Читать книгу Weak Devotions - Luke Hankins - Страница 7

In Pineville, Dad would chop the heads

of cottonmouths off with a flat-head shovel

and the bodies would spurt blood and writhe

as if in anger. I almost had my head taken off

by a flat-head shovel in the hands of a neighbor boy—

no lie—and was pissed on by another—

and who knows why? Once, I watched a 5-year-old

pull the trigger of a pellet gun

aimed at the belly of another boy

and he ran screaming up the hill to his house.

We learned later that the lead curved upwards

and almost reached his heart, almost killed him.

The police officer questioned me the next day

in my home, and I identified the weapon—

identical to one I used to hunt snakes in the creek.

After telling him of the eerie proclamation

I witnessed—“I’m going to shoot you”—

and the immediate, reasonless violence that followed,

I cried, then lay on Mother’s lap in silence on the couch.

I imagined the holes tunneled through his liver

by the hot metal hungry for his heart

and I renounced my own rifle.