Storm (28 page)

I lift my nose to it and smile. Nothing can lower my spirits today. Bash lies beside me, his face completely within my reach. I touched that face everywhere last night. I kissed it everywhere.

On the other side, my baby curls, his arms and legs tucked under him, his bare bottom to the wind. Pishon. He smiled yesterday. One brief flash. Only two weeks old and he smiled.

I push up so that I’m leaning back on my elbows. The sun
rises, a yellow ball in an orange sky. And last night it set, an orange ball in a red sky. I feel bathed in optimism.

The shutters bang open below us, and Noah’s voice booms out the window. “This may be the day.”

“Do it for us, little friend,” calls Mother Emzara. “All my hopes go with you.”

There is nothing in their talk to alarm me. Nothing about the women having seen a giant last night. Can our luck possibly be holding? I strain to hear more.

A sharp whistle of wings!

A dove flaps up past the edge of the ark roof and off in the same direction as last week. It must be the same one, for this one is tiny—and so was last week’s. It’s as though she has absorbed the meaning of her flight, the sense of Mother Emzara’s words; she flies like all of life depends on it. In the straightest of lines, without hesitation. She doesn’t waste time at the first peak she comes to but flies on to the second one and disappears around it.

Pishon whimpers.

I pick him up fast because I know the shutters are still open below. I imagine all of them crowded at the window, waiting to see if the dove will return. If they are talking, it must be in mumbles. But I can sense their chest muscles squeezing in hope, for mine are too. I sit by Bash, my thigh touching his back, and play with Pishon’s ear as he eats.

The dove has not come back.

Pishon finishes eating and I bathe him in seawater and we
play. I pull on his legs and press them up against his belly and spread them out to the sides. I do the same to his arms. I wiggle each toe, each finger. I lick his eyes and nose and ears. And he smiles! Not quick or fleeting like yesterday, but lasting. My perfect baby.

The dove has not come back.

I can’t bear it any longer. I lick the back of Bash’s neck, and he rolls over and catches me around the waist.

He smiles. “Good morning.” And we kiss.

“It’s late morning. Another.”

“Good late morning.” And we kiss again.

“Really late.”

“Good really late morning.” And we kiss again.

“I think it might be close to noon.”

“Good close to noon.” And we kiss again.

“It could even be—”

“Sheba, I need to relieve myself first. Then we can kiss all you want.” He runs a finger from my mouth, down my chin, my throat, between my breasts. “We can pass the day doing whatever you want.” He gets up and heads for the ark edge.

“Wait,” I call in a strong whisper. “Piss over the other side. Noah has opened the shutters again.”

Bash’s eyes widen. “Did he let loose birds?”

“Only one. The dove.”

Bash lopes to the other side of the ark. He goes on tiptoe, trying to be quiet. Moving that way he’s a remarkably funny
figure, a dear figure. Oh, yes, I am already imagining how I want to pass the day.

On the way back, he scoops a large handful of brown seaweed from a bucket. Then he sits behind me with his legs straddling Pishon and me. I point, and we watch in the direction the dove went while we chew on the plant. We’ve tasted so many different kinds of sea plants by now, but this is our favorite. We’re lucky that it has a habit of getting caught under the edges of rocks on the shoreline, so it’s easy to gather.

“Thirsty?”

I look at Bash. “You know I always am.”

“But you’re very thirsty now. You’re making those little swallows that you do when you’re just about parched.”

“I can wait. My milk is overflowing, so Pishon won’t suffer. And I want to watch for the dove. Besides, I’m feeling too lazy now to wring out fish flesh.”

“You may not have to.” Bash grins his big toothy grin. He goes over to his stash of gear from last night and bumbles around for a while. Then he comes back and sets everything in front of me.

A bucket of seawater. An empty bucket. A bone knife. And a shark.

The shark is the fish that dangled from the rope last night. It is not huge—if I were to lie beside it, it would stretch only from my feet to my breasts. But it has white on the tip of its dorsal fin, side fins, tail. This is the kind of shark mariners who
survived a shipwreck talk about. It’s the kind that ate all their crewmates. Larger ones than this usually. But this type, for sure.

A shudder racks my body.

“What’s the matter?” Bash quickly looks out toward where the dove went. But there’s nothing in the sky. He turns back to me. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t swim anymore.”

He looks at the shark. He rubs his neck thoughtfully. “All right. I won’t swim again until we find a small pond, too small for a shark—an inland pond.”

“Are you so sure we will find a pond?”

He nods. “And soon, Sheba. Last night I walked a stretch of mountain that was muddy. Not rocky. Real mud. Real dirt.”

I kiss Pishon and hug him tighter. He’s asleep again, but he gives a satisfied little belch and milk bubbles out the side of his mouth. “What are you going to do with that rotten fish?” The other fish are in seawater. They’ll still be edible. But the shark already stinks.

“Just watch.”

“Oh, look!”

The dove is flying back. I’m so sad. But in her beak she carries something. It’s green. Silvery-green. Now I can see: It’s a little branch with leaves!

The dove enters below.

A cheer goes up.

“Another week!” booms Noah.

“What!” It’s Ham again. Always Ham. “That’s an olive branch as sure as I am a man.”

“You’re right. But she brought it back here.”

“So what?”

“So that means she couldn’t land in the tree. And you know why she couldn’t land in it?”

No one answers. Finally, “Why, Noah?” It is Mother Emzara.

“Because the tree is under water.”

“That’s ridiculous!” shouts Ham. “Olives don’t grow under water.”

“Maybe not for long,” says Noah. “But they can strike the first leaves that way. No, we wait. Another week.” The shutters slam.

I look at Bash. “Is he right?”

“I don’t know. I could swim over to that second mountain peak and take a look around. The water between here and there is shorter by the day.”

“Except you’re not going swimming in that water again.”

He smiles. “Exactly what I was about to add.”

“So what are you going to do with that disgusting fish? It reeks.”

Bash cuts the fish in the strangest way I’ve ever seen. He cuts so that he can peel away a sheet of skin that was the belly and most of the sides. Then he scrapes the skin clean on both sides. He drapes the skin over the empty bucket, then pats it down
inside, so that the skin lines the bucket and flops over the edge. Now he picks up the bucket of seawater and pours half of it into the sharkskin-lined bucket.

I’m starting to understand. I press my lips together in excitement.

Bash gathers the edges of the sharkskin and pulls them together and twists the top as he lifts it a little. He keeps twisting and lifting, and I hear the
drip, drip, drip.
It takes a long time to force all the seawater through the sharkskin. He sets the skin on the roof and dips a finger into the filtered water. He tastes it. Then he dips his finger again and puts it to my mouth. It’s brackish, yes, but even less so than the water we extract from fish flesh. And this method is so many times faster.

“You are a brilliant man.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Bash stands up and beats on his chest in triumph.

“Come down here,” I say. “You’ve just saved us a lot of time. And I’ve figured out how I want to pass that time, how I want to pass the entire day.”

T
he shutters bang open on the deck below us.

I clap my hand over my mouth to hold in my laughter. Bash goes instantly silent too. But Pishon gurgles. I quick put him to the breast. He opens his eyes wide as though surprised, and maybe he is. After all, he just finished nursing not long ago. Maybe Pishon is building up expectations about life already. In any case, he’s a greedy baby, so he’s safely, quietly, nursing now.

We were just having a nuzzling fest, the three of us. It’s the middle of the day and it’s been only three days since the shutters last opened, not the full week that Noah said he’d wait. So we’re stunned, Bash and me. And alarmed.

“Look,” says Noah, but not in his big announcement voice—this is just ordinary talk. “The Mighty Creator has given me a present.”

“And what would that be?” Mother Emzara asks.

“Dirt.”

“Dirt? Really? Show me!”

“There, beyond those rocks. The ones that look like oxen plowing. See?”

“The far ones?”

“See how dark it is on the other side of them? That’s not rock. That’s dirt. Dry dirt.”

“At last! Noah, I’ll go call the others together. You can let out the dove!”

“No. We’ll wait the full week. That’s what the Mighty Creator wants.”

“Forgive me, husband, but you’re mistaken. The Mighty Creator showed you the dirt. Wouldn’t you say he’s sending you a message?”

“Oh, he’s sending a message all right. He’s wishing me well on my birthday. Today I have completed another year of life. I am six hundred and one years old.”

“Ah,” says Mother Emzara, “I lost track of the days.”

“I make notches in a floorboard, otherwise this shaggy head couldn’t have kept that information either.”

“Shaggy head? I love your gray hair, Noah. It’s your crown.”

“You think so?”

“You gained it through a life of righteousness. So, yes, yes, indeed. It is a crown of glory.”

“Six hundred and one years of righteous servitude. And I
hope to go on serving the Mighty Creator until I am at least a thousand years old.”

“After all this, do you really want to live to be a thousand, husband of mine?”

“After all this?” Noah’s voice rises. “After all this, I’d better! I’d better see a whole new world start over and go right this time. No more arrogance. No more wickedness. Praise to the Mighty Creator, every day, every night.” His voice shakes. “That at least—that at the very least.” He’s quiet a moment. “Don’t you want to live long with me to see it all?”

“Oh, Noah, my husband, my dear one, don’t ask.”

The shutters close. We sit with Bash’s body surrounding me and my body surrounding Pishon. We are an onion, protecting the center, tight and firm in the sun. But things are about to change. We have to make it off the ark with stealth.

And then? It’s hard to even imagine what then.

Mother Emzara’s words linger in my head:
Don’t ask.

T
his morning makes precisely one week since Noah last set the dove free and she came back with the olive branch. He opens the shutters and calls, “Find land, bird! Find a place where my family and I can go on serving the Mighty Creator,” and he sets the dove free again—just as he promised.

I listen from above. I hear them all talking at the open window as they watch the dove fly out of sight. I hear a voice I don’t know, as well—it must be Puzur Amurri. Everyone wants to know the message of the dove.

Gradually, though, as time passes, they go about their chores. They come back every now and then to check with Noah about whether the dove has returned. Each time he says no, I can hear a growing brightness in their responses.

Around midday Ada says, “There’s so much driftwood lying all about down there, we can have a fish fry on the beach tonight! Oh, I mean, if we can leave the ark, that is.”

“No beach fish fry,” says Noah.

“Well, it was just an idea,” says Ada. But she can’t keep the singsong out of her voice. Hopes are rising.

In the late afternoon Ham says, “That dove’s not coming back, Father.”

“No, I don’t think she is.”

“So we can finally leave the ark.”

“No.”

“Father! The dove is our signal. It’s time to leave the ark.”

“No.”

Ham shouts for his brothers. He stomps away shouting. Minutes later they gather by the open window again. I take inventory of the voices; all of them are there.

“Father, we demand to leave the ark.” It’s Ham.

“Don’t put it that way, Ham.” It’s Mother Emzara. “No one is making demands, Noah. We’re just listening to you. To your words. You said the dove is our signal. You said it yourself.”

“The dove has clearly found a spot to perch and perhaps dirt to peck around in,” says Noah.

“Exactly,” says Mother Emzara.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s time to leave the ark. Dry ground is appearing, yes. But the ground has to be thoroughly dry before we can leave.”

“Father!” It’s Japheth.

“Hush, Japheth,” says Mother Emzara. Her voice is strained. “So when will the ground be dry enough, Noah?”

“Two months, I think.”

“Two months!” shouts Ham.

“Maybe less. Maybe fifty days. The Mighty Creator will tell us.”

A woman screams. She goes running around the top deck of the ark and screams and screams. It’s only when people try to calm her down that I find out it is Mother Emzara. So even she has reached the end of her rope.

They have such a row now, I think the ark might shake and fall over on its side. Then the shutters slam and I hear no more.

Bash and I have passed the day thus far listening to Noah’s crew, watching for the dove, feeding and playing with Pishon, and kissing each other. Now we just wait in silence.

Night falls, and the dove hasn’t come back yet. “The dove is not coming back,” I say to Bash.

“Doesn’t look like it.” He gathers his gear and gets ready to go over the side of the ark, to fish and get us water and seaweed. He moves like a happy man. It is remarkable how easily Bash can be happy.

We don’t worry that the women might tell on us anymore. Ada and Leba never go out at night; the near drowning clearly frightened them off. But Nela goes out every night. She’s already out tonight—we saw her walking in the shallows. She doesn’t
dare stray into the waves. Instead she dances at the very edge of the sea, all alone. She sings to the moon. I can’t hear her from here, of course, but I see her face turned upward, mouth open. Bash says she has moon fever.