In the Beginning: Mars Origin "I" Series Book I (15 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE

“Hey, speaking of movies has anyone see
that movie
Men in Black
?” Sean asked. Glad the subject was changed from
me.

“That’s been out for a while, little
brother. You just now seeing that?” Doobie asked.

“It may have been out at the movies, but
it just came out on cable,” Sean answered.

“Oh, yeah. Cheap Sean. Can’t even pay to
go to a movie,” Gerald teased.

“You know they’ve gone alien crazy,”
Michael chimed in. “Practically every movie that comes out is about aliens
anymore. Even NASA is in on this alien craze. They’re working in conjunction
with the Russians, of all people, to find out what’s happening on Mars, to see
if they can find signs of life.”

I don’t believe in aliens, UFOs or
anything of the sort. We are the only people in the universe,” Claire declared
emphatically.

Greg smiled at Claire and reached over and
patted her on her head. “Good thing they’re not all like you lil’sis.”

She didn’t pay any attention to Greg, she
just kept right on talking. “You would have to believe in evolution in order to
believe that there are other people out there and I don’t believe in
evolution.”

“Why would you have to believe in
evolution?” Sean questioned her reasoning.

“Because,” she explained, “life on other
planets would have had to evolve. God only put man in one place. The people on
Earth are one of a kind.”

“Well, I’m with Claire,” I said. “God only
put man on one planet and that was Earth.”

“And,” I said. “Man did not evolve from
some primordial pool a billion years ago. The people on Earth are the first and
only people.”

“No one said anything about evolution,
Justin. None of us believe that man evolved. But God could have easily put
humans or some kind of like form on other planets.” Michael countered.

“Well, if that’s true, how come it doesn’t
say so in the Bible?” Claire questioned.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I think this alien stuff is senseless,”
Mase said. “They should spend the money that they’re spending to go to the moon,
or wherever they’re going these days, on the life forms they know exist. Man.”

“They don’t care about man,” Doobie said.
“You know, the government is spending all this money on nuclear warheads and
flights out in space when the world is starving. Look at the article in
Justin’s magazine, ‘World Hunger.’ It’s terrible. I drive down the streets at
night sometimes and I see people sleeping on the sidewalks.”

“Sleeping on the sidewalks?” me and Claire
voiced in unison.

“Yeah, sleeping on the sidewalks.”

“Where?” Claire asked.

“Downtown. You should see them. Mostly
men. They lay on the ground next to the sewer holes where the steam is coming
up to keep themselves warm. I’ve gone and taken them some food and coffee a
couple of times. Gave them a little money. But it’s really sad.”

“They’re just lying there?” Claire was
really upset.

“Yes, Claire, just lying there. They don’t
lay there all day. It’s where they sleep. Some of them have blankets, which a
lot of them match so maybe some organization or something gave them to them.”

 “That’s really sad,” I said. “Man that
really depresses me. Seems like something could be done about that. I mean look
at all the abandoned buildings around. It seems as if some of them could be
renovated to allow room for people at least to sleep at night and get out of
the cold. Someone should help.”

“You never helped,” Doobie said. “You
could help.”

“I never knew they were there.” What a
thing for him to say. “I don’t go downtown at night.”

 “So, the government has all this money to
go to outer space and spend a billion dollars on a race with the Russians to
see who can build the biggest and bestest fire power. Why not give a couple
thousand dollars to heat up a building at night, where people can go and
sleep,” Michael said.

“’Bestest’ is not a word, Michael,” Gerald
said. “Is that what you’re teaching those seven-year-olds?”

“You know Greg is right,” Doobie got very
serious. “No one cares about the underdog, or even mankind in general. Not the
world, not our government, heck, not the people in the world. Everyone just
seems to care about themselves. Look at how they did the original race of
people.”

“Who?” Claire asked.

“Black people.”

“Blacks?” Claire and I spoke in unison
again.

“You think that Blacks are the original
race of people?” Claire asked.

“Yeah, I do. The first people on Earth
were black,” Doobie answered. “Justin, you’re an archaeologist, you should know
this. The oldest remains of man were found in Africa.”

I didn’t say a word.

“Doobie, where did you get that from?”
Greg said.

“The Bible says that Jesus was black,”
Gerald added. Evidently he agreed with Doobie’s theory.

“No, it doesn’t,” Claire said her face
turning red. “And, I mean I love my people, and always love to hear about great
people that were black, but Jesus was not black and if he had been that doesn’t
make the first people black.”

I stayed quiet. Even though this
conversation covered both of my areas of expertise, Bible history and
archaeology, I didn’t want to get into this argument.

“The Bible does not say that Jesus was black,”
Claire repeated her comment. She was obviously upset with what Gerald had said.
“And the ‘Black’ race didn’t even begin until about the 1600s.”

“What? Claire what are you talking about?”
Doobie was almost shouting. “There have always been blacks, whether you agree
that they were the first man or not, you can’t disagree that blacks have always
existed.”

That’s not true, is it, Justin? I opened
my mouth to speak but she didn’t give me time to get out an answer. “There may
have always been people with ‘black’ skin, but the
race
didn’t come into
being until after slavery started. Before then there were only Africans. A pure
race of people. Blacks are derived from a mixture of Africans, Caucasian and/or
other people. Before then if there were any blacks they were scattered here and
there from the occasional mating between Africans and non-Africans, but there
were no ‘race’ of people.

I looked at Claire in surprise. She
actually said something that made sense.

“And show me where it says that Jesus was
black.” She was on a roll now.

“The Bible says his hair was like wool,”
Gerald defended his comment. “Black-skinned people are the only people on earth
with hair like wool.”

“That’s not true,” Sean said. “There are
some people from the Middle East – Arabs and Jews that have kinky hair.”

“The Bible says his hair was the
color
of wool,” Callie corrected, “which, is white.”

“Justin?” Claire wanted me to talk. I was
still trying to stay out of the conversation. But Claire was getting the best
of Gerald and Doobie, I couldn’t resist helping her out.

“Actually, there are two verses that make
reference to his hair being like wool. In the first chapter of Revelation it
says, “His head and His hair were like wool, as white as snow . . .’ The other
is in the book of Daniel and it says, “
the hair of his head like pure wool .
. .
’”

“Right. Jesus was a Jew. His hair was
curly like Jews,” Claire proclaimed. “And both of those references referred to
his second coming, right, Justin?” I nodded. “So his hair could have been
different when he first walked the earth. Maybe it wasn’t even curly, maybe it
was straight. You couldn’t even prove the sun rose and set with a theory that
weak.”

“Tell him, Dr. Claire.” Greg was
thoroughly amused at Claire’s rationality.

“Well, I still believe that the world was
once inhabited only by Blacks. Blacks were the first people on earth. And if
you want to say that they were not from the quote, Black, unquote race, that’s
fine. They had black skin and they were a black people,” Doobie was unmoved by
Claire’s argument.

“So Adam and Eve were black?” Claire
asked.

“Yes, they were,” Doobie answered.

“Noah was black?”

“Yep.”

“Moses was black?”

“Yep.” Doobie answered.

“And so was Aaron, their sister Miriam,
David, and Solomon, they were all black,” Gerald said. Guess he just decided to
cover them all.

“So, why did Aaron and Miriam get mad when
Moses was going to marry a woman with black skin?”

“Nobody ever said that,” Doobie frowned up
at Claire.

“It’s in the Bible,” Claire said.

“No, it isn’t,” he said confidently.

“Justin?” Claire looked over at me.

I nodded my head, “Numbers, Chapter 12.”

“Doesn’t matter they were all black,”
Doobie said.

“Doobie, you sound crazy.”

Doobie chuckled, “Well, Claire, if that
isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”

Everybody laughed. I don’t think Claire
got it because she kept right on talking.

“Doobie, you and Gerald just can’t take
one verse out of the Bible and build an entire concept on it. That’s as bad as
early Americans using the verse about light and dark shouldn’t mix to uphold
slavery. That verse had nothing to do with skin color it was talking about good
and evil. Your interpretations are just as wrong as that.”

“C’mon Doobie,” Michael interjected.
“Think about it. Where did all the other races come from? You can’t get
anything from black but black.”

“And I guess you think you can get black
from white, Michael? No, you can’t. Take an anthropology class or pick up a
history book sometime. Find out where the earliest remains of man were found.
And you’ll see where I’m coming from.”

“How did a conversation about aliens get
to be a vehicle for Doobie’s militant tenets?” Callie shook her head.

“That is not a militant statement or idea,
it happens to be the truth,” Doobie said.

The lights blew out on the tree with a
sizzle and pop and a small bluish spark that made us jump. It took everyone’s
attention away from the conversation and back to how incompetent my brothers
were about putting up Christmas lights.

Discomposed.

That’s how I felt whenever I thought about
those manuscripts. And since Doobie’s “first people” theory at the Christmas
Eve dinner, my brain had been working in double time.

Even by the time I got back to work,
knowing I should be devoting all my time to the tour, I sat in my office,
staring out into space, absentmindedly, with those manuscripts dangling in my
face. One race of people was exactly what the faded manuscripts had declared. Well
according to Dr. Yeoman.

‘For we have found that difference breeds
hatred.’

Doobie may have understood that concept,
but it had me totally confused.

There was a very important piece for the
tour coming to the museum in a few days. I needed to make travel and storage
arrangements until the tour began. It had been one of the Dr. Margulies’
favorite and I wanted to take special care with it. But I couldn’t bring myself
to get set to the task at hand.

So, I had promised myself not to ever let
those things back in my life. Promises. Smosises. I couldn’t do it. I was tired
of fighting with myself over those things. I mean, how was I supposed to fight
destiny?

 The phone ringing brought me back from
the land of la -la. I glanced at my watch, 11:45. Where had the time gone? It
was Ty.

 I hadn’t told her anything about my
conspiracy theory. Greg had warned me to be careful about throwing accusations of
murder and theft around. He was convinced that it was all in my head. I did
tell her that the seminar had stopped abruptly, but nothing more.

“Hi,” she answered, cheerfully.

“Where are you?” I asked. She sounded far
away.

“I’m at the hairdressers. Wanna do lunch?”

“Sure. But I can’t go far because I’ve got
a lot of work to do.”

Not that I was getting any of it done.

“How about if I go to
Gallucci’s
and pick up a couple of salads? We could go down to the duck pond in front of
the Art Museum and eat.”

“The duck pond?” I said. “Girl, it’s cold
outside. Have you forgotten this is the end of December in Cleveland? Where do
you think you are, Palm Beach?”

“How did
you
get to work? In a
vacuum? You couldn’t have gone outside because it’s nice out, like sixty-six
degrees or something. Just meet me there at 1:00, okay?”

Okay, but make my salad lasagna.”

“Lasagna?” The disapproval in her voice
was obvious. “That is not good for you. Too much cholesterol,” she fussed.
“Don’t you know we are getting too old to eat like that anymore? We both have
to watch what we eat.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll just load it up with
salt, that’ll make my blood pressure high enough to push that cholesterol right
through those little arteries that way nothing gets clogged up.”

I could hear her gasp over the phone.

“Well, I want you to know that when you
die, I’m going to forget I was ever your friend and I’m marrying your husband
and putting your kids in foster care somewhere.”

I laughed. “Just don’t forget the salt.”

I heard a ‘beep-beep’ over the phone.

“I gotta go,” she said hurriedly. “This
phone is beeping. They must have another call coming in. See you at one, okay?”

I left as soon as I hung up from Ty. I let
my assistant, Nichelle, know that I was having lunch with Ty and would be late
getting back because I needed to check on something in our off-site storage. I
really didn’t need to check on anything. I just didn’t want to be at work
anymore.

I put on my coat, my knit hat and scarf,
leather gloves and walked out the back door of the museum. As soon as I got
outside, a warm, gentle breeze blew against my face and the sun was beaming
down like on a mid-summer day. Ty was right. It was beautiful out.

It must be the end of the world
, I thought. I
raised my head skyward, closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. I smiled at
the sun and remembered how my mother told us that the Bible said you’ll know
the end of the world is near because, “You won’t be able to tell the changing
of the seasons except for the budding of the trees.” I have read the Bible a
zillion times and exactly where that verse is, is a mystery to me, but I
certainly am not going to question my mother. And judging by this weather and
her interpretation, the end must be pretty close. I turned around went back
inside and flung my hat and scarf across my desk.

I walked aimlessly around University
Circle, the home of Cleveland’s museums and symphony. I decided to go in the
Art Museum while I waited on Ty. There was a turquoise exhibit that I could see
to pass the time.

I love the Art Museum. Cleveland has one
of the best. Even the building, a neoclassic structure of white Georgian
marble, was appealing to the eye. But soon after arriving there, I found that’s
all I was going to see. I couldn’t get into the exhibit because there was an admission
fee. The museum itself is free but not the exhibit. I’d left my purse at work
since Ty was treating and had only brought ID.

Back to walking.

And, without anything else to occupy my
mind, it was back to thinking about the manuscripts and the one race of people.

“Oh well,” I said out loud, after
wandering around for a little while. I glanced at my watch. I had been walking
for more than an hour and I didn’t understand the one race idea any more than I
had all morning. I shook my thoughts off and went to look for Ty.

“Hi,” she smiled. I found her on the far
end of the duck pond sitting on a bench.

“Hey. Your hair looks nice.” Her hair, cut
into a short bob, was as black and silky as a raven. I sat down beside her.

“Thanks,” she pushed a bag toward me and
scrunched up her nose. “I bought you salad. I really don’t want to have to
marry Mase.”

“No you didn’t,” I said.

She smiled and pulled out a pan of
lasagna. “Give it here,” I snatched it from her.

“Girl, you are pitiful!” she said and
laughed.

“And, where is my salt?” I narrowed my
eyes accusingly.

She handed me one pack. I took the bag
from her and dug in it until I came up with two more packs.

“Yep.” She handed me an orange juice out
of another bag. “You seem like you’re on another planet or something lately,”
Ty said. “What’s up with you?” She took a bite of a sandwich.

I frowned at her, “I thought you were
going to have a salad.”

“Changed my mind,” she answered with a
mouth full of food. “But it’s turkey,
lean
turkey, no mayo and lots of
veggies, see.” She held it over so I could look at it. I nodded my head.

“Where were you coming from? The Art
Museum?”

“Yeah. I wanted to look at the new
turquoise exhibit.”

“How was it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see it. I forgot
my purse at work and there’s a charge to get in.”

“Can’t you get in free or something? I was
under the impression that you run things around here.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “I probably could
get in for free, but that defeats the purpose of having the exhibit, which is
to help make money for the Arts.”

“I love Indian Art. Maybe we could come
back and see it later?”

“Sure, but it’s not Indian, it’s African.”

“Oh really? That’s cool. I’ll call you
later and we can get together.”

After laughing and talking about nothing
in particular, watching ducks and swans snootily swim around the pond, Ty, not
twenty minutes after she arrived, popped the last of her sandwich in her mouth,
put all her trash into my bag, stood up and dusted the crumbs off of her coat.
She looked up at the sky and looked back down at me, “See, I told you it was
nice out here,” she smiled at me. “Okay,” she said, “I gotta go. I got a date.”

“With whom?” I asked. “I know it’s not a
lunch date.”

She laughed and winked at me. “I’ll call
you later.”

I sat on the bench for a while after Ty
left and looked out across the pond. The manuscripts crept back into my
thoughts. Even with Doobie’s concurrence to the notion, I didn’t have a clue
about the single race idea. Not one clue. I watched the ducks frolicking in the
water. Looks like they didn’t have a clue about anything either. Here they were
in Cleveland, in December, swimming around in a pond. What happened to flying
south? This wasn’t even the south side of the city.

I slowly walked back to my museum.

‘
One people
.’ Maybe I should go on
blind faith like Doobie because playing detective wasn’t working for me. I
can’t even put two and two together. I could try to figure this out all night
and probably still only come up with three.

Let me think about this. It’s true that
all the early remains of man came from Africa. Whether there were all black is
a different story. But if they did come from Africa, they didn’t stay there
long. I’d recently read an article that the remains of a man had been found in
California at least 20,000 years older than any other remains found in that
part of the world. Ancient bones are turning up everywhere. Clearly man
populated the globe sooner than was originally thought.

Is it possible that the remains of early
man that were being found all around the globe were of one race? Could there
have, at one time, only been ‘one people?’ Well, Adam and Eve were. But that
couldn’t be what the manuscripts meant.

If there had been one race of people,
there should be some kind of evidence. And the one race wouldn’t have stayed in
one place, they would have migrated. So then, by the time the explorers came,
who were already ‘many races,’ they should have found some evidence.

Think Justin, what kind of people was
found everywhere new land was discovered?

I walked back by the Art Museum and
thought about the turquoise exhibit. I wish I could have seen it. Maybe I will
call Ty, I thought, and see if she really wants to come back. Or maybe I’ll
just go by myself. It struck me as funny that Ty just automatically assumed
that it was Indian Art.

Then it hit me. Oh my goodness that’s it.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before.