“Other lawyers,” the old man growled and they had left and visited three more, without stopping, and Tarwater had counted eleven men who might have had on his hat or might not. Finally when they came out of the fourth lawyer’s office, they sat down on the window ledge of a bank building and his uncle felt in his pocket for some biscuits he had brought and handed one to Tarwater. The old man unbuttoned his coat and allowed his stomach to ease forward and rest on his lap while he ate. His face worked wrathfully; the skin between the pockmarks appeared to jump from one spot to another. Tarwater was very pale and his eyes glittered with a peculiar hollow depth. He had an old work kerchief tied around his head, knotted at the four corners. He didn’t observe the passing people who observed him now. “Thank God we’re finished and can go home,” he muttered.
“We ain’t finished here,” the old man said and got up abruptly and started down the street.
“My Lord!” the boy groaned, jumping to catch up with him. “Can’t we sit down for one minute? Ain’t you got any sense? They all tell you the same thing. It’s only one law and it’s nothing you can do about it. I got sense enough to get that; why ain’t you? What’s the matter with you?”
The old man strode on with his head thrust forward as if he were smelling out an enemy.
“Where we going?” Tarwater asked after they had walked out of the business streets and were passing between rows of grey bulbous houses with sooty porches that overhung the sidewalks. “Listen,” he said, hitting at his uncle’s hip, “I never ast to come.”
“You would have ast to come soon enough,” the old man muttered. “Get your fill now.”
“I never ast for no fill. I never ast to come at all. I’m here before I knew this here was here.”
“Just remember,” the old man said, “just remember that I told you to remember when you ast to come that you never liked it when you were here,” and they kept on going, crossing one length of sidewalk after another, row after row of overhanging houses with half-open doors that let a little dried light fall on the stained passageways inside. Finally they came out into another section where the houses were clean and squat and almost identical and each had a square of grass in front of it. After a few blocks Tarwater dropped down on the sidewalk and said, “I ain’t going no further. I don’t even know where I’m going and I ain’t going no further.” His uncle didn’t stop or look back. In a second he jumped up and followed him again in a panic lest he be left.
The old man kept straining forward as if his blood scent were leading him closer and closer to the place where his enemy was hiding. He suddenly turned up the short walk of a pale yellow brick house and moved rigidly to the white door, his heavy shoulders hunched as if he were going to crash through it. He struck the wood with his fist, ignoring a polished brass knocker. At that instant Tarwater realized that this was where the schoolteacher lived, and he stopped where he was and remained rigid, his eye on the door. He knew by some obscure instinct that the door was going to open and reveal his destiny. In his mind’s eye, he saw the schoolteacher about to appear in it, lean and evil, waiting to engage whom the Lord would send to conquer him. The boy clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering. The door opened.
A small pink-faced boy stood in it with his mouth hung in a silly smile. He had white hair and a knobby forehead. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles and had pale silver eyes like the old man’s except that they were clear and empty. He was gnawing on a brown apple core.
The old man stared at him, his lips parting slowly until his mouth hung open. He looked as if he beheld an unspeakable mystery. The little boy made an unintelligible noise and pushed the door almost shut, hiding himself all but one spectacled eye.
Suddenly a tremendous indignation seized Tarwater. He eyed the small face peering from the crack. He searched his mind fiercely for the right word to hurl at it. Finally he said in a slow emphatic voice, “Before you was here, I was here.”
The old man caught his shoulder and pulled him back. “He don’t have good sense,” he said. “Can’t you see he don’t have good sense? He don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The boy grew more furious than ever. He swung around on his heel to leave.
“Wait,” his uncle said and caught him. “Get behind that hedge yonder and hide yourself. I’m going in there and baptize him,’”
Tarwater’s mouth was agape.
“Get behind there like I told you,” he said and gave him a push toward the hedge. Then the old man braced himself. He turned and went back to the door. Just as he reached it, it was flung open and a lean young man with heavy black-rimmed spectacles stood in it, his head thrust forward, glaring at him.
Old Tarwater raised his fist. “The Lord Jesus Christ sent me to baptize that boy!” he shouted. “Stand aside. I mean to do it!”
Tarwater’s head popped up from behind the hedge.
Breathlessly he took the schoolteacher in—the narrow boney face slanting backwards from the jutting jaw, the hair that receded from the high forehead, the eyes encircled in glass. The white-haired child had caught hold of his father’s leg and was hanging onto it. The schoolteacher pushed him back inside the house. Then he stepped outside and slammed the door behind him and continued to glare at the old man as if he dared him to take a step.
“That boy cries out for his baptism,” the old man said. “Precious in the sight of the Lord even an idiot!”
“Get off my property,” the nephew said in a tight voice as if he were keeping it calm by force. “If you don’t, I’ll have you put back in the asylum where you belong.”
“You can’t touch the servant of the Lord!” the old man hollered.
“You get away from here!” the nephew shouted losing control of his voice. “Ask the Lord why He made him an idiot in the first place, uncle. Tell him I want to know why!”
The boy’s heart was beating so fast he was afraid it was going to gallop out of his chest and disappear forever. He was head and shoulders out of the shrubbery.
“Yours not to ask!” the old man shouted. “Yours not to question the mind of the Lord God Almighty. Yours not to grind the Lord into your head and spit out a number!”
“Where’s the boy?” the nephew asked, looking around suddenly as if he had just thought of it. “Where’s the boy you were going to raise into a prophet to burn my eyes clean?” and he laughed.
Tarwater lowered his head into the bush again, instantly disliking the schoolteacher’s laugh which seemed to
