Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister Read Free Book Online

with a shovel, and I saw the venom drops against the metal. Then she buried the head, skinned it out, battered and salted the meat. We fried it in butter and pepper, and it tasted good.”
    “You liked it?”
    “Oh yeah. Gray and tender. It was pretty nice, but it was also something other than fish, which was good. My father was always talking about the treasure that we’d found when I was little, but he never wanted to buy meat.”
    “Treasure?” Lucy said.
    “That’s another long story.”
    Lucy opened the food bin and got out more Nalley’s cans. “Chili burritos? What do you say? Instead of plain chili we can wrap it in something for variety.”
    “Sure,” I said. I got out the tortillas and the block of cheese. Started cutting slices.
    We warmed two cans on the Coleman stove, then glopped big scoops onto slices of cheese on top of tortillas. Then we wrapped them.
    Lucy’s burrito spilled and she rewrapped it. She said, “I don’t like reptiles dying.”
    I took a big bite. Chewed and swallowed. I said, “I guess that’s not my favorite thing either.”
    Lucy said, “My cousin caught an alligator lizard on the Vernal Trail when I was six years old, and it was about this long.” She held her hands a foot apart. “He caught the lizard in a pile of leaves and needles, then started waving it around like it was a toy.”
    “And it was dying?”
    “No, no. The lizard was fine. Healthy. But then he put it in my sister Anne’s face, and she held up her hand, and the lizard bit onto her finger.”
    “Bit hard?” I said.
    “Oh yeah. Wouldn’t let go. Anne was screaming and trying to rip her finger back out, and my cousin was just laughing and laughing. Then Anne started cussing at him, so he took out his sheath knife and pried the point of the blade into the side of the lizard’s head. He was still laughing as he popped the jaws open and tore the top of the lizard’s head off.”
    “What was your sister doing then?”
    “Still screaming,” Lucy said. She took a bite of her burrito. Talked with her mouth full. “The lizard writhed and spun around, flipped upside down. Its blood was everywhere. It was sick.” Lucy swallowed her bite. Took another.
    The cheese hadn’t melted in my burrito but I liked it like that. I was eating fast. I said, “So you were pretty mad at him?”
    Lucy said, “I called him a murderer.”
    I laughed.
    “But he was a murderer,” she said. “That was murder. And I called him a murderer for a long time after that too.”
    “Well, it sounded pretty intense anyway.”
    “It was.”
    Lucy smiled. Touched her chili burrito to mine. “Cheers for more chili dinners, huh? Same old chili, but a new style of eating it.”
    I said, “People do terrible things sometimes. Much worse than killing lizards.”
    “I know,” she said. “But I was six. And that sort of thing is worse when you’re six.”
    “Right,” I said. “That makes sense.”
    “But just the same, tell me a terrible thing you’ve done.” Lucy ate the last bite of her burrito and tapped me with her index finger. “You go,” she said.
    “A terrible thing?”
    “Yes,” she said. “No, wait. Don’t tell me a terrible thing. All terrible things are the same. Tell me something beautiful instead.”
    “Beautiful like what?”
    “Beautiful like an image,” she said. “Tell me something I can picture.”
    “Okay,” I said, “let me think.” I took a bite of my burrito. Chewed. I thought of the butterflies in August, how they came in great orange clouds when they were migrating, landing on me as I stood still. But then I remembered something I loved even more. I said, “Some nights in winter, when I was a kid, and it was cold, we’d go into our tent right after dinner, and I’d lay my head in my mother’s lap and my feet in my father’s, and we’d have these thick, wool blankets over all of us. My dad would read from this book of animal stories, where a rabbit was always getting in trouble and