People don’t get it. Lambs are not afraid. They don’t miss their moms. People think lambs cry for their moms when they’re on their own, but they don’t. They cry for tit. Or maybe they cry for bigger company. Not their moms. Once you walk one to your side they don’t cry anymore. They don’t cry when you put your knife to their neck. Hardly a whimper when you slice their throat. Some have licked my hand while they bled on the floor. They barely care about being hung upside down, and they’ll be dead before you’re done. It’s not cruel. To them it’s barely uncomfortable. Lambs never understand what’s happening. They’re never afraid. It’s not pretty, but they’re never afraid. Foxes are afraid. They understand, and they don’t want to die. This one was hurt, from a trap that should have killed it. It couldn’t run anymore. It would die in a week. Caranchos would eat its eyes while it was still limping. They do that to lambs as well, but they only do it to foxes when foxes are half-dead. If it had cubs, the rot would call kikes to its burrow. I knew that then too, from my encyclopedias. Kikes jump into your belly and eat you from the inside-out. It was merciful, killing a lamb with a knife to the throat. It would be merciful, killing this fox. My uncle told me to be a man and kill the fox myself. Told me not to be afraid. It would have been mercy, he said. My older cousin wasn’t there, he said. I had my knife, didn’t I? I did have my knife. But fox hide is not like a lamb’s soft throat. It’s wiry, and tough, and smells sour and rotten. I thought I should cut its throat, and managed to hold it, but it thrashed a lot, and my knife wasn’t very good, and my hands were trembling really badly, and I think I held back a lot of strength. I wished the fox wouldn’t be so scared, and I tried to hold it still, and be careful of its wound, and pet it a bit, and help it calm down, but the fox bit me really hard and I dropped my knife, and I dropped the fox, and it hurt its leg worse. It could barely stand now. The bad leg got in the way of its other leg at a weird angle, and it didn’t seem to understand why it had trouble walking. I tried looking at my uncle but didn’t see him. He was probably still watching, I assured myself--but I didn’t see him. I wasn’t crying, I was just breathing hard. My arm hurt where the fox had bitten me, and I didn’t have my knife anymore. But I was being fearless. The fox growled and hissed. They make a sound, like a baby. Like a crying baby. But I hadn’t been able to kill it with my knife. I wished I had been better with a knife. My only other option was my rebenque’s pummel. It was not meant for a kid. In my hands, it looked more like a club. It took a lot of false starts to hit it across the face. But I didn’t put enough strength in the blow. The fox yelped. It didn’t try to run. It didn’t try to growl. It just complained, after I hadn’t killed it. I put both hands on my makeshift club and lifted my arms over my head, and gritted my teeth, and the fox staggered towards my feet, as I tried to be merciful. I recoiled and kicked its nose by accident. I hadn’t meant to. I think I really hurt it, because it fell down. I let it get up and it tried to walk again. It raised its head towards me, but its eyes were closed. I think it was trying to bear its teeth, but it looked more like a grimace. It was trying to growl, I think, but it started wailing instead. Just like a baby. So I hit it again. And I didn’t kill it again. And I hit it again, and it didn’t fall down, and it didn’t stop wailing, and my hand was trembling. And I hit it again, but it was still standing, and I was still not hitting it hard enough, and it was still wailing. And I kept hitting it, with my club, and it kept wailing after each blow, and at some point I noticed its nose was bleeding, and at some point its cries became shorter, and at some point it finally fell down. I looked over my shoulder. My uncle wasn’t there. His truck wasn’t there. My brother, my cousin, my mom; there was no one there. But I was not crying. My face hurt from being stiff, and I found I was kneeling down in front of the fox. And it was bleeding from its mouth and one of its eyes was bulging out. I tried to pet it, and it only recoiled a little, and its pelt was really soft, and I felt like crying, and I thought about my mom, and I thought about mercy, but I had to be fearless, and I didn’t have to cry. The fox was still crying. It had never stopped crying. So I grabbed my club, and I hit it again. And I could hear my mercy even over the wind hitting my face.
Not like a lamb at all. Lambs die in silence.
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