Lake Wobegon Days Read Online Free

no apple tree on Adams Hill, but that didn’t weaken my faith; there were snakes. Here, above the school, God created the world.
    When I was four, I told my sister about the Creation, and she laughed in my face. She was eight. She gave me a choice between going back on Scripture truth as I knew it or eating dirt, and I ate a pinch of dirt. “Chew it,” she said, and I did so she could hear it crunch.
    There, for years, to the peak of Paradise, we resorted every day, the old gang. Nobody said, “Let’s go”; we just went. Lance was the captain. Rotting trees that lay in the clearing were our barricades, and we propped up limbs for cannons. The boulder was the command post. We sat in the weeds, decked out in commando wear—neckerchiefs andextra belts slung over our shoulders for ammo and Lance even had a canteen in a khaki cover and a khaki satchel marked
U.S.A.
—and we looked down the slope to the roofs of town, which sometimes were German landing boats pulled up on the beach, and other times were houses of despicable white settlers who had violated the Sacred Hunting Ground of us Chippewa. We sent volleys of flaming arrows down on them and burned them to the ground many times, or we pounded the boats with tons of deadly shells, some of us dying briefly in the hot sun. “Aiiiiieeee!” we cried when it was time to die, and pitched forward, holding our throats. There were no last words. We were killed instantly.
    Near the clearing was a giant tree we called the Pee Tree; a long rope hung from a lower branch, which when you swung hard on it took you out over the edge and showed you your real death. You could let go at the end of the arc and fall to the rocks and die if you wanted to.
    Jim said, “It’s not that far—it wouldn’t kill you.” He was bucking for captain. Lance said, “So jump then. I dare you.” That settled it. It would kill you, all right. It would break every bone in your body, just like Richard. He was twelve and drove his dad’s tractor and fell off and it ran over him and killed him. He was one boy who died when I was a boy, and the other was Paulie who drowned in the lake. Both were now in heaven with God where they were happy. It was God’s will that it would happen.
    “It was an accident, God didn’t make it happen, God doesn’t go around murdering people,” Jim said. I explained that, maybe so, but God
knows
everything that will happen, He has known every single thing since time began, and everything that happens is part of God’s plan.
    “Does He know that I’m just about to hit you?” Jim said.
    “Everything.”
    “What if I changed my mind at the last minute and didn’t?”
    “He knows everything.”
    Jim believed that God sort of generally watched over the world but didn’t try to oversee every single detail. He said that, for example, when you’re born, you could be born American
or
Chinese or Russian or African, depending. In heaven are millions of souls lined up waitingto be born, and when it’s your turn, you go down the chute like a gumball to whoever put the penny in the slot. You were born to your parents because, right at that moment when they Did It, you were next in line. Two seconds later and you could have been a feeb. Or a Communist. “It’s just pure luck we’re Americans,” he said.
    When it was hot, we all lay around in the grass and talked about stuff. At least, if you were older, you could talk. Little kids had to shut up because they didn’t know anything. Jim leaned on one elbow and tore off tufts of grass and threw them at my face. I told him twice to quit it. He said, “Tell God to make me quit it. It’s God’s plan. He knew that I was going to do it. It’s not my fault.” He said, “If you think God planned you, then He made a big mistake, because you’re the dumbest person I know.”
    I was on top of him before he could blink and pounded him twice before he wriggled out and got me in an armlock and shoved my face into the dirt. Then