Eden Page 15

  The day wore on. The onlookers sat on flat rocks in a rough circle, and others gathered in twos and threes to watch and wait. Those who knew the man, or knew of him, sat quietly among themselves. Two others had been sentenced to the hill that day, and those two criminals drew a handful of onlookers—perhaps the men they had robbed, or women they had bedded. It didn’t matter, their end would be the same. And lastly, the curious appeared, a few heartless souls desiring a closer look at death.

  But they were just a few.

  No man sought this ground.

  No man chose it of his own free will.

  For this fetid hill stank of dried blood, untold bodies and decay.

  The Romans had stripped Eden’s master of his robe as he dragged the beam up the slope and then pored over his other garments, discarded as he stumbled up the hill. Turban, robe and girdle, they passed the clothes among them so as to soften the flat rocks where they sat for they knew their limbs would soon grow weary. Padding for the endless watch was always welcome.

  As the beam was raised Eden saw a long tunic slip from her master’s body—but before it touched the soiled ground one Roman soldier pulled his knife from its scabbard and caught it on the blade. With a few shorts stroke he could split the thing among them for extra padding. But the carpenter soldier stayed his fellow’s hand. This seamless, finely woven tunic was too precious to cut into patches no matter how hard the rocks under their bones.

  Eden saw her master’s cracked lips move speaking indistinct words:

  Forgive … forgive them … forgive everyone

  Eden’s master must have spoken out loud because the Roman soldiers glanced up at the man on the beam. They shrugged. No soldier begged forgiveness. And for once Eden saw the Roman’s true faces, hard and blank like stone. Mercy was something soldiers offered to others but never expected. There was nothing to forgive. Legionaries did their duty. No more, no less. And that’s all that mattered.

  Now as they sat the long hours, the carpenter soldier fished some dice from his purse and tossed them on the ground. Let some of them at least gamble for these things. One after the other, each Legionary took a throw. Last of all, the carpenter soldier took his turn. And as luck had it, his own dice rolled his way.

  His men looked up at him with dark, suspicious eyes.

  He won too often for their tastes.

  But the carpenter soldier did not covet his prize.

  Telling his men, “I’m not keeping it. Sell it later when we’re done. Back to his mother if you want, surely one of the women made it for him. For now, it can sit beneath me.”

  He had brought with him a low wooden stool with his own name carved on it. Years of sitting upon his own mark waiting for men to die had worn away the letters. He carefully folded the tunic, placed it on the stool and sat, covering his name once more.

  The soldiers had brought with them drink and food, but did not touch it. They started a smoky fire, burning dirty wood to cover the horrid smell of this ground. And from time to time a Roman stirred the embers of the fire with the tip of his spear to keep it going. They threw a few coins at an old man to fetch armfuls of wood for them from down below. As the day wore on you could hear the old man huffing and puffing each time he brought another sling of sticks and branches to the top of the hill. Down and back, down and back—

  Another hour passed. And then another.

  The day wore on as the crowd silently watched; the only sound the wind sighing across a broken sky, while the clouds overhead held their breath in anger.

  Eden didn’t move from the shelter of Maryam’s arms. Somehow they seemed to be crouching on the one patch of ground not soiled by an overpowering stench, a tiny patch of ground with a thatch of grass poking up like close-cropped hair. Nearby, under a low bush, three brave mice stood silently watching from the safety of a tangle of thorns, their eyes glued to the men hung on the wood. They whispered nervously among themselves as if they feared they might be next. Eden could not hear what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. Their whiskers twitched, their eyes gleamed and they wrung their paws in dismay, too afraid to stay and too afraid to flee.

  Flies hovered about her master’s mouth and eyes, and Eden heard the woman beside her muttering, attempting to command the flies to depart and trouble their master no more. But the flies didn’t listen and Maryam fell silent.

  The hours passed.

  The men on their wooden beams gasped hopelessly for air. Legs weakened, limbs trembled and their bodies sank. With great effort one of them tried to talk to the other, to speak a few words, but he could barely make a sound, and Eden could not hear them. She felt her master trying to comfort the other men, perhaps to say that this would not endure forever, that something greater was at hand, but she could not make out the words. A cloak of silence seemed to wrap the dog’s head. All human tongues were muted in this place, as if the Almighty wanted to keep Eden innocent of darkest human thought.

  Her master cried to the sky, begging pity for his pain. Eden heard the cry, but only as a voice tearing at the clouds above. As if to hear him, the sky swirled overhead. And Eden watched, helplessly, those on the beam and those waiting below. The carpenter soldier dipped a ball of sponge into a jar of wine, and then placed it on a stick. The soldier stood on his stool and the wet sponge reached her master’s face. The wine ran down his chin and some into his throat. Enough for a few more words.

  Did he speak? Was it him?

  Or someone else?

  Yes, him. Eden heard it.

  It is finished …

  The world fell silent and the wind took what little of him remained alive.

  The merest breath …

  A gust, and Eden’s master was gone.

  For many moments a great stillness hung over the men on their wooden beams and over the people watching. The soldiers looked up from their smoky pit. The fire itself seemed to die. And the deep silence sank into the ground beneath Eden’s paws.

  The carpenter soldier took a spear from his fellow and went to the wooden beam. He touched it once upon the rib of the hanging man. The flesh did not jump. He pressed it in, and blood and water flowed from the open seam. There was nothing left.

  Eden felt a great chasm open inside her. And she realized now that the man she had followed all this time, mile after mile, had faded from her with every step she took. She knew him better when she was a puppy always underfoot in the family’s shop. She knew him better as his friend in the wilderness staring at the Hollow Man on the side of the cliff. She knew him better when the rams and goats came to save them, and when she first met the donkey Samson. But since that time he walked from the great water to the great city, since the time he made the strangers well, since the time he saved her from the storm standing by the boat, since all the time of miracles, she did not know him anymore.

  He had passed into something greater than that man who loved her. Half shadow, half hope. For he had loved more and more people. And the many places and many creatures of his past clung to him, but only as creatures of the past. And she was one of those. And this emptiness poured through her like grains of sand through open hands until the hands were empty.

  Perhaps the Roman soldiers were right, perhaps in a good way.

  During their last great journey her master had become all things to all creatures.

  Maryam’s hands loosened around her neck. The air on this ugly hill swirled overhead, a bitter smoke. Eden felt a queer kind of dizziness that welled from the inside. A great flock of birds flew up from the city below them, circled in a wide arc and kept circling as though the earth itself was no place to land. The sky overhead grew even darker. From every corner of the bald hill the rats began to flee. Eden watched them scamper off, leaping from rock to rock and snaking through every little gully, tails shivering in fear and squealing all at once, running for their lives.

  And then the ground beneath their feet began to tremble, shaking the city, the hill, and even tipped the wooden beams with hanging men fr
om side to side.

  A rolling thunder came down from heaven and kept roaring until everyone cowered, covering their heads. Cold rain slashed down, cutting as ice, and quickly filled every hole and pockmark. The Roman soldiers clutched their spears and shields, but the shaking earth and roaring air tore the weapons from their hands and the metal clattered to the ground. Then, just as suddenly as it came, the roaring stopped.

  And the cold rain passed over the hills toward the horizon.

  The carpenter soldier stooped to pick up his spear. The blood from the man’s wound still stained the tip despite the rain, and he ran his finger along the edge. He muttered to himself, suddenly ashamed for all he had done and witnessed, and the dog heard his words.

  “Righteous blood of a righteous man.”

  The first bold, clear words Eden understood since she had come to this ugly place.

  The carpenter soldier spoke again:

  “I saw no evil in him.”

  Faintly, a forlorn wail rose up from the city and all those standing on the hill turned their faces to look at the high walls. The temple doors stood out like Goliath’s gate. The towering curtains draped in the entranceway, now hung in tatters, ripped apart by the wind.

  And all the temple worshippers and priests standing in the temple courtyard looked like grains of wheat milling about inside a stone box. They wrung their hands in grief beseeching heaven, tiny, terrified creatures with no place to call home.

  No one who stood on the hill could tell if it was sundown or merely dark. But the time had come to relieve the wooden beams of their lifeless burdens. A ladder was brought and winding sheets. And many hands came to return the three men to the earth. The two criminals first. Their crosses, loosed by the rumbles of the earth, toppled easily. Once fallen, they lay on the cold ground unattended, with none to mourn them.

  Eden broke from Maryam’s arms and went to her master’s beam. She could barely reach his feet standing on her hind legs, but her paws scratched the wood. A drop of blood had run down her master’s leg and clung stubbornly to his toe.

  She whined.

  The drop fell to her nose and before she knew what she did, she licked it off.

  Plain blood, with that tang of iron and salt and sweat.

  The carpenter soldier lent his tools so that they could pry the spikes free without tearing more of the flesh, and before Maryam crossed the dead hands upon his breast, Eden managed to put her head under his fingers, for one last moment, just a moment, as he used to pet her.

  One last touch.

  But there was no one there.

  EVERLASTING

  Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  Luke 12: 32–34

  Two Nights and a Day

  They laid the winding sheet upon the ladder, making a stretcher. But before they could place their master on this makeshift sling the Romans left their fire pit and took the ladder away.

  “The ladder is Pilate’s,” one of them said. “Not the priests’.” And the soldiers prepared to lug their ladder down the slope and back to the garrison.

  To those clutching the body of Eden’s master one of them said, “Carry him arm by arm and leg by leg if you care for him so much.”

  But not the carpenter soldier. He turned his face away.

  The winding sheet became their master’s stretcher for the steep descent to the bottom, then to a lower rise and the resting place prepared. Eden followed Maryam silently down the face of the ugly hill. The bearers stumbled as they went, but each time a foot slipped, a knee or elbow met the ground, they righted themselves. On this last trip their burden was not so great, the body lighter than the bundles of sticks the old man had brought for the Romans’ fire.

  And before the sun set that day, the tomb accepted him and Eden watched the mourners roll a great stone into place.

  The salty taste of her master had vanished from her mouth. As the night drew close Eden’s belly twisted in hunger and her tongue swelled, growing thick with thirst. She sat with Maryam under the shoulder of a great boulder. The ground hard, scarcely any grass, but the woman folded their master’s cloak and it cushioned them, keeping the cold from seeping into their bones.

  Maryam’s hand came to Eden’s neck and the dog rested her head in the woman’s lap. The tomb of their master waited silently in the dark, and they could barely see the outline of the stone covering the entrance.

  Why were they waiting here?

  What were they waiting for?

  Eden did not know.

  The moon showed its silver face through a stand of spindly trees on a distant hill and lit the rock tomb. The surface shone whitely, lighting the ground where they sat. Time passed.

  Quietly other women joined them, one here, and another there, in twos and threes. Not sitting closely, but scattered across the wide ledge where they could find a touch of shelter, on a rock or beside a boulder. They covered their heads with their shawls to keep warm, which under the moon made them seem part of the earth.

  Silent witnesses who watched the stone face of the tomb.

  But witnesses to what? Eden could not say.

  Suddenly the sound of footfalls on the path rose up from below. Not human feet, for men and women always scraped and shuffled when then moved. But the sound was hard, clear steps. And to her astonishment Eden saw Samson’s old gray nose nodding up and down as he climbed. His long ears bobbed with every footfall. He carried a great load of branches on his back, and round his strong neck dangled water skins, sloshing from side to side. While the old man from the horrible hill quietly followed the donkey upward.

  And the littlest of the lambs came with him too! Eden watched as the littlest lamb picked her way daintily along the steep path. A tiny bell about her neck jingled brightly through the gloom, the moonlight catching it at every step.

  “We thought I’d find you here,” Samson told Eden.

  “You’re burdened now!” the dog exclaimed.

  “Yes, but it’s an easy burden,” Samson told her. “Sticks for this old man. And water for those who wait in the dark. You see, I can bring enough—more than he can carry.”

  “And look at you, you little rascal,” Eden said to the littlest lamb, “someone gave you jewelry!”

  “Of course, I keep them company!” exclaimed the littlest lamb. “Marking their coming and going with the sound of my bell!”

  “More than that,” the gray-faced donkey told Eden. “The bell keeps us from being lost. Like a herald in the night,” Samson said, “whether rising from deep ravines or calling over great mountains, no wind can drown out the sound of this bell. A clear voice in the air, a voice of everything to come—”

  “And yet its ring is so tiny you barely notice it,” said the littlest lamb.

  “Like you,” Eden said.

  “Yes, like me,” said the littlest lamb. “Just like me.”

  The three animals fell silent.

  Eden recognized this old man, the same who had brought the Romans firewood on that terrible hill. All this time ignored as one not even worthy of notice, just a few coins tossed in his direction. Yet on this night he brought wood to those who had no coins for him. The women unloaded the sticks from Samson’s back and stacked them in a pile to make a fire. The old man let the women take the wood without complaint, and even helped them stack it. Eden saw Maryam fumble with her purse but the old man simply shook his head, placing his hand upon hers. He wanted no money.

  Not this night.

  At length, the old man passed the skins around, pouring water into empty cups, or tipping it to waiting hands until every parched throat was quenched. And water itself seemed to fill every belly, sating every tongue, and hunger was no more.

  Someone struck a spark from flint and iron, the stack of wood caught and night’s chill retreated from the ledge. To Eden it seemed a strange kind of campfire, for though Samson had brought a g
reat load of wood, this fire seemed to need no feeding, burning with light and heat but no ash. And so eventually everyone on the ledge was warmed and heads nodded to their breasts. The last thing Eden saw before her eyes closed was that old man staring at her.

  He sat off by himself, curiously aloof, seeking neither the fire nor company. Eden realized that since she had first seen him on the Hill of the Skull he had neither spoken nor been spoken to. Not even the Roman soldiers who merely threw him a handful of coins. Nor did he speak now, but simply stared from his spot by the great stone door. Beside him Samson stood silently, occasionally swishing his tail. And the littlest lamb curled by the old man’s feet, the bell round her neck tinkling softly each time she stirred in the dark.

  And so night passed into morning.

  Dawn of the second day.

  Eden opened her eyes and picked her head off Maryam’s lap. Samson, the littlest lamb and the old man were nowhere to be seen. But she heard the tiny bell tinkling faintly in the dell down below. After a few moments even that hopeful sound vanished, and a cold wind sighed across the ledge. Maryam huddled into herself, clutching the dog closer. The fire had died, thirst and hunger returned. The women on the ledge stared out of their shawls with hollow eyes. A gray sorrow seemed to cloak them all, and some rose from their chosen rock, stepping a few paces away to weep in private.

  But Maryam was not among them. The woman’s eyes were dry. She did not weep. Nor had she wept with the others on the Hill of the Skull when their master spoke no more, and they brought him down from the beam. Quietly, she refolded the cloak for herself and the dog to sit on the hard ground. And it struck Eden, two days waiting felt like a long, long time.

  The cold wind blew a trifle faster over the ledge, ruffling the women’s shawls. They tugged their wraps about their faces, looking from eye to eye, as if the wind itself was trying to tell them a secret. But no one understood, as if the wind spoke secret words in a strange tongue from a foreign lands, far away.

  Yet through the wind Eden heard the strangest sound, the murmuring of a voice, faint and indistinct. Not a voice of fear or sadness, but full of great tidings. And underneath the voice, there echoed a beating heart, hope and a second chance.