I watched Sam and Joel with
fascination. I knew
what they were doing was wrong. They had made a little
noose. We stood very still by the
woodpile, watching for
lizards. A
lizard darted out and then
stood still. It looked like it was doing
pushups on the grey
wood in the sun. Everything was
dry dry dry. It was
fire weather. The sign outside of
Boonville with the picture of
Smokey Bear had the arrow pointing to the red: “Severe
fire risk.”
Sam and Joel were Randy and Eddie’s cousins, but they lived far away. They came in the
summer to visit. They had
white-blond hair, and their father was an unbeliever.
Joel
crept incrementally toward the lizard, then
lassoed it, pulling it tightly in the string. He yanked the lizard off the ground, its legs circling like when in
cartoons,
Scooby’s legs
scramble but he’s not going anywhere? Like that. I was
sickened and curious.
“
You shouldn’t do that. It’s mean.”
We drew around to look at the lizard. It was the
dry color of the wood and it had tiny
grey claws, still
scrambling.
Joel
pulled on its back leg, not hard enough to
tear it off.
“I’m going to tell on you!”
“We’re just
looking at it.”
“
You shouldn’t, though. You should let it go.”
God
made His People kill animals for Him all the time. And they didn’t even
eat the animals. They would
kill them and then
burn them for God. We didn’t have to do this, because when His
People killed Jesus, this was the
last offering they had to make to God and then
all their sins could be forgiven. This wasn’t for God, and I was pretty sure that
Sam and Joel wouldn’t care.
The lizard was
dying but it was not dead yet. It started
twitching. Joel lay it down on the woodpile, and Sam
smashed its head with a rock. The rock and the wood got
bloody, but just barely. There was surprisingly
little blood in the lizard.
from The Book of Revelation