A Just Farewell

by Brian S. Wheeler

  “I’m surprised to see you still standing after such a hot day, Abraham,” the high cleric smiled. “Let me see your hands.”

  Abraham held his fingers and palm to the high cleric’s inspection, trying his hardest not to wince as the wind drifted across his sores so that pain throbbed about his skin.

  The high cleric nodded. “You’ve accomplished much with the shovel. There appears to be room for two more men within your hole.”

  A pair of additional beards peeked upon Abraham from the edge of the hole, the faces of the two clerics who had accompanied the high cleric during his visit to Rahbin’s home early that morning. Both of them dropped into the hole and took a position next to Abraham, who felt the warmth of their breath as they shared the space the boy had that morning cleared with a shovel.

  “You must be very hungry, and no doubt very thirsty,” observed the high cleric, “but there remains one more test you must endure before you may climb out of your hole and return to our village.”

  One of the bearded clerics punched Abraham in the chest, and the boy dropped upon the ground as his breath rushed out of his body. The heel of a boot slammed into Abraham’s head and filled his ears with a ringing that forced him to sob just as a hand clutched his hair and slammed his face into the ground. Abraham tasted blood fill his mouth, and he covered his face with his arms as the pair of clerics kicked at his side and struck at his head. What had he done wrong? Had he worked the shovel so poorly as to deserve such an attack? He had done his best to stand strong, and his effort seemed to have only attracted another beating. He felt betrayed, and thus Abraham released his restraint as the blows struck him, and he sobbed and cried as the clerics continued their onslaught. Finally, after he gasped for breath as pain screamed from his ribs with each inhale, the clerics ceased their beating and climbed out of the hole.

  “We leave water with you now, Abraham, and food.” The high cleric’s voice sounded as calm and kind as it had the moment his long beard first peered down upon the boy. “Things as simple as drinking and eating will no doubt pain you now, but all of this is also a measure of your strength. You must know, Abraham, that the Maker desires only strong tools, more so than ever now that we ready to take our battle against the unbelievers into the stars.”

  Abraham heard the clerics’ footfalls echo away towards the village while he sobbed, curled in a tight ball, his arms still covering his face to protect himself from the fury he anticipated falling upon him. The Maker seemed merciful, for a cool breeze drifted into the hole and helped Abraham catch his breath and steady his heart, so that the boy soon stretched a shaking arm to the pouch of water, whose contents pained his hurt teeth and stung his cut mouth. Abraham left the food where it remained, too hurt to protect it from whatever rare animal or common bug might attempt to scavenge from it during the night, and the boy’s beaten body soon enough fell into sleep.

  And the burrowing cockroach with the orange shell painted in dark swirls returned to the edge of that hole and silently spied upon it all.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 7 – A Lamb Taken to Slaughter

  The cleric with the short, dark beard and the wide, menacing shoulders chuckled as he looked upon Abraham and the bleating lamb.

  “Why haven’t you yet accomplished what we ask of you, boy?”

  Abraham gulped, and the lamb made a sound that sounded like a laugh. “I needed to clean the chamber, and I had problems with the knot I used to tie the lamb to the stake over there by the drain. And I needed to sharpen my cleaver and knife. The high cleric teaches me that I must pay attention to the details of all things if I hope to please the Maker.”

  The cleric chuckled. “Well, I will be patient then, butcher Abraham, but know that the high cleric will be with me when I next return, and he will expect you to have slaughtered his lamb as he instructed. Abraham, realize that you will have to dig another hole if you should fail in this, and that the price you pay to begin your year into manhood will be twice as steep. Do you understand, Abraham?”

  Abraham vigorously nodded, and the cleric nodded back before leaving the boy alone to his knives and the bleating, laughing lamb.

  Abraham leaned against the chamber’s cool wall and took a breath. He had been afraid that the cleric, upon seeing that the lamb remained alive in the center of the room, would deliver him a new beating. Purple bruises streaked with yellow blossomed on Abraham’s face to draw attention to the new crook that ran in his broken nose. His right eye was finally starting to open again after being swollen shut for several days, and the pain receded from the chipped teeth that would ever onward mar his smile. Abraham nervously touched the swollen lump on the top of his head, a mark delivered him from a cleric’s boot while he had huddled and cried at the bottom of his hole, and he wasn’t surprised to find his finger splotched with blood. He had felt betrayed by that beating the clerics delivered to him, for he had thought the effort of his hole would have impressed them. He had thought about simply wasting away in that hole until the Maker took his soul through thirst, but his stomach had betrayed him in the morning so that Abraham had limped back home for breakfast, where no one in his family said a thing to suggest they noticed the injuries delivered to their son and brother, where everyone simply expected Abraham to go about his routine duties as if it was all another day.

  Abraham peeked towards the shadows that lurked on wall opposite of the chamber’s entrance; and as he suspected, he spotted a pair of fine antennae sniffing the air.

  “You’re lucky the cleric didn’t see you, Oscar,” Abraham shook his head. “I wouldn’t have claimed you as a friend if he had, and I wouldn’t have defended you if the cleric claimed your orange shell and lovely swirls were markings painted by the great devil’s hand. You’re very lucky that your guts aren’t still clinging to the bottom of the cleric’s boot. Now hurry back into the shadows, Oscar, because what I have to do is already hard enough without your beady, little eyes watching me.”

  Abraham growled at the burrowing cockroach, hoping to chase his friend away from danger. The bug seemed to be the only creature anywhere in the village to have noticed the hurts he suffered in his hole. The cockroach nestled against his feet at night while his busted body tossed and groaned upon his cot, and the bug refused to vacate the blankets no matter how hard Abraham’s legs kicked at it. Abraham felt the bug’s presence throughout the day as he attended to his chores, and he swore the cockroach followed him throughout the village like some sad animal. But Abraham glimpsed the bug only when he was alone, and thus far no one had discovered the creature whose shell had been foolishly painted by the boy to forge a bond that anyone in the tribe would recognize as unnatural.

  “I mean it, Oscar. Unless you can do this for me, get the hell out of the butcher shop.”

  The bug easily dodged the stone thrown by the boy and scurried back into the darkness. Abraham knew that bug was only hiding in a darker place, that it hadn’t abandoned him, no matter the growl he placed into his voice. The lamb laughed again, and Abraham closed his eyes. It couldn’t be put off any longer. He had wasted all morning tending to whatever chore he thought might distract him from the task given him from the high cleric. He had cleaned all of the butcher shop’s rooms, and he had inspected all of the salted meat hanging in the coolest chamber of the subterranean complex to insure that not so much as a chicken leg had spoiled after the clerics executed Paul and his wife for the adultery they had committed against the Maker. But all the floor scrubbing and all the cutlery sharpening was complete, and Abraham had to stare at that laughing lamb and swallow his fear and his mercy.

  The high cleric ordered him to slaughter that lamb by dragging a knife across its throat. If he failed, Abraham would face digging another hole and suffer a beating more severe than the first. He feared that would mean his end, and he had little doubt that the clerics would slaughter that lamb all the same regardless of his cowardice.

  But that didn’t make it any easier for his hands to accept the action
they would have to commit. That knowledge didn’t help steady him as he trembled while gripping the knife’s handle.

  “I’m so sorry, little lamb.”

  The lamb didn’t shirk as Abraham grabbed for its neck, and it instead pushed its nose into the boy’s arms, oblivious to the purpose of the knife clutched in its keeper’s hand. Abraham’s heart raced. His hands trembled, and the blade’s handle felt slick in his grip no matter how hard he squeezed. The lamb bleated as the boy scratched the animal’s ear. Abraham sighed. Comforting the lamb would do him no good. There was nothing he could do to save that lamb from slaughter, and he would pay a terrible price if he failed to complete the high priest’s task. Abraham convinced himself that he would show the lamb more mercy if his hands delivered death to the animal. He fooled himself into believing that the Maker intended to give a little kindness in the end to the lamb by sending a boy to tend to its slaughter.

  Abraham pressed the knife to the lamb’s throat and swallowed. When the animal shirked from the blade’s touch, Abraham pulled the knife across its throat. But Abraham did so without conviction, and his trembling blade failed to severe the arteries that would release spurting, throbbing blood and grant the lamb a quick death. The animal spat and cried, and it broke away from Abraham’s grasp when the boy’s shaking hands released the animal. Blood stained the lamb’s fur from the ineffectual cut the boy administered, and the lamb darted about the chamber, bleating and crying as it wrapped the rope fastened at its neck repeatedly around the stake positioned near the drain located in the center of the chamber. Abraham’s eyes cried as he watched the scared lamb wrap itself against the stake. He tried gripping the creature’s neck, but the blood gathered on his hands, so that his grip slipped upon the knife’s blade when he made a second attempt to slash the lamb’s throat. Abraham hissed in pained as his fingers slid across the cold blade, and his blood mingled with that of the lamb’s.

  Its neck tightened against the stake, the lamb kicked and cried. Abraham had hoped to deliver a merciful and quick death to the animal. He instead gave the creature torment. He shamed his father, who had been so proud to think that his young boy could learn the skills of the village’s butcher. His incompetence would surely anger the clerics, so that they would banish him from the village if Abraham was lucky, or stone him to death if they decided he deserved to be treated as a man. Worst of all, he shamed the Maker by filling a creature of the divine’s creation with so much fear and pain. Desperate, Abraham stabbed again and again at the lamb, until the red blood spread across the creature’s wool and covered his tunic.

  The lamb twitched a final time upon the chamber floor as its blood ran into the room’s drain. Abraham crawled away from the lamb through the blood to lean again against the chamber’s cool wall, where he pressed his forehead to his knees and waited for the fear charging his system to empty.

  “I’m happy to see that the blood now marks you, child.”

  The high cleric came alone to the butcher’s chamber, and his voice startled Abraham.

  “I’m sorry I gave it an ugly death.”

  The high cleric stepped into the chamber and gathered the knife still laying at the dead lamb’s side. “You’ve done what I have asked. I will take the lamb now and dress it myself. Did you think you could give that lamb any death other than the one you delivered it? Abraham, you are still only a boy who is still learning what it takes to kill. I assure you that the Maker will provide you with ample opportunity to improve your harvesting of blood. No, Abraham, it is not the killing of the lamb that displeases me.”

  “Where else then have I failed?”

  The high cleric placed the bloody blade before Abraham’s face. “The other clerics told me that you learned well how to clean and sharpen your knives, and yet I find this one abandoned in the blood. You know better, Abraham.”

  Abraham nodded. “I do.”

  “Remember that the Maker values all his tools of creation. You have killed my lamb as I asked, and as reward I’ll not mention your oversight with your blade. I don’t yet see cause to send you outside the village to dig yourself another hole. But Abraham, you will scrub this floor of the blood the best you can, and you will tend to each of your blades. And tomorrow, I will send you another lamb to butcher, and you’ll find it a little easier to drag that blade across its throat.”

  Abraham hurriedly gathered his bucket and his sponge and set to the task of cleaning the lamb’s blood from the chamber’s floor. He wasn’t surprised when he heard something scurry out from the shadows, and he nodded at the orange cockroach who lifted its antennae as it watched the boy work. Abraham was thankful for that silent bug’s company.

  * * * * *

  Governor Chen didn’t leave the cinema after Abraham finished his duty cleaning the butcher shop and returned to his family home, and to the warm cot that waited for his rest. She guided her eavesdropping cockroach back into the safe shadows before replaying the footage gathered that day. Watching the frightened boy clumsily slaughter that bleating lamb wasn’t easy viewing, but Kelly didn’t anticipate taking any pleasure from the sights and sounds gathered from a savage world. The choice she faced was too terrible for any kind of enjoyment.

  Why did the slaughter of that lamb, after everything she had already witnessed concerning that boy, so trouble her? The butchering of livestock was no reason to sentence the tribes, and an entire planet, to oblivion. But the sight of that butchered lamb made her shudder, and she feared the sight of that blood would not permit her night’s dreams to be peaceful.

  The boy was too young to be a butcher. Kelly recognized that the clerics harbored ulterior motives for so soon training Abraham in the ways of the knives, and she was afraid of how that killing reshaped that boy.

  For when she was next called to submit her vote concerning the ultimate answer, Kelly’s decision would depend upon how much hope and innocence she felt survived within a child.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 8 – Blessed Hands

  “There’s a monster in our home! Hurry, Rahbin! There’s a monster in Abraham’s room!”

  Abraham bolted out of his bed at his mother’s scream, instantly lifting his fists to attack whatever boogieman or demon leapt from the shadows to threaten his mother. Yet nothing growled from the darkness. No teeth glimmered in the dim light, nor did any claws scratch along the walls. Rahbin and Ishmael soon barged into his room, each brandishing kitchen knives for defense. Abraham’s mother trembled in the center of the room, pointing towards the corner where she spied her monster while Rahbin kicked at the hard floor.

  Rahbin turned and squeezed his wife’s shoulders. “What did you see, Rebecca?”

  Rebecca covered her dark glasses with her hands. “It was a terrible cockroach.”

  “You’re acting like a foolish girl,” Rahbin snarled. “The cockroaches visit us everyday. Such a bug is no monster.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “It was an unnatural bug. It was orange, and black swirls decorated its shell, surely the runes painted by the great devil to employ that cockroach as his tool.”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” snapped Rahbin.

  Ishmael continued to pace about the chamber’s walls. “Maybe not, father. Others in the village have whispered of seeing bugs of unnatural color. I heard our neighbor John describing a blue cockroach he saw scurrying across the floor one night when I went to the market for onions.”

  “Do you know what John did about it?” Rahbin asked.

  Ishmael shrugged.

  “I’ll inform the clerics,” nodded Rahbin. “We must be on guard against the great devil, and we shouldn’t be surprised if he sends a spy into Abraham’s chamber. Abraham has dug his own hole and started his year into manhood, and the clerics are already teaching him a butcher’s trade. You must be careful, Abraham. This year will tax you, and the great devil will try to exploit your exhaustion.”

  Abraham swallowed. He considered telling the truth concerning those bugs for a second, that his hand
s were responsible for the colorful cockroaches scurrying about the community. Perhaps the great devil was truly testing him. Perhaps the great devil had inspired Abraham to decorate those bugs when the boy thought that the Maker was guiding his brush. Perhaps Abraham needed to explain to his father and the clerics that the great devil had employed him as a tool, so that his elders could protect the village. But Abraham could not. He was afraid of losing what he recently gained - a foothold on the threshold of manhood and a butcher’s training. He was afraid of being cast out of the village, or of being cauterized like an infected wound so that the great devil’s touch didn’t infect the remaining village. So he said nothing while he watched his mother tremble in fear.