As I Lay Dying is told in individual sections, so that the narration of the story shifts from one character to the next. While most sections are narrated by members of the Bundren family, the few that are narrated by neighbors and other observers offer insight into the family from an outsider's perspective. Each narrator – family members and strangers – is believable but at the same time unreliable, forcing readers to decide for themselves what is reality and what is not. Addie Bundren, the wife of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor southern family, is very ill and is expected to die soon. Her eldest son, Cash, uses all his carpentry skills to prepare his coffin, which he builds right outside Addie's bedroom window. Although Addie's health deteriorates rapidly, two of her other sons, Darl and Jewel, leave town to make a delivery to the Bundrens' neighbor, Vernon Tull, whose wife and two daughters care for Addie. Shortly after Darl and Jewel leave, Addie dies. Bundren's youngest child, Vardaman, associates his mother's death with that of a fish he had caught and cleaned earlier in the day. With a little help, Cash finishes the coffin just before dawn. Vardaman is troubled by the fact that his mother is nailed in a box and while the others sleep, he drills holes in the lid, two of which go through his mother's face. Addie and Anse's daughter, Dewey Dell, whose recent sexual liaisons with a local farmhand named Lafe have left her pregnant, is so overcome by anxiety over her condition that she barely mourns the death of her mother. A funeral service is held the next day, during which the women sing songs inside the Bundren house while the men stand outside on the porch and talk to each other. Darl, who narrates much of this first section, returns with Jewel a few days later, and the presence of buzzards above their house lets them know that their mother is dead. Seeing this sign, Darl sardonically reassures Jewel, who is widely seen as ungrateful and uncaring, that he can be sure that his beloved horse is not dead. Addie made Anse promise that she would be buried in Jefferson City, and although this request was a far more complicated proposition than burying her at home, Anse's sense of duty, combined with his desire to buying a set of false teeth, forces him to fulfill Addie's last wish.