The Beheading of St. Tadpole

It was cool for July. A wet, sunny, bible school morning. Tulip, Kitty and Tadpole stood at the corner waiting for the bus in matching dresses. Three different colors of the same gingham tied at the shoulders. Their downy necks prickled in the breeze. Tulip held clenched in her fist a huge dill pickle wrapped in a slice of American cheese, brine dripping down her arm.

“ Give me a bite,” begged Tadpole.”

“No.“

“Come on.”

“Get your own.”

“I cain’t I’ll miss the bus.”

“Tough titty said the kitty, but the milk tastes fine.”

“I hate you.”

“Don’t say that stupid rhyme,” begged Kitty.

“Oh. Poor kitty poor kitty poor kitty,” purred Tulip nuzzling Kitty with the top of her head.

Tulip was the oldest followed by Kitty and finally Tadpole. Kitty’s real name was Kitty but Tadpole had named herself, thinking it terribly unfair that her sisters were named after a flower and an animal while she was stuck with Judy after her great aunt Judy who smelled like a smokestack and talked like a man. She’d named herself Tadpole after the crawdads they’d found at the lake and brought home to live and die and eventually stink up the place. She’d have named herself crawdad, but that seemed to her like a boys name and even though a tadpole eventually became a frog it was awfully cute in it’s little fishy phase and seemed like a fine thing to be named after. Tadpole loved critters of all kinds, animals, bugs and babies. She couldn’t stand to see one cooped up, but she couldn’t stand to see them in the wild either for fear they’d be eaten or killed by some bigger meaner creature so she brought them all home and let them loose in the little house. The little house was a chicken house that papa built and gave to the girls one summer to do with as they pleased. It had been a store, a doctor’s office, a mansion, a theatre, but was nearly always, no matter what the current title a haven for wayward critters.

The three girls stood by the road. Tulip rocking back and forth on the side of her wooden sandal sucking the guts out of the pickle, Kitty clutching a stuffed Garfield staring blankly at the grass and Tadpole gathering rocks into her dress tail.

“I bet you cain’t hit that car,” said Tulip, pointing at the orange El Camino low rider sliding down the street.

“I could if I wanted to.”

“Go on then.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You’re gonna get in trouble,” warned Kitty.

“No you won’t. Just go hide in them bushes. They’ll never know what hit ‘em.”

“You throw it.”

“I don’t have to. I know whether I’d do it or not. I’m bettin’ on if you will.”

“She’s just tryin’ to get you in trouble.”

“I am not. I just wanted to see how far she could throw.”

Just then the bus rounded the corner.

“Better not,” said Kitty, “the preacher’ll see.”

The bus pulled up, Tadpole stashed her rocks in the mailbox. The three girls got in and took a seat.

Bible school lasted three hours. There were graham crackers and Kreature Kooler. Cute boys from the youth group leading kick ball games. You could make cotton ball sheep or a popsicle stick Jesus depending on your taste and skill in the arts and crafts. The trade off was you had to meet in the sanctuary at the beginning for singing, games and scripture learning and the end for a bible story and invitation, where an old lady played the piano and the preacher stood in the front begging everybody to come down front and get saved. This involved crying and blowing snot into your teachers shoulder while she told you the words of the prayer that unlatched the gate to heaven. Some kids really got into it and would go down three or four times in the course of the week. Once to get saved, once to recommit their life, once to confess something awful they did on the way home yesterday and once to tell on some other kid they knew wasn’t saved yet and was bound for the fires of eternal damnation should the Lord come back that afternoon.

Kitty had gotten saved on Monday, which didn’t seem to Tadpole like such a hard thing to do since she was good most of the time anyhow. Tulip went down on Wednesday, but that was probably just because all her other friends had already gone and the preacher’s daughter was hosting a slumber party on Friday and there was no way any unsaved heathen was going to get invited to that shindig and Tulip liked to be invited to things. Tadpole sat squirming in her seat while the preacher asked if anybody knew of someone who was in the process of hardening his heart against future dealings with the Lord and therefore committing immortal suicide and must be prayed for, witnessed to and called upon in his or her home next time the prayer warriors went a visitin’.

Her friend April was sniffling next to her. Tadpole’s face was all hot and she had begun to sweat. What if this was it? What if on the way home the sky opened up and them wild apocalypse horses the preacher talked about shot out with swords and fire and mad angels riding barebacked with butterfly nets to pick up sinful little girls and cast them down into the lake of fire. What if the Duck River turned to blood and hot lava and she was jerked up by the ponytail and pitched in. She couldn’t even swim that well, but she probably wouldn’t need to once the devils and the monsters impaled her on their pitchforks and tossed her like a rag doll back and forth across the spider pits and poison ivy gardens. What if this was her last chance. It was Friday after all and she would have to make it all the way though Saturday before more church and who knew what kind of trouble she could get into in that amount of time and what if by Sunday her heart had shriveled up into a hard black little rock like a half a lemon left on the counter too long and left her mean and evil and who could ever love somebody like that. There was no way her mama, a good Christian woman could allow such a person to live under her roof. Where would she go? What if mama threw her out and she had to go live in an orphanage full of other sinful unloved children or get adopted by a child molester or a witch who bakes children into pies.

“We’re gonna sing one more chorus and if nobody comes down we’re gonna close,” promised the preacher.

One more. Oh God.

“There is somebody here right now that the Lord is dealin’ with. Somebody who needs to surrender. “

“Surrender, Surrender,” sang the choir.

“You might be thinking Brother Jimmy I’m just a kid. I got all the time in the world. Well folks let me tell you that’s what little Bobby Metcalf thought that last Sunday in church before that train ladder took his head off. Now I cain’t claim to know Bobby’s heart. He might have gone on to glory that day, but that’s between him and his God. Point is you just don’t ever know now do you.

Maybe you’re worried about what your friends will think. Well brothers and sisters I’m tellin’ you that Jesus is the only friend you need. Come on choir. What a friend we have in Jesus…”

Bobby Metcalf. Oh God, thought Tadpole. What if a train takes my head off on the way home? There didn’t happen to be any trains between church and home, but you never could tell. And even if there wasn’t there were all manner of ways to die between here and there.

“Well if the Lord is done dealin’ with everybody in this room we’ll bring this invitation to a close. Sister Williams?”

“Wait!”