Moses, Man of the Mountain

by Zora Neale Hurston

  “Just what did you want me to do about your case, Miss Miriam?”

  “You know just as well as I do, Moses. Just let your right hand fall from over me. You still punishing me about that wife of yours, Moses? Don’t hold me here no more. Open your fingers, Moses, just a little bit and let the husks of a weak old woman escape out past ’em.”

  “Do you think that I am God, Miriam?”

  “Indeed, I don’t know, Moses. That’s what I been trying to figure out for years. Sometimes I think you’re just that Egyptian Prince that took up with us for some reason or other. Then again I would agree with some of them others that you was an Ethiopian. Once or twice I thought you was the sacred bull of Egypt with the known markings but the unknown history. Sometimes I thought God’s voice in the tabernacle sounded mighty much like yours. But ever since you punished me with leprosy, I knew you had power uncommon to man. I been knowing ever since you healed me and took me back into the congregation that you wasn’t through with me. You love that woman and we hurt her. You meant for us to punish and to punish well, didn’t you? So you locked me up inside myself and left me to wait on your hour. Moses, ain’t I done punished enough?”

  “How do you know all of this?” Moses asked and studied her while she answered him.

  “Oh, I don’t know how I know, but I do. When I found out I couldn’t do no more in Israel than you let me, I made up my mind to go on off and die, but I found out I couldn’t even do that unless you let me. I saw all them people dead in the wilderness from snake-bites and disease and one thing and another and I looked at their bones and wished it was me. I waited and I waited, but death always avoided me. Aaron was waiting for the crown in Canaan, but I just been waiting to die. Now, I ask you please to leave me go. I done tried to be as stiff as you was stout, but I found out I got to come ask you to die. You knew it all along and you been waiting for me to come.”

  “I certainly didn’t expect you to come here to say what you did.”

  “No, Moses, don’t put me off like that. Talk to me straight. I come here to you for something and I don’t mean to go till you tell me yes or no. I don’t mean to leave here until I get what I come after.”

  The repulsive old woman was tragic. She had been sent on a mission as he had been sent, and the burden had torn and twisted her. She had been petty, envious and mean, but she had served. But then fate had provided no compensations for making her a bearer. Miriam had lived on hopes where other women lived on memories. And that was bound to do something to her. She was not sent to be what she wanted to be, so she had wasted herself procuring pangs for people who had. Moses looked at her and through her with pity. She seemed to hold everything about herself very still until he got through looking. Then she got up and moved to the door.

  “Much obliged, Moses. Now I can go.”

  “Much obliged for what, Miriam?”

  “I felt your right hand fall from over me. I’m going on back to my tent now and rest. It’s no sense in something like me being alive. I am going to die now, Moses. Keep that right hand of yours down.”

  Moses didn’t say anything more. He just looked at her and watched her go. She went off a little brisk. Her face almost moved. She seemed to see something with her eyes. She made deep prints with her feet.

  Miriam went back and laid down just like she said she would, and the next morning they found her dead with a bitter twist on her mask of a face.

  Moses called a halt and told the people what it meant to lose a patriot like Miriam. The young ones were told what the old ones had forgotten—all about those days back in Egypt when the house of the prophetess Miriam was the meeting place of all those who were willing to work for freedom. How she had gathered folks together by two and threes and changed weakness into resolution. Her dust weighed as much as all Israel. The people all listened and thought it was a great speech. They even mourned when Moses ordered them to mourn for thirty days. They held a great crying for Miriam. So Moses buried her with a big ceremony and ordered a great tomb of rocks to be piled up over her grave.

  On the way back from the funeral Moses considered the life and death of Miriam. She was a woman, but he never had been able to quite think of her as such. What with her lack of female beauty and female attractions, and her loveless life with one end sunk in slavery and the other twisted and snarled in freedom. He wondered which had hurt her most. He thought how the threads of his life had gotten tangled with the threads of this homely slave woman. He wondered if she had not been born if he would have been standing there in the desert of Zin. In fact, he wondered if the Exodus would have taken place at all. How? If she had not come to the palace gates to ask for him and to claim him as a brother, would he have left Egypt as he did? He doubted it. He never would have known Jethro, nor loved Zipporah, nor known the shiny mountain, nor led out a nation with a high hand, nor suffered as he had done and was doomed to keep on doing. A mighty thing had happened in the world through the stumblings of a woman who couldn’t see where she was going. She needed a big tomb so the generations that come after would know her and remember.

  Well, Miriam was gone. There was Aaron left and himself. And there was the desert and the wilderness and the forty years and the people. This was the second going-out. He had led out Pharaoh’s slaves. Now he must lead out a free and singing people from inside the cringing slaves. He turned from burying Miriam and set his face grimly for the task.

  Then a running messenger came from Jethro telling Moses that he must come. Jethro was sick and wanted Moses’ company. He mounted his white stallion in the night and rode hard back towards Midian, and was there on the third day.

  The old chieftain was lying on his couch. On his face was a great stare that had not changed for days. But he saw Moses standing before him and smiled.

  “Lift up his bed and carry him outdoors,” Moses ordered at once.

  They bore him out and Moses ordered them to place him under a tree with his face to the mountain and then he sat down beside him and touched his feeble hand. Life seemed to come back into the sunken face at once.

  “That was right, Moses. That was right and good.”

  “Lying shut-in was no place for you, Jethro. You are a man without bounds.”

  “My eyes and my mind keep taking me where my old legs can’t keep up. My old age is burdensome for that reason, now.”

  He rested awhile then he said, “I knew you were worked to death, and I wouldn’t have sent for you except that I had to ask you a question, and I was afraid I couldn’t wait for you to come.”

  “You know I would have been miserable if you hadn’t sent for me—if you hadn’t let me know in some way.”

  “Well, Moses, you never said so in too many words, but your love for me had something to do with your going back into Egypt to lead the Israelites, didn’t it?”

  “Perhaps it did, Jethro, but perhaps it was my destiny anyway.”

  The old man reached out and caught hold of Moses’ hand and drew him closer. He lifted himself up and held the face of Moses between his hands and searched his face with his eyes.

  “You don’t hold it against me, Moses, do you?”

  “Hold it against you? No, Jethro.”

  “I worried you so about my wish. You might have refused the call and been much happier here. Often and again I have blamed myself for urging you.”

  “You shouldn’t have felt that way. You said yourself it was my destiny.”

  “Your friendship didn’t shrink away from me in the least?”

  “Not in the least, Jethro. Your friendship would have been worth ten times more.”

  Jethro embraced Moses with his skinny old arms and lay back smiling.

  “I knew better all the time but I had to ask. If I had another night and day, you could tell me about the Israelites and the work. But as it is, about all you can do is to cover up my face for me. I didn’t want anybody to do it but you.”

  That night the family and the tribe mourned around Jethro’s body and the
next day Moses buried him in the path that led up the side of the mountain and planted a grove of trees to honor him. On the seventh day he set out for the camp of Israel again, sadder and more bereaved than he had ever been in his life before, or was ever to be again.

  He wished that he could order a great crying in Israel for Jethro. He wished that the nation could know how much Jethro had meant to it. But he knew misunderstanding would come out of his act and so he mourned alone. He must keep on doing them good on the sly.

  The years went on doing their slow drag over Israel and left it fat and strong. When Joshua marched out against a people he won. There was no longer famine and thirst among his army and always, now, the hosts moved nearer the Jordan, and Israel grew conscious of its might.

  So at Jeshurun, the people offered Moses a kingly crown. “You brought our old folks out of slavery and you have led us from one degree of grace to another until now we are folks wherever our feet fall on dry land. We want to turn you some humble thanks so it ain’t nothing but right for you to be our King and live rich. You done worked forty years for us for nothing. Therefore we took all the crowns that we beat off of the heads of Kings that we conquered and melted them all down and made them into one crown, something that’s fitten for your conquering head. It ain’t much, Moses, but it will give you some idea of how we feel.”

  Moses stood up and thanked everybody very kindly. But he went on to say that he wasn’t sure that people ought to have Kings at all. It’s pretty hard to find a man who wouldn’t weaken under the strain of power and get biggity and overbearing. He himself might not be any better than nobody else if he had the chance. So they better let this King business rest for a while. “This freedom is a funny thing,” he told them. “It ain’t something permanent like rocks and hills. It’s like manna; you just got to keep on gathering it fresh every day. If you don’t, one day you’re going to find you ain’t got none no more. I’m getting kind of old and I been with you like you say since back in Egypt. It’s been kind of tough sometimes, and maybe I neglected a lot of things I could have done off by myself. But if you just keep free and be a fine nation of folks I’ll feel like I bought something with my life. You done got free of Pharaoh and the Egyptian oppressors, be careful you don’t raise up none among yourselves.” Moses left with drooping heart.

  The people had missed the whole point of his forty-odd years of work. He loved freedom and justice with a fierce love and he wanted Israel to be free and just. All that he had done to them and for them was intended to bring them to his viewpoint. And here they were wanting to be like other halted people that they touched along the way. They despised their high destiny. They misunderstood him so far that they even offered him a crown! As if he could not have had that from the very first. He could have led them to Midian and with Jethro to help him, set up a kingdom within a few weeks after leaving Egypt. He need not have experienced a wilderness, and deserts and hunger and thirst and misunderstanding and sacrifice to wear a crown. The hem of the sky ran in close around him and oppressed him. It took a long time to thrust it out again. Well, anyway, he could hope. He had produced the physical base for greatness.

  These young Hebrews were something. They were bound to get somewhere if only they fell into the right hands after he was gone. And that put him to thinking back. The mood stayed on him for several days. Then the cloud of fire lifted from above the tabernacle and moved the Israelites to the plain at the foot of Mount Hor. And it rested there so Israel camped awhile.

  As soon as they had gotten settled down, Aaron sent a delegation of Levites to Moses to protest a decision Moses had made about the services. Moses listened until they were through and then he said, “The words you have brought here in your mouths are not your own. Somebody else made them and loaded your mouth up with ’em. Go back and tell Aaron to come and tell me what he’s got to say his own self.”

  Aaron came, but he took his own time about it. He explained to Moses that his beard-boy was looking after his beard so he could not come right away.

  “Your beard-boy?” Moses exclaimed.

  “Now, Moses, you know the Lord has given me as a sign of special favor the longest and the finest whiskers in all Israel. And me being who I am I don’t really have time to do for it like I should. So I had to sign up one of the young men around the altar to wait on my beard and tend to it. I give him the responsibility and if it gets out of shape and careless looking he’ll have to suffer for it. The Lord don’t want His gifts to be despised.”

  It all sank into the mind of Moses and he thought it over well before he spoke.

  “Aaron, do you think that if you had of stayed back there in Egypt that the Lord would have bothered about whether your whiskers was greased or not?”

  “We don’t need to waste time over that because I ain’t back there in Egypt. A smart man like me couldn’t be kept down like that nohow. I got too much brains for people. You don’t meet my kind every day. I let folks think they are using me for a tool when all the time I’m using them for a step-ladder.”

  Moses felt an acid wind from Aaron’s words blowing across his face. He didn’t need to look at the man to read him. He had been reading him for forty years or so. He didn’t need to look for interpretation. He knew the meaning before he heard the words. So he went on to conclusions.

  “Aaron, we’re here at Mount Hor—not too far from the Jordan, but still a little distance off. I’m going up in the mountain to ask the Lord what He wants me to do next. Would you like to go up with me this time?”

  “That’s all goodness been begging righteous to do all these forty years. I should have been up there to meet God at Sinai. It made me look like a fool before Israel. The high priest his own self can’t go to see God!”

  “Well, you can go with me this time, Aaron. We won’t have no hard words about all those other times you didn’t go. But if God had of asked for you, Aaron, I would have come straight back and told you.”

  “I hope you would have, Moses.”

  “All right, come on and let’s go. But let’s take your oldest boy Eleazar along with us. God might want to see him and talk with him, too. No telling, he might make a fine priest when he gets a little older.”

  “I ain’t got the least doubt about that, Moses. I done my best to bring him up right. He’d look noble in the robes, too—after I am gone.”

  The three men went up the mountainside together. Aaron and Moses walked a little ahead and Eleazar followed respectfully behind. Moses wore a short robe belted in at the waist with his traditional short sword at his side. He walked with his rod in his left hand, and now and then he helped Aaron over rough places with his right. They went up and round the mountain and then up. The huge camp of Israel below them began to take on a pattern. Moses saw that Aaron had stopped stroking his beard and was panting hard. So he paused and turned to Eleazar and told him, “Eleazar, you wait here until I call you. Your father is going higher up. He’s got to listen to God.”

  Moses could see the tired old shoulders of Aaron stiffen with pride at that. He almost stood erect. They traveled on up the mountain for some time yet. Nobody tried to talk because both of them realized it was useless then. At last Moses stopped before a cool grotto in the mountainside with a rude stone seat inside. Aaron practically dragged himself to the seat and panted a long time before he could measure out his breath.

  “Do you always have to climb this high to talk with God?” Aaron asked when he got his breath back.

  “Higher than this, Aaron. Sometimes men have to push through the sky to reach Him. We stopped here to rest a minute, that’s all.”

  Aaron groaned out loud.

  “Supposing we talk awhile then, Aaron. I’m the leader of Israel and you’re the high priest and we ain’t had our heads together since way back there, Aaron, before Sinai.”

  “That’s right, but it ain’t no fault of mine. I been kept back in the background and I been kept in the dark about things. You don’t never tell me nothing. Joshua is
the only one that gets any information around here.”

  “Well, Canaan is right close now and we ain’t got too much time to talk and plan. You know things won’t be the same over there that it is out here in the wilderness.”

  “Don’t I know it? I been waiting for it for forty years. I’m getting pretty old, but I think I can make it. It won’t be so hard over there as it is in the wilderness nohow. Then Israel can reward me for my labors.”

  “But the Lord said, Aaron, that all the old folks who came out of Egypt had to die in the wilderness, all except Joshua and Caleb.”

  “Oh, I never took much stock in that, Moses. I’m not the people, you know. I believe I’m going to make it and when I do, I mean to be folks over there. The thought of it has kept me living or else I would have gone like Miriam. She fretted herself to death about who was going to get us there. That was foolish. I let who can get us there, then we can see about things after that. I know how to handle people.”

  “You think so, Aaron?”

  “I sure do, unless I’m mighty mistaken.” Aaron sat stroking his beard with a little gesture that was smug and flourishing at the same time. He knew he was important and he knew his clothes were fine. He looked just as satisfied as the snake that lives under God’s foot-stool.

  “Yet and still, Aaron, you have never done anything that I could not have prevented if I had wanted to and you never done a thing that I didn’t undo.”

  “It’s not too late, Moses. We’re born but we ain’t dead yet.”

  Moses stood up suddenly and looked Aaron straight in the eye. Aaron unveiled his eyes for the first time in front of Moses since the law was given at Sinai. There was neither love nor mercy in his look.

  “You got your power and your brains, Moses, but you ain’t never made the people happy like you said.”

  “I never said I’d make them happy people. I promised to make them great. Anyway, happiness is not something you can catch and lock up in a vault like wealth. Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.”