by K. B. Kofoed
Gene had ignored most of the TV messages but that one drew a comment. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What in God’s name does THAT mean?” he roared. “You’d think at least HERE we could avoid fucking commercials!”
Jim laughed. “You might want to work a bit on that piety.”
Jim tried to remember some of the earlier messages that he hadn’t written down. “What was that one about loons and badgers?”
“Can’t remember,” said Gene. “Concerned General Wilcox, no doubt,” he added with an evil smile. “Fits him to a tee.”
“You know,” said Jim, “here we are laughing it up and making small talk on the cusp of Phase Two. What is it about us? You’d think we’re be speculating about what’s going to happen, you know, when we REALLY do the ark thing.”
Gene agreed. “You’re right. Yesterday we were bantering like this just before the sacrifice. I’ll tell you what it is, Jim. We’re just a pair of sick puppies.”
The General’s face suddenly appeared on the screen.
“Are you ready, boys?”
Gene reached for the SEND button. “Any time, General.”
“We dismantled everything this morning and are going to set it up tomorrow, not today, at the proving grounds. Be ready at six.”
The screen went blank. Gene and Jim looked at each other. “Great. Another day to kill,” said Gene.
It wasn’t so bad. They both welcomed a day off, taking in a matinee at the local theater, and that evening, after dinner, they bowled at the Los Alamos Lanes.
#
The next day at six a.m. General Wilcox came to their room with John at his side. They both wore sunglasses, tan caps and desert camouflage fatigues. The General’s cap bore four gold stars.
“Oooo, aren’t we looking all military and bad today,” Gene teased.
“Bring sunglasses. Sunny up top,” the General advised.
He wasn’t kidding. The airfield was dazzling under a cloudless sky. Three helicopters waited to take the Thunderbolt personnel to a secret testing area at the edge of the White Sands proving ground. A prepared field, airstrip and temporary quarters had been set up there.
From the air the tents reminded Jim of a small refugee camp in the desert. He wondered what the Israelite camp must have looked like four thousand years ago.
Someone, maybe it was Gene, had once remarked that it must have been an amazing sight; the twelve tribes of Israel all spread out, looking not unlike a modern camp of, say, Rwandan refugees. The population of the whole camp must have been well over a million people. The numbering of the tribes mentioned in the Bible is a much lower figure, Gene had said. “They only counted the elder males. That means that there must have been scores of eyewitnesses to the events described in the three books of Moses.”
A circle of white robed priests around a dark blue object came into view as the chopper lowered toward the temporary tarmac. Jim guessed it was the ark, dressed for portage. The Bible said it had two coverings, the outer blue upholstery and an inner layer of sealskin, presumably for weatherproofing. Again, Jim was impressed that the army was at least trying to show some respect to orthodox thinking. Certainly Rabbi Levi and his drafted band of Levites were seeing to that.
Everything else was in a graded and cleared area maybe a thousand feet on a side. The outer courtyard and the Tabernacle were set up exactly as it had been in the grotto: on an east-west axis, with its front facing the rising sun.
A cloud of dust surrounded them as their helicopter landed. One by one, each chopper deposited its cargo of materials and personnel, then lifted off. When the last of the three helicopters vanished into the distance Jim’s ears still rang from the thumping and whine of their rotor blades.
The General ordered everyone into a group. He held a megaphone that matched his desert outfit. With his cap and sunglasses, Jim thought the General looked much younger than his actual age. Gene even commented that with a corncob pipe in his teeth he’d be a “spitter for MacArthur.”
“Mom always loved General MacArthur,” said Gene. “Wanted him for president.”
“What’s on your minds, gentlemen?” asked the General. “Care to share?”
“You remind us of General MacArthur, Sir,” said Gene, to Jim’s surprise.
Without comment the General stared at Gene for a moment, then turned to face the rabbi and the Levites.
“Is there a specific time that you want to do this, gentlemen?” he shouted through the megaphone.
Rabbi Levi answered but Jim couldn’t make out what he’d said. The General looked unhappy.
The rabbi was sweating in his heavy headdress and white robes. His gold breastplate glittered in the morning sun, out of place in the barren landscape.
It must have been no different in ancient times, Jim mused. The priests and their blue ark must have been a standout in the desert. Gene had once described the Israelite camp as a traveling circus with exotic animals and colorful banners displaying the tribes’ identities and locations in the tent city that surrounded the original Tabernacle. Now, four thousand years later, there were only twelve Levites on hand for the rebirth of their ark. Not the same as in the beginning, but it was all the Army could muster and still keep the project a secret.
Jim surveyed the horizon. To the North and South stretched stark desert, almost unbroken in its bleakness except for the occasional Joshua tree or patch of brush. To the West, off the rear wall of the Tabernacle, were hills and distant mountains, just as bleak but more interesting to the eye. To the East was more barren desert except for a line of electrical towers in the distance.
“Hard to believe that we’re only a half hour or so from Los Alamos,” Jim mused aloud.
John Wilcox walked to the back of the group where Gene and Jim were watching the proceedings. He pointed to the impromptu conference between the General and the Levites. “I think there’s some question whether we need another sacrifice,” he said with a sardonic smile.
“There’s no question about it,” said Gene. “The ark was supposed to be consecrated with a sacrifice every day. That’s the law. It doesn’t have to be a ram, though. A bull, sheep or even a turtledove will do, if they don’t have any blemishes.”
“Blemishes?” asked John, looking Gene up and down.
“It’s all in the book,” said Gene with a grin. “I’m not making this shit up.”
John kicked a clod of dirt. “First we have to have a sacrifice, then it has to be every day. THEN it has to be without blemish. I thought you wanted to see if this thing works?”
“John, I don’t make the rules around here,” said Gene. “Complain to the rabbi, not me. He’s the one running the show.”
John Wilcox stalked away to join his father, who already seemed to be involved in a dispute with Rabbi Levi.
“I thought by now Wilcox might have opened a Bible,” said Gene.
Jim laughed. “That’s what you’re here for, Gene. I’d think by now you’d know that.”
“Touché,” Gene replied.
The sun beat down mercilessly on them as the mercury moved toward a hundred degrees.
The General’s voice was getting louder and more high pitched as he argued with the rabbi. Despite the wind, Jim could hear most of what the General was saying.
“Look, I know we should have taken this into account,” said the General, “but we didn’t. We’re shit outta rams today, rabbi, so let’s bag tradition, take our chances and move this along.”
At that point, the archbishop appeared from an air conditioned trailer. He was dressed in a lightweight white outfit and, like everyone except Aaron, he was wearing sunglasses, gold rimmed with mirrored glass. Jim thought the cleric looked more like a drug lord than an archbishop.
Frazetti nosed directly into the fray, a jeweled rosary in one hand and a white leather Bible in the other. “My friends, my friends,” he was saying. “Is there a problem among us that cannot be solved?”
“No disrespect there, father,” said General Wilcox, “
but unless you can cough up a fine unblemished ram, I believe there is.”
Rabbi Levi nodded and folded his arms resolutely across his golden breastplate. “In a nutshell,” he said.
Jim looked at Gene. “Is it just me or is this getting funny?”
For the next few minutes the conversation became an unintelligible babble of yelling. At one point John had to physically separate the archbishop and his father before they came to blows.
Finally the General got on his radio. By two P.M. a young calf had been airlifted in from Sandia. How they managed to have one on hand made even the General wonder.
#
The calf came crated and dangling by cables from a Huey helicopter.
The Levites and a small group of soldiers ran to the center of the courtyard to release the cables and open the crate. When the calf was finally standing next to the pieces of the container, mooing plaintively from fear and confusion, the Levites gathered around and held it steady. One of them was brandishing a knife.
Jim noticed Marta disappear into a trailer with her hands over her ears. He shook his head and nudged Gene. “Why don’t they just let Marta go back to Switzerland? She’s having a real problem with this sacrifice thing.”
Standing nearby, John overhead him. “We want a metallurgist on hand even if we don’t use her.”
Jim began passing the time making entries in a notebook that had been left in the apartment. Reviewing his entries, he realized that he had failed to cover most of the work that had gone into the building of the Tabernacle complex. He resolved to fill in the gaps later while the memories were still fresh.
When Jim looked up from his notes, the calf had already been killed and its blood was being poured around the altar.
Clouds began to form over the mountains to the West. As the dead calf was placed on the altar, Rabbi Levi’s voice grew loud as he chanted and prayed. The wind rose unexpectedly, causing sparks to fly in a dusty swirl above the altar. Gene scanned the sky and commented on the possibility of rain, but John shook his head and said that the forecasts had all been positive. “We’re not supposed to have any rain for days,” he said. Glancing again at the approaching clouds, he looked more doubtful. “Of course you never know in the West. The weather can play tricks on you.”
General Wilcox stood to the rear of the group. Jim noticed that Lieutenant Bush was advising him. Bush left the General’s side and went into a trailer that bristled with antennae.
The General joined Jim, Gene and John in the outer courtyard where they’d moved to watch the proceedings. “This is it,” he said. “All systems go.”
Rabbi Levi’s voice strained to compete with the noise of the increasing wind. The Levites, squinting to see through the windblown dust, managed to uncover the ark and pick it up. They began carrying it ceremoniously toward the Tabernacle. Ahead of them walked the Rabbi, praying at the top of his lungs, his melodic song-prayer blending with the sound of the wind. It gave Jim chills despite the hundred degree heat. Gene looked around and pointed to the trailers. It seemed that most of the personnel were outside watching as the ark moved closer to the Holy of Holies.
The Tabernacle’s tenting was shaking in the wind but the ropes and lashings held firm. Jim noted that the design of the tent was proving to be sturdier than he’d expected.
“I wondered how that thing would hold up in a wind,” observed Gene.
“Now you know,” said John. “Why? Are you surprised?”
“Well, it lends some credibility ...” began Jim.
John interrupted. “If you’re going to say that the fact that the tent stands up to the wind is a reason to believe the Bible, I think you’re reaching a bit, Jim. Building a tent is common knowledge to the boys who wrote the book, don’t you think?”
Jim didn’t answer. He watched the ark as it moved toward the Tabernacle. At the moment, theological debate seemed not only inappropriate but irrelevant. Besides, he had felt for a long time that none of the events transpiring here would change anyone’s beliefs. Essentially people believe what they want to, and John was no exception. He’d heard John and Gene argue the Bible enough to know where each of them stood. While he never said so, John was an inch from Von Daniken's view that interloping space aliens had duped poor Moses. Gene, for the moment at least, was still open, but he was a dedicated techie who believed that given enough time everything would be explained.
Two of the Levite group were holding the curtains at the mouth of the Tabernacle as the four who carried the ark marched steadily toward the Holy of Holies. A moment later they emerged from the sanctuary and filed ceremoniously out of the Tabernacle. Finally, everything was in place.
Jim held his breath as he listened to the wind and the sound of the faraway rabbi wailing prayers as he stood alone to face the truth before him. He noticed that the wind was circling the huge encampment as though it had a life of its own.
“Look at the smoke from the altar,” said Gene.
In spite of the wind the column of smoke from the burning calf rose straight into the sky.
“That’s kind of weird,” said John.
#
Jim could still hear the rabbi despite the wind.
Gene studied the situation and smiled. “Don’t freak, everyone. It’s only a whirlwind. Normal desert activity in the afternoons.”
The smoke, it seemed, wanted to prove Gene wrong, keeping its form as a column rising up to the sky before dissipating into the wind at about fifty or sixty feet.
Jim wondered if his mind was feeding him suggestions of supernatural events. Certainly he was primed for it. Maybe he simply wanted to believe that it was God himself that empowered the ark. Now, he was seeing it. The devout might judge what they were seeing was a miracle. But was it? The behavior of the smoke hardly mattered. What really mattered was what happened with the ark.
Jim focused his attention on the Tabernacle and the rabbi’s voice. He listened for any intonation that might indicate what was going on inside the Tabernacle.
The whirlwind persisted for a long time before it began to subside. Finally the wind stopped completely and the heat of the desert returned. “Well, there goes your miracle, Jim,” said John with a grin.
The General was waving at Irwin Bush in the radio trailer. “Anything?” he mouthed, keeping his voice down out of respect for the semi-religious service that was going on. Bush shook his head negatively.
Outside the Tabernacle the Levites stood with their heads bowed. One of them was wiping grit from his eye, no doubt grateful that the wind was no longer blinding him. Finally, the rabbi emerged from the tent and closed the curtains. He looked off toward the sun that was beginning to sink toward the horizon. The clouds that had formed there were gradually filling the sky like outstretched fingers reaching toward them. The rabbi turned to face the group of people that watched in silence from a distance. Then he dropped to the ground.
The General looked back and forth between the rabbi and the lieutenant, expecting some activity involving the ark. Irwin shook his head again as he spoke into his headset, presumably to technicians inside the radio trailer.
The Levites, followed by nearly everyone else, ran to the fallen rabbi. John was the first from their group to arrive in the midst of the Levites. They had formed a circle as one knelt beside Rabbi Levi, feeling his pulse.
“I don’t believe it,” said John. “The man’s dead.”
Jim looked down at Rabbi Levi. The ashen face and dark lips said it all. He looked away, unable to bear the sight.
Then he heard a voice. It was THAT voice. “Take off thy shoes, for the place where thou standeth is consecrated ground.” And when Jim looked at the body, lying face up in the dust, he noticed the Rabbi’s shoes.
Jim looked up. Dark smoke from the sacrificial calf rose as a column into the sky. He realized then that he was standing in the blood of the sacrifice, next to the altar. He could feel its heat on his face as he looked at it.
The archbishop had arrived with the
General. He pushed people gently away and knelt next to the rabbi. Rosary in hand, he prayed over the fallen cleric. The General watched dispassionately, muttering into his radio headset.
Inside Jim’s head the words he’d heard kept repeating. Finally he sat down and pulled off his shoes.
“What are you doing?” asked Gene.
Jim looked up at Gene. A tear rolled down his cheek.
“Jim, are you okay?”
Jim stood up. “I want to go in there,” he said. “Will they let me?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Gene. “God, all of a sudden everything’s going to Hell. Maybe you should just go into the trailer and get out of this heat?”
Barefoot, Jim walked briskly over to the Tabernacle and pulled back the heavy coverings just enough so he could slip through them. For a moment he was engulfed in what felt like a thick tapestry, then suddenly he was inside. The menorah was all that illuminated the interior. It looked just as it had when he explored it in the grotto.
Jim walked to the curtain that covered the Holy of Holies and stood there trembling. He held out his hand to push the curtain aside, but something prevented it. His arms hung at his sides like lead weights.
Falling to his knees, he cried like a baby. “Why? Why?”
There was no answer, only the shouts of people outside the Tabernacle.
Jim got to his feet and stared at the curtain. Gold threads amid the linen sparkled in the light of the menorah. He considered looking behind the veil but knew there was no reason other than to test the ancient warning against violating the Holy of Holies. He wiped his cheeks, then turned and left the Tabernacle.
Gene and John were standing outside. They seemed relieved to see him emerge from behind the curtains.
“What got into you?” asked Gene.
Jim realized that his actions had no easy explanation. “I’m okay,” he said. “Sorry.”
“What’s going on in there?” asked John. “Did anything happen?”