A writing exercise:
Write a new chapter from Faulkner's AS I LAY DYING
from another character's point of view.

“It don’t bother me none,” says Cash.

“But you’re fixing to make yourself sick,” I say. My voice rises like Addie Bundren’s cakes. “Take it, Cash. Take Ma’s rain coat.”

“It don’t bother me none,” he says.

Pa picks up another plank. “Darl knowed it was fixing to rain. He taken his coat to town.”

“Eula!” Ma calls from the porch. “Come out of the rain, Eula!”

Oh, fiddlesticks. Cash takes up the adze. I pull my red hat over my ears. Kate says them rich town ladies wear ostrich feathers in their hats and eats little bits of cake without moving their tongues. I am hungry always. Sometimes I wag my tongue in Kate’s glass when she aint looking. That shiny glass, sent all the way from Jackson with nary a scratch, and Ma making such a fuss when she catched me staring in it like I was queer as Darl or crazy as little Verdamen was just then, screaming and hollering like the devil hisself!

Cash Cash Cash. The tip of my tongue stings with sweetness and I feel the pink muscle exploding with that pleasure. Who needs Kate’s old glass or her Jewel or them town gals diamond hairpins and shiny brass buckles. My jewel is right here, right outside his dead mama’s door. She can not open it. But I, I am stronger than a new roof. I will give my hand freely if only he would look at how sweet I am.

Cash squints his eyes. “Give me the next one, Vernon,” he says.

Pa hands him a plank. The earth trembles. I can feel it in my knees. I can feel the glare of the lantern on my skin. The lightning strikes my legs.

Pa says, “You take Mrs. Tull’s rain coat, Cash. You’re soaked to the bone.”

He is not like the others. I see him falling off the church. Inside the church it is warm and dry. I see him inside the church. I am wearing a silver necklace. My dress is whiter than a eggshell. Cash covers my seams with his arm and, leaning over me like a willow branch, whispers in my ear. Kate cries into a handkerchief and Dewey Dell faints away in the aisle of the church. She says she cant holp it. She says she misses her ma. In a second, I would leave my own at the altar steps. In a second, I would leave her bible and her callused knees and her chickens.

“Eula,” calls Ma again. “Come to the house!”

“Coming, Ma!” Cash is not like the other ones. Addie Bundren is dead
and my red hat is wet.