People of the Flood (Ark Chronicles 2) Page 2

  Ham built a low stone fence around his tent, creating a yard for a tanning frame, the hounds, some of the goats, an open fireplace and an oven. He dug a hole, lined the bottom with stones and the sides with dubious clay. For baking flat bread, Rahab stuck the dough to the oven’s sides, lit the wood and closed the top. The surrounding earth provided the insulation for heat.

  Gaea said it would be a good idea to start relearning basic crafts.

  So she, Rahab and Ruth trekked to the nearest river and, after several days of searching, found prime clay, much better than what Ham had used for the oven. At Rahab’s request, Ham took several donkeys and loaded the woven-basket saddlebags with the clay.

  In the cargo hold of the Ark had been several socket-and-pivot potter’s wheels. Gaea gathered the pregnant girls around her—everyone treated Rahab carefully—and prepared the clay by mixing it with sand and water. Then she proceeded to make a pot. It was uneven, producing laughter.

  Gaea let each of them try. Ruth proved dismal. Rahab seemed to have the knack, while Europa’s indifference proved middling effective.

  They had no kiln as of yet, but there was a crude way to fire the pots. To save the young saplings, Gaea had them gather reeds, which they dried and tied in tight bundles and piled in a circle of stones, placing their clay handiwork among them. The open firing was uneven and threatened to mar the pots, but harden them, it did.

  “What do you think?” Gaea asked, handing a bowl to Rahab.

  “Good enough.”

  “Yes. Good enough until we acquire more skill.”

  That winter, the first children entered the world screaming. Gaea acted as midwife. To Japheth and Europa was born red-haired Gomer, a strapping baby boy. Ruth bore twins, a boy and girl, named Elam and Deborah. It meant that Shem’s tribe was the most populated, or so he liked to joke. Kush, a dark-skinned boy, was born to Rahab.

  Kush interrupted Ham’s evenings, so he no longer slept the entire night through. Rahab spent most of her time with the baby, and the women loved to let the children play together. Noah beamed whenever he sat one of them on his knee. They tugged at his long white beard and Noah laughed, making them cry. He seemed to love Deborah best, cradling her in the crook of his burly arm as he strode about camp. Although he was over six hundred years old, Noah was still the strongest and, therefore, the mightiest man on Earth.

  Spring came, and the real work began. Ham and his brothers hitched the oxen and plowed, and they crossed their fingers each time it rained. Too much, and the fields might be swept clean. Too little, and their crops might wither before they could grow. In the Old World, they didn’t have this worry. The dense fog simply rose from the ground each night to water the crops. But that perfect world had vanished.

  Ham, noticing how fibrous the ground had become with roots, built a sod house with a leather roof. He debated moving into it. Then an earthquake knocked it down. If Rahab or the baby had been in there…

  They continued to live in tents, using the rebuilt sod house as a storage-shed.

  The second and third year swept by with more pregnancies, babies and fields to till. Sometimes, Ham spotted gophers or squirrels, or larks flittering from the growing birches. In the fourth year, early one morning, big brown grasshoppers swarmed in a rustling cloud and onto a millet field. They chewed green stalks down to the dirt.

  “We’re ruined,” whispered Ham.

  Noah, who had joined him at the edge of the field, ran back into his tent. He reappeared with his gopher-wood staff, a gourd of water and a sack of bread. With them, Noah raced to his hilltop altar, his robe flapping around his legs. Ham called everyone else. They waded through the fields, stomping grasshoppers or as some said locusts, crushing them with their fingers, causing the insects to spit gooey black ichor.

  That night, Ham slumped exhausted into his whicker chair.

  Pregnant Rahab sat cross-legged on a cushion as she regarded her husband. Her chores left her little time to help in the fields. She had the regular daily task of wool to card and spin, and baskets to weave, and needlework to do, and children to look after and butter to churn—an endless succession of things. Presently, she sat before her floor loom, which had been brought across from Antediluvian times. It was a frame of wood with warp threads attached to the top and bottom pieces. Upon the warp threads, she wove weft threads, using a twill weave, meaning that each weft thread crossed three warp threads at a time, creating extra width than if she had used a plain weave. This width helped the fabric to hold its shape, even after repeated wear, and was more decorative. Rahab preferred weaving with the floor loom because she used treadles, or foot pedals, to raise and lower the harness. This freed her hands to pass the shuttle rhythmically through the sheds and sped the work, as compared to a handloom, where for every row she would have had to put down the shuttle and move the harness by hand.

  Rahab sipped water from a clay cup. “Don’t despair, husband. Jehovah listens to Noah.”

  Ham laughed harshly.

  Rahab studied his wan features, the thousand-yard stare. She seemed ready to speak again, then bent over the loom and continued weaving in silence, the only sound the harness as it rose and lowered.

  “Why didn’t grandfather help us kill locusts?” chirped four-year-old Kush. He lay under his woolen covers in the corner on a reed mat.

  “He was praying to Jehovah, dear,” Rahab said. “Asking for help.”

  Kush rubbed his nose. “Is Jehovah hiding?”

  “Hiding?” she asked.

  “I never see Him.”

  Rahab glanced at Ham, who continued to stare. “We can’t see Jehovah because He is invisible. He’s a spirit.”

  Kush scrunched his face in thought.

  Rahab glanced again at Ham. “Maybe Jehovah will take pity on us if we all fall before Him.”

  Ham stirred. “It’s foolish to climb the prayer hill in the dark.”

  “Noah prays in his tent.”

  “Please, Rahab, it is bad enough we’re going to starve. But to be nagged to death by my wife is more than I can bear.”

  Their second child began to wail. Rahab picked Mari out of the crib, avoiding looking at Ham.

  He threw himself onto the sleeping-mat, covered his head with a pillow and fell into troubled slumber. In the morning, he awoke to Rahab poking her head into the tent.

  “They’re gone.”

  “What?” Ham asked. “Who is?”

  “Come quickly, husband.”

  He hitched up his breeches, stepped outside and gaped. Yesterday, locusts had swarmed the fields in buzzing, seething sheets. Today, he couldn’t see one.

  Kush tugged his pant leg. “Did Jehovah do that?”

  “Yes, dear,” Rahab said, as she twined her arms around Ham. “Jehovah listens to Grandfather Noah. I’m sure He listens to anyone who takes the time to pray.”

  Kush squinted at his grandfather’s tent. Then he looked at Ham. Maybe he was thinking about the difference between Noah and his father. “Doesn’t Jehovah listen to you, Daddy? Is that why you don’t pray?”

  Ham mumbled an answer, when Noah strode toward them.

  “Everyone, onto your knees,” Noah shouted. “We must give thanks to Jehovah for saving us.”

  “What if the locusts return?” Ham asked.

  “You must have faith that Jehovah loves us and therefore will protect us.”

  The clan knelt in a circle, Noah praying aloud.

  The grasshoppers didn’t return, although as spring changed into summer, big brown beetles by the thousands appeared in the wheat fields.

  “Where are they all coming from?” Ham wailed.

  Again, Noah went up to the mountain. Again, the insects moved on after a long day of devastation.

  “Is the Earth exploding with insects?” Japheth asked.

  “Why don’t they fear us?” Ham said.

  “They fear Noah’s prayers,” said Shem.

  That year, three different forms of insect came, clouds of them, swarms, in nu
mbers they had never conceived of. Each time, Noah drove them away by prayer, although the last took two days of it and fasting. Unsurprisingly, the fourth year harvest proved the leanest.

  The next year, the insects returned, but not in mind-numbing numbers. Robins, blue jays and ducks nested in the trees or the reeds and gorged themselves on grasshoppers, beetles and flies. In the sixth year, rabbits, gophers and squirrels seemed to overrun the Earth.

  “Where did they all come from?” Ham asked. “And if we survive this, in several years, will wolves and lions show up in the same number?”

  Gaea made a sweeping gesture. They stood in a wheat field, panting from chasing rabbits. “The rodents come from everywhere, from the same place as the grasshoppers.”

  “Why now?” Ham asked.

  “How many lions or foxes have you seen?” Gaea asked.

  “None.”

  “So who eats the rabbits?”

  Ham scanned the field. “Foxes and lions don’t breed as fast as rabbits and rats. So the world must swarm with rodents.” He pitched a rock, and a rabbit sprang for cover. “Noah can’t pray away these creatures, it seems. So are we to be eaten out of existence?”

  “We must release our hounds,” Gaea said. “Let them eat the rodents.”

  “The dogs will tear up the fields giving chase, and we’ll be just as ruined,” Ham said.

  Gaea mopped her neck, shrugging as Ham waited for another answer.

  That spring, day or night, they prowled the fields chasing rabbits and rats and shooing away crows.

  “At least these creatures fear us,” Ham said, walking in the moonlight with Japheth, each of them with a pouch of stones.

  “Eh?”

  “The rodents fear us,” Ham said. “Not like the insects, which only prayer could move.”

  Japheth’s eyes widened as he clutched Ham by the arm. “Fear! That’s it.”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  The next day Japheth chopped down a tree and fashioned a crude image of a man, planting it in the middle of a field.

  As Japheth went to make more of them, Europa watched that field.

  “The crows don’t like it,” she said later.

  Japheth grinned.

  “So what do you call it?”

  Japheth mulled it over, the grin soon returning. “A scarecrow,” he said.

  Despite all the hard labor and ingenuity, the lean harvest threatened them with disaster, until Noah unlocked the answer.

  Early one day, Noah dug a pit a hundred feet from his tent and splintered a log into firewood. He built a frame with the biggest branches and dragged a protesting hog to the pit. With an axe, he brained it, cut its throat, hooked the carcass to the frame and drained the blood. Then he built a fire and spitted the hog, rotating the carcass over the fire. At suppertime, he called everyone near, with a big leather mat thrown onto the ground. From the charred carcass, he cut a slab of pork and slapped it onto a wooden platter. First saying a prayer, Noah salted the hot meat, cut slices and set them onto their plates. They stared at the meat, none of them ever having eaten any.

  “Observe,” Noah said, picking up a fork and knife.

  “Wait.” Japheth’s face was shiny with sweat. “If it was wrong before the Flood to eat meat, why is it all right now?”

  “Remember?” Noah asked. “At the altar that first day after exiting the Ark, Jehovah said we could eat meat.”

  Japheth glanced at Europa. She stared at her plate. Japheth wiped his brow. “Father, back then, only the wicked ate meat.”

  Noah stabbed his slab, cut a piece and popped it into his mouth. Everyone watched as he chewed. He swallowed, nodding.

  Japheth cut a piece and put it in his mouth—he blanched, turned and spit it out. Several of the children laughed, until scolded into silence by their parents.

  “Does it taste bad?” Ham asked.

  Japheth, wiping his mouth and gulping water, shot him a withering look.

  Ham bared his teeth. Then he grabbed a piece and shoved it into his mouth. He didn’t try to taste it, just chewed fast and swallowed without gagging. It was salty and very strange. Yet soon, he began to eat with gusto.

  “Let me try,” Kush said.

  “Me, too,” chirped Elam.

  “And me, and me, too,” shouted the other children.

  Later in the week, Ham had an idea. He cudgeled his memories from a time that seemed long ago and began a process that took the rest of the spring and early summer. He made glues out of boiled-down cattle tendons and skin mixed with bones. Then he used animal horn and laminated wood—the process for the wood took several weeks. Finally, he glued and pressed the pieces of horn and wood, steaming them over a hot fire. The wood and horn hardened, or “cured,” into a nearly complete circle, the elements fused together.

  It was a composite bow, and it came out a sinister, shiny black color.

  Straining with effort, Ham forced the bow in the opposite direction as its natural relaxed shape and strung it with catgut thread. He then plucked the string. It was incredibly taut.

  In the tent, he slipped a leather guard over his left wrist. “Walk with me, boy.”

  Holding onto the arrow-case, Kush ran to keep up. The arrows had been made from the strongest reeds, with chiseled flint tips for points and crow feathers to help stabilize the arrow in flight.

  Ham stopped thirty paces from a straw target. Winded and wide-eyed, Kush held up the arrow-case. “Thank you, my boy,” Ham said, selecting a fire-hardened practice arrow. He lifted the bow, notched the arrow and squinted, one-eyed. His arm trembled as he drew back—the “pull” was incredible. The arrow hissed and hit the target.

  “Did you see how fast it went?” Kush said. “Do it again, Daddy.”

  Ham’s lips twitched. Oh, he saw. He was the world’s best-armed man now. He practiced until he backed up sixty paces and hit the center every time. All the children watched.

  “It works,” Japheth said, as he stroked his beard.

  “How could you remember everything correctly?” Europa asked.

  “That is Ham’s gift,” Gaea said. “He has a knack for making things.”

  The next morning, Ham hunted the fields. Rabbit stew became a popular item in his tent, and the creatures learned to stay out of his way.

  Shem and Japheth made simple bows from a single length of wood. Ham showed them how to make catgut thread and fashion arrows. His arrows, however, always seemed straighter, better fletched and with sharper flint tips. Still, theirs slew rodents.

  A week before harvest, Noah and Ham strolled through a wheat field with Kush tagging along. The wind bent the ripe stalks, and Ham spied movement. He motioned to the others, slipped free the black bow and let an arrow fly.

  “Kush, take that home, skin it and give it to your mother.”

  “Do I have to?” Kush complained.

  “Yes,” Noah said. “Don’t you know that a child’s glory is obedience to his parents?”

  Kush ducked his head, but Ham saw him scowl.

  “Hurry,” Ham said. “Listen to your grandfather.”

  Kush loped for the slain rabbit, crushing grain stalks.

  Noah turned to Ham.

  “I know,” Ham said. “I’ll tell him when we get home to walk more carefully in the fields.”

  “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,” Noah said, “but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.”

  “You want me to spank him?”

  “My son, he who rebels against authority is rebelling against what Jehovah has instituted. Rebels thus bring judgment on themselves.”

  “Kush is high-spirited, is all. Better to let him run free for a time like a young donkey, and let him wear himself out.”

  “Do you fear to discipline him?” Noah asked.

  “Of course not,” Ham said. Sometimes, Kush made him so angry that a swift slap on the butt was exactly what the boy got.

  Noah snapped a stalk and rubbed the wheat with his fingers, exam
ining the grain. He began to talk of the coming harvest.

  Ham only half listened. His father seldom criticized Japheth or Shem’s children. He was too busy praising them.

  Noah interrupted his own discourse on the crops. “I only said what I did, my son, because some day Gomer, Elam and Kush will be the patriarchs of great nations. How they are trained will greatly influence humanity.”

  Later in the evening, as Ham chipped new arrow flints, he wondered if their children and grandchildren would war against one another someday. He scratched his cheek. Despite his bad hip, he could defeat either Japheth or Shem. Could Kush do likewise with his cousins?

  Ham snorted, shaking his head, telling himself he was stupid to think about war. Such things wouldn’t happen for the next few hundred years. Let the others worry about it when it happened.

  6.

  As the years passed, their tools from the Antediluvian World wore out, disappeared or broke, and with extra hands came the need for even more tools. The question, of course, was where to get these items. In the good old days, a trip through the forest road to Arad with a sack of silver shekels solved the problem. Or, perhaps, a day at the forge in the old Ark-construction yard casting new tools made good any lack. Arad had vanished, copper ores were scarce or far away, and the needed tin to mix with the copper and make bronze was even harder to acquire. Fortunately, stone, bone, ivory and wood filled much of the lack. Unfortunately, the sons of Noah weren’t as familiar with those substances, at least not as replacements for copper or bronze.

  Noah’s great age, early training and memory came to the rescue. He had been born one thousand and fifty-six years after the creation of the Earth—1056 AC (After Creation). Enos, a grandson of Father Adam and a direct ancestor of Noah, had died 1140 AC, when Noah was eighty-four. Enos’s son Cainan had died 1235 AC. Cainan’s son Mahalaleel had died in 1290. Mahalaleel had been the father of Jared, who in turn had been the father of Enoch, who had been Methuselah’s father. Noah had never met Enoch, as Enoch had been translated to heaven in 987 AC. What all this meant was that Methuselah had known Father Adam well, as Adam had died 930 AC, when Methuselah was 243 years old. Many of Methuselah’s earliest lessons had been in stone, bone, ivory and woodwork. The smelting of ores to make copper and bronze had taken many years of trial and error to learn. Many of those lessons in the old crafts, although nearly superfluous by Noah’s time, had been taught him nonetheless.