Six Crime Stories

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  Then, by chance, I looked up, gazing into the tangled bushes and weeds that rimmed the field. I noticed a depression in one of the bushes; something was holding down a cluster of leafy branches, though I could not see what it was.

  Getting to my feet, I walked over to the bushes and looked down into the depression. Right away, I recognized what lay inside, and I reached for it.

  It was a pole, about five feet long, and thick as the leg of a goat. All the branches had been trimmed off, leaving pale knobs along the length. One end had been whittled to a blunt point. Near the other end, a strip of gray bark had worn away where a human hand had encircled it.

  His hand. Abel's.

  It was Abel's...the combination walking stick and herding prod he'd always carried with him when tending his sheep and goats. The animals were gone, off munching in another pasture somewhere; Abel was gone, too, killed and buried.

  But here was his walking stick. He must have dropped it during the struggle, I thought, and been taken the few more steps to the spot where he'd died. Meaning he and his attacker had come this way, along this rim of bushes and weeds.

  Carrying the stick with both hands, I slowly followed the curving rim of the field, carefully studying the tangle of vegetation. Nothing new caught my eye.

  The rim led up to a thicket of trees and underbrush. There was a path, but I almost missed it; the opening was blocked with a thorn bush.

  A bush that moved when I poked it with Abel's walking stick...and I don't mean just the branches or leaves moved. The whole bush moved; it wasn't attached to the ground. Something or someone had hacked its trunk free of its roots and moved it here...and since "here" was the mouth of a well-worn trail through the forest, I was betting this wasn't the work of animals or the elements.

  I was a little nervous as I stepped onto the path. Forests had become a lot more menacing since I'd left Eden; the trees didn't sing, the ferns didn't tell jokes, and you never knew when something might jump out of hiding and try to take a bite out of you.

  For a little while, I walked along the trail, winding deeper into the woods. I tried to concentrate on watching the ground and trees and underbrush for signs of who had gone this way before...but the million sounds of the forest kept drawing my attention this way and that, expecting who knows what to pounce with dripping fangs and gleaming claws.

  Finally, the path led me to a break in the forest, an open circle in the midst of the dense, leafy growth. I stepped out of the treeline, glad to emerge into an open space, however limited...and stopped.

  At one side of the grassy clearing, I saw something I'd never seen before. Something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.

  There was a pile of stones about as high as my waist, neatly stacked to form a rectangular base. Atop the pile was a big, flat stone, long and broad enough to cover the stacked base and extend beyond it on every side.

  Atop this stone slab was a sight that made me shudder.

  Now, in the years since, I have seen this kind of thing too many times to count. It has become a way of life, though not one I have ever approved of or practiced with my own hands.

  But that day, in the woods, I saw it for the first time, and I didn't understand. In fact, it horrified me. I was used to seeing dead animals and had eaten my share of meat, but this was different.

  This was death, not without purpose, but without a purpose that I could comprehend.

  A gray-haired goat lay on its side on the smooth surface of the table. Insects crawled all over it and flew around it, but the thickest concentration of them swarmed at the goat's eyes and mouth and throat.

  The throat had been gashed open, probably with the flint blade that lay alongside it. I could see the dried, dark stain left behind by the pool of blood that had poured out of that wound onto the slab. A basket of grain and vegetables also rested on the slab, and the blood had soaked the reeds of the basket's bottom, turning them crimson.

  Beneath the slab, all around the base of the table, I saw the remains of other creatures that had died there...jumbled bones of all sizes, most picked clean by wild scavengers, some with scraps of shriveled flesh or clumps of fur still stuck to them. So many bones ringed the table, I could not even begin to guess how many animals had been killed to collect them.

  I was able, however, to guess who had been there before me. And I began to see that the reasons for my son's murder may have gone deeper than I had imagined.

  For one thing, when I moved in for a closer look--but not too close--I recognized the goat. It was one of Abel's.

  And the basket of grain and vegetables on the slab...I recognized that, too. The pattern of the woven reeds that formed the basket was unmistakable; only Cain was known to make a basket like that.

  Abel the herdsman. Cain the farmer. Both of them had been here, and probably not long ago, judging from the condition of the carcass. One or both had left behind a heap of produce, and one or both had cut open the throat of a healthy goat and left it on a slab of stone to rot.

  My boys had been up to something out here, I thought. Something secret and strange. Maybe something that had led to Abel's murder.

  Killing, not for survival, but for other reasons. I had never considered it before...but someone had.

  And if a goat could be killed like that, so too could other living things. So too could Abel.

  As I stood there, I had a feeling. This was where it started.

  Little did I know, as I do today, just how true that was. And just how much was started by what happened there. What happened in Eden was just prelude, I know now; this was the true cradle of man's history.

  *****

  "It's so God will take us back," said Adam when he was done playing dumb and trying to change the subject. "Back to Eden."

  I stared at him and shook my head, amazed at his unflagging stupidity. Or maybe naiveté would be a better word. "He'll never take us back, Adam," I told him. "He made it pretty clear."

  Adam's eyes flashed with anger and blame. I was the one who'd gotten us into this, he must have been thinking; how dare I try to ruin what little hope he had left? "Maybe He was only trying to teach us a lesson," he said. "Maybe He'll see how much I love Him and how sorry I am, and He'll let us back in."

  I noticed he hadn't said "how much we love him" or "how sorry we are," but I couldn't fault him for that. It would have been a lie to include me. "We've been out here for eighteen winters," I said. "That's a pretty long lesson, Adam."

  He glared at me, clenching his fists at his sides. I had seen that expression often since the Eden debacle; he had never hit me, but every time I saw that look, I was certain he wanted to. "Maybe if you'd even try to learn it, we could return," he said coldly. "Maybe if you'd make the slightest effort to earn His forgiveness."

  "Like teaching our boys to kill?" I snapped. "Is that the kind of effort that will get us back to paradise?"

  "It was no worse than killing a goat for supper!" shouted Adam. "Not once did I give them the idea it was right to kill another man!"

  "I guess they just figured it out for themselves," I said.

  Adam kicked the dirt and released an incoherent roar of rage and frustration. "You don't understand!" he said. "Sacrifice is not about killing! It's meant to show God how much we love Him by giving up something we worked hard for! Something we need!"

  "How long have you been doing this?" I said, lowering my voice the way I do when I'm so angry I could burst.

  All of a sudden, he looked sheepish. "Since we left Eden," he said, not so furious anymore.

  I nodded, holding his gaze, making him squirm. He deserved it. "So, for all this time, you've been going off behind my back," I said. "Killing goats and sheep and who knows what else...taking food from your family's mouths...because according to your demented mind, this will somehow get us back to Eden."

  "If I had told you," he growled, "you would have tried to stop me."

  "As if that wasn't bad enough," I said, "you taught our chi
ldren to do it! Taught them to kill for no good reason!"

  "I did it for all of us! I wanted the boys to grow up in Eden!"

  "And now look where it's gotten us," I hissed. "One son dead. The other missing. Maybe dead, too. Nice job, Adam."

  His eyes flared, and for a moment, I thought the rage was going to resurface. I wondered if it could be strong enough to make him kill...if it had already made him kill.

  Then, the fire died in his eyes, and he hung his head. "I won't apologize for paying tribute to God," he said, "but I'm sorry I never told you. I should have told you."

  It wasn't enough to smooth things over, not by a long shot. "What else have you been doing behind my back?" I said. "How can I ever trust a word that comes out of your mouth? How can I ever forgive you?"

  "How?" said Adam, looking up at me with a gaze of icy clarity, a gaze that cut right through me. "The same way I forgave you for what happened in Eden."

  I was shaken, but not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. "You've never forgiven me," I said bitterly. "I know you. I see it in your eyes."

  "What you see in my eyes," said Adam, "is disappointment. Because you'll deny it until the day you die, but you're the one who blames me for Eden. For not protecting you. For not fighting harder for you."

  I just stared at him as he spoke, incredulous.

  "And for that, Eve," he said quietly, "for that, I do apologize."

  With that, he shrugged and walked away, leaving me to fume...and think about what he'd said.

  Now, listen: I don't give him much credit sometimes, because he doesn't often deserve it, but once in a while, he has a way of cutting through the crap and laying something out there that I didn't even see.

  And this, though I'd never admit it to his face, was one of those times.

  *****

  The next morning, we packed some provisions in a goatskin bag and set out on a journey to search for Cain. Adam and I agreed that no matter what the outcome might be, we had to find out what had happened to our son.

  Five days had passed since we had last seen him. He certainly wasn't anywhere near our camp; between drinking bouts over the last day or two, Adam had wandered all around our home, calling Cain's name in case he was alive and poking at bushes and patches of high weeds in case he was dead. There was no sign of him.

  If he wasn't nearby, he could be anywhere...but Adam and I got the idea that if he was alive, he might be at one place in particular: our old home, where we'd lived with Cain before Abel was born.

  After I'd had Abel, I'd convinced Adam we should move, because, frankly, it was too close to Eden, and who wants to be reminded of that disaster every day of their lives? Cain never forgot the place, though; he called it "Nod" (it might have started with "no," which he screamed repeatedly when we dragged him away from there) and he talked about it his whole life the way Adam obsessed over the Garden. Maybe he remembered it as being so perfect because he was an only child there and didn't have any competition for our love...but I can't say for sure. Despite how things turned out with Abel in the end, despite the fact that Cain was mostly a big grouch, he never seemed to hate his brother. They fought like brothers do, but no worse than most I've seen in the years since.

  Nod was over a day's walk from our current camp, so we left as soon as the sun came up. In spite of the distance, it wouldn't be a difficult walk in terms of terrain; nevertheless, I wasn't looking forward to it.

  I had no idea what the trip would bring. Would we stumble upon our elder son's corpse...or would we find him alive, only to learn definitively that he was a murderer? And if he was, what then? Could I bear to punish my only remaining child? And did he even deserve to be punished? There were no laws in the world back then, other than "Don't eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in Eden"; the thought of what Cain might have done filled me with rage and the desire for retribution...but would it really merit punishment? And if it did, what should the nature of the punishment be? The only serious punishment we had experienced was exile; perhaps, by leaving home, Cain had already punished himself.

  Unless, of course, Adam had killed Abel, and the reason Cain was gone was that Adam had killed him, too. In which case, this trip could turn out to be dangerous for me personally.

  To be honest, I didn't really think Adam was the killer...but I had to stay on guard, given what I'd just found out about his years of secret sacrifices. If he could cut open one animal after another in a delusional frame of mind, and do it behind my back, I had to consider the possibility that he was capable of sacrificing not only his own boys, but his wife.

  Which was why, under my knee-length goatskin, I wore a sharpened flint dagger tied with sheep-gut cord to my upper leg.

  *****

  Adam and I walked all day, sweating and puffing beneath the hot summer sun, stopping only when we came to a stream or needed a drink of water from the goatskin bag he carried.

  Though it had been many winters since either of us had been through this particular region, we remembered enough landmarks between the two of us that we were able to find our way. It was a welcome distraction, piecing together the route, recalling our journey from Nod to the new camp; it kept my mind off the troubles at hand, at least a little...and believe it or not, it even got us laughing as we reminisced.

  I say "believe it or not" because Adam and I hadn't laughed together--or done other things together, if you know what I mean--in a very long time...and I'm talking about long before Abel's death. Do the math: our youngest child was fifteen winters old, and we had no way to prevent pregnancy back then. We didn't even know what caused it.

  In other words, Adam and I weren't exactly the picture of togetherness. Imagine my surprise, then, when we ended up telling stories and laughing...and, later, when he wiped a tear from my cheek as I cried about my boys.

  I can't tell you how long it had been since he'd kissed me, but he even did that. And I let him.

  It happened that night, when the two of us were lying side-by-side on the grass, staring up at the starry sky. The air was thick with the sweet smell of lush, leafy greens and night-blooming flowers. The trickle of a nearby stream intermingled with the buzzing of insects and the croaking of frogs. The ground was hard beneath us, but we shared a rolled-up fur for a pillow under our heads.

  "What a beautiful night," he said, pulling my attention away from thoughts of Cain and Abel. "Just like Eden."

  I always wished he would stop dwelling on Eden...but I decided to indulge him this once. "Yes," I said. "It gives me a good feeling."

  Adam chuckled. "Remember how God used to make the stars dance for us? And the angels would lift us high above the Garden, up up up, and carry us among them as they flickered and swirled?"

  I smiled. "That was pretty amazing," I admitted.

  "Look!" said Adam, jabbing a finger at the sky. "Look there!"

  I just caught it out of the corner of my eye: the flash of a falling star against the blackness of the sky. "There's another one," I said, spotting a second streak of light.

  "And right after we were just talking about them!" Adam said with childlike exuberance. "Wow!"

  "Quite a coincidence," I said, watching for more flashes overhead.

  Adam propped himself up on his elbow and smiled down at me. "Maybe it was a sign," he said. "Maybe everything will work out okay, after all."

  Staring up at him, I didn't share his hope for a moment. With Abel dead, it was too late for things to work out okay.

  But I have to admit, as he looked down like that, I saw the old sparkle in his eyes, the one from before we'd left Eden. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't depressed, he wasn't dying inside.

  He reminded me of the man I'd loved.

  Reaching up, I traced a finger over his lips, and he kissed it. Dipping his head lower, he pressed his lips against mine.

  And in spite of the fact that we were in the middle of an ongoing nightmare, with one son dead and one son missing...and we were far from home, with only each other to rel
y on...and the next day might bring us unguessable suffering...or maybe because of all that...

  We kissed. And more.

  As things heated up, I slid the dagger from my leg when he wasn't looking and hid it under the goatskin bag. Unencumbered, I moved with my husband upon the earth, exploring his body as if for the first time.

  Everything that had come between us was forgotten, at least for a while. All my doubts and suspicions and fears about him were set aside. Inexplicably, unexpectedly, we had a night of actual happiness together.

  And I swear, though I might have been the only one who saw it, that the stars in the sky whirled around just like in the old days in Eden. At least a little.

  *****

  When we reached Nod the next day, I at first thought we had made a mistake in going there.

  Standing on the crest of a ridge, I gazed down into the fertile valley that had once been our home...and saw no sign of my missing son. Nothing but the glittering river snaking through the grassy plain, the stands of trees thickening into forest that carpeted the opposite slope.

  And, of course, the one sight that could completely derail Adam from our purpose. The land upriver, misty and twinkling in the distance, visible and reachable yet forever barred to us.

  Eden.

  Naturally, Adam's gaze fixed on it as soon as we topped the ridge. Shading his eyes against the light of the midday sun, he stared longingly at the only place he could not enter in the world, the only place where he wasn't welcome...the only place where he really wanted to be.

  "I think I see angels over the treetops," he said breathlessly. "It's hard to tell from here. Or are those griffins?"

  I knew he could have stood there all day, spying on paradise. He'd certainly done it often enough in the past.