The Violent Bear It Away

Old Tarwater dies at the breakfast table, and the fourteen-year-old great-nephew he kidnapped as an infant and raised in a woods clearing to be a prophet after him is left two commands: bury him deep with a cross over him, and baptize the idiot child of his schoolteacher uncle in the city. The boy digs a little of the grave, drinks the rest of the day, and by dark has set the house alight and started walking.