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Lollipop

We did laugh at him, behind his back. "His momma just says he's the son of god 'cause she don't know who his poppa is!" You know the kind of things kids say. Adults, too, sometimes. They're just quieter about it. A little more careful to keep it behind his back instead of to his face. Still, he had no call to be mean to us like that.

He used to hold me down and whale on me until I cried uncle. He'd do that a lot. He wasn't big, or nothing, but he was good at fighting. He was good at everything. Real teacher's pet. One time we called him that over and over until he started crying. He got back at us, though. Next day, he turned all our water into wine, and we got piss drunk and got in real trouble with the teacher. Had to stay home from school for a week, which didn't show too many smarts on the part of the teachers if they thought it was a punishment. Poppa whipping me with a birch rod for it, that was a punishment.

But when I got back, there he was. I think it was 'cause he could be as mean as he wanted, and he didn't have to worry about us taking any permanent damage that would get him in big trouble too, 'cause if we stated limping or had a shiner he'd just heal it on up, good as new, and no one to say it'd ever been otherwise. And who'd the teacher believe, us, looking like we'd never been touched, or him, scuffed up some from us trying to fight back? Teacher's pet, all right.

'Course, there were times, when we were all getting along, he'd be good to be with. We'd go down to the swimming hole, and we'd swim, and he'd skate on top of the water, and we'd try to pull him under, and he'd try to pull us up, and we'd have a great time. Not often, though. More often we'd be after him for something, or he'd be after us for something, and we'd mock him for keeping kosher, and he'd yell at us that we were gonna burn for eternity in a lake of hellfire, and then there'd be a big ol' tussle. I hear he's given up on keeping kosher, though.

There was this one time I recall when I'd been good for a change and poppa had given me a buck for candy at the store. I went stright over and got the biggest lollipop they had there, or at least, the biggest you could get for a buck. Kept it in my room for a few days, just prolonging the anticipation. Then, I brought it in to school with me. I'd just started sucking on it when I saw him lying on the ground, arms spread wide, staring up at the sky. I was feeling mean, so I yelled, "Hey! Jesus! Look what I got!" He looked up at me, and I waved the lollipop at him. Now, if there was one thing Jesus loved, it was sweets, and he stood up and said, "Gimme some!"

Now, the long and the short of it was, we started fighting over the damn thing. After a while of this, the lollipop fell into the mud. We both stared at it. "Now look what you made me do!" I said to Jesus. "It's still good," he said. "Look!" He picked it up, wiped it off on his shirt, and took a big old lick. Made a face, kept licking. We fought some more and that was that.

A couple days later, we heard Jesus moaning. Teacher sent him to the nurse, who said that he'd gotten really sick, probably from something he ate, and that he'd have to go home. We thought he'd die. Everyone was real solemn for a while.

Was all for nothing, though. He was back in school three days later.

We didn't much talk after that. He moved away. Always wondered what happened to him.