“Huh?” the man said.
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to,” he said breathlessly. Then in a calmer voice he said, “The words just come out of themselves but it don’t mean nothing. You can’t be born again.”
“Make sense,” the man said.
“I only meant to drown him,” the boy said. “You’re only born once. They were just some words that run out of my mouth and spilled in the water.” He shook his head violently as if to scatter his thoughts.
“There’s nothing where I’m going but the stall,” he began again, “because the house is burnt up but that’s the way I want it. I don’t want nothing of his. Now it’s all mine.”
“Of his whose?” the man muttered.
“Of my great-uncle’s,” the boy said. “I’m going back there. I ain’t going to leave it again. I’m in full charge there. No voice will be uplifted. I shouldn’t never have left it except I had to prove I wasn’t no prophet and I’ve proved it.” He paused and jerked the man’s sleeve. “I proved it by drowning him. Even if I did baptize him that was only an accident. Now all I have to do is mind my own bidnis until I die. I don’t have to baptize or prophesy.”
The man only looked at him, shortly, and then back at the road.
“It’s not going to be any destruction or any fire,” the boy said. “There are them that can act and them that can’t, and them that are hungry and them that ain’t. That’s all. I can act. And I ain’t hungry.” The words crowded out as if they were pushing each other forward. Then he was suddenly silent. He seemed to watch the darkness that the headlights pushed in front of them, always at the same distance. Sudden signs would spring up and vanish at the side of the road.
“That don’t make sense but make up some more of it,” the driver said. “I gotta stay awake. I ain’t riding you just for a good time.”
“I don’t have no more to say,” Tarwater said. His voice was thin, as if many more words would destroy it permanently. It seemed to break off after each sound had found its way out. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“You just said you weren’t hungry,” the driver said.
“I ain’t hungry for the bread of life,” the boy said. “I’m hungry for something to eat here and now. I threw up my dinner and I didn’t eat no supper.”
The driver began to feel in his pocket. He pulled out half a bent sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. “You can have this,” he said. “It don’t have but one bite out of it. I didn’t like it.”
Tarwater took it and held it wrapped in his hand. He didn’t open it.
“Okay, eat it!” the driver said in an exasperated voice. “What’s the matter with you?”
“When I come to eat, I ain’t hungry,” Tarwater said. “It’s like being empty is a thing in my stomach and it don’t allow nothing else to come down in there. If I ate it, I would throw it up.”
“Listen,” the driver said, “I don’t want you puking in here and if you got something catching, you get out right now.”
“I’m not sick,” the boy said. “I never been sick in my life except sometimes when I over ate myself. When I baptized him it wasn’t nothing but words. Back home,” he said, “I’ll be in charge. I’ll have to sleep in the stall until I get to where I can build me back a house. If I hadn’t been a big fool I’d have taken him out and burned him up outside. I wouldn’t have burned up the house along with him.”
“Live and learn,” the driver said.
“My other uncle knows everything,” the boy said, “but that don’t keep him from being a fool. He can’t do nothing. All he can do is figure it out. He’s got this wired head. There’s an electric cord runs into his ear. He can read your mind. He knows you can’t be born again. I know everything he knows, only I can do something about it. I did,” he added.
“Can’t you talk about something else!” the driver asked. “How many sisters you got at home?”
“I was born in a wreck,” the boy said.
He took off his hat and rubbed his head. His hair was flat and thin, dark across his white forehead. He held the hat in his lap like a bowl and looked into it. He took out a box of wooden matches and a white card. “I put all this here in my hat when I drowned him,” he said. “I was afraid my pockets would get wet.” He held up the card close to his eyes and read it aloud. “T. Fawcett Meeks. Southern Copper Parts. Mobile, Birmingham, Atlanta.” He stuck the card in the inside band of his hat and put the hat back on his head. He put the box of matches in his pocket.
The driver’s head was beginning to roll. He shook it and said, “Talk, dammit.”
The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out the combination corkscrew-bottleopener the schoolteacher had given him. “My uncle give me this,” he said. “He ain’t so bad. He knows a heap. I speck I’ll be able to use this thing some time or other,” and he looked at it lying compact in the center of his hand. “I speck it’ll come in handy,” he said, “to open something.”
“Tell me a joke,” the driver said.
The boy didn’t look as if he knew any joke. He didn’t look as if he knew what a joke was. “Do you know what the greatest invention of man is?” he asked finally.
“Naw,” the driver said, “what?”
He didn’t answer. He was staring ahead again into the darkness and seemed to have forgotten the question.
“What’s the greatest invention of man?” the truck driver asked irritably.
The boy turned and looked at him without comprehension. There was a choking sound in his throat and then he said, “What?”
The driver glared a him. “What’s the matter with you?”
