkerchief even though it sticks out of his front pocket.
"Yes yes yes," he groans.
I clear my throat, and the mad man jerks his head up. He is still, very still, watching me. Three breaths go by, then seven. Then he starts laughing. Laughing like a damn hyena. The best way to get them to shut up is to just let them go at it. He laughed into the window.
"Yes," I say after some time passes of listening to his racket.
He stills and quiets. Slowly he looks back at me then into the empty seat beside me then into his lap.
"Loren," I say. He doesn't come back. "Loren." He jerks his body and looks at me, gives me a nod, and goes back away.
Yes yes yes
If he is mad, and Kinchen is sane, what am I? I want to burn things sometimes. Who hasn't imagined burning down their rude neighbor's house before, especially the ones who have caught and killed your daughter's cat? Do they not deserve for that to happen to them? I didn't mean for my dog to get out and kill their birds. She was a hunting dog, what would anyone expect? I took care of her though. I gave her to someone else. Yet they still felt the need to capture her cat and get rid of it. Do they not deserve to be burned—to be punished? How do you explain to your child that their Kitty won't be coming back? Parts of my body are burning. He mutters and laughs. I mutter and laugh too, sometimes. I laughed when I found her poisoned body on my doorstep—I know who did it. Bundren, here, knew when to end something, but I still struggle with knowing when to end or knowing when to punish or knowing when to do nothing. Kinchen has been killing himself for years—or trying to. He drinks and drinks and drinks. He wants the drink to shut down the body, to slow it down. But his body defies him and stays healthier than mine. I don't drink more than a glass of wine a night with my dinner. That's it. My health is failing and I'm ten years younger than him. Does that not make him mad? Is that not abnormal?
Empty seat in front of me, rough, bottom curved from so many resting travelers. Or maybe more madmen. What makes one man mad and not the other. Why is Darl mad? Why am I normal? And if I wanted to be mad?
Yes yes yes
I dig into the front pocket of my coat and pull out my tarnished watch. Three generations have felt that one smooth spot on its back. Two generations have passed it down to the next. My son will get it next. He insisted on having his own name, so Kinchen was changed to Kenchen. Ha ha ha.
I look at the mad man whose face is slick with either sweat or tears and red—as red as Beryl's face when she comes into the house late in the evening after playing out with Willie and Ken. I will hug them. They will not burn me.
Yes yes yes
He is on the other side of the grimy bars, laughing and looking right at me. But I'm in the cell. I'm the one in the cell. He is free to be a madman. I'm stuck in my place. Everyone knew who he is—who he was. Everyone thinks they know who I am. I have to keep it that way. He calls me different names. Jewel. Dewey Dell. Addie. Addie. Addie. I call him one, I call him Father. A lantern, covered in grime and shedding oily, yellow light hangs beside me. I take out a candle and light the top. Just him and me. We stare at each other. We talk without moving our lips. Ideas flow in and out. I can't distinguish them from his and mine, for they are intertwining, and they spiral up and through and over and inward, and for they implode and reconstruct. They are incestuous. We are incestuous and our thoughts are incestuous. They are profound. Profound? Was that his word or mine? Profound. He calls me. Like a bug digging deep into my ear, turning biting twisting yanking. It is painful and it doesn't end. A burn that is being irritated with more heat, the flesh just sloughed and it falls into the candle and the fat burns and it pleases us with the smell. And it is gone. Everything. Nothing else remains but the thoughts. It starts over in the rolling green fields of ivy.