Snails
Jason Goldsmith
When I was seventeen years old I lost my religious faith. It wasn't so much that I lost faith in GOD or ceased believing that there were higher powers than myself who existed outside of my realm of knowledge. Rather it was a loss of belief in the ability of the organized church and their brand of GOD to answer the questions of life. I no longer could rely on what I had been taught to make sense of the world around me. So I abandoned the church and left to find my own way.
My grandmother thinks I lost my faith because of what happened to my family. I wish she could understand that that really had very little to do with it. You see on my seventeenth birthday my parents had planned this huge celebration for me, a really big deal, they even bought me a brand new car, of course I didn't know that at the time. I had gone out with my buddies to celebrate, which worked perfectly into their plans, they wanted it to be a surprise. Well, I guess that last wish was granted, wasn't it?
As far as the police were able to reconstruct, two men approached my father while he was in the driveway finishing up the wax job on the new car. The police assume that one or both of the men were armed with guns. They threatened my father and forced him into the house at gunpoint. From the wounds he received the coroner determined he was pistol-whipped twice and probably the third time he struggled he was shot three times in the chest. I suppose, in a way, he was lucky to have been killed so quickly. My mother wasn't.
My mother was in the kitchen and heard the men enter with my father, but didn't think anything of it. I don't think it would have made much difference had she noticed really. The police believe that the men immediately grabbed her and gagged her. I don't want to go into all the details, but I'm sure you can guess that it was a rather brutal assault. If you really want to know what happened, the coroner's report is on file at the county courthouse. The found her in the bathtub.
Really though, to be totally honest, and my court appointed therapist will vouch for me here, it wasn't their deaths that caused me to lose faith. Don't get me wrong, it was a horrible thing to have to go through, but I still had my faith. At least I did for a while afterward. I really didn't lose my faith until almost a year after their deaths. I had dealt with my grief and I was getting ready to graduate from high school in a few more months. Things were really looking up for me. But then one afternoon, after a big rain storm, it all fell apart, what remained of my faith dried up and blew away.
I was walking home from school, well not home really, but to my grandmother's house. I suppose it had started to feel like home to me then, but it will never and can never really be home. Home died with my parents on my seventeenth birthday.
As I was walking home with a couple of my good friends, we all played baseball together, I heard a strange sound. A soft crunching underfoot. At first I thought nothing of it, and I couldn't place it anyway, so I ignored it. But as we kept walking I swear it was getting louder and more regular, until it was really a deafening sound. I know it was just my unconscious mind magnifying the sound, that it had attached some significance to the noise and wanted to draw my consciousness towards it. I tell you though, I've been to the sea and nothing was so loud as that crunching sound.
I stopped my buddies and asked them to be quiet for a sec. They laughed and groaned, but eventually they quieted down for me. I took a couple more steps and the crunching came back loud as ever. I finally made the connection and realized that the noise was coming from whatever I was stepping on. I looked down and there were these small snails. Not like the kind you see on television, in cartoons or whatever, but smaller, with shells more like crabs' shells.
We'd been crushing these little snails all the way home from school. Little defenseless creatures enjoying their short time out and about, their short time when they can crawl around on the moist concrete and live a little, and here we were stomping them to paste under shoes. Suddenly I couldn't believe anything anymore. My whole conception of good, evil, right and wrong was scattered and shredded. I had nothing to cling to and I just stood there sobbing. I couldn't move, couldn't bear to kill any more of the snails.
I don't know how long I stood there crying before my friends managed to get me to my grandmother's house. I didn't stop crying for two days, I didn't even sleep, just sat there sobbing. My grandmother called a psychiatrist to take a look at me. He couldn't do much, I don't even remember him being there, but my grandmother insists he was. I could care less. I think he must have given me a sedative because I woke up on the third day and had a gap in my memory. I didn't feel rested, I felt awful, as if I hadn't slept for months, but really it had only been a couple of days.
My grandmother had set food by my bed, so I ate a little, drank a little, went to the bathroom and crawled back into bed. I slept another three days, finally waking up almost a full week after I had killed all those snails. I got dressed, slipped out of the house and went to visit my parents' grave. It was a couple of miles from my grandmother's house, but I didn't mind. I needed to get moving about anyway, it's not good to lay in bed like that.
While I was there, a small service was held at a nearby gravesite. The minister was speaking all the comforting Bible verses they must teach you in seminary, the same ones that were said at my parents' funeral. I watched silently for a while, reliving the day my parents were buried, but it was a peaceful few moments for me. The funeral finished, and the minister lingered for a few minutes. I walked up to him and asked him, "What about the snails?" Just like that.
He stared back and asked me to repeat the question, I did. He still didn't get it and I told him so. I also told him that he really didn't understand much. I asked him to call me if he ever figured it all out, figured out GOD and everything else. He told me to call him if I needed to talk. I politely told him thanks, but he'd probably never be able to answer my questions. I thanked him for his time and left. I walked back to my grandmother's house and I haven't been back to see my parents since.
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