"You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead" Summary

Francis Marion Tarwater's great-uncle dies as he is eating the breakfast he has cooked for himself and his nephew. He and his nephew have lived together as long as the fourteen-year-old boy can remember, even in the face of objections from the boy's uncle, his mother's brother. The uncle, Rayber, is a school teacher, who tries to get custody of Tarwater, even taking a social worker with him to the two-story ramshackle cabin where Tarwater lives in the woods. The old man threatens to shoot the first foot that steps on the porch and when Rayber puts his foot on the bottom step to impress the social worker, the old man shoots him in the leg. They leave the boy alone with his great-uncle after that.

Tarwater is sitting...