A Just Farewell (8 page)

“I mean it, Oscar. Unless you can do this
for me, get the hell out of the butcher shop.”

The bug easily dodged the stone thrown by
the boy and scurried back into the darkness. Abraham knew that bug
was only hiding in a darker place, that it hadn’t abandoned him, no
matter the growl he placed into his voice. The lamb laughed again,
and Abraham closed his eyes. It couldn’t be put off any longer. He
had wasted all morning tending to whatever chore he thought might
distract him from the task given him from the high cleric. He had
cleaned all of the butcher shop’s rooms, and he had inspected all
of the salted meat hanging in the coolest chamber of the
subterranean complex to insure that not so much as a chicken leg
had spoiled after the clerics executed Paul and his wife for the
adultery they had committed against the Maker. But all the floor
scrubbing and all the cutlery sharpening was complete, and Abraham
had to stare at that laughing lamb and swallow his fear and his
mercy.

The high cleric ordered him to slaughter
that lamb by dragging a knife across its throat. If he failed,
Abraham would face digging another hole and suffer a beating more
severe than the first. He feared that would mean his end, and he
had little doubt that the clerics would slaughter that lamb all the
same regardless of his cowardice.

But that didn’t make it any easier for his
hands to accept the action they would have to commit. That
knowledge didn’t help steady him as he trembled while gripping the
knife’s handle.

“I’m so sorry, little lamb.”

The lamb didn’t shirk as Abraham grabbed for
its neck, and it instead pushed its nose into the boy’s arms,
oblivious to the purpose of the knife clutched in its keeper’s
hand. Abraham’s heart raced. His hands trembled, and the blade’s
handle felt slick in his grip no matter how hard he squeezed. The
lamb bleated as the boy scratched the animal’s ear. Abraham sighed.
Comforting the lamb would do him no good. There was nothing he
could do to save that lamb from slaughter, and he would pay a
terrible price if he failed to complete the high priest’s task.
Abraham convinced himself that he would show the lamb more mercy if
his hands delivered death to the animal. He fooled himself into
believing that the Maker intended to give a little kindness in the
end to the lamb by sending a boy to tend to its slaughter.

Abraham pressed the knife to the lamb’s
throat and swallowed. When the animal shirked from the blade’s
touch, Abraham pulled the knife across its throat. But Abraham did
so without conviction, and his trembling blade failed to severe the
arteries that would release spurting, throbbing blood and grant the
lamb a quick death. The animal spat and cried, and it broke away
from Abraham’s grasp when the boy’s shaking hands released the
animal. Blood stained the lamb’s fur from the ineffectual cut the
boy administered, and the lamb darted about the chamber, bleating
and crying as it wrapped the rope fastened at its neck repeatedly
around the stake positioned near the drain located in the center of
the chamber. Abraham’s eyes cried as he watched the scared lamb
wrap itself against the stake. He tried gripping the creature’s
neck, but the blood gathered on his hands, so that his grip slipped
upon the knife’s blade when he made a second attempt to slash the
lamb’s throat. Abraham hissed in pained as his fingers slid across
the cold blade, and his blood mingled with that of the lamb’s.

Its neck tightened against the stake, the
lamb kicked and cried. Abraham had hoped to deliver a merciful and
quick death to the animal. He instead gave the creature torment. He
shamed his father, who had been so proud to think that his young
boy could learn the skills of the village’s butcher. His
incompetence would surely anger the clerics, so that they would
banish him from the village if Abraham was lucky, or stone him to
death if they decided he deserved to be treated as a man. Worst of
all, he shamed the Maker by filling a creature of the divine’s
creation with so much fear and pain. Desperate, Abraham stabbed
again and again at the lamb, until the red blood spread across the
creature’s wool and covered his tunic.

The lamb twitched a final time upon the
chamber floor as its blood ran into the room’s drain. Abraham
crawled away from the lamb through the blood to lean again against
the chamber’s cool wall, where he pressed his forehead to his knees
and waited for the fear charging his system to empty.

“I’m happy to see that the blood now marks
you, child.”

The high cleric came alone to the butcher’s
chamber, and his voice startled Abraham.

“I’m sorry I gave it an ugly death.”

The high cleric stepped into the chamber and
gathered the knife still laying at the dead lamb’s side. “You’ve
done what I have asked. I will take the lamb now and dress it
myself. Did you think you could give that lamb any death other than
the one you delivered it? Abraham, you are still only a boy who is
still learning what it takes to kill. I assure you that the Maker
will provide you with ample opportunity to improve your harvesting
of blood. No, Abraham, it is not the killing of the lamb that
displeases me.”

“Where else then have I failed?”

The high cleric placed the bloody blade
before Abraham’s face. “The other clerics told me that you learned
well how to clean and sharpen your knives, and yet I find this one
abandoned in the blood. You know better, Abraham.”

Abraham nodded. “I do.”

“Remember that the Maker values all his
tools of creation. You have killed my lamb as I asked, and as
reward I’ll not mention your oversight with your blade. I don’t yet
see cause to send you outside the village to dig yourself another
hole. But Abraham, you will scrub this floor of the blood the best
you can, and you will tend to each of your blades. And tomorrow, I
will send you another lamb to butcher, and you’ll find it a little
easier to drag that blade across its throat.”

Abraham hurriedly gathered his bucket and
his sponge and set to the task of cleaning the lamb’s blood from
the chamber’s floor. He wasn’t surprised when he heard something
scurry out from the shadows, and he nodded at the orange cockroach
who lifted its antennae as it watched the boy work. Abraham was
thankful for that silent bug’s company.

* * * * *

Governor Chen didn’t leave the cinema after
Abraham finished his duty cleaning the butcher shop and returned to
his family home, and to the warm cot that waited for his rest. She
guided her eavesdropping cockroach back into the safe shadows
before replaying the footage gathered that day. Watching the
frightened boy clumsily slaughter that bleating lamb wasn’t easy
viewing, but Kelly didn’t anticipate taking any pleasure from the
sights and sounds gathered from a savage world. The choice she
faced was too terrible for any kind of enjoyment.

Why did the slaughter of that lamb, after
everything she had already witnessed concerning that boy, so
trouble her? The butchering of livestock was no reason to sentence
the tribes, and an entire planet, to oblivion. But the sight of
that butchered lamb made her shudder, and she feared the sight of
that blood would not permit her night’s dreams to be peaceful.

The boy was too young to be a butcher. Kelly
recognized that the clerics harbored ulterior motives for so soon
training Abraham in the ways of the knives, and she was afraid of
how that killing reshaped that boy.

For when she was next called to submit her
vote concerning the ultimate answer, Kelly’s decision would depend
upon how much hope and innocence she felt survived within a
child.

* * * * *

Chapter 8 – Blessed Hands

“There’s a monster in our home! Hurry,
Rahbin! There’s a monster in Abraham’s room!”

Abraham bolted out of his bed at his
mother’s scream, instantly lifting his fists to attack whatever
boogieman or demon leapt from the shadows to threaten his mother.
Yet nothing growled from the darkness. No teeth glimmered in the
dim light, nor did any claws scratch along the walls. Rahbin and
Ishmael soon barged into his room, each brandishing kitchen knives
for defense. Abraham’s mother trembled in the center of the room,
pointing towards the corner where she spied her monster while
Rahbin kicked at the hard floor.

Rahbin turned and squeezed his wife’s
shoulders. “What did you see, Rebecca?”

Rebecca covered her dark glasses with her
hands. “It was a terrible cockroach.”

“You’re acting like a foolish girl,” Rahbin
snarled. “The cockroaches visit us everyday. Such a bug is no
monster.”

Rebecca shook her head. “It was an unnatural
bug. It was orange, and black swirls decorated its shell, surely
the runes painted by the great devil to employ that cockroach as
his tool.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” snapped
Rahbin.

Ishmael continued to pace about the
chamber’s walls. “Maybe not, father. Others in the village have
whispered of seeing bugs of unnatural color. I heard our neighbor
John describing a blue cockroach he saw scurrying across the floor
one night when I went to the market for onions.”

“Do you know what John did about it?” Rahbin
asked.

Ishmael shrugged.

“I’ll inform the clerics,” nodded Rahbin.
“We must be on guard against the great devil, and we shouldn’t be
surprised if he sends a spy into Abraham’s chamber. Abraham has dug
his own hole and started his year into manhood, and the clerics are
already teaching him a butcher’s trade. You must be careful,
Abraham. This year will tax you, and the great devil will try to
exploit your exhaustion.”

Abraham swallowed. He considered telling the
truth concerning those bugs for a second, that his hands were
responsible for the colorful cockroaches scurrying about the
community. Perhaps the great devil was truly testing him. Perhaps
the great devil had inspired Abraham to decorate those bugs when
the boy thought that the Maker was guiding his brush. Perhaps
Abraham needed to explain to his father and the clerics that the
great devil had employed him as a tool, so that his elders could
protect the village. But Abraham could not. He was afraid of losing
what he recently gained - a foothold on the threshold of manhood
and a butcher’s training. He was afraid of being cast out of the
village, or of being cauterized like an infected wound so that the
great devil’s touch didn’t infect the remaining village. So he said
nothing while he watched his mother tremble in fear.

Rahbin smiled and kissed his wife’s tattooed
forehead. “Take a breath and calm now, Rebecca. We must keep the
faith that the Maker protects us. We cannot let any bug, as
unnatural as it may be, prevent us from appreciating the blessings
our divine creator bestows upon us. Show Abraham what you’ve made
for him.”

Rebecca smiled as she held out her arms to
offer her son a new tunic. Abraham grinned as he accepted the
clean, unsoiled clothing. The fabric felt softer than anything he
had previously worn, and he recognized the care his mother must
have invested in its creation. Abraham looked into his mother’s
face, where he admired the tattoos inked below her skin. For not
the first time, he wished the Maker permitted his wives to remove
their dark glasses in the privacy of their homes so they might show
their children the color of their eyes.

“I don’t understand,” spoke Abraham.

Rahbin winked at his youngest boy. “The
Maker already favors you with another special day, Abraham. Our
neighbor Josef offers his twin daughters to your charge, and
expects you to visit him today to mark your ward upon them. You
have butchered animals the last three mornings, Abraham. You’ll not
offend Josef by wearing a blood-stained tunic into his home.”

“What about my duties in the butcher’s
shop?”

Rahbin chuckled. “The high cleric gives you
permission to take a morning off from such chores. In fact, he
requests that you honor Josef’s offer. You can catch up on your
butcher training this afternoon, and Ishmael will pick up your
household chores for today.”

Abraham donned his new tunic before Rahbin
and Ishmael hurried him to the ladder exiting their underground
home in another rush of village opportunity. Abraham paused when he
gripped the ladder’ bottom rung to peer back at his mother, and he
saw how tears streamed out from her dark glasses to trickle down
the swirls of black, ink tattoos that covered her face, a strange
language his father had scribed upon that skin to tell of the
blessings the Maker delivered their family unit. The realization
suddenly washed over Abraham that he would soon scribe the opening
passages of his story upon the faces of Josef’s daughters. He had
never imagined what he might write upon the skin of a wife, had
never thought he would need to think of what shapes to scribe upon
the faces of two women. But events unreeled so quickly after he had
dug his hole to announce the start of his year of man-making.
Everything left him breathless and a little afraid. What if the
great devil truly moved his hands while he had painted the shells
of his cockroach friends? Would he taint Josef’s daughters by
marking their flesh? Suddenly, all things of the Maker’s creation
seemed so complicated and dangerous. Suddenly, every decision
seemed crowded with repercussions that remained invisible to his
judgment.