Читать книгу The Education of Arnold Hitler - Marc Estrin - Страница 14

On May 12th the following year, Arnold Hitler, eight years old, president of his third grade class, experienced his first human death. At 7:35 A.M., five minutes after the pre-school voluntary prayer session had begun in the front lobby, Peter Schrag, fourteen, interrupted the regular Monday morning practice with a random spray of bullets from a semiautomatic.22 pistol, wounding ten students and killing two girls, one immediately. As Arnold walked in the door, Peter pushed past him as if he didn’t exist and ran home to think things over. Arnold stood just inside the doorway, surveyed the bloody scene, and covered his ears against the shrill screaming of the girls. Then he turned around and ran to Karbur’s Kwik Stop to call his mom to come get him so he could go home to think things over. And cry.

The town was stupefied. Mass murder, at least domestic mass murder, had not yet become a national pastime. As clichéd as only reality can be, Peter Schrag had been “such a nice boy.”

“No one would have ever guessed that . . .”

. . .

That evening, Arnold demanded details of the die-on-the-cross story he’d heard about. George and Anna looked at one another with as much despair as if they had been asked to explain the facts of life, or the nonexistence of Santa. As they struggled to tell the tale, each realized how many particulars they had forgotten. Exasperated, Anna pulled the English Bible from the shelf, and Arnold was likely the only child in Texas that night who had the crucifixion for his bedtime story. On Sunday, he would not go to church.

“And why not?” his mother asked.

“Remember how you read me about the crucifixion, and how Jesus said, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’?”

“Yes. That’s what He said.”

“Well, it isn’t. He didn’t say that.”

“What do you mean? I read it to you right out of the Bible.”

“The other articles by Matthew and Mark and John don’t say he said that.”

Anna pulled out the Bible to check.

“They wouldn’t leave it out if He said it. They wouldn’t forget it—all three of them. Luke just made it up. It’s three against one!”

“He didn’t make it up. He . . .”

“If you can’t believe what you read in the Bible . . .” And before Arnold Hitler began to cry, he ran into his room and slammed the door. Strangely enough, that was it. No one in that family ever went to church again.