A Just Farewell (7 page)

Rahbin nodded towards Ishmael. “Continue
your duty. This only concerns Abraham.”

Abraham followed his father and the clerics
into the central chamber of their home, where his mother cast her
sight upon her floor and quietly walked away from her loom to
vacate the room to the business conducted by men. They sat upon
their family’s finest carpet, and the capes worn by Abraham’s
father and the bearded clerics seemed to melt into the carpet’s
pattern. The high cleric placed a wooden box into the center of
their circle, opening it to reveal a cleaver and a long, serrated
knife. Abraham employed all of his courage not to gasp or cry out
at the sight of those blades. He didn’t close his eyes, though the
vision of the butcher’s execution flashed in his memory. Was the
high cleric aware of his crime of painting bugs without the Maker’s
permission, and had he come with those knives to take a finger, or
a hand, to punish Abraham for the theft of his mother’s dyes? Would
it be better for Abraham to suddenly cry out his admission of
guilt? Would the high cleric consider him young enough for mercy,
though he entered the year that would shape him into a man?

“Calm your breath son,” spoke the high
cleric. “Your apprehension at the sight of these sharp blades
speaks well of you, for by recognizing the gravity of these knives,
you show yourself to be mature for your age.”

Rahbin grinned at Abraham. “The high cleric
and I have discussed a position for you within the tribe, Abraham.
The tribe will need a new butcher, and I agree with the high
cleric, who thinks you are of the proper age to begin learning the
trade.”

The fear rushed away from Abraham, and he
couldn’t resist grinning in the company of the high cleric. The
high cleric’s smile grew as well, and Abraham felt ashamed for
feeling that the clerics came to deliver him doom.

The high cleric nodded. “You needn’t speak,
son. It will not be your place to speak while we teach you a
butcher’s way of wielding those knives, and your smile tells us
that our suggestion makes you very happy and proud.” The high
cleric retrieved the wooden box from the center of the carpet and
snapped its lid once more shut. “But you must start your transition
into manhood before we can teach you, Abraham. Your tenth birthday
is still a few months away, but we would like to begin your
training as soon as possible. And so I ask you to take your first
steps into manhood today. Come with us.”

They climbed the ladder rising onto the
surface and were greeted by a young, rising sun that promised a hot
day, one sure to chase the tribe into the cooler shelter of their
underground chambers. A hundred questions raced through Abraham’s
mind as he followed his father and the clerics beyond the edge of
the village, but he didn’t voice any of them. He knew it was not
his time nor place to speak in the business that brought the
clerics to his family. Abraham knew they were not headed towards
the city ruins on a hunt for salvage, for they travelled in the
direction opposite of the unbelievers’ wastes. Many minutes passed
before they came to a flat and featureless landscape devoid of
plant or weed, over which rose ripples of heat mirage already
burning in the young day. The high cleric pointed ahead of him, and
Abraham saw the shovel set upon the ground.

Rahbin proudly squeezed his young boy’s
shoulders. “The time has come for you to dig your own hole,
Abraham. The time is here for you to announce that you will be a
good man for the tribe. And the day greets you with a proper, bold
sun, whose heat will show that my son is strong.”

Abraham swallowed. He wished he had eaten a
breakfast, and he was already thirsty. But the clerics provided him
with a proud opportunity, and Abraham wouldn’t lose his chance by
complaining about his discomforts. So he stepped forward and
gripped the shovel; and when the high cleric nodded, Abraham
started to dig.

* * * * *

The bug with the orange shell silently
watched Abraham finish his work from the edge of the hole as its
delicate and sensitive antennae waved in the air. No matter the
heat, the boy had dug through the day, so that by the time the sun
prepared to fall beyond the western horizon, the boy had to stretch
in order to reach his hole’s ledge. The effort with the shovel
blistered Abraham’s hands and turned them bloody, and the moisture
that emptied from his taxed body drenched his tunic. The bug had
watched it all, and it dodged another clump of dirt tossed by
Abraham’s shovel before settling still once more and extending its
fine antennae into the air.

Abraham panted as he finally leaned his
shovel against the wall of his hole. “What do you think, Oscar? Do
you think my hole promises that I’ll grow into a strong man?”

Tribal symbolism filled Abrahams’s hole.
Customs of the tribe demanded that each boy dig a hole on their
tenth birthday. The hole represented the home each boy would soon
be expected to establish within the community, a miniature and
simplified representation of the chambers the boy might in the
future dig beneath the ground to accommodate a wife and children.
Boys taxed themselves in the efforts, for the clerics visited at
nightfall to judge the merits of each boy’s hole, to gauge whether
the boy who all day wielded the shovel showed the strength demanded
by the Maker, or whether the boy betrayed weakness the great devil
exploited. Though many a boy fainted from the dehydration, a hot
day was considered a blessing that showed the Maker took particular
interest in a boy wielding a shovel on the birthday marking the
year during which he would transform into a man.

Abraham circled about his hole, bending to
scoop up extra extra clumps of dirt with his bare hands before
tossing the debris out of the hole. “Let’s pray the Maker considers
my efforts worthy. I wish you could stay with me when the clerics
arrive to judge how well I wielded the shovel, but you must leave,
Oscar. Remember, the clerics will think you’re a tainted creation
made without blessing, and they would squash you with their
boot.”

As if it had the ears and the comprehension
to follow a boy’s request, the orange bug retreated away from the
hole’s ledge towards the direction of the village. Abraham’s body
ached and he felt dizzy for the lack of water in his system. Yet he
didn’t slump upon the floor of his hole, nor did he lean against
its wall. Instead, he stood in the hole’s center and concentrated
on holding his posture straight and rigid, refusing to show the
cleric’s any trace of his fatigue when they arrived to consider his
constitution.

The clerics decided to let the sky darken
before visiting the boy’s work, and another of the unbelievers’
castles, with so many levels of blinking blue and pearl lights,
orbited overhead to crowd the stars. Abraham’s eyes felt very heavy
when he heard the soft footfalls of the clerics returning to
inspect his efforts, and he forced a dry swallow to gather what
strength remained to keep his legs straight as the high cleric’s
long beard and wrinkled face appeared at the edge of his hole.

“I’m surprised to see you still standing
after such a hot day, Abraham,” the high cleric smiled. “Let me see
your hands.”

Abraham held his fingers and palm to the
high cleric’s inspection, trying his hardest not to wince as the
wind drifted across his sores so that pain throbbed about his
skin.

The high cleric nodded. “You’ve accomplished
much with the shovel. There appears to be room for two more men
within your hole.”

A pair of additional beards peeked upon
Abraham from the edge of the hole, the faces of the two clerics who
had accompanied the high cleric during his visit to Rahbin’s home
early that morning. Both of them dropped into the hole and took a
position next to Abraham, who felt the warmth of their breath as
they shared the space the boy had that morning cleared with a
shovel.

“You must be very hungry, and no doubt very
thirsty,” observed the high cleric, “but there remains one more
test you must endure before you may climb out of your hole and
return to our village.”

One of the bearded clerics punched Abraham
in the chest, and the boy dropped upon the ground as his breath
rushed out of his body. The heel of a boot slammed into Abraham’s
head and filled his ears with a ringing that forced him to sob just
as a hand clutched his hair and slammed his face into the ground.
Abraham tasted blood fill his mouth, and he covered his face with
his arms as the pair of clerics kicked at his side and struck at
his head. What had he done wrong? Had he worked the shovel so
poorly as to deserve such an attack? He had done his best to stand
strong, and his effort seemed to have only attracted another
beating. He felt betrayed, and thus Abraham released his restraint
as the blows struck him, and he sobbed and cried as the clerics
continued their onslaught. Finally, after he gasped for breath as
pain screamed from his ribs with each inhale, the clerics ceased
their beating and climbed out of the hole.

“We leave water with you now, Abraham, and
food.” The high cleric’s voice sounded as calm and kind as it had
the moment his long beard first peered down upon the boy. “Things
as simple as drinking and eating will no doubt pain you now, but
all of this is also a measure of your strength. You must know,
Abraham, that the Maker desires only strong tools, more so than
ever now that we ready to take our battle against the unbelievers
into the stars.”

Abraham heard the clerics’ footfalls echo
away towards the village while he sobbed, curled in a tight ball,
his arms still covering his face to protect himself from the fury
he anticipated falling upon him. The Maker seemed merciful, for a
cool breeze drifted into the hole and helped Abraham catch his
breath and steady his heart, so that the boy soon stretched a
shaking arm to the pouch of water, whose contents pained his hurt
teeth and stung his cut mouth. Abraham left the food where it
remained, too hurt to protect it from whatever rare animal or
common bug might attempt to scavenge from it during the night, and
the boy’s beaten body soon enough fell into sleep.

And the burrowing cockroach with the orange
shell painted in dark swirls returned to the edge of that hole and
silently spied upon it all.

* * * * *

Chapter 7 – A Lamb Taken to Slaughter

The cleric with the short, dark beard and
the wide, menacing shoulders chuckled as he looked upon Abraham and
the bleating lamb.

“Why haven’t you yet accomplished what we
ask of you, boy?”

Abraham gulped, and the lamb made a sound
that sounded like a laugh. “I needed to clean the chamber, and I
had problems with the knot I used to tie the lamb to the stake over
there by the drain. And I needed to sharpen my cleaver and knife.
The high cleric teaches me that I must pay attention to the details
of all things if I hope to please the Maker.”

The cleric chuckled. “Well, I will be
patient then, butcher Abraham, but know that the high cleric will
be with me when I next return, and he will expect you to have
slaughtered his lamb as he instructed. Abraham, realize that you
will have to dig another hole if you should fail in this, and that
the price you pay to begin your year into manhood will be twice as
steep. Do you understand, Abraham?”

Abraham vigorously nodded, and the cleric
nodded back before leaving the boy alone to his knives and the
bleating, laughing lamb.

Abraham leaned against the chamber’s cool
wall and took a breath. He had been afraid that the cleric, upon
seeing that the lamb remained alive in the center of the room,
would deliver him a new beating. Purple bruises streaked with
yellow blossomed on Abraham’s face to draw attention to the new
crook that ran in his broken nose. His right eye was finally
starting to open again after being swollen shut for several days,
and the pain receded from the chipped teeth that would ever onward
mar his smile. Abraham nervously touched the swollen lump on the
top of his head, a mark delivered him from a cleric’s boot while he
had huddled and cried at the bottom of his hole, and he wasn’t
surprised to find his finger splotched with blood. He had felt
betrayed by that beating the clerics delivered to him, for he had
thought the effort of his hole would have impressed them. He had
thought about simply wasting away in that hole until the Maker took
his soul through thirst, but his stomach had betrayed him in the
morning so that Abraham had limped back home for breakfast, where
no one in his family said a thing to suggest they noticed the
injuries delivered to their son and brother, where everyone simply
expected Abraham to go about his routine duties as if it was all
another day.

Abraham peeked towards the shadows that
lurked on wall opposite of the chamber’s entrance; and as he
suspected, he spotted a pair of fine antennae sniffing the air.

“You’re lucky the cleric didn’t see you,
Oscar,” Abraham shook his head. “I wouldn’t have claimed you as a
friend if he had, and I wouldn’t have defended you if the cleric
claimed your orange shell and lovely swirls were markings painted
by the great devil’s hand. You’re very lucky that your guts aren’t
still clinging to the bottom of the cleric’s boot. Now hurry back
into the shadows, Oscar, because what I have to do is already hard
enough without your beady, little eyes watching me.”

Abraham growled at the burrowing cockroach,
hoping to chase his friend away from danger. The bug seemed to be
the only creature anywhere in the village to have noticed the hurts
he suffered in his hole. The cockroach nestled against his feet at
night while his busted body tossed and groaned upon his cot, and
the bug refused to vacate the blankets no matter how hard Abraham’s
legs kicked at it. Abraham felt the bug’s presence throughout the
day as he attended to his chores, and he swore the cockroach
followed him throughout the village like some sad animal. But
Abraham glimpsed the bug only when he was alone, and thus far no
one had discovered the creature whose shell had been foolishly
painted by the boy to forge a bond that anyone in the tribe would
recognize as unnatural.