A Child's Revelation

“What do know about God?”, my brother "Bubs" asked as we were heading across the morning field in search of cattle. back in the spring of 1954.

After pondering for a dozen steps, I answered quietly,  “Not much.”

“Well, you know, He can see everything that you do.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.  Like when you're jacking off, and lying, and reading my comics before me, and mouthing off to the folks.”

“ What's Jacking off?”

“It's like casting your seed to the wind; read the bible, it's all in there,” you little shit, “and God doesn't like it when you do things that are forbidden. Not at all.”

“What happens when I piss God off?”

“He will strike you down on the spot.”

“Like right now, with a bolt of Lighting, probably.”

“And when you're sleeping with a heart attack, probably,”

“or maybe drown you, but He usually reserves that when He has a lot of people to rub out all at once.”

“Wow!”

As an after thought, he added, “Flood, Big flood! Higher than the Dore Mountain! Drowning rats, all of them! Serves them right.”

“Wow!”

“Lipping off!”, he added.

I was more than scared.  I could the hand of doom pressing my right shoulder... Just this morning I went through his comics, hidden under the bed, and read one; a brand spanking new one. That he was yet to read, one the most heinous acts the you can imagine.  He would rip my lungs out, my own brother, not to mention what God would do!

“Women!”, he added with an evil, yet reverential look on his kisser.

Now I had something to worry about, that's for sure.

“Thinking.  He knows what you think.  It's like doing, for what you think, so thinking is like your doing.” he said, “No difference.”

“So I think about something god-awful and I might-as-well go and do it?

He give me a punch, “You're toast anyway, the I see it, but He might prolong your death if you play that game. Like throwing you off the barn and giving you time to see the ground racing up to meet you.”

My life was looking bleak now, for shure.

“That's what I would do to you.”, he smiled...

If I think, God will hear it.  Why didn't I hear about this before?  Over the years I must have thought a million thoughts that God wouldn't want to hear.   A million that I knew were suspect, and maybe a million more I had know idea about the severity of.  A million more I knew were just plain wrong.

Reading me like a book, he went to say, “ 'Course you didn't know, so God figures your innocent as grass 'till now. "

“So that's why He didn't rip you head off sooner.” , he added.

Swelling up, he went on to say, “I'm here to tell about God, so that you can be saved.”

Now serious like the dickens, “Now you know.  Just remember, from this day forward, you are no longer innocent, and you're gonna be answerable to your sins. ”

Now a bit modlin, he says, “I'm telling you as a brother, for you own good.”

Over breakfast, I guess I wasn't my usual chipper self, and I did two things out of character. I asked my Dad if he would show me the Bible, and give me some pointers.

I asked my Mother if she needed help with anything.

“You feeling all right?” said Dad.

“Snork!”, said my brother.

Mother had no words to say. Needless to say, I was a little angel that week.  A real angel. Godly even.
I wouldn't say Shit if I had a mouth full. No tricks on my sister. No looking at the livestock fucking.  (It was spring you know.)

“Stealing!”, he whispered.
"Help with the chores!" he chimed.
“No card games”, he chortled.

After a week or two, I figured I was on the road to salvation, having read the bible, (or parts anyway), memorized the the ten commandments where my father said it was most important thing to do, and follow them of course, and chuckles when he explains  “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, ass, and what have you.”

Well, so far so good; the neighbors had no ass, no grain, and his wife looked like hell on wheels.  A real nightmare, so I usually had no thoughts of coveting her.  The daughter, maybe.  But we just wrastled and fought so I wouldn't call that coveting, exactly.  My Daddy said 'coveting' was like “wanting” 'till your head fills up with it, so since right now I can take it or leave it, I'm good.  No sweat, like I said, I'm on the road to salvation.

Until,  me and Bubs were moseying through the goddamn field again.

He pipes up and says, “Remember when I told you about God Almighty?”

“Do I, yes, Boy oh boy do I, for shure!”

“There is no God.”, he says quietly

“What?”

“ I made it all up.”

“No God?”

“Not even a smidgen”

“What about the Bible?”, I hesitantly inquired.

“That was written by some dudes in robes in their spare time to keep everybody in line.”

“My Daddy says that you if rip a page out of the bible, God Will strike you down.”,  I added.

“His Bible, Pop's Bible, you twerp!  I did that once and God had nothing to with the licking!”

“You tore a page out of the Bible?”, I said reverently.

“There's a page in the Bible, or used to be, where if you take a key, and put the key on that page, the key will turn, depending on the nature of a question you say out loud.

“Boy, oh Boy”

“So I wanted to show my girlfriend. When Dad wanted to show some people, he couldn't find the page, so that why he said that.”

“No God?'

“You're on your own.  Do whatever you want...”

“No sins?”

“No.”

“No mind reading?”

“What do you think? That somebody is going to give a shit what you think, let alone read you mind?”,
he smiled then, and looked up at the sky.

“Life don't work that way...”