by Dick Denny
“I hate to be the one to have to tell you, but the Father”—again he gestured out at the cityscape—“never wanted all this.”
I cocked my eyebrows; if he wanted to monologue I’d let him. People hell-bent on pumping a monologue either gave you information they might not have needed to or just annoyed the fuck out of you. Right now there’s little to lose in letting him ramble. But if I got too annoyed I was going to fucking jet.
“Look back at the Garden, or at least the representation of the Garden you were given. Adam and Eve, running around naked, picking fruit off of trees and getting by, that correct?”
“More or less.”
“See, the plan was for humanity to basically be hunter-gatherers. Stay in the Garden, naked and happy, and worship the Father. And don’t get me wrong, the Father is great. He’s worth the worship and deserves all he gets. But here’s the rub. This was my problem anyway, creating a race whose sole purpose is to worship you is a bit… needy. So in the Garden, Adam and Eve didn’t know any better till Lucifer pointed the tree out. Knowledge of Good and Evil. After that, they had a choice. And isn’t that better? Would you rather have someone love you who doesn’t know better, or someone who understands they don’t have to and does it anyway?”
I nodded. Whether I decided to buy the product, I guess I was in for the infomercial.
“So Lucifer helps them get free of the Garden. What happens next, they keep with the same hunter-gatherer BS. They pump out two kids, Cain and Abel, right? So, Abel’s the big victim and Cain is history’s first villain.”
“Did he really bash his little brother’s head in with the lump of iron that became the Spear of Destiny?”
Baalberieth chuckled. “Honestly, I’d forgotten about that. Yeah, I guess he did. But here’s the rub: if you like the world, Cain is the hero.”
“Wanna explain that one?”
He held up a finger. “Life expectancy in a hunter-gatherer society is shit. You look at modern Inuit tribes who subsist in a hunter-gatherer paradigm life expectancy hits somewhere around only about twenty-five percent of the population hitting age sixty. The average life span is around forty-three or forty-four. Hunter-gatherers are looking at around a twenty-five percent infant mortality rate. But here’s the real shitty thing—it never gets better. Hunter-gatherers don’t have hope.”
“Every dumbass who is dumbassed enough to want it has hope, dude.” Yes, I Just referred to Hell’s top lawyer as dude.
“Well, yeah, in the I hope I find food tomorrow. But what they don’t have is hope for the future. They don’t have a plan to make things better for their kids. Those kids will have the same shitty life that their parents did. Abel’s the hunter-gatherer. Cain was arguably the greatest human ever. He came up with farming. It wasn’t Lucifer’s idea, wasn’t my idea. Cain freaking invented civilization.”
“Okay?” I wasn’t tracking. “Want to elaborate on that?”
“All right, to be fair, he never knew how it would turn out. But by definition, Cain was a better father than Abel simply because of this. Cain wanted his kids to have a better life. Abel wanted his to have the same life, so Cain invented farming. So you can argue chicken and egg, but Cain came up with farming and the idea of a surplus. That changed everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-damned-G. Everything.”
He walked back to the bar and opened a mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle of some craft beer. Apparently, not all the douche died with Eric Travis, colossal douche. He offered me one but I shook my head.
“So while Seth’s kids were wandering hills following flocks and bloom patterns of wild fruit, Cain and his kids were building cities. Because farming is sedentary, sedentary plus surplus equals population boom. Increased population and surplus equals specialization. Seth and all his kids had to worry about not dying every day. Cain and his kids knew they weren’t going to starve, so they could do other things. Frank was a farmer and grew enough that Bob didn’t have to be a farmer, so Bob became a metal worker. Lisa made pottery, and on and on. It led to writing; the perpetuation of knowledge. Anything greater than tribal-level civilization is built from the work of Cain.”
“Yeah.” I hadn’t given the subject enough thought to argue with him. “But doesn’t change the fact that Cain iced his brother.”
Baalberieth sipped his beer and nodded. “A sad byproduct of necessity.”
“Oh, so it was necessary?”
A shadow did pass over his face, almost like me bemoaned it. “Agrarians and hunter-gatherers can’t live side by side, they just can’t. It boils down to resources, geography, security. So either the hunter-gatherer has to go or get killed. It’s always been that way. You like the song, Sweet Home Alabama? You like B.B. King’s, The Thrill is Gone? Tina Turner? Elvis? None of that would have happened had Andrew Jackson not uprooted the indigenous people in Alabama and Mississippi and forced them out to Oklahoma.” He saw I was about to say something but he held his hand up to hush me. “I'm not saying it was right. I’m not saying it was good. I’m not saying it wasn’t horrible. But a lot of good came from it. Know how many people died in the Manhattan Project? Does it matter? Because it ended the war. Sometimes a big evil can lead to a bigger good.”
He took another long tug on his beer. I reached behind me and shut the door to the balcony figuring he wasn’t going back out there.
“Had Abel been left alive, he and his would have plucked Cain’s fields, taken the product of his work to get by that day. Cain was looking to tomorrow. Cain was looking forward for his kids. Sad fact is Abel had to die, Seth’s kids had to be beaten and pushed out. Abraham was a nomad, and the Egyptians had built the damned pyramids. The Hebrews roamed the desert for forty years, and in the end, they built cities, the nexus of civilization. Why? Because whether they were aware of the reasons, Cain had won. And because of it, we have roads, antibiotics, beaten polio, child labor laws, art—all that is because of Cain. The Father might have sent his Son to save your souls, but if you like pizza delivery, hospitals, books, webcomics, music, good Scotch…”He paused, letting that last one sink in. “You really need to thank Cain.”
He looked knowingly to me. “Plus, why should anyone have sympathy for an older brother who loves his younger brother but doesn’t like him?”
“That’s fucking low.”
He smiled. “And if it boiled down to him or Gretchen?”
I didn’t answer him. Then again, goddamnit, I didn’t have to, did I?
Baalberieth leaned back against the bar. “So what’s your plan, Nick?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are you going to tell Gabrielle?”
“Whatever I have to to get Switch back on his feet.” I heard the steel in my voice that I honestly didn’t mean to put there. But it was my fault Switch was fucked up, so it was up to me to get it fixed.
“Well, that’s fair, I guess.” He set his beer down and stepped toward me with his hand extended. “I kind of want to apologize to you, Nick.”
“For what?”
“For trying to kill you the second I got here. I could say that going from Hell to here in the corporeal form is rough, but that would just be an excuse, and doesn’t excuse. So I’m sorry about that.”
I took his hand and we shook. “Sorry I hacked into you with the Fiery Sword.”
He smiled, “Yeah, that did hurt like a son of a bitch.” Our eyes were locked; it wasn’t intimate, it was intimidating. It was like a chicken race and we were both hell-bent on not being the one to swerve first. “I can see it.”
“See what?”
“What Lucifer sees in you.”
Our grip dropped and I started stepping toward the door. I paused with my hand on the knob. “I’m surprised you didn’t mention mom.”
“Why?” He seemed bemused.
“Well, she was your sister too, right?”
He shrugged. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but your mom was, pardon the irony, an unholy cunt. Hell for me was going to be having to listen to her
prattle on for all of eternity. From what I could tell she was only loyal to three people: Lucifer, your dad, and your brother. Then again, she was insanely loyal to them.” He tapped his lip with his finger for a moment. “She was like a Cleveland Browns fan longing for the glory days of Jim Brown, idiotically believing this year will be their year. How were your parents as parents?”
I shrugged. “I’ve seen worse ones.”
“Your dad?”
I felt my head cock to the side just a bit. “He didn’t know how to pick a winning pony at the races.”
He laughed. “Nice allusion. Your mom? And the inequality of it all?”
“She needed a son that needed mothering. She got the shit head for that. Fuck knows he needs to be taken care of. So maybe it’s not that she was a bad mother to me but that I was a shit son for her.”
“That seems to be a very generous assessment on your part, Nick.”
I turned the knob. “No waiter that has ever had my table would call me generous.”
He laughed as I stepped out into the hall. “You are welcome anytime, Nick Decker.”
I glanced back at him. “Probably not taking you up on that.” I pulled the door shut and headed down the hallway to the stairs.
Gretchen waited, Spear shaft extended ready for action, pistols on her hips. She smiled as she saw me and leaned the Spear against the wall and started taking off the pistol belt and putting it back in the tool bag.
“Find out anything?”
“Hopefully enough.” I picked up the bag after she zipped it.
“You okay?” she asked with a voice full of concern.
I shrugged as she started collapsing the Spear. “Apparently, I’m Cain and my brother’s Abel. And it seems Cain is a fucking rockstar or something.”
Her confusion was refreshing because it meant I wasn’t the only one that was a little mixed up at the moment.
“Huh?” she asked tucking the collapsed Spear under her jacket.
I took her hand and our fingers interlaced as we started down the stairs. “Yeah,” I nodded, “that just about goddamned says it, all right?”
Chapter Nine
Older Brothers Tend To Get Screwed In The Bible or The Number of Fucks I Give
“He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother” Neil Diamond
I gave Gretchen the cliff notes version of Baalberieth’s, “Cain was a Rockstar” spiel. She took it with a quiet contemplation that reminded me of a Jeopardy! contestant who knew she’d nailed the Final Jeopardy! question but was so far behind that the point was moot. Then she started slowly nodding. “Well, you know, I’ve always taken the Cain and Abel story as ‘murder is bad, and we have to give God acceptable offerings in the right spirit.’ I never thought of it from a social evolutionary or anthropological sense.”
“Okay.”
She shot me a playfully dirty look. “Come on, you went to Sunday school, right?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “but not lately.”
She smiled demurely. “Well, it does hold to theme, doesn’t it?”
“What theme?”
“Older brothers get screwed in the Bible. In fact, if you look at the Old Testament I’m not sure there isn’t an older brother besides Solomon who doesn’t get hosed.”
I sat my mug of hot cocoa down. “Older brothers don’t get screwed in the Bible.”
She raised her eyebrows in such a manner it made me wonder if she were about to ask if I could smell what the Rock was cooking.
“Okay,” I said leaning back lacing my fingers behind my head. “Let’s hear your case, counselor.”
She bit into a scone and chewed. She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Cain and Abel—Baalberieth made a pretty good case on that one. Ishmael and Isaac—Ishmael didn’t ask for any of the bullshit and he still kinda got hosed for not being Sarah’s. Esau got screwed out of a blessing by Jacob but God was cool with it. Joseph was like the youngest of eleven or twelve brothers…”
“And he was the one that got the fucking musical. I hate musicals. And the poor mother who pumped out that many kids barely got mentioned.”
She nodded like a bobblehead with epilepsy. “Exactly! Then there’s David, he had older brothers but God poked the finger of greatness at the youngest one, didn’t he? The most beloved apostle was James, Jesus’s”—she pronounced it Hay-Seuss—“little brother.”
“Hay-Seuss didn’t get it too bad.”
Her eyes went wide and then she crossed them. “He got freaking crucified and stabbed with a spear!”
“Oh yeah…” I watched and luckily her eyes straightened out. “What about King Solomon?”
She paused and chewed her lip, then she sucked in her cheeks. “Did he have siblings?”
“I dunno.” There was no reason to not be immediately honest on that one. I knew I couldn’t carry that lie.
“And don’t forget the whole prodigal son!” She smiled and slapped the table causing our mugs to rattle in their saucers.
I sat and stared at her and that apparently, wasn’t the reaction she wanted.
“Come on!” she continued. “The younger brother takes his half of the father’s stuff and whores it up while the older brother stays home, works the fields, is responsible, and does what he’s supposed to do as an adult. Then little bro comes back having pissed everything all up. He didn’t have an epiphany and realize I’m hosing my life away or this is all wrong and I need to get on the right track. He just parties till he’s got nothing and when he’s out of every other option he comes home. Crawls back, not because it’s right but because he has no other choice and dad just hugs him, gives him dope threads, and throws a party. But those dope threads and the party came out of the brother who didn’t jack everything up’s half of the stuff. I know it’s supposed to be a parable about the love and redemptive power of the Father, but still. It’s not a great example; it’s like saying, You should be nice to people because even Hitler helped an old lady across the street. I mean, prodigal literally means wasteful, for crying out loud.”
I laughed. “Look who maxed out the non-math shit on her SATs.”
She just smiled. “You know, thinking about it, you hear about the religious right in government all the time, but you don’t hear about the religious left a lot. But if you think about it the Prodigal Son is basically nothing but big government socialist bullcrap.”
I sat there for a second or two and just marveled at how huffed up she’d gotten. “Wow,” I slowly eased into it. “Tell me how you really feel?”
She laughed and threw her napkin at me. “Asshole. You, good sir, are just deflecting.”
“Did you really just say ‘dope threads?’”
She giggled. “Stop it, you’re still deflecting.”
“How so?” If I sounded confused there was a really good reason for it.
She smiled and batted those lashes to the point that it went from sweet to diabetic. “How’re things between you and your little brother?”
I felt myself bite the inside of my cheeks. “I wouldn’t say they’re Biblical.” Maybe it was her reiki training but she knew where the pressure points were, didn’t she?
“Little brother that mommy and daddy carried while the older brother went off and became a man? I admit it’s not a perfect metaphor but it’s pretty damned close, right?” She seemed pretty pleased with herself. Then her look darkened and for some preternatural reason, I had the feeling I was screwed. “I’ve never met your family.”
“There’s a good reason for that.”
“Oh?” She bit the corner of her lip comically poking out the other half.
“I like you.”
“And?” She crossed her arms, I wasn’t sure if she was being serious or playfully dramatic. So the impending feeling of “I’m screwed” didn’t go away.
“I don’t like them.” I didn’t think the logic was too hard to follow.
“You like your nieces and nephews.”
“Well, yeah…”
�
��Why haven’t I met them?” She had me there. Point was, I would have loved to have a better relationship with my nieces and nephews. But I didn’t want to put up with their parents, and that cost me the opportunity to get to play any part in the kids’ lives other than as a figure in the periphery. I’d take them to the movies even though taking four kids to the movies nowadays could put a dent in the wallet—the youngest two were still too young to even realize I was a person. So that’s what I was: not really a family member as much as a guy who showed up to take them to the movies. I was an uncle in the only way I knew circumstances had allowed me to be. They were never going to call to ask me for advice. I was fun-go-out-to-eat-and-go-to-the-movies guy, and that guy isn’t a role model. The thought, “What would Uncle Nick do?” was never going to cross their minds. The older ones were getting to the age where college was becoming a question. I’d been to and graduated college (and a decent one at that)—their dad/step-dad hadn’t—but the number of phone calls I got asking about higher education equaled the number of fucks I gave about the existential crisis facing millennials in today’s ever-encompassing digital consumer environment: zero. I knew what I was to them, and I knew that was the way it had to be.
But I had never introduced them to Gretchen, or Gretchen to them.
She smiled like she knew she had me in a trap; the cat looking at the canary. “Well?”
I shrugged. “I’d rather the girls think about career options and think chemist, nuclear physicist, astronaut, jet pilot, carpenter, or motivational speaker-slash-snake oil salesman—saleswoman. I dunno what the fuck you’d call it nowadays.”
“As opposed to?” Her tone sounded dangerous.
Gretchen was either going to take the compliment or get really pissed. I didn’t see a third option. I shrugged and said what I was thinking anyway. Damn the torpedos. “You're too cool. You’d be the perfect Uncle Sam for the stripper community and I want to keep eating the buffet at Sharky’s without having to worry about accidentally catching a glimpse of someone I know spinning around a pole or shaking daddy’s little money maker for crumpled bills tucked in their undies.”