Which was one of the reasons I'd insisted we move.
"Come on," I said, grabbing his arm, pulling him down the slope. "We need to get down there."
He resisted at first, then gave in with a sigh and another glance upriver. "Maybe we could go there next," he said wistfully. "Just to have a peek from outside."
"And maybe we can get back in and get thrown out again for old times' sake," I said, dragging him into the valley. "In the meantime, why don't we concentrate on finding our son?"
Adam didn't answer. When I glanced back at him over my shoulder, he was staring toward Eden again.
I was feeling more charitable toward him after the night before, but I was still tempted to haul off and slap him across the face just then.
*****
The valley seemed just as deserted when we walked through it as it had when we'd gazed into it from above. We found nothing to suggest that anyone had been there recently--not a shelter, not the charred remains of a campfire, not even the bones of a fish or the rind of a piece of fruit.
We walked along the riverbank, spread apart to cover more ground, but found no sign of human habitation. Even our old campsite looked as if no one had ever been there; everything had been picked clean, washed away, or covered over. It made me sad to realize how time could wear away every trace of a home that had once been the center of our lives. Our memories were all we had left of it, just as they were all we had left of Abel.
At a rocky notch in the river, we crossed to the other bank to continue the search. We followed the bank well beyond the point where we'd descended into the valley, but turned up absolutely nothing.
Unwilling to give up, I proposed that we double back in the direction of our old campsite, only this time cut through the edge of the forest. Adam cast an impatient look upriver toward you-know-where, then gave in with a heavy sigh and led the way.
At my urging, we followed the treeline for quite a distance past the campsite. After a while, as afternoon leaned toward evening and this strategy proved no more fruitful than any other, Adam made a suggestion that didn't come as a surprise to me.
"Let's go upriver," he said. "Maybe Cain's in Eden."
I covered my face with my hands and shook my head back and forth in frustration.
"No, think about it," said Adam. "What if it's only you and I who can't get back in? Maybe exile doesn't apply to our children."
Lowering my hands, I rolled my eyes skyward. "What am I going to do with you, Adam?"
"I can't believe I never thought of it before," he continued. "I'll bet Cain's in Eden."
At that moment, we both heard the crackling of branches and turned toward the forest...just in time to see Cain charging toward us.
The instant I laid eyes on him, I knew we were in trouble.
The expression on his face wasn't one of joyful recognition. Clearly, he wasn't running toward us because he couldn't wait for a tearful reunion.
Instead, his features were twisted in a grimace of rage. His eyes were glazed over, his nostrils flared, his teeth clenched and bared like a predatory beast's. His long, black hair flew behind him as he ran, and his shaggy beard bounced against his chest, adding to the impression he gave of a ravenous animal on the attack.
In one hand, he brandished a thick branch, swinging it overhead. He was naked, and he howled with violent purpose as he raced toward us.
My heart pounded. In a matter of seconds, I flashed from shock and confusion to relief that he was alive to fear of what he might do to us...
And resignation, for his appearance and behavior left no doubt in my mind that he had murdered his brother.
*****
As Cain's club swung toward his head, Adam flung up his arms and deflected the blow. Without hesitation, Cain heaved the club back and swept it down into Adam's side, then pulled it back again.
Before he could swing it forward, I darted over and grabbed hold of the weapon with both hands, wrenching it back with all my strength. Cain roared and tried to yank the club free, but I managed to hold on.
That gave Adam the seconds he needed to recover from the shock of Cain's first blows. With a howl of his own, he lunged forward, slamming a shoulder into Cain's chest, driving him back and down.
As my husband and son dropped to the ground, Cain released the club. I had been tugging at it as hard as I could, and I stumbled a few steps back when it finally came free.
The two of them grappled, rolling back and forth, each struggling to subdue the other. I looked on, waiting for a moment when I might need to intervene, holding on to the club with one hand.
And keeping the other at my side, fingertips brushing the hard lump of the flint knife strapped under my goatskin. If it came down to it, if there was no other way, I would use it.
And though I had never had to make such a difficult decision before, I had already made up my mind which one of them I would kill.
In this way, though I didn't think much of it at the time, I had already made the same leap as Cain. I had discovered that I, too, was capable of killing another person.
*****
Adam and Cain wrestled on the ground, the father at first holding his own against the son...but that quickly changed. Cain had the advantage of blind rage and wasn't holding back, while Adam was more directed toward restraining his child than hurting him.
Adam managed to force Cain under him and pin him to the ground...but Cain threw him off and reversed the position. Adam struggled, but Cain held both his wrists firmly against the earth, then plunged his head down upon Adam's skull.
Dazed, Adam stopped fighting; his head dropped to the dirt. Cain released one of his father's wrists, then clenched his free hand into a fist and lashed it across Adam's face.
As Adam slumped, stunned by the blow, Cain reached for a rock as big as his fist. Before he had raised it overhead, I was in motion, rushing toward him with the club swung back over my shoulder.
Alerted by the sound of my running footsteps, Cain moved fast, releasing Adam's other wrist to catch the blow against his forearm. I heard the wood crack hard against bone, but he didn't flinch; instead, with the same arm I had struck, he latched onto the club and whipped it around, knocking me off-balance. I went sprawling to the ground, the wind knocked out of me, the club torn from my grip.
Without a word, he threw it away over his shoulder. Again, he raised the rock over his father's head.
I reached for the flint dagger.
Then, something visibly changed in my son.
Kneeling atop his father, he held the rock high, ready to plunge it downward...and he hesitated. For the first time since he'd charged out of the woods, his expression altered, shifting from a grimace of rage to one of horror. His eyes still swam with feverish intensity, but it was overlaid now with conflicted awareness.
Slowly, I got to my feet. I thought of bolting over to try to fight the rock away from him but stayed where I was, watching the play of emotions on his face.
The rock shook in his hand, and his eyes welled with tears. Sucking in a great breath between clenched teeth, he snapped up his other hand to grip the rock.
For an instant, he seemed to overcome the indecisiveness and pulled the rock back as if about to strike. Heart racing, I reached beneath my goatskin and slid the dagger from under the sheep's gut harness, ready to charge.
Then, with a cry that sounded like a mix of fury and anguish, Cain cast the rock aside. Weeping and trembling, he slumped against his father's chest.
I slid the dagger back under the cord and went to him.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed as I knelt beside him. "I'm so sorry."
"It's all right," I said softly, stroking his hair. "It's all right."
Cain looked up then, but not at me. "I couldn't do it," he said, wincing at the sky. "I tried, but I couldn't do it."
"What couldn't you do?" I said, but still his eyes avoided me.
"Please forgive me," he said, his body heaving with violent sobs. "I couldn't sacrifice the
m!"
It was then that I realized he wasn't talking to me at all.
"I couldn't pay the price!" he said. "I'm so sorry!"
He was talking to someone else.
"Forgive me!" he cried, and then he buried his face in Adam's chest.
He was talking to someone I couldn't see.
*****
That night, when Cain confessed to killing his brother, I felt relieved. I was horrified, saddened, disappointed, and enraged...but also relieved.
For one thing, I finally knew what had happened to Abel. It was terrible, and I knew it would resonate for all the days of my life, but at least I knew. There was some closure.
Also, I had never wanted to believe that Adam was capable of killing his own son. It was equally awful that our other son had done it, but I was relieved that my husband was not to blame. In spite of his flaws, in spite of all the little things he had done to hurt me through the years, I had never truly stopped loving him.
Never forget, what I did in the Garden, I did for him. For us, but especially for him. I was told that eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge would lift us up, would make us like God. I wanted that for Adam, I loved him so much. It was the promise of a better life, the promise of getting closer to his beloved God. It was supposed to be a gift.
It was love that made me do what I did. It was love that bound me to him still.
Love...and fear. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. Fear of being alone. In those days, when there were only three people in the whole world, being alone was even more of a major concern than it is now.
So, you see, it's actually a huge understatement to say it was a relief to learn that Adam wasn't a murderer. Because leaving him wouldn't have been an option in that underpopulated and hostile world...and I knew that I wouldn't have been able to forgive and continue to love him the way I could forgive and love my own son.
Which, believe it or not, wasn't so hard to do once I found out that Cain and I had more in common than flesh and blood. We had a shared experience.
We had both been tricked.
*****
That night, the three of us sat around a fire at our old campsite in Nod. Though I'd wrapped Cain in the fur we'd used for a pillow the night before, and it wasn't a chilly night, he couldn't stop shivering.
He wept as he told us how he and Abel had made sacrifices at the secret altar...and a voice had spoken to them. It was a voice they'd heard before, a voice they'd assumed was the Voice of God.
And it had told them, as it had many times before, that Abel's sacrifice was better than Cain's.
Adam and I frowned at this. The Voice of God hadn't spoken to either of us since our exile from Eden. We were both surprised to hear our son claiming to have heard it...though our interpretations of the news veered in opposite directions.
"God didn't like your sacrifice?" said Adam, sounding disappointed.
"It was always the same," said Cain, clutching the fur tightly around him. "Mine was never good enough."
"Now wait a minute," I said. "How do you know it was God talking to you?"
Cain sniffed, gazing into the fire with bloodshot eyes. "Who else would it be?" he said with a shrug.
"No wonder you were upset," Adam said sympathetically, putting a hand on his son's shoulder. "I know what it's like to have God unhappy with me."
"You told us our sacrifices would convince God to take us to Eden," said Cain. "I didn't want to be responsible for keeping us out because my sacrifices weren't good enough."
"You should have told me," said Adam. "I could have helped you work on improving your sacrifices."
As I listened to Adam's inane encouragement of the misguided thinking he had instilled in his son, I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on. "So what happened next?" I said.
Cain released a long, shuddering sigh. "I got mad," he said, rocking back and forth. "I didn't want to ruin everything. Maybe I thought if Abel's sacrifices weren't around to compare to, mine would finally be good enough for God."
"So you killed him," I said evenly.
Adam gave me a disapproving look. "Don't put words in his mouth," he said.
Cain nodded. "Yes," he said, his voice breaking. "I killed him."
As Cain sobbed, Adam patted his back. "Now, now," he said softly. "I'm sure it was an accident."
This time, it was my turn to glare disapprovingly. "Let him tell it, Adam," I said.
"I came up behind him," said Cain, barely able to get the words out, "and put my hands...around his throat...and squeezed."
"But you didn't mean to kill him," said Adam.
Cain buried his face in his hands. "I meant to," he said, wrenching out each word with great effort. "I wanted him...dead."
As Cain completely broke down, heaving with sobs, Adam got to his feet. "You're not thinking straight," he said. "I'm sure you didn't mean to kill your brother."
"I couldn't...stop myself," said Cain.
"You've been through a lot," said Adam. "You don't know what you're saying."
"I'm so sorry," said Cain.
"Why don't you get some sleep?" said Adam. "You'll remember better in the morning."
"Adam," I said. "He's already told us what happened. There's a more important question now than whether it was an accident."
"What question is that?" said Adam, looking annoyed.
"Someone else drove him to this," I said. "The question is, who?"
"He said God talked to him," said Adam, gesturing at the sky. "But I'm sure God didn't intend for this to happen any more than Cain did. It must have been an accident."
"You're missing the point!" I said, exasperated. "What if it was someone else doing the talking?"
"It doesn't matter!" said Adam. "It was an accident!"
Suddenly, Cain raised his head and looked his father in the eye. "No accident," he said, his voice hoarse from crying. "You were supposed to be next."
Adam stared back at him, dumbfounded.
"Is that why you attacked us, Cain?" I said, reaching over to fold my son's hand between both of my own.
"The voice told me that...because I murdered Abel...I was banned from my home soil. It said I was marked...so everyone would know...what I had done." With shaking fingers, he parted the hair on his forehead, as if to expose the mark he'd been given.
But I saw no mark.
"I couldn't bear the thought...of you seeing me like this," said Cain, "so I left. Came here. But when you followed me...the voice spoke to me again.
"I was told...to sacrifice you both...to make up for killing Abel," said Cain. "But I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it."
With that, my son slumped against me, weeping into my shoulder. If not for what I had just heard, I could almost have believed he was five winters old again, crying over a skinned knee.
For a long moment, Adam stared down at us, glowing red in the flickering firelight. Though I couldn't read his mind, I could tell he was thinking hard, trying to process what Cain had said...trying to reconcile it, probably, with what he wanted to believe.
Then, he threw up his hands and turned away. "I'm going for a walk," he said, marching off down the riverbank. "I need to think."
I thought we would have been better served by working on the problem together, but I let him go without comment. Maybe he'd work something out by going off by himself; at least it was better than getting drunk, which I was sure he would have done if we had been back home.
"I miss him," said Cain, his voice a defeated whimper. "I miss my brother so much."
"We all do," I said, softly kissing his head.
"I didn't realize," said Cain. "When I did it...I didn't know it would be like this. Gone forever."
"Some things, you can't take back," I told him.
"And you were almost gone, too," he said. "I almost...if I'd done what God told me..."
"But you didn't," I said, rocking him in my arms. "We're still here for you."
He looked up at me then, terror in his eyes.
"But what will He do to me now? For disobeying Him? How will He punish me?"
"Don't worry about that now," I said, pressing his head back down to my shoulder. "It's all right."
Cain was so distraught, I kept my thoughts to myself on the subject of the voice that had pushed him to murder. I had a strong suspicion about who had been behind that voice, but it would have done no good just then to mention it.
And the truth was, despite my suspicion, I thought the voice could just as well have been God's. After the way he'd treated Adam and me, kicking us out of Eden over a single mistake that was the result of trickery, I couldn't dismiss the possibility that he was manipulating us. Maybe it was all just another way of punishing us for what we'd done, as if the punishment we'd already received wasn't enough.
Either way, whoever had whispered into my boy's ear, I couldn't place the blame solely on Cain. I couldn't find it in my heart to condemn him, knowing he'd been tricked just as surely as I.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so, so sorry."
"I forgive you," I said, and I meant it with all my heart...not just because we had both been tricked into making mistakes...or because I loved him or because he was the only son I had left.
I forgave him because I had once been in his place, and forgiveness was what I wished God could have given me the one time I did something wrong.
*****
Cain cried himself to sleep in my arms. I stayed awake for a long time after that, silently shedding tears of my own as I caressed his troubled brow...tears for him, tears for Abel, tears for myself.
But eventually, exhaustion overcame me and I, too, fell asleep.
As I slept, I dreamed again that I was in Eden...but this time, I was alone. No Abel, no Adam, no Cain, no angels. Not even the Voice was there, I think. No one but me.
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