Page:Requiem for a Nun (1919) Faulkner.djvu/244

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REQUIEM FOR A NUN NANCY 243


I don't know. Maybe when folks are suffering, they will be too busy to get into devilment, won't have time to worry and meddle one another. TEMPLE But why must it be suffering? He's omnipotent, or so they tell us. Why couldn't He have invented something else? Or, if it's got to be suffering, why can't it be just your own? why can't you buy back your own sins with your own agony? Why do you and my little baby both have to suffer just because I decided to go to a baseball game five years ago? Do you have to suffer everybody else's anguish just to believe in God? What kind of God is it that has to blackmail His customers with the who'e world's grief and ruin? NANCY He don't want you to suffer. He don't like suffering neither. But He can't help Himself. He's like a man that's got too many mules. All of a sudden one morning, he looks around and sees more mules than he can count at one time even, let alone find work for, and all he knows is that they are his, because at least don't nobody else want to claim them, and that the pasture fence was still holding them last night where they can't harm themselves nor nobody else the least possible. And that when Monday morning comes, he can walk in there and hem some of them up and even catch them if he's careful about not never turning his back on the ones he ain't hemmed up. And that, once the

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