I've been wanting to write another As I Lay Dying fanfic ever since I wrote Secret Sin, but it is really hard to get into these characters' heads. I sketched this brief interlude out during class. It takes place after Secret Sin, and I debated whether I wanted to make it a separate story or keep all of my AILD stories under one fanfic together. In the end, I decided to keep it with Secret Sin.
Some personal notes on dates, ages, etc.:
Faulkner doesn't state when AILD actually takes place, but it was likely the mid-1920's. The novel itself was written in 1929 and published in 1930, and Faulkner notes it took him six weeks to write it. While it is possible that he started the novel after the Stock Market Crash in October 1929 and finished it in December, there were also eight months out of the year before the crash in which he could have written the novel. In short, it is not a novel about the Great Depression. The South was notably poorer than other regions even during the prosperous 1920's.
From the novel itself, we know Darl fought in World War I (in his final chapter, he mentions a coin he brought home from France in "the war"), and history tells us that the US did not get involved in that war until late 1917 and more so in 1918. We also know that Dewey Dell is 17 in the novel, and that it was "nigh on ten years" after Darl's birth before Jewel was born. Fighting men in WWI were ages 18-40 (though many were younger - the youngest soldier in WWI was actually 12). If, say, Darl was around 20 years old in 1917, this would make his birth year ca. 1897, which places Jewel's birth year around 1906 (9 years older, because "nigh on ten years" is "almost ten years"), and if Cash is a year or two older than Darl, he was probably born in 1895 or 1896. We can assume Jewel is at least in his late teens when the novel takes place – maybe 18 or 19 years old, which dates the novel to 1924 or 1925. Dewey Dell was born in 1907 or 1908. Vardaman is the wild card, but I always assumed he was about 10 years old, making his birth year around 1917.
Those are just my speculations, of course. Onwards...!
~BD
Secret Sin: Brothel
Winter, 1926
In an effort to make more money to pay off the mortgage, he starts helping Quick with lumber in his spare time. There isn't much to do on the farm until spring planting, and sometimes he just needs to get away from that new wife of his. He isn't overly fond of Quick, but he wants the money, and he doesn't want to be too beholding to Tull.
To his irritation, Quick also hires MacCallum – one of the laziest men in the whole damn county. More than once, Jewel wishes Quick would fire MacCallum's sorry ass. He's more suited for farm work; not for hauling lumber.
On their third trip that first week, with two full loads, MacCallum says he has something he needs to do in town, and leaves Jewel to unload the lumber at the mill on the outskirts of town. He takes a mule and bails, and Jewel swears to high heaven while he unloads by himself. The foreman keeps frowning at him and wondering out loud why "that there other fellow" disappeared. Jewel says he doesn't fucking know, and keeps unloading.
When he finishes, he waits. But after twenty minutes, he's so pissed off about the whole thing that he asks the foreman to hire him for the day and to saw lumber, since he has no idea when MacCallum will return. The foreman and manager grapple, there is some hedging and haggling, and they finally (grudgingly) agree to pay Jewel for a day's work.
By nightfall, MacCallum still hasn't returned. The mill shuts down for the evening, Jewel receives his pay, and in pure anger, he storms towards town to track the son of a bitch down, if for no other reason than he needs the fucking mule to haul the wagons back to Quick.
The shop fronts have long since closed and the owners headed to supper. The only lights are those of homes and, in the worse districts, brothels and bars. He has better use of his money than wasting it on whiskey, but he checks the bars to make sure MacCallum isn't at his cups. None of the bartenders has seen him, but finally, with only a couple of bars left, Jewel asks an old man wiping out a glass. The man stares at him balefully for a moment before admitting that he did see the fellow a bit earlier, drunk off his ass, and that he likely went to Miss Daisy's, "cuz he's got a bitch up there".
Jewel heads through the alleys and bangs into the brothel in question without knocking. The madam looks him up and down appraisingly, but he ignores her.
"I'm looking for Lafe MacCallum," he snarls. "Bout yea high, darkish hair. Heard he come here."
The woman's expression immediately changes; no longer does she look him over as though thinking he is attractive. Now, she looks mad and worried at the same time. "We don't want no trouble here," she snaps shortly.
"Ain't looking for trouble," he growls. "Looking for that goddamn sorry cuss. Might say I'm responsible for the mule he rode up on, the son of a bitch." Without waiting for a response, he heads up the rickety staircase, and the woman starts shrieking that he can't go upstairs unless he pays first. He ignores her and kicks the first door open.
A young, straggly-haired woman and an older, paunchy man stare at him like frightened rabbits from the bed, and without waiting for a response, he moves on to the next door. A skinny blonde girl screams and snatches her negligee around her; he ignores her too, and kicks the third door open, then the fourth.
In the fourth small room, he discovers the filthy piece of shit, passed out on the floor and snoring lightly. The girl is sitting at a scuffed, dirty vanity – she sees Jewel in the mirror and turns abruptly. She is dark-haired and thin, and she eyes him sharply, as though she could kill him with her eyes, and he stares back at her, his anger rising even more, and quickly, suffusing his face.
The madam appears behind him at that moment, furious and puffed up like a mad hen. "You git out of here!" she yells at him hatefully. "You ain't paid for her and she's with another man right now!"
The girl stands up, not bothering to pull on a robe. Her negligee is dirty and thin; she may as well be wearing nothing. In a flat, quiet voice, she says, "It's okay. He's an old acquaintance. Ain't seen him in a while. I'd like to talk to him. We won't do nothin' else, I promise." She jerks her head slightly towards MacCallum, and adds, "He can't do nothin' right now no ways."
"You sure, Della?" the madam asks coldly. "You don't get paid if you don't work, girl."
"I'm sure," she answers.
The woman slams the door behind him, leaving him standing in a dirty, cramped room with just a bed, a vanity, a rickety chair, and a broken dresser.
After a long moment, he demands, "Where's the goddamn baby?"
Her eyes look dead. She sits down on the vanity and looks down at MacCallum, and in that moment, he knows the truth and a wave of anger infuses through him.
She says wearily, "Gave it up. Started working here. Ain't nothing else I'm fit for, is there?"
"It was his, wasn't it?"
She doesn't respond, she just fidgets with the hem of her negligee and keeps looking down at the passed-out son of a bitch.
"Why you ain't using your real name, is it?"
"Didn't want no one to find me." She rouses herself and looks at him, her brow furrowing slightly. "How did you?"
"I didn't." His voice is short and belies the anger. "Quick hired both me and him, and that good-for-nothing piece of horse-shit ran out on me today. Left me to unload two goddamn wagons by myself so he could get drunk and come here."
"He brings me a little money now and again. Not often."
He bares his teeth in his anger. "Only cuz he wants to rut."
"Sorry he left you to unload," she mumbles, looking away.
"Not as sorry as he's gonna be when he wakes up and finds he's stranded in town."
Dewey Dell doesn't argue with him, nor does she beg him not to leave MacCallum behind. Instead, she says, "How's pa?"
"Don't know. Never see him. Don't care to."
She looks confused. "You ain't living in Jefferson?"
"No."
"Where are you living, then?"
"Home," he answers shortly.
"Oh. You still farming that place?"
"Made that woman get pa to sell me the mortgage," he growls. "She got him to do it. Only thing the bitch has ever done for me."
"You're married." She nods towards his left hand.
"So's Cash."
"How is Cash?"
"Last I saw he was doing decent. Leg bothers him some still."
"Vardaman?"
"No idea."
She doesn't ask about the other one, and after a long, tense moment, Jewel turns to leave. Behind him, she says sharply, "Don't you tell nobody, Jewel. You hear me?"
His lip curls. "Why the hell would I?"
"Don't expect you to help me, neither." She fumbles over these words, glancing back down at MacCallum as she says them.
He doesn't respond to that at all, because he doesn't intend to help her. Instead, he leaves the room and heads downstairs, slamming the door behind him. On his way out the side door, the madam claws at him, demanding to know why the hell he didn't take that drunkard out when that's what he came for. He ignores her, too. Outside, he grabs the mule MacCallum took, and leads it back to the silent mill. He hitches the wagons together and the mules to the front, and heads back towards Quick's place.
He arrives late at night, and Quick is in a foul temper. Jewel tells him the truth: that MacCallum bailed out, and he watches as Quick's face turns purple by the lantern light.
"'preciate you telling me." Quick spits into the dust, his lips pulled back and his teeth gleaming yellow in the glow of the flame. "He better not show up here again. I'll beat his sorry ass into the ground. He'll wish he'd never been born. I 'sume you still want the work. Can you manage by yourself 'til I find someone else?"
"Rather do it by myself," he says shortly. "Then I ain't got to rely on no one else."
Quick nods. "Understood."
Without another word, Jewel heads home.
FIN~