Learning the Ropes:
|
Food ChainEisenhower shot Eddie Slovik for stealing bread, Somewhere a pride of hungry shadows scrapes stone, shifts weight. Gandhi died with soup in his bowl, shot for rice |
I pulled three really nice nails out of a board at the dump. I don't remember where I got the hammer, but I used it to tap the nails straight on the sidewalk. The big ones like the three I got to nail Jesus don't straighten very easy. Sometimes you pinch your finger. You put the hump side up and hit it, and the hammer bounces right up in the air. A hammer works a lot better than a rock.
Sometimes we tear off some caps from a roll and hit them with a hammer on the sidewalk. When they pop, they bounce your hammer a little bit. One day I hammered a whole roll of caps at once and popped some powder into my eye. It really hurt. I had to wear a bandage on both eyes and I couldn't go to school all week.
I got in trouble because I wasn't supposed to have the hammer anymore after I nailed my sister into the chicken wire. All she wants to do is sit and play in the dirt, anyway, and I had that chicken wire that me and Big Tim found at the dump. I put her toys in the corner where Robbie Dobson's house meets our house, then nailed up the chicken wire. She stayed in there okay but mom got mad when she came home from work. My sister broke her arm in the swing, so she couldn't come out and play Jesus with us. She hit me with her cast and it really hurt. But not as bad as that powder.
The policeman told me they don't have radios in form school. I like the radio. I'm in Catholic school now. I'm in second grade and I can already read a book. I get to read any time I want to in the coat room.
Robbie Dobson doesn't go to Catholic school. I don't know, maybe he goes to form school. He takes the 38th street bus, I take the Manitou. I forgot to get off at school one day and rode all the way to Manitou. When I tried to walk back, I got lost in the cemetary and the lawn mower man called the police. Dad had to come get me and he really hates riding on the bus. He gets in fights. He got in a fight on the way home with a man who looked at him.
There was me, Janet Sue, Little Tim and Big Tim, and Robbie to play Jesus.
"You all know who Jesus is?" I asked.
Everybody knew.
"Well, who wants to be Jesus?"
Robbie Dobson and Janet Sue both said, "I do, I do."
"You can't be Jesus, you're a girl," Robbie said.
Big Tim and Little Tim just waited to see who they could be, they didn't want to be Jesus.
So Robbie Dobson got to be Jesus, and Janet Sue was Mary and Little Tim carried the can with the nails. Me and Big Tim were the soldiers.
We went behind where Big Tim's house and Little Tim's house come together. I had Robbie Dobson back up against Little Tim's wall and stretch out his arms.
"Will it hurt?" he asked.
I told him it wouldn't hurt, and showed him my hand.
"See? You go in this soft part between the bones. It just pinches a little bit, that's all."
He said if it hurt I'd better stop, and I did. I think I hammered a bone. But then I couldn't get the nail out and he was stuck to Little Tim's wall. He was crying and I tried to get the nail out but the hammer kept smashing his fingers and he kept hitting me with his other hand. Sister Nathalie told me that Jesus never hit.
Little Tim's mom came running and got the nail out. She was really mad. She called Robbie Dobson's mom. She called the police, and they called my dad. He's catching the bus home from the gym. He hates riding the bus, and he's really going to be mad.
I don't know what everybody's so mad about. I would have let Robbie Dobson nail me up, but he was the one who wanted to be Jesus.