uniquely able to understand—would be there to explain them to him. He had not said they were going to Powderhead. So far as the boy knew, this was to be a fishing trip. He thought that an afternoon of relaxation in a boat before the experiment would help ease the tension, his own as well as Tarwater’s.
On the drive up, his thoughts had been interrupted once when he saw Bishop’s face rise unorganized into the rearview mirror and then disappear as he attempted to crawl over the top of the front seat and climb into Tarwater’s lap. The boy had turned and without looking at him had given the panting child a firm push onto the back seat again. One of Raybers immediate goals was to make him understand that his urge to baptize the child was a kind of sickness and that a sign of returning health would be his ability to begin looking Bishop in the eye. Rayber felt that once he could look the child in the eye, he would have confidence in his ability to resist the morbid impulse to baptize him.
When they got out of the car, he watched the boy closely, trying to discover his first reaction to being in the country again. Tarwater stood for a moment, his head lifted sharply as if he detected some familiar odor moving from the pine forest across the lake. His long face, depending from the bulb-shaped hat, made Rayber think of a root jerked suddenly out of the ground and exposed to the light. The boy’s eyes narrowed so that the lake must have been reduced to the width of a knife-blade in his sight. He looked at the water with a peculiar undisguised hostility. Rayber even thought that as his eye fell on it, he began to tremble. At least he was certain that his hands clenched. His glare steadied, then with his usual precipitous gait, he set off around the building without looking back.
Bishop climbed out of the car and thrust his face against his father’s side. Absently Rayber put his hand on the little boy’s ear and rubbed it gingerly, his fingers tingling as if they touched the sensitive scar of some old wound. Then he pushed the child aside, picked up the bag and started toward the screen door of the lodge. As he reached it, Tarwater came quickly around the side of the building with the distinct look to Rayber of being pursued. His feeling for the boy alternated drastically between compassion for his haunted look and fury at the way he was treated by him. Tarwater acted as if to see him at all required a special effort. Rayber opened the screen door and stepped inside, leaving the two boys to come in or not as they pleased.
The interior was dark. To the left he made out a reception desk with a heavy plain-looking woman behind it, leaning on her elbows. He set the bags down and gave her his name. He had the feeling that though her eyes were on him, they were looking behind him. He glanced around. Bishop was a few feet away, gaping at her.
“What’s your name, Sugarpie?” she asked.
“His name is Bishop,” Rayber said shortly. He was always irked when the child was stared at.
The woman tilted her head sympathetically. “I reckon you’re taking him off to give his mother a little rest,” she said, her eyes full of curiosity and compassion.
“I have him all the time,” he said and added before he could stop himself, “his mother abandoned him.”
“No!” she breathed. Well,” she said, “it takes all kinds of women. I couldn’t leave a child like that.”
You can’t even take your eyes off him, he thought irritably and began to fill out the card. “Are the boats for rent?” he asked without looking up.
“Free for the guests,” she said, “but anybody gets drowned, that’s their lookout. How about him? Can he sit still in a boat?”
“Nothing ever happens to him,” he murmured, finishing the card and turning it around to her.
She read it, then she glanced up and stared at Tarwater. He was standing a few feet behind Bishop, looking around him suspiciously, his hands in his pockets and his hat pulled down. She began to scowl “That boy there—is yours too?” she asked, pointing the pen at him as if this were inconceivable.
Rayber realized that she must think he was someone hired for a guide. “Certainly, he’s mine too,” he said quickly and in a voice the boy could not fail to hear. He made it a point to impress on him that he was wanted, whether he cared to be wanted or not.
Tarwater lifted his head and returned the woman’s stare. Then he took a stride forward and thrust his face at her. “What do you mean—is his?” he demanded.
“Is his,” she said, drawing back. “You don’t look it is all.” Then she frowned as if, continuing to study him, she began to see a likeness.
“And I ain’t it,” he said. He snatched the card from her and read it. Rayber had written, “George F. Rayber, Frank and Bishop Rayber,” and their address. The boy put the card down on the desk and picked up the pen, gripping it so hard that his fingers turned red at the tips. He crossed out the name Frank and underneath in an old man’s meticulous hand he began to write something else.
Rayber looked at the woman helplessly and lifted his shoulders as if to say, “I have more than one problem,” and shrug it off, but the gesture ended in a violent tremor. To his horror he felt the side of his mouth give a series of quick jerks. He had an instant’s premonition that if he wished to save himself, he should leave at once, that the trip was doomed.
The woman handed him the key and, looking at him suspiciously, said, “Up the steps yonder and four doors down to the right. We don’t have anybody to tote the bags.”
He took the key and started up a rickety flight of steps to the left. Hallway up, he paused and said in a voice in which there was a remnant of authority, “Bring up that bag when you come, Frank.”
The boy was finishing his essay on the card and gave no indication of hearing.
The woman’s curious gaze followed Rayber up the stairs until he disappeared. She observed as his feet passed the level of her head that he had on one brown sock and one grey. His shoes were not run-down but he might have slept in his seersucker suit every night. He was in bad need of a haircut and his eyes had a peculiar look—like something human trapped in a switch box. Has come here to have a nervous breakdown, she said to herself. Then she turned her head. Her eyes rested on the two boys, who had not moved. And who wouldn’t? she asked herself.
The afflicted child looked as if he must have dressed himself. He had on a black cowboy hat and a pair of short khaki pants that were too tight even for his narrow hips and a yellow t-shirt that had not been washed any time lately. Both his brown hightop shoes were untied. The upper part of him looked like an old man and the lower part like a child. The other, the mean-looking one, had picked up the desk card again and was reading over what he had written on it. He was so taken up with it that he did not see the little boy reaching out to touch him. The instant the child touched him, the country boy’s shoulders leapt. He snatched his touched hand up and jammed it in his pocket. “Leave off!” he said in a high voice. “Git away and quit bothering me!”
