by J.R. Bowles
CHAPTER 61
Finally, Zolar thought, as he heard a knock at the door. He had started pacing fifteen minutes earlier.
“Hello Dad, I was beginning to worry about you.” He said opening the door.
“Sorry I got stuck in traffic.” His father embraced him.
“I know this is all of a sudden but I wanted to talk to you before midnight. I don't know if you're aware of what has been happening but I'll fill you in later. What I need to know is more about what happen the night we were born.”
“Okay, just let me catch my wind.” His father walked over to a chair and sat down.
“Could I get you a glass of water?”
“I'm fine, just give me a second.” His father cleared his throat. “You're as impetuous as ever.”
“I know,” Zolar said, “I take that after you.”
That brought a smile to his father's lips. “I was on call the night you were born. That was back when I was still practicing. I was the only doctor here that night. Of course back then hospitals were small not like they are now a days.”
Zolar leaned back and listened. He knew that when his father began there would be no hurrying him. After Zolar began to teach he could better understand the many lectures his father had given him over the years. It had been a shame that his father had given up surgery but his hands weren't as functional as they once had been. He smiled remembering the day when his father had told them his plans to teach. “As shaky as these hands are,” his father had said, “I liable cut somebodies nuts off while trying to remove their appendix.” He had joked about giving it up but down deep Zolar knew how hard it had been for his father to admit he could no longer trust himself to operate on anyone.
“That night there were only three of us on duty. “His father continued. “Me, Thelma my RN, and an orderly named Sam. The whole hospital only had three patients and they weren't all that sick. Then all of these pregnant women started showing up. It was unbelievable. Eight of them. Damnedest thing I ever experienced. A Jewish woman and her husband that had been on vacation, a black woman here visiting her sister from Lynchburg; three white women and their husband... your natural mama and an Indian woman. We had them stacked up practically.”
“An Indian woman?” Zolar interrupted, “a native American?”
“Now if you're going to let me tell this don't be interrupting. If you've got questions wait tell I'm finished. Boy you ought to know that when I get started I can't backtrack and then find my place again.”
“Sorry Dad.”
“Now where was I, oh yes, we had them stacked up. Back in those days we weren't supposed to treat any non-whites. We were supposed to send them over to the colored hospital but these women were too far along in labor for me to be sending them over there. I caught hell for it the next day. They even gave me static about letting the Jews in; thank God those days have changed.”
“That's only seven. I thought you said there were eight?”
“What did I tell you about interrupting me. I'll get to that, now just listen up.” Zolar's father peered over his glasses with a severe warning. When Zolar saw that look he had learned to do as his father said or there would be hell to pay. Funny how his father could still make him feel like a small boy.
“Now I forgot where I was.”
“You caught hell for letting them in.” Zolar prompted.
“Oh yeah, they gave me hell for it. We had blood and sack water all over the operating room. Damnedest sight you ever could see. We had the tables full, filled up all the gurneys and even had to lay one woman on a slab of limestone that they build the labor room around. We were in the back building at the foot of Mill Mountain. Anyway, that was the eighth one but I'll get to her, so just be patient. That limestone, he said remembering back. They always said it was limestone but limestone's not usually that hard. They tried to blast it out before they built the place but didn't have any luck. So they just incorporated it in the design of the delivery room. Made it into a table. We couldn't even get them all to the delivery room. We couldn't fit them in and they were all having contractions about the same length apart. I even had to have Sam, the orderly, scrub up and help us. We were lucky that we only lost two women that night.” He reached and patted Zolar's hand. “I'm sorry your mother had to be one of them. I guess that was one reason your mother and I adopted you. Of course we had never had children and we had always wanted one. We probably would have adopted the other one but he had relatives that claimed him. That was the babe born to the woman on the limestone.”
His father leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. Tears formed in his eyes as he remembered. “I thought we were going to lose all of them and the babes too when that light came down from the sky. The ceiling of the delivery room caved in and this bright white light filled the room. It seemed to come out of the heavens. Right at midnight the ground shook and we very rarely have earthquakes around here. Well the ground shook and we heard the ceiling began to crack and fall but the strangest thing was the room didn't cave in, it caved out. You know how a tornado pulls windows out. That's what it was like. It was like something just pulled the roof right off that part of the hospital. There were a few fragments that fell on us, dust and plaster but the main part of the roof just blew off. Then this white light came down from the sky and filled the room. It was so white it hurt your eyes but didn't blind us. In the center of it was a bright yellow light that shone down directly on the woman on the limestone. All of the women's labor seemed to respond to it. But the woman on the limestone hadn't died yet. She had been screaming from pain and fright but she became quiet. We were working as hard and fast as we could. Then in the center of the yellow beam a large florescent orange orb flowed down through that beam, right out of the sky. This piercing orange sphere settled down on her and the babe, which was still attached by the umbilical cord. We were still tying and cutting but you couldn't help but watch what was happening. It was mesmerizing.”
His father stared off into air as if the image he had created with mere words was becoming visible before them. As his father spoke, Zolar began to picture the scene being described.
“Then that orange ball began to shimmer.” His father continued. “And it began to change in color. It changed to something else. Its color was indescribable. It wasn't color it was light. Pure unadulterated light. It was a clear cold light.” He squinted his eyes and pushed his glasses up on his nose as if he were still staring at the light. “It wasn't warm. It was cold, oh such a cold, cold light. Like darkness, a black light, but it wasn't an ultraviolet light.
It was the purest purity of the very essence of light. And when this happen seven rays of light shot out from the babe. Each ray fell on one of the women in labor. It was the colors of the rainbow, or a prism. Plop, plop, plop, babies came popping out. Each couldn't have been more than a few seconds apart. Soon as one of those lights touched the mothers they popped out a baby.” He shook his head back and forth. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. Back then they didn't have lasers or at least us average folks had never seen them but that's about the best way to describe those rays, like laser beams. Violet, purple, blue, and red, ever color of the prism to be exact. And when them kids were born they didn't cry at first but as each one inhaled we heard musical notes. Sweet notes with each birth. Like a musical scale. Seven notes and seven rays. Pretty crazy was exactly what it was, just plain crazy.”
He paused and looked into Zolar's eyes. “Thelma, Sam and me, we never mentioned it to anyone for a long time. Like a UFO sighting, you see one of them damn things flying around and next thing you know folks think you're daft.”
He paused and took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “We didn't talk about it for years. We adopted you and you were our pride and joy. When I gave up surgery and started teaching was the first time I had talked about it, except with your mother of course. That was when we met Ing Hue and he taught us the eastern p
hilosophy. The more your mother and I learned we came to realize that you were special. All eight of you kids were special. According to Dr. Ing Hue, your births had been predicted through the alignment of the stars and we taught you as much about it as we could. Even sent you to Tibet when you were still a kid. We figured we owed it to your mother.”
He leaned back and put his glasses back on. “I guess I'm finished with my lecture. Ask your questions.”
Zolar thought for a moment as he watched his father. His mother had been from Tibet and her parent before her. Then she had met his father an American GI. He had talked her into coming to the states and be married. Under Virginia law at that time they hadn't been able to marry because of the mixed races but his father had been killed. It was all so confusing. The joining of the religions and language sometimes confused his thinking. Dr. Ing Hue had taught him the ways of his mother's people and even his adopted parents had learned from him. He had taught him how to locate the other centers by using his nerve endings. That had been how he had located Jackie and Bernie that first night when they had been running from Jamal.
“Why did you say we were the six hundred and sixty sixth descendent of pure linage of Cain, Able and Seth?” Zolar finally asked his father.
“Zoe, we were brought up as Christians and sometimes it's hard to readapt to new learning when your foundation has already be laid. As a doctor and a scientist, I know about the two theories of the creation of the universe but your mother and I are believers in the third theory of creation.” He paused for Zolar's response.
“The third theory?” Zolar wrinkled his brow in thought. “I don't recall having heard of the third theory?”
“The third theory is the Creationist Theory. That's what we believe.”
“Oh, I forgot about that one. I just think of it as being a myth since there's no scientific evidence to even indicate it is true.”
“Well, scientific or not, that's what we believe. Ing use to tell us when we argued about it, that it was a matter of perspective. It all depends on where you stood and looked at it as to how much truth you could actually see.”
“Perspective.” Zolar nodded. “That word seems to be popping up lately.”
His father nodded back. “Well if you think very hard about it all, all three are the same. It's just that some aspects of it can't be seen unless we open our minds up and take a three hundred and sixty degree view of the thing. The Steady State, the Big Bang and the Creationist theory if you sit back and look at it completely, it's all the same.”
“But that's impossible. They're so different in their definition of how it started or how they end.” Zolar argued and then added. “Well when I think about it I can see how the Big Bang and the Creationist Theory relate. I saw it last night as a matter of fact. I just hadn't been calling it the Creationist Theory. I guess I made the mistake of calling it the Judeo-Christian Theory, but I guess it's the same thing. I just don't see how those two can be related to the Steady State?”
“Son I can't tell you that. Truth is something you have to experience. When you only learn the fundamentals of truth without experiencing it, then it is only a theory. But when you experience it, then and only then is it the truth.”
“I still don't understand the possibility of the 666th thing. That's a lot of generations but the universe is billions of years old. With only 666 generations that's less than, even if we say a generation is 30 years, that's not even 20,000 years. The earth it's self is billions of years old and the universe is older than that.”
“Ah, but we just spoke about that. Time like everything else is dependent on perspective. It can be the distance from point A, to point B. It can be dependent on the speed traveled from A, to point B. Take for example the fact that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is moving through the universe. Now think about how our solar system is moving within our galaxy. Then think about the speed our planet is circling our sun. Earth, solar system, galaxy, all moving. Yet you and I sit here and talk for only fifteen minutes. Since we have begun our talk we have probably moved millions of miles and yet we are sitting in the same place. It is only perspective and perspective is all relative to what reference point we use when we begin.”
Zolar watched his father intently in respect and awe. His father reached out and tapped a nearby table.
“Now take that table there. Think about the number of atoms in motion within that table. Those atoms' electrons and protons are spinning around its nucleus, a nucleus that we're still learning about. Those atoms are in motion bonding together to form molecules and those molecules binding to form the table as we see it. All in motion, but to us they are still. What is it? It's all perspective. No more, no less. That's why we believe you are the 666th generation from Cain, Able and Seth. It’s our perspective.”
Zolar shook his head. “I guess,” he sighed, “but I just don't see it. Why Cain, Able and Seth, why the 666th?”
“Zoey,” his father spoke his childhood nick name, “the best records we can find come from the Cherokee nation. It was all handed down from one generation to the other that each thirty years on the very spot in which the eight of you were born the same thing happens. The eight of you make up the 666th time that this has occurred at that same location.”
“But why Cain?”
“It is believed that when Cain was cursed by God for killing his brother he was sent away. He took with him his own children and children from both of his brothers Able and Seth. They migrated to the American when the supercontinent land mass of Pangaea existed. The early scientist believed that the Native Americans migrated across the Bering Strait.
Although that's not what the Cherokee Nation has passed down from generation to generation in secret. They believe that when Africa was part of Gondwanaland, it was all attached to Laurasia which broke up and formed Europe and North America.”
“But Dad, the Supercontinent broke up 225 million years before man is known to have existed?” Zolar argued. “How can we be the 666th generation descendent of Cain, if we assume a generation is 30 years, that's a hell of a lot less than 20,000 years!”
His father looked at him somewhat perturbed. “Didn't your mother and I teach you not to swear?”
“Uh, sorry Dad.” His father was still doing it. He always made him feel like a child.
“To answer your question, the key word you use is assume. If you think about perspective you have to keep an open mind. First, of all we might assume that Homosapien's life generation is 30 years but I never said that Cain was a Homosapien, did I?”
“Oh,” Zolar said as he realized where his father was headed with this.
“The decedents of Cain started long before man existed. The life that you are now existed long ago in other life forms. It has evolved too where it is a thinking Homosapien.”
Zolar rolled his neck around on his shoulders thinking about what his father had said. It all fell in line, he half heartily thought. He smiled as he thought about it. The first man, Adam should really be called Atom and atoms formed the first one cell creator. That was Adam and when that one cell creator reproduced it split in half. And Eve came from Adam's side. Oh well, he shrugged, that was neither here nor now. Then he remembered the question he wanted to ask his father.
“Dad, earlier you said there was an Indian woman that gave birth. She was one of the eight.”
His father nodded. “Yes a pretty Cherokee woman gave birth to a little girl. The woman's father had brought her in that night.”
“But none of the eight are Cherokee.” Zolar protested but thought about Mindy. Was it possible? “Although Jamal, one of the centers, has a girlfriend that may be Cherokee.”
“I don't think so son, I kept in touch with her grandfather for quite a few years, he is a good man, but he told me about fifteen years ago that the girl had been killed. I can't quite remember how he said she died but he told me she died. I remember that because I had wondere
d how that was going to affect the rest of you seven.”
“She was replaced by a woman named Morgan.” Zolar shook his head. “Seems strange though, to find out that one of the centers was an Indian and the girlfriend of one of the centers is an Indian. It's just too much of a coincidence. And I'm slowly beginning to believe that there's no such thing as the word coincidence.”
“I don't know son. I can't help you there. Now it's my turn to ask questions.” His father said.
“Fair enough.”
“What's going to happen tonight?” His father looked at him gravely.
“I wished I knew Dad, I wished I knew.”