Wives of the Flood

by Vaughn Heppner

  Ham belched, the air-bubble finally escaping his gut. “What was that?” he asked, as drowsiness threatened to take him.

  Kush smiled wisely. “You won’t remember any of this, will you?”

  Ham swayed as he peered at the moon. Even for him he’d ingested an amazing amount of wine. He slid against the Tower, his chin sinking onto his chest.

  “No,” he heard Kush say. “You won’t remember a word.”

  10.

  Ham was too sick to be enraged. His eyes were bloodshot and his face puffy. Early this morning granddaughters of his had found him in the street, shaken him awake and helped him up. Long years of drunkenness and its aftermath had kept him from puking. They led him into a spacious home, Canaan’s he realized dimly. There he had been purified and given a fine robe, boots, his hair and beard combed and a hat placed on his head. Canaan had led him back to the cube-shaped temple.

  As before, he halted on the steps. He swayed and his vision blurred. It felt as if he might be sick after all. A tired smile cracked his lips as he envisioned puking on the steps. That seemed like the right thing to do.

  “Are you well?” Canaan asked.

  Ham rubbed his dry mouth. “What are we doing here?”

  “Mother lies within.”

  Ham recoiled, and anger stirred. His head throbbed. He rubbed his forehead, willing himself better. “I took her out of here.”

  “It was decided that she should rest here before the final journey.”

  Ham squeezed his eyes shut. Why did his children use such odd terms? What was final journey supposed to mean? Everyone knew a soul left the body the instant of death. Rahab was already gone.

  “From dust she was formed,” Canaan said. “To dust she shall return.”

  Ham groaned at the dreadfulness of the words.

  The hand on his elbow tightened. “Come, Father. You are to help us carry her to the pyre.”

  After what seemed an age, Ham nodded. It hurt his aching head. He trudged up the stairs with Canaan. In the temple, he found Kush, Menes and Put. They wore costly long robes, hats and boots. Each seemed somber. They mumbled words of consolation to him as he gaped at Rahab laid out on a stretcher. She wore a fine gown and hat, and her face had been painted with cosmetics.

  “It is time,” Canaan said. “Father, you will lead us.”

  Ham stared at his beloved. He couldn’t believe she was dead. He refused to believe. He staggered to her, kneeling, touching the cold skin. He bit his lips and stroked her forehead.

  “Father,” Canaan said, with his hand on his shoulder. “You will lead us.”

  Ham looked up at his handsome son. “No,” he said. “I will be a pallbearer.” All his life he had worked. He had helped build the Ark. He had plowed the first fields in the New World. He had made the first bow. He had smelted ores and forged many things. He did. He used his hands, getting them dirty. He didn’t make windy speeches or dream up airy ideas. So at his wife’s funeral…he would work. He would carry her.

  “If you’re a pallbearer,” Canaan said, as if speaking to a child, “who will lead the procession?”

  “I will,” Ham said, “as a pallbearer.”

  “There are four sons here,” Canaan pointed out.

  Ham stared at his youngest son, studying him. In many ways, he was a good son. “You will follow behind,” Ham said.

  “Me?” Canaan asked.

  “You.”

  The superior attitude slipped from Canaan. “Why not have Put or Menes trail in back?”

  The reason was obvious, Ham thought, but he didn’t want to say it.

  “You’re hung over,” Canaan said. “You’re not thinking right. You will lead us to the pyre. The four sons will be the pallbearers.”

  Ham took a deep breath. He didn’t want to quarrel, not here, not now. “No, my son, you must listen to me. You must obey your father.”

  With that trapped ferret look, Canaan glanced at his brothers. “I’m to be a pallbearer.”

  “Grant him his request, brother,” Kush said. “Consider the occasion.”

  Canaan laughed; it had a shrill quality. “Oh, no, no. I’m not going to be pushed aside that easily. We all agreed it would be this way.”

  Ham rose. He was weary, tired, with little fight left in him, and his hip ached. He put a gentle hand on Canaan, who flinched and stared at him. “Let us show respect for the dead. Let us not quarrel. Accept my judgment, my son.”

  “But why me?” Canaan cried. “I came to fetch you from the reservoir, remember?”

  “Yes,” Ham said. “I remember, and I thank you for doing so.”

  “I’m the youngest son,” Canaan said, “but that’s no reason for excluding me.”

  Ham looked away.

  A wild look entered Canaan’s eyes. He shook his head. “There’s no other reason for me not to be a pallbearer.”

  “There is,” Ham said, and it hurt him to say it. He loved his son. In many ways, he was a good boy.

  “What?” Canaan said. “What is the reason?”

  “Come,” Ham said to his other sons. “It is time.”

  “No!” Canaan said. “I’m to be a pallbearer. I will not be demeaned before the people. I will not walk behind.”

  “You must,” Ham said, gently.

  “But there’s no reason.”

  Ham took a deep breath. This was hard, so very hard. “You are cursed,” he said.

  Canaan staggered away, his eyes wild, wide, stark. He looked at his brothers, then back at Ham. He worked his mouth. Finally, his shoulders deflated.

  “I’m sorry,” Ham said.

  Canaan turned away and his shoulders shook.

  Ham, feeling more wretched than ever, took one end of the bier, nodding to his other sons. They approached, and at a signal from Ham, they lifted the bier, hoisting Rahab to their shoulders. Marching down the narrow corridor and squeezing through the small door, they moved down the temple steps and toward the Tower. In the distance, he saw that all the people of Babel stood in the plaza, milling, talking and waiting for the ceremony to begin.

  As they moved down the lane, Ham saw the giant pyre. It seemed for a moment as if it became a living thing, eager to devour his beloved wife. On the hastily built wooden steps before the pyre, Nimrod waited in splendid robes. He wore a bronze band like a crown, with a single horn jutting from the front.

  Ham didn’t want to wrestle the bier through the crowd. He didn’t think he had the strength to do so. He said, “Turn left, we’ll use the lanes to come behind the pyre.”

  With leaden steps, he and his sons marched through Babel, taking various lanes to work their way behind the pyre and to avoid the crowd. The weight of the world seemed to descend on Ham. Tears threatened, but he fought them back. Oh, Rahab… he had never thought it would end like this. She had been such a good wife and he had often been such a terrible husband.

  “Take the next right,” tall Menes said, who held the pole behind Ham.

  Ham did, and he staggered a half step.

  The houses beside him were two-story. The lane was narrow so two laden donkeys might find it hard to pass one another. The buzz of the waiting crowd was muted because of the tall homes. None of those things surprised Ham. Two men barred the way. They didn’t stand in a threatening manner. One held a long staff. The other one breathed heavily, with huge thumbs hooked in a broad leather belt, an axe thrust through it.

  “Halt!” cried Ham.

  His sons stopped.

  “Greetings, brother,” Shem said. He leaned on his staff in a manner reminiscent of Noah. He looked travel stained, his robe grimy and his sandaled feet dirty. His black beard was caked with dust, although his dark eyes seemed very clear. Beside him, Beor looked weary.

  “Shem, what are you doing here?” Ham asked.

  “Who do you carry?” Shem asked.

  “Rahab.”

  “Where do you take her?”

  “To the pyre.”

  “To burn?” Beor asked.

&nbs
p; Ham nodded.

  “To turn her body into ashes?” Beor asked.

  Ham nodded again.

  Shem and Beor traded glances.

  “I think the meaning of your dream has revealed itself,” Beor said.

  Shem seemed troubled.

  “Grandmother Rahab is the rare bird,” Beor said. “Soon she will be ashes.”

  Shem shook his head, and he became very pale.

  Ham wondered what Beor babbled about. Yet he didn’t have time to inquire. “You must stand aside,” he said.

  Shem lifted his face heavenward. “Isn’t this foolishness?”

  To Ham the act of talking to the sky seemed foolishness. It, combined with Shem and Beor’s appearance, made the moment surreal, seemingly otherworldly, especially with his dead wife on his shoulder.

  Shem sighed, and he straightened, approaching them. “Lower the brier.”

  “You must step aside,” Kush said.

  “Listen to Shem,” Beor said.

  Ham did not intend to try to ram through Beor. He didn’t know what this was about, but he was too weary to argue. “Lower it,” he said.

  Reluctantly, Kush did, as did the others.

  “Stand back,” Shem said.

  Kush bristled. Ham shook his head. “Listen to him. Let him pay his last respects to the dead.”

  His three sons stepped back beside Canaan, who had trailed them after all.

  Ham smiled sadly at Shem. “She is the first of us to go. Mother is dead, I realize, but among the children, I mean.”

  Shem sighed again, deeply, and his eyes took on an intense cast. Ham noticed that he clutched the staff so his fingers turned white. He didn’t understand. Shem wasn’t usually this emotional.

  “Brother,” whispered Shem. “The LORD Jehovah has sent me to Babel.”

  Ham frowned. That sounded ominous.

  “I have a task here,” Shem said. “Only now do I understand it.”

  “What task?”

  Shem’s throat convulsed as he swallowed. “Nothing is impossible for Jehovah. The Creator is able to bring things into existence that are not. Do believe that?”

  Ham frowned. He didn’t understand what was going on, what Shem was trying to say.

  “Do you believe that Jehovah can do all things?” Shem asked.

  “I do,” Ham said.

  Shem fell onto his knees. He set down his staff, and he put his dusty hand on Rahab’s face. In a loud voice he cried, “O LORD my Jehovah, let this woman’s life return to her.”

  Behind him, Ham heard his sons gasp. He stared stupidly at his brother. What did Shem think he was doing?

  “Again,” urged Beor. “Call out again.”

  “O LORD my Jehovah,” cried Shem, “let this woman’s life return to her.”

  To Ham it seemed that Shem wilted. His brother’s features became ashen. Shem had always been Jehovah crazy. But this…not even Noah had ever attempted to raise the dead. It was madness.

  “O LORD my Jehovah,” cried Shem a third time, “let this woman’s life return to her.”

  Terror whelmed within Ham. For color returned to Rahab’s cheeks. Her skin twitched. Ham groaned and his knees threatened to unlatch.

  Shem said, “The LORD Jehovah has heard my cry, and Rahab’s life has been returned to her. Arise, Rahab!” Shem took her hand.

  Rahab opened her eyes, and with Shem’s help, she sat up.

  Two thumps startled Ham. He turned to see that Canaan and Menes had fainted. Put seemed dazed, while Kush’s eyes had opened wider than Ham had ever seen a man’s do, and his hair stood on end.

  “We must give her something to eat,” Shem said.

  “I have food,” Beor said. He took a piece of bread from his belt-pouch.

  Shem broke it apart and gave some to Rahab. She did eat.

  Unbidden, tears flowed from Ham’s eyes. He knelt beside his wife, touching her, wondering if he dreamed.

  “Hello Ham,” she said, smiling.

  “Rahab?” he whispered.

  She glanced about, with a hint of a frown in her eyes. “I remember… I seem to recall bright…” Her frown deepened as she chewed the bread.

  “Rahab,” Ham said, touching her cheek.

  She smiled, taking his hand.

  He hugged her, helping her stand. “You’re alive.”

  “Of course I’m alive,” she said. “What a strange thing to say.” Then she noticed his tears. “Darling, why are you crying? And why are my sons lying in the dirt?”

  11.

  Amazement, bewilderment and shock struck Babel. At first even Nimrod was stunned into silence. Rahab walked to the pyre, alive, well, seething with vitality.

  Shem and Beor followed in her train, and Beor clumped up the wooden steps to Nimrod, greeting him. Then the big man turned to the crowd and gave his first sermon in Babel under the shadow of the Tower.

  Work on the Tower stopped immediately.

  People debated the idea of spreading out in small clans, filling the world as Jehovah had decreed when the eight had first exited the Ark.

  Tirelessly, Beor rose each morning with Shem beside him. Beor spoke earnestly about Jehovah: that the people turn from the way of Cain. He and Shem had spoken during the journey south. Combined with Noah’s teachings, Beor now brimmed with Jehovah-knowledge.

  Beor had never envisioned that he would return to his tribe like this. Cracking heads, bellowing, showing them who the real fighter was, that’s how he had imagined it many lonely nights while in exile in Japheth Land. Now he spoke to the people in the cool of the morning. Together with Shem in the afternoon, he prayed to Jehovah. At night, he rested, usually dinning with Ham and Rahab, sometimes with other families. He felt more at peace than at any time in his life. Yet there was a void, a secret pain that he was unwilling to tell Shem for it seemed petty and well, sinful. At night as he lay on his mat, sometimes outside on the roof of a house, he stared at the stars. At other times, on cold nights beside the coals of a hearth, he prayed to Jehovah to give him the strength to resist the temptation of this secret sin.

  In the morning, he preached once more. It delighted him to see people nod, to take in the thoughts of Noah and Shem, the ideas each of them had taught him. And if he was honest with himself—he tried hard to be—he was fiercely glad to thwart Nimrod’s evil scheme. He wondered at times if he was happier stopping the evil or stopping Nimrod. He suspected the latter and prayed that it be the former.

  Then the spring floods came. The Euphrates surged with raging water, and the time of hard canal work took precedence over everything else.

  12.

  Nimrod crouched in the grass of the plain, his hand on the sleek hide of his cheetah, Azel. He loathed canal work, directing teams here or others there. Naturally, he couldn’t give the old task back to Kush. The people looked up to the man who led them in the farmer’s chores. So today, he had told Uruk oversee the work. Uruk was a handy man, willing to do anything. Nimrod simply had to get away from the suffocating presence of Shem and Beor. They drove him to despair.

  As he couched in the grass, he bared his teeth like a wolf. Underneath his hand, Azel grew stiff.

  Nimrod raised his head, peering up from the grasses around him. A gazelle wandered by, apart from the herd that nibbled the short stalks farther away. The lone gazelle paused, looking up, its nostrils twitching. Then it bent its head, tearing from the lush grass.

  Nimrod eased up his bow, laying a reed arrow on the wood, drawing the string. The twang made the gazelle start. Then an arrow stuck in its hindquarters,

  “Go,” whispered Nimrod.

  The cheetah shot out of the grass. The wounded gazelle didn’t have a chance. The rest of the herd bounded a short distance away and watched the dismal drama.

  The Mighty Hunter trotted near and pulled the cheetah off its kill, hooking a leash to the leather collar. The beast hissed as if it would bite him. Then training took over. Nimrod threw it a piece of bloody meat. Afterward, the beast allowed itself to be pul
led away.

  Dressing the kill and taking the choicest pieces, Nimrod pondered his dilemma. A league later brought him to the hunting camp. An awning had been erected against the sun and leather tarps laid out. A Hunter readied a campfire. Minos played tunes on his harp for Semiramis and her maidens. Nimrod brought the kill to the cook, who began to ready it.

  He drank from a jug and rinsed his hands. Then Nimrod paced along the outer edge of camp.

  From the corners of their eyes, the others watched him, whispering to each other. Finally, several urged Semiramis to talk to him, no doubt to discover what ailed him. She seemed reluctant, but at last rose and approached him. She seemed concerned, worried, although she was careful to smile. Nimrod had long ago made it clear that he enjoyed a pleasant, cheerful countenance rather than a dour one.

  “What troubles you, my husband?”

  He peered at the horizon, not bothering to glance at her.

  She hesitated, and then pressed against his side. “Is it Beor?”

  “It isn’t the crops,” he said sarcastically.

  “Yet the yearly flood couldn’t have come at a better time,” she said.

  He regarded her.

  “Rahab’s recovery—”

  “Being raised from the dead isn’t a recovery, my pretty. It’s a miracle.”

  Resentment flashed across her features. She quickly smoothed that away. “You’re right. That was a poor choice of words. But consider this. The miracle awed our people, making fertile soil for Beor’s preaching. Naturally, they heeded him. How could they not? Now they work as of old, keeping the canals intact and saving their fields. When they’re done, the miracle won’t seem as miraculous. They will have become accustomed to it. And Beor’s words… They’re hard, like all of Jehovah’s sayings. Jehovah is so demanding, so strict and such a tyrant. Who can breathe under the dictates of Jehovah? Believe me. The people will soon grow weary of listening to this new preacher.”

  “Perhaps,” Nimrod said, “and perhaps not. The people with their whims are like the wind, blowing first one way and then another.” He shook his head. “I can’t count on that. Beor’s influence and by him Jehovah’s must be broken. And yet…” A troubled look entered his eyes. He put his broad hand on Semiramis’ throat. “Do you know what I wonder?”