The Priest

Formerly known as Bob (part 9)

Boy in a basket.

Do you have any idea how awkward it is to try and push a bicycle with an oversized basket up a hill when there’s a kid in the basket?

That’s a rhetorical question.

It’s really hard.

The bike kept wanting to tip over because I couldn’t get the kid properly situated in the basket, and he kept squirming around every time I tried to get him balanced.

Several times during the night I considered just pushing him down the hill and forgetting about him, but for some reason, one of the old world things that stuck around was guilt when I thought about hurting him.

My brother took me out in the woods once, and we both had slingshots. We were going hunting. We didn’t know what for, but we were hunting something. Finally, we came across some pigeons. Pigeons don’t seem too bright, and I had always thought that if a cow was a bird, it would be a pigeon. I took the first shot and hit one of the birds in the head, and it toppled over and moved around a little and then just stopped. I went over to it slowly and poked at it with my shoe. It didn’t move. I looked at my brother and he nodded approval. I had killed an animal. An animal that had never done anything to me. An animal that had never hurt anyone. An animal that was just sitting there minding its own business, and I killed it.