The Dog in the Lake
The brisk fall air felt like needles pricking my skin as I removed my life jacket and stood up to take the long step from the small outboard-powered boat. The dock jutted from the mist-veiled shoreline like a ghostly, weather-beaten finger pointing back across the lake toward our small, brown house on the other side.
Steadying myself on the wide planks of the dock, I felt a sense of dread as I watched my siblings move ahead without me. They reached the end of the dock and turned left on the boardwalk toward school. To the right, the boardwalk connected to a well-worn and muddy track on which four-wheel-drive pickup trucks and three-wheelers drove past the police station on the left, up a steep hill past the hospital on the right, and to the small Mennonite church my dad pastored.
On Sunday mornings, I sat swinging my short legs on hard wooden pews as Dad talked about God’s love, and the importance of obeying him no matter what the world around me said about me or did to me. We took Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek literally, and violence was never an option. Rather, I was to share in the sufferings of Christ on the cross by willingly accepting whatever others might choose to do to me.
I was always slow, bringing up the rear as we made our way over the open water, past cat-tails and marsh grasses.
The plaintive yelp of a dog, frantic splashing of water, and a hollow, sodden thud. I heard it ahead of me on the right. Again and again. Then laughter, taunting, more yelps. On the shoreline, I saw a group of young boys, though much older than myself, bending over to pick up stones, they turned and hurled at the helpless mongrel trying to keep its head above water—desperate for life.
I wanted to run, but it was too late. They spied our skin shining in the early morning light. “Wemistikoshe!” they taunted, “You’re next!” There it was, the familiar taunt, somehow white man was a curse word. “Never come this way again!”
I’d seen and felt violence; I had that drive in my own heart, but this wanton cruelty took my breath away. No. Not me! But where can I run?
Now I knew my life was a mine field, and this walk to school reminded me it could detonate at any moment. Safety would be up to me, unless I wanted to be the one in the lake breathing my last, desperate breaths.
I’ll watch my back. All the time.
In the back of my mind, a question began to form. Where is the Jesus I hear about on Sunday mornings? I couldn’t see him here, loving and protecting me. He wasn’t helping that poor, suffering dog. Could I trust him?
