All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923)

by Humphrey, Michael C.

  “Cain asked for life and felt as if he had been given a stone instead. Bread in the Bible represents physical life, the bread of life. When the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness he challenged the Messiah to turn ‘these stones into bread,’ but Jesus said, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone…’

  “Cain knew nothing of this future confrontation and could not connect the dots. He did not see that true life, beyond this physical one, is not to be determined by something physical that you eat. He had heard the stories about the tree of life from our parents and longed for its fruit; for the fruit that our parents snubbed. But Cain didn’t know how to get it. He felt that at some point God and the angels must have eaten of this fruit, only now to be hoarding it for themselves.

  “Cain blinded himself to the understanding that God does not need any thing to perform His will. He is not doing magic tricks with a wand. He is not performing illusions with smoke and mirrors. He is not practicing sorcery with gestures and incantations. If God says it, it is. His Word enforces the power of His will.

  “But Cain only wanted the bread of life or the fruit from the tree of life. Cain knew he could not find the garden. Cain therefore, incorrectly assumed that our heavenly Father, since He had denied us access to the tree of life, must have replaced the fruit with the stone. Remember me mentioning the philosopher’s stone earlier?”

  Lester nodded.

  “Cain spent his entire life searching for it.”

  “What is it?” asked Lester.

  “Most people think it is a stone or a substance that can turn base metals, like lead, into gold. Alchemists down through the centuries have conducted thousands of experiments, trying to discover it; for the one who unravels its mysteries will be wealthy beyond imagination. And of course, wealth equals power and presumably the means to search for life-lengthening opportunities.

  “But for Cain it was not turning lead into gold that intrigued him. It was changing corruptible flesh into incorruptible spirit. Cain deceived himself into thinking that with the stone he could transcend this mortality and put on immortality like a mantle, draping it over his shoulders, like a garment of glory.

  “Our parents talked to us some about those first days that they spent in the garden before they knew that nakedness had other options. They never thought of themselves as wearing nothing. They were clothed with righteousness. Glorious, magnificent outfits of wonder fit only for those who have never sinned.

  “Cain wanted to wear raiment of righteousness. He wanted to appear righteous to those who knew him. He just did not want to define righteousness by anyone’s definition but his own. And if he had to be unrighteous, if circumstances called upon him to kill again, he wanted to be able to forgive himself. To Cain, giving thanks to the Creator occasionally was one thing, but having to wait on Him to reveal His will was unbearable.

  “I don’t even know if Cain was fully aware of what he was doing, but he began to replace God in every aspect of his life. He never said, God, I don’t want you, but by his actions he demonstrated that for day to day life, God was not a necessary component. His sons and their sons adopted this independence, this arrogance, and the city of Enoch thrived on it.

  “There was bitterness and grief and strife. There was violence and anger and hatred. Men worked together under Cain’s command and despised one another. Words were created for the things men did, like stealing and lying. Other words and gestures were fashioned to show disdain for one another. Problems were resolved with bloody fistfights while jeering crowds of people looked on and did nothing. There was no law except for the law of Cain and Cain’s law was ‘survival of the wickedest.’ This was the city that I found myself in when I went to pay a visit to my beloved sister, Kesitah.”

  “She was probably glad to see you,” Lester interrupted. For a while now, Al seemed to be lost in his own memories, not so much telling Lester a story as reminiscing aloud to himself.

  “Indeed she was,” sighed Al.

  “So what happened?”

  “Lester, you should read it. It would be better that way.”

  “Because it’s easier than talking about?”

  “Because it’s easier than talking about,” Al quietly confirmed.

  They both sat there for a minute, Al staring at the chipped Formica tabletop but seeing in his mind a city thousands of years old. Lester focused on an invisible spot three feet in front of him, imagining a world that was completely foreign to him yet oddly familiar. The insensitive hustle of people worried more about their appointments, errands, and schedules than about each other. The similarities of random violence, selfish interests, personal space, home wreckers, and stolen property creating a segregation between two peoples, not divided by age, race, gender, language, or country of origin, but by ideology, ethics, and scruples.

  Lester thought of his own country and the invisible but tangible division of political lines; republican verses democrat, liberal verses conservative, left verses right. Noteworthy that if a random group of people today were suddenly transported through time to that distant, misty past, they could easily find themselves feeling right at home in the city of Enoch. As if reading his mind, Al spoke.

  “‘As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.’”

  “Huh?” Lester was shaken out of his reverie.

  “‘For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.’ That was where it started. Right there in Cain’s city. I stood by and watched it happen. Just like I did when Abel was killed.”

  “Al, you can’t really…”

  “Maybe if I had done something. Maybe if I had countered Cain’s corruption with the wonderful truth and splendor that God had revealed to me. Maybe I could have made a difference, slowed down my family’s descent into decadence and depravity. Maybe God would not have needed to use the flood as a last resort. Maybe…”

  “Al?” said Lester. The hushed halcyon quality of Lester’s voice stopped Al mid-diatribe. Al looked up.

  “Al, I don’t know if there is anything that I can say that might make a difference. I’m nothing really but an ignorant child compared to you. I know the things you’ve seen have given you a greater wisdom and understanding of mankind and of God than I can ever comprehend, even if I lived a dozen lifetimes. I have no right to give you any advice, no qualifications, you know? I have no resources at my disposal to untangle antiquity, no balm to soothe your anguish, no light to disperse the shadows. But if I might be honest with you, as your friend, I really don’t think you would have made a difference.

  “Things are the way they are. I’m sure you did everything you could, everything you felt was right to do at the time, but you can’t let it eat at you now. Sooner or later, everybody learns from their mistakes, and that’s a good thing. When we let those mistakes scare the hell out of us, let memories keep us awake at night, we begin to decay from the inside out. Hindsight might be a learning tool, but it’s also the temptation of the siren calling us to look in the wrong direction so that we wreck ourselves on our own self-destructive impulses.”

  Al smiled, a quirky little knowing smile and said, “You know what, Lester? You’re all right.”

  “I try.” Lester grinned back. “So, where does that leave us?”

  “I think about right here,” said Al, handing Lester another notebook. “I’m going to catch a quick nap, if you don’t mind.”

  Even the short time that Al had spent reminiscing about the past seemed to have drained him. Or maybe it was thinking about the Lightmen dogging his steps. Or maybe it was something else, some heavy piece of history that Al had yet to share.

  “Okay,” Lester said with some concern in his voice. “Want me to wake you when I’m done?”

  “Don’t bother,” said Al, “I’ll set my internal cl
ock. Oh, and Lester?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t tear out any pages, all right?”

  “Cute.”

  The city assaulted Kole’s eyes. Even from this distance it was plain to see that it was a squalid, dust-covered compound of stone huts, crammed together with narrow streets slithering and fanged with evil malice. The scorched plain that the city of Enoch festered upon seemed devoid of life, a callused palm with a pus-filled blister. The soil was baked hard and cracked by a demanding sun, and what few trees there were twisted and limped up out of its broken surface, gnarled and hunched into submission.

  A muddy rivulet of water sludged thickly from the city, oozing beneath a partially-finished wall to dwindle and dry up a stone’s throw into the desert. For a desert it was. Perhaps once there had been life here, verdant pasturage and lush greenery. But whatever the sons of Cain were doing to raise up this city of theirs, they were not tasking themselves with maintaining the landscape.

  A slate gray sky pressed down upon the plain like a stone lid on a stone pot. Fierce, black birds circled high overhead like prophets of death, their faint shrieks ominous on the still air. The day was hot, soup kettle hot; a slow boiling miasma of feral stew. Shifting waves of heat shimmered over the bleak terrain causing it to seethe with its own internal agony.

  This place is the other side of the grave, thought Kole, a place where the dead have come to torment themselves. He could not bear to think of Kesitah living in such a place. The sooner this is over with the better.

  The morning had dawned slowly like a faint blush on the cheeks of a shy girl. It had been three mornings since his confrontation with Irad in the Valley of Pride. Kole had intended to come immediately to this place, to win Kesitah back by whatever means necessary and to put an end to the contention that had been born within the family, but the world had been uncooperative.

  On that first day, the hunters had made it back to the camp by early afternoon, thanks to the two wagons that Jorel had left hidden from the herd on the other side of the hill. It seemed as if the entire family was out in the common area to greet them when they returned, each side bursting with news. Everyone began talking at once, and it was several moments of hugging and hollering before Kole finally spotted Adam and Eve standing quietly under the boughs of a giant fir tree, holding hands and smiling at their family’s exuberance. Kole strode over to them.

  “Greetings, my son,” said Adam. “You have made good time. And what a successful hunt. We shall have a fine feast this evening.”

  “Yes, Father. Mother, I am glad to see you looking well. There was some concern.”

  “Yes, your father startled everyone here this morning when he burst into the camp like a hungry dragon, roaring to see me.”

  “You are okay then?” asked Kole.

  “I am as fit as ever, my son. Your concern for my well being is most welcome though.”

  “I am glad to hear it.”

  Adam sighed. “It seemed there was some mistake. Your mother was never wounded or taken ill. The news of her injury was bad. I mean, incorrect, unreliable. The information was faulty.”

  “Yes, Father, we assumed as much,” said Kole. When his father raised an eyebrow, Kole continued. “We were set upon by men from Cain’s city. They were intent on doing us evil.”

  “They were intent on more than that, Father,” said Jorel, making his way over to the trees with a handful of the other hunters. “Those wicked, vile, city serpents wanted a fight. If it hadn’t been for Kole here they would have taken all three hrak. They had us surrounded and outnumbered. They had their spears in our guts and their noses in our faces. I admit, I almost welcomed the chance to knock a stone or two out from under Irad…”

  “But you have all the meat?”

  “We do.”

  “And no one was hurt?”

  “No one.”

  “Praise the Creator,” said Eve.

  “How is this so then?” asked Adam. Everyone started talking at once.

  “Kole picked up a hrak,” someone said.

  “Picked up the whole animal all by himself,” shouted someone else.

  “It was the lions,” said Jorel.

  “He put a curse on them,” said another voice.

  “Remember when he was walking and they couldn’t catch up to him no matter how fast they ran?” someone recalled, his voice resounding with awe.

  “Irad threatened to kill all of us, and Kole told him he didn’t have the guts.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” said Adam, “I am completely confused. First things first, you hunters go and wash yourselves. Those who stayed behind in the camp will tend to the meat. We will make a meal and celebrate our good hunt and Eve’s health. Then I will hear this story from the beginning and perhaps make better sense of it.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  So a bit later, little by little, as the story unfolded, Adam’s eyes grew round with incredulity, as did everyone’s who had not been on the hunt that morning. Kole was the talk of the campfire, from his bold audacity to his incredible strength, from his calm demeanor in the face of adversity to his blistering predictions.

  “It seems your stay in the garden has changed you somewhat,” said Adam, looking at his eldest son.

  “So it would seem,” Kole replied quietly.

  Adam chewed on his thumbnail, a habit he had acquired when deep in thought.

  “What do we make of all this, Kole?” he finally asked.

  Kole did not reply immediately. He was modest about the part he had played in the afternoon’s incident but fervently convinced of what he needed to do about it now.

  “I must go to the City of Enoch, Father. I must speak with Cain. This contention cannot be allowed to take root and blossom into a harvest of hatred. If I act quickly, perhaps we can prune the bad branches, and the family tree will flourish with unity and the fruit of the Spirit once more.”

  “I agree, Son. And your words, as you have spoken them, are a language to which Cain can relate. Hopefully in a positive manner. He has always taken pride in his skills of husbandry, and he will relate to analogies of plants and people. Perhaps it will get through to him. Perhaps it will be enough.”

  “I will accompany him on this task, Father, with your permission,” interjected Jorel.

  “As will I,” said a chorus of other voices.

  “I will go alone,” said Kole firmly, looking around him at the faces of his family, startled to see their looks of disappointment. He realized then that even in the short time he had known them, just a handful of days really, they had grown to love him as a brother and respect him as a leader of men. They wanted to support him by volunteering to place themselves in harm’s way. Maybe some of them were itching for a fight. Maybe some of them just wanted to see what Kole would do next. But some of them thought that there was more safety in numbers and wanted him safe, even if it meant risking their own safety. Kole was touched, and his eyes glistened in the firelight with unshed tears of gratitude and humility.

  “I am honored that so many of you wish to accompany me,” said Kole. “I value your companionship as I would food after a three-day fast. But I will not be without aid. The Creator has assured me he will be my guide and never leave my side. This is something I must do alone, for only alone will there be any outcome of success. Strength in numbers is weakness in God’s sight. I must trust in Him, and all will be well.”

  “So be it,” said Adam. “We will wait for you here then, Kole. We will wait for the Lord’s will.”

  The next morning dawn woke hungry and swallowed them whole. Before Kole had a chance to gather any supplies and set off for the city, the wind roared like a bloody, ragged beast. It tore clothes from the drying lines and hurled dangerous showers of sparks from the banked fire pits, igniting the dry grasses that covered the hill homes
. Men and women poured out of their doors with eyes aglow from the carnage and leaped from burn to burn with blankets, shovels, buckets of water, anything that might put out the flames threatening to consume them.

  The day devoured them with dust from the bald patches, smoke from the burning bushes, and ash from the charred grasses. The sun rose gassy and angered, like a malevolent boil, flinging heat and fierce rage down upon them as if its personal vendetta against humanity had been held in check and was long overdue. Small whirlwinds twisted the air into a choking brown hash, causing the children to fall and the men to stumble.

  Kole pulled one young girl back sharply just as she was about to tumble into the glowing coals of the previous night’s cookfire. People raced around trying to help, but the air was heavy and turbid with stinging soot, and visibility was nil. People were shouting, calling out names, hoping to hear an answer. Children were crying, lost from their mothers amidst the confusing muddle and ossified breath of the world. The ground shook. The sky darkened even further as if the sun had given up and returned home to its bed.

  Kole thought he heard Adam yelling, but he couldn’t make out his words. A little boy, strangely subdued, bumped into Kole’s legs, and Kole picked him up and carried him. Something small and sharp flew out of the darkness and hit Kole just above his left eye. He felt the warm finger of blood trickle down into his lashes. He covered the boy’s head with his free arm and ran toward the sound of Adam’s voice. A jolt of pain across his right shin, and he was thrown forward, his momentum carrying him and the child over the top of the water trough that he had crashed into. Kole turned in mid-air to protect the boy and landed gracelessly atop sharp tools lying forgotten in the furious confusion. He flinched in pain as he felt the top layer of his skin scraped off his shoulder blades.

  As he lay there trying to catch his breath, he heard the little boy praying softly into the side of his neck. “God, please make it stop. God, please make it stop, God.”