unmistakable sign, not a pang of hunger or a reflection of himself in a store window, but an unmistakable sign, clear and suitable—water bursting forth from a rock, for instance, fire sweeping down at his command and destroying some site he would point to, such as the tabernacle he had gone to spit on.
His fourth night in the city, after he had returned from listening to the child preach, he had sat up in the welfare-woman’s bed and raising his folded hat as if he were threatening the silence, he had demanded an unmistakable sign of the Lord.
Now we’ll see what class of prophet you are, his friend said. We’ll see what the Lord has in mind for you.
The next day the schoolteacher had taken them into a park where trees were fenced together in a kind of island that cars were not allowed in. They had only but entered it when he felt a hush in his blood and a stillness in the atmosphere as if the air were being purged for the approach of revelation. He would have turned and run but the schoolteacher parked himself on a bench and pretended to go to sleep with the dimwit in his lap. The trees rustled thickly and the clearing rose to his mind’s eye. He imagined the blackened spot in the center of it between the two chimneys, and saw rising from the ashes the burnt-out frames of his own and his uncle’s bed. He opened his mouth to get air and the schoolteacher woke up and began asking questions.
He prided himself that from the first night he had answered his questions with the cunning of a Negro, giving no information, knowing nothing, and each time he was questioned, raising his uncle’s fury until it was observable under his skin in patches of pink and white. A few of his ready answers and the schoolteacher was willing to move on.
They had walked deeper into the park and he began to feel again the approach of mystery. He would have turned and run in the opposite direction but it was all on him in an instant. The path widened and they were faced with an open space in the middle of the park, a concrete circle with a fountain in the center of it. Water rushed out of the mouth of a stone lion’s head into a shallow pool below and as soon as the dimwitted boy saw the water, he gave a whoop and galloped off toward it, flapping his arms like something released from a cage.
Tarwater saw exactly where he was heading, knew exactly what he was going to do.
“Too late, goddamit,” the schoolteacher muttered, “he’s in.”
The child stood grinning in the pool, lifting his feet slowly up and down as if he liked the feel of the wet seeping into his shoes. The sun, which had been tacking from cloud to cloud, emerged above the fountain. A blinding brightness fell on the lion’s tangled marble head and gilded the stream of water rushing from his mouth. Then the light, falling more gently, rested like a hand on the child’s white head. His face might have been a mirror where the sun had stopped to watch its reflection.
Tarwater started forward. He felt a distinct tension in the quiet. The old man might have been lurking near, holding his breath, waiting for the baptism. His friend was silent as if in the felt presence, he dared not raise his voice. At each step the boy exerted a force backward but he continued nevertheless to move toward the pool. He reached the rim of it and lifted his foot to swing it over the side. Just as his shoe touched the water, the schoolteacher bounded forward and snatched the dimwit out. The child split the silence with his bellow.
Slowly Tarwater’s lifted foot came down on the edge of the pool and he leaned there, looking into the water where a wavering face seemed trying to form itself. Gradually it became distinct and still, gaunt and cross-shaped. He observed, deep in its eyes, a look of starvation. I wasn’t going to baptize him, he said, flinging the silent words at the silent face. I’d drown him first.
Drown him then, the face appeared to say.
Tarwater stepped back, shocked. Scowling, he straightened himself and moved away. The sun had gone in and there were black caves in the tree branches. Bishop was lying on his back, roaring from a red distorted face, and the schoolteacher stood above him, staring at nothing in particular as if it were he who had received a revelation.
Well, that’s your sign, his friend said—the sun coming out from under a cloud and falling on the head of a dimwit. Something that could happen fifty times a day without no one being the wiser. And it took that schoolteacher to save you and just in time. Left to yourself you would already have done it and been lost forever. Listen, he said, you have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. You can’t spend your life fooling yourself this way. You have to take hold and put temptation behind you. If you baptize once, you’ll be doing it the rest of your life. If it’s an idiot this time, the next time it’s liable to be a nigger. Save yourself while the hour of salvation is at hand.
But the boy was shaken. He scarcely heard the voice as he walked off deeper into the park and down a path he scarcely saw. When he finally took note of his surroundings, he was sitting on a bench, looking down at his feet where two pigeons were moving in drunken circles. On the other side of the bench was a man of a generally grey appearance who had been examining a hole in his shoe when Tarwater sat down but who stopped then and devoted himself to a close scrutiny of the boy. Finally he reached over and plucked Tarwater’s sleeve. The boy looked up into two pale yellow-rimmed eyes.
“Be like me, young fellow,” the stranger said, “don’t let no jackasses tell you what to do.” He was grinning wisely and his eyes held a malevolent promise of unwanted friendship. His voice sounded familiar but his appearance was as unpleasant as a stain.
The boy got up and left hastily. An interesting coincident, his friend observed, that he should say the same thing as I’ve been saying. You think there’s a trap laid all about you by the Lord. There ain’t any trap. There ain’t anything except what you’ve laid for yourself. The Lord is not studying about you, don’t know you exist, and wouldn’t do a thing about it if He did. You’re alone in the world, with only yourself to ask or thank or judge; with only yourself. And me. I’ll never desert you.
The first sight that met his eyes when he got out of the car at the Cherokee Lodge was the little lake. It lay there, glass-like, still, reflecting a crown of trees and an infinite overarching sky. It looked so unused that it might only the moment before have been set down by four strapping angels for him to baptize the child in. A weakness working itself up from his knees, reached his stomach and came upward and forced a tremor in his jaw. Steady, his friend said, everywhere you go you’ll find water. It wasn’t invented yesterday. But remember: water is made for more than one thing. Hasn’t the time come? Don’t you have to do something at last, one thing to prove you ain’t going to do another? Hasn’t your hour of dallying passed?
They ate their lunch in the dark other-end of the lobby where the woman who ran the place served meals. Tarwater ate voraciously. With an expression of intense concentration, he ate six buns filled with barbecue and drank three cans of beer. He might have been preparing himself for a long journey or for some action that would take all his strength. Rayber observed his sudden appetite for the poor food and decided that he was eating compulsively. He wondered if the beer might loosen his tongue, but in the boat he was as glum as ever. He sat hunched over, his hat pulled down, and scowled at the spot where his line disappeared in the water.
They had managed to get the boat away from the dock before Bishop came out of the lodge. The woman had drawn him to an icecooler and produced a green popsickle which she held up for him while she gazed fascinated
