by Brad Meltzer
“They can hear me?” Roosevelt asks through the phone.
In the rearview, Serena nods. My dad thinks I don’t see him smile.
“Roosevelt, you’re on speaker,” I announce with the push of a button as I stuff the phone in a dashboard cup holder. Behind us, I notice a white Jeep with its lights off. “So the tattoo: It’s Cain from Adam and Eve. Okay, so he loves the bad guys.”
“Oh, goodness, son—you’re missing it all, aren’t ya?” Roo-sevelt asks, and I swear I hear a swish from his ponytail. “Sure, all the images—the dog, the stars, the moon, even the thorns that the man is carrying—they’re all ancient symbols of the so-called Mark of Cain. But deciphering that mark is one of the oldest questions of the Bible. Most scholars believe it’s something God gave to Cain as punishment for killing Abel: that God marked Cain as a murderer—gave him horns, put a cross on his forehead, made him into some gol-durn half-beast—then sent him wandering in the Land of Nod. But the real question remains: Who is Cain?”
“No . . . uh-uh. No offense to Sunday school, but spare us the lecture,” I shoot back. “Just tell us why it’s important.”
“Cal, this guy tried to kill you. Both of you,” Roosevelt says as my father shoots me a look. “Dontcha wanna hear why?”
On the highway, the car plows over a flat sheet of ice. We don’t go flying or spinning out of control, but for a full two or three seconds, I turn into the skid and know—as we glide in perfect, soundless silence across the ice—that I’m not in control. Since the moment I found my father, that’s my life.
“Just listen to him,” my dad insists, sounding like a dad.
I hold tight to the steering wheel, and the tires again gain traction.
“So back to brother Cain,” Roosevelt says through the speaker. “God created Adam and Eve—making Cain the first human ever born. First killer. First human villain, correct?”
“Depends what you want to believe: the Bible . . . ” I say, “or every single carbon-dated archaeological dig of the last hundred years that proves people existed fifty thousand years before Adam and Eve ever supposedly went on their apple rampage.”
“Here—exit here,” Serena calls out from the backseat, and I tug the wheel and veer toward the sign for I-90 East. Behind us, the Jeep with no lights does the same. I slow down, giving it a chance to pass, but it doesn’t.
“The Bible ain’t just a bunch of stories about dead people, Cal. It’s the greatest and oldest book of human civilization—a book that people through the centuries have given their lives for. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems of translation. It’s like Adam and Eve and the apple, right? Like you mentioned, one of the Bible’s most famous tales, except for the problem that there was no apple.”
“Says who?” my father asks.
“Look at the text, sir: The word apple never appears in the Bible. It ain’t there. Eve ate a fruit—probably a fig—but in ancient Greece, when the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew, the scribes put in the word apple because at the time, apples were the big symbols of desire and destruction. And those slight editorial changes—over time, they start affecting how we think about the Bible, even though they’re not even in the original text.”
“But now, thanks to the wonders of Bible college, you’ll reveal the far more interesting alternate history that’ll surprise us all,” I say.
“Cal, this ain’t about what you believe. It’s about what Ellis believes. And right now, you gotta understand that he’s coming at you with what he perceives is the power of God on his side.”
We all fall silent. Serena scootches up in her seat and scratches my dad’s shoulder. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose.
“So to understand the tattoo, we need to understand Cain,” I say as Serena points to the right, signaling for us to get off at the next exit. In the rearview, the Jeep with no lights is barely two car lengths back. I tap on the brakes and slow down to get a better look. Annoyed, the Jeep pulls around us and passes on our right. I get my first good look at the driver: a pissed-off mom with three kids in the back.
“It all goes back to how we view him,” Roosevelt says. “Cain’s the ruthless brother-killer, right? For thousands of years, he’s the symbol of our worst sins—the bad man who makes us feel better about ourselves. But when you check out the earliest theories—like those geniza fragments they found in Cairo centuries ago—those fragments are as close as we get to the earliest copies of the Bible, and in there, they question the entire premise,” he adds with a brand-new seriousness in his voice. “Or to put it more bluntly: Instead of thinkin’ Cain’s the ultimate villain, what if he’s the good guy in the tale?”
“Yeah, except for that part in act one where he kills his own brother,” I point out.
“Forget your Sunday school, Cal. Sure, over the years, we all demonized Cain. But the Bible doesn’t.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “When Cain asks, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’—those’re hardly the words of a saint.”
“And that’s fine. But the story of Cain and Abel isn’t just about fratricide. It’s about what happens after Abel’s death. God’s reaction. Punishment versus redemption.”
“So now the Mark of Cain is God’s way of rewarding Cain?”
“Again, look at the translation. According to most modern Bibles, Cain thinks God’s punishment is too much—‘My punishment is greater than I can bear,’ is what the text says—which is why Cain is seen as such a remorseless monster. But when you go back to the original text—like in the geniza fragments—that same passage can just as easily be translated as ‘My sin is too great to forgive.’ See the difference there? In this version, Cain feels so awful . . . so sorry . . . for what he’s done to poor Abel, he tells God he should never be forgiven. That’s a pretty different view of Cain, no?” Roo-sevelt asks, letting it all sink in. “Of course, most religions prefer the vicious Cain. A little threat of evil is always the far better way to fill the seats. But sometimes the monsters aren’t who we think they are.”
In the backseat, Serena has long forgotten the map. My dad stares down at the phone. “So God forgave Cain?” he asks.
“Think about it: What if that’s the whole point of the story? The Mark of Cain wasn’t a punishment. It was God’s reward: to show Divine mercy—to teach us that those who repent get forgiveness.”
“So the Mark of Cain could be something good?” Serena asks.
“This is a gift straight from God,” Roosevelt replies, his southern accent lingering on the final word. “So, yeah, I’d wager ‘good’ covers it.”
“C’mon, you’re telling me that the whole reason we’re running around—the reason my dad got shot—”
“I think he got shot for the address,” Serena interrupts. When I glance in the rearview, she adds, “From the comic. It’s just a feeling, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. You said there’re other copies of the comic. But the address . . . That’s the new piece of information, right? Maybe that’s their meeting place. Or their storage place.”
“Or their hiding place,” my dad says without turning back to either of us.
“Whatever it is, they wanted that address on the comic,” Serena points out. “They thought your dad had it. Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . you think that’s why Mitchell Siegel got shot eighty years ago, too?”
“Perfect, just perfect,” I continue. “So what Timothy and Ellis and everyone else—what they’re really all after is the long-lost, barely believable Mark of Cain, which is somehow on a Superman comic from some crappy neighborhood in Cleveland?”
“I’m not saying it exists,” Roosevelt’s voice goes on as we reach the exit for Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. “You asked about Ellis’s tattoo; I’m telling you what it stands for. And when you look at what the Bible says about the Mark—‘The Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whoever found him should not kill him.’ Look at the last part there—‘should not kill him.’ The images in Ellis’s tatto
o, those are God’s gifts to Cain: things that’re gonna protect him from all the wild beasts in the wilderness.”
“Y’mean like weapons?” my dad asks.
“Or a dog,” Roosevelt says. “Named Benoni.”
Everyone is silent as I tug the wheel to the right, and we all sway to the left, curving around the exit. At the red light, it’s no different from the Martin Luther King Jr. street at home: Even with the darkness, it’s clear we’re in a rough neighborhood. Within a few quick turns, nearly all the businesses are either burnt out or boarded up. On each corner, there’s some kid in a thick winter coat bouncing in place to find some warmth. Not one of them gets on the passing buses. I work in these neighborhoods every day. I know drug dealers when I see them.
“You still there?” Roosevelt asks.
“You were saying about the dog,” I reply as Serena and my dad glance out their respective windows. Both of them sit up straight. Like they know we’re close. “That from Bible college, too?”
“Nah, that was Google,” Roosevelt says. “Benoni was apparently Abel’s dog, then when Abel got killed, God supposedly gave the dog to Cain as protection.”
“Okay, so Ellis renamed his dog,” I say. “Big deal.”
“Maybe it ain’t just the dog,” Roosevelt says. “Most people are taught Cain wandered through the Land of Nod for seven generations. But another interpretation says that God’s gift—that no one should kill Cain—was literal. That God let him live forever.”
“You mean Ellis thinks he’s Cain?” Serena asks.
Next to me, my dad’s now mesmerized by our surroundings, staring out the window. “I think it’s the next right,” he blurts. When I look at him, he adds, “I saw it on the map.”
“It’s only been a few hours. I gotta do more research,” Roosevelt says. “But for a book like the Bible, where nearly every major figure’s death is pointed out—Noah lived for X years; Moses lived for Y—the Bible is completely, and almost strangely, silent about the death of Cain.”
“This is it—Kimberly Avenue,” my dad blurts as I turn onto the narrow block that’s lined with small, beaten two-story houses and barely any cars. It’s one thing to be in a bad neighborhood; it’s another to be in an abandoned one.
“Do people live here?” Serena asks as the car bangs through one of the street’s ice-filled potholes. On both sides of the block, the sidewalks are barely plowed. I check the windows and front porches of every house we pass. It’s only four-thirty. There’s not a person in sight.
“Roosevelt, can we deal with the rest of the nutty Cain stuff later?” I ask.
“You’re missing what I said, Cal. Ellis thinks he has God on his side. Take it from the former pastor: The true believers are the ones who’ll burn you the worst,” he says. “Though what all this has to do with an address on a comic book, now you’re out of my biblical league.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” I say as we reach the middle of the block and pull up to the peeling blue two-story house with the even more peeling red trim. Unreal. The whole house, including the front steps: bright blue and red. Like Superman.
From my backpack, I pull out the old 1938 comic and its protective wax paper.
If found, please return to:
10622 Kimberly Ave. Cleveland
I scan the alleys on both sides of the house (dark but empty), then double-check the numbers on the front porch: 10622. This is it. The address from the coffin.
Before I can even stop, my father’s out of the car.
42
Ring it again,” my dad says impatiently. The words come out in plumes of vapor.
I press the buzzer and put my ear to the frozen metal screen door. I don’t hear anything from inside, including the doorbell. I shouldn’t be surprised. The way the front porch is slanted and the overhead light is cracked, this place has more problems than just some peeling blue paint.
“C’mon! Anyone there!?” My father raps the door with his fist, clearly freezing as he hops up and down. His coat is on Serena, who’s rubbing his back as he settles into calm. I keep checking the length of the block, searching for arriving cars. Ellis . . . Naomi . . . neither of them is stupid. Each minute we’re standing out here . . .
“Easy, easy—I’m coming,” a man’s voice calls from inside.
Serena steps back, almost as if she’s checking that we’re in the right place. There’s no doubt about that. To the left of the door, the front windows that face the porch are filled with sun-faded posters and cards of Superman. A handwritten sign on a sheet of loose-leaf paper says, “Superman’s House!!!”
Serena stares at the sign. My brain flashes to the gun that shot my dad. What the hell does this all have to do with Superman?
The door swings open and an older black man with a Mr. Rogers sweater pokes his head out, careful to keep the cold from seeping in.
“Who is it?” a female voice calls out from deeper inside the house.
“Dunno,” the man calls back, eyeing me and my dad. Then he spots Serena. “I know you?” he asks her.
Like a turtle, Serena shrinks into the shell of her winter coat. “I—I don’t think so.”
“Man, you look familiar,” he adds, and just as quickly shakes it off. Turning back to my dad, he asks, “Where’s your coat? What you want?”
“We . . . er . . . we wanted to see if you . . . y’know . . . we found your address . . . on a comic,” my dad blurts.
The man rolls his eyes. “Oh, man—white boys in the ghetto—you’re fans, ain’t ya?”
“Yeah. Huge fans,” I jump in, determined to get some info. “Why? You get a lot of us?”
“Naw, just here and there. Comes with the house,” he says. “So. Again. What you want?”
I wait for Serena to maybe jump in and charm, but she’s still a turtle in her coat.
“I know this sounds crazy,” I begin, “but y’ever go somewhere and feel like you were just meant to be there?”
“Hoooo, you’re those kinda fans, ain’t ya?”
“We came really far,” I plead.
“How far? Shaker Heights?”
“Florida,” my dad says, bouncing lightly and reminding our host just how cold it is with no coat. “I was tan when I got here.”
It’s just enough of a bad joke to make the man laugh. “Aw, you’re lucky I got a sister in Jacksonville,” he says as he opens the door, shuffling back and revealing the checkerboard pajamas he’s wearing under his sweater. “Shoes over there,” he adds, pointing to a pile of old boots in the corner. “Wife’s request; not mine.”
We nod thankfully, then add our shoes to the pile and hand him our jackets, which he layers on top of an old coatrack. “If ya want, I can hang the backpack, too,” he offers, taking a double take on me. “Man, all that white hair—I thought you were old at first. Like me,” he says. “You get that a lot?”
“Sometimes,” I tell him.
“You should get it more,” he insists. “White hair’s mysterious.”
“He’s very mysterious,” Serena blurts, meaning every word.
The man doesn’t care. “Anyhow, your backpack . . .”
“I’m fine holding it,” I say, sliding it onto my back and getting my first good look at the house, which is centered around a main hallway with three side-by-side sofas running along the right-hand wall and an old, thick, projection-style TV on the left, just next to the stairs.
“Introduce yourself, Johnsel!” a woman scolds from the kitchen.
“Sorry,” the older man says, extending a hand. “Heyden Johnsel.”
“And Vivian,” adds an overweight black woman in a Cleveland Browns apron, entering the hallway with a surprising elegance. She reaches into her shirt and from inside her bra pulls out a tissue and dabs her eyes. “Not real crying—just onion chopping,” she promises, as if having three strangers in her house is just part of her daily life. But as I look around, I realize it is.
The far wall is covered from floor to ceiling wi
th pictures, drawings, needlepoint, shelves with candles, even a wall calendar with Jesus on it, and in nearly every one, Jesus is pictured as black. It’s the same in the administrative offices of the shelters and churches we work with. True believers are always the most likely to take in weary travelers.
“So apparently, back in the twenties, this’s the room where the whole family used to gather round the radio,” Johnsel says, pointing to where the TV is and heading toward the worn stairs. “Though I assume you’re really here to see the bedroom, huh? In the attic?”
We all three smile and nod. “Absolutely,” I say.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?” Johnsel asks, stopping on the first step.
None of us move.
“D’ya even know where you are? This is the old Siegel house— sacred ground—where young Jerry Siegel created Superman.”
“No, that we know,” my dad says, though I can’t tell if it’s the truth. As always, he’s a half-step ahead. And it’s the kind of half-step that’s getting impossible to ignore. “We’d love to see the bedroom,” he says.
Johnsel grins and shrugs. “Hoooo. Fine by me.” He’s in his pajamas at four-thirty. He’s just thrilled to have an audience.
In a slow spiral, he leads us to the second floor, then around to a shaky set of stairs that lead up to the third. The higher we go, I swear, the narrower the stairway gets—and with each shoeless step, the uncarpeted wooden stairs creak and scream far more than I’m comfortable with.
“Don’t worry, it’ll hold our weight,” Johnsel promises.
I grab for the banister and realize there isn’t one.
“Okay, now, here’s what people make the fuss about,” Johnsel says as he reaches the third-floor landing and extends his hand palm up like a model on a game show.
I crane my neck to peek over Johnsel’s shoulder. I’m not from money. I live in a converted motel room. But even by my standards, the small finished bedroom is a wrecking ball of a room, filled with pile after pile of milk crates, plastic bins, and old furniture. The entire back wall is hidden by mini-skyscrapers of paperback books—all with titles like Elijah and King of Kings. Up top, huge hunks of the slanted plaster ceiling are cracked and missing, revealing the old wooden slats underneath.