A Gift Upon the Shore

by Wren, M. K.

  “A little. But things of this world aren’t important, you know. Not after Armageddon.”

  Mary saw the tightening of Rachel’s mouth, but when she spoke, it was with consummate casualness. “But the world is still here, isn’t it, Armageddon or not?”

  Luke’s attention was on his glass as he gingerly tasted the mead. He waited after the first swallow, as if he expected something to happen. A bolt of lightning, perhaps, Mary thought.

  He said cautiously, “This tastes . . . good.” Then he turned to Rachel. “Yes, the world is still here, but it’s not like it was before Armageddon.”

  “No. At least, parts of it have been devastated. Still, that doesn’t explain why you relegate an entire planet to a state of unimportance.”

  “Because nothing in this world is important. Saint Paul said, ‘Set your affections on things above, not on things of the earth.’ ”

  “But what did he mean by things of the earth? Was he talking about geography—which no one knew much about in his day, by the way—or was he talking about the mundane, selfish concerns that always commanded the affections of most people?”

  Luke eyed Rachel speculatively while he took another sip of mead. “I think you must be right. He was talking about selfish concerns.”

  “But this planet Earth—shouldn’t we admire the creator of such a beautiful world, the creator of the whole magnificent universe?”

  “We do admire the Creator.”

  “Then we should also admire the creation.”

  Luke wasn’t entirely convinced. “But the creation isn’t as important as the Creator.”

  “Luke, I was an artist and in a lesser sense a creator. I can assure you, I consider my creations more important than I. Besides, isn’t understanding the creation one way to understand the creator?” She paused, then with an easy laugh, added, “But I didn’t intend to launch into a theological debate. Aren’t you tired?”

  He shook his head. “No, and I enjoy a . . . a theological debate.”

  “Then maybe we’ll continue another time.” She stroked Shadow’s head while she sipped her mead. “Poor lady, I wish I could give you some of this. It might help your aches and pains.”

  Luke started to pet Shadow, but withdrew his hand when she stiffened and growled. Rachel said, “Don’t mind her, Luke. She’s just getting a little crotchety.”

  “She must be very old.”

  “Yes, she’s at least thirteen. I’m afraid this is one member of our family who won’t be with us much longer.”

  Luke seemed stricken by that, or perhaps it was the sorrow he read in Rachel’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Sister.”

  Rachel glanced up at him. “Sister? Is that how you address women where you come from?”

  “Yes,” he admitted, as if he’d been caught out. “We call each other Sister or Brother.”

  Rachel waited a few seconds, then, “Tell us about your home, Luke. I don’t mean for you to tell us where it is. It’s just that we’d like to know more about you.”

  He took another swallow of mead, then nodded decisively. “You have a right to know more, since you saved my life.”

  Mary met Rachel’s eyes briefly, a glance that exchanged their recognition of a small step forward, while Luke pulled in a deep breath and said, “My home is about three miles from the ocean in a river valley. It’s a small river, but the Doctor calls it the Jordan, and he calls our little valley Canaan. In the summer when the morning bell rings and the birds start singing, the mist comes up from the fields, and the hay smells so sweet . . . well, sometimes I think the Lord gave us a taste of heaven here on Earth.”

  Mary saw the shine of tears in his eyes, and she wanted to reach out and take his hand, so poignant was the silent cry of homesickness in his voice. She asked, “Can’t you go back to your valley?”

  “Yes, I can go back, and I will when I’ve done what I set out to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  The question seemed to put him on the defensive again. “I’ll tell you about it . . . someday.”

  Rachel asked, “Is this a family farm where you live?”

  “We’re not all family, except we’re all in the family of Christ.”

  “It’s a religious commune?”

  “I guess you could say that. We call our settlement the Ark, and just like Noah, the Doctor was warned by God in a vision.”

  “The Doctor? Who is he? Or is your doctor a woman?”

  Luke laughed at that. “No, he’s a man. He’s my uncle. My father’s brother. I was named for him.”

  “What kind of doctor is he?”

  Luke seemed perplexed. “Well, he’s a healer.”

  “Ah. Luke the beloved physician.”

  “Yes. He said it was his name that made him decide to be a doctor. He wanted to be a healer—to heal men’s bodies first, then to heal their souls. He and my father grew up in Portland. The Doctor worked among the worst of sinners—drunkards and whores and thieves. He brought a lot of them around to Jesus. Until he had the vision.”

  Rachel asked without a hint of skepticism, “What kind of vision?”

  “A vision from God. The Lord showed him Armageddon and told him it would come soon, said for him to take his loved ones and those who were truly reborn in Christ and find a place for them to live in His ways until Armageddon and until the Lord . . . comes to Earth again.”

  Mary was watching Luke’s face, and with that last phrase she caught a shadow in his eyes that she might have called doubt if it had lasted longer.

  Perhaps Rachel caught it, too. “Did the Doctor believe the second coming would follow the End—what he calls Armageddon?”

  Luke bristled. “It says it will in the Book of Revelation.” A hesitation while he eyed Rachel uncertainly. “You know that.”

  “I know the author of Revelation said that.”

  “Then it must be true.”

  “It depends on what you mean by true. Truth is not a simple thing. But you were telling us about the Ark. The Doctor found an ideal place for it, from the way you describe it.”

  Luke’s angular features eased into a smile. “He did, and only the Lord could’ve led him to it. It was six years before Armageddon when the Flock came to Canaan Valley. I was nine then, and I remember the building of the Ark: cutting trees, sawing logs for the houses and barns, putting up the beams and walls, making the furniture—and all with our own hands and the tools we could use with them. We didn’t use any machinery. The only things we had to buy were paint and nails, and we could’ve made the nails if we’d had the smithy finished.”

  Mary stared at him. “You have a smithy?”

  “Well, we have the building and equipment, but Brother Peter died in the Long Winter, and he was the only one who knew blacksmithing. But two of the brothers are trying to learn it. It’s in the Doctor’s books.”

  Rachel asked, “Does the Doctor have many books?”

  “Not nearly as many as you have here.” He glanced uncomfortably into the shadows at the bookshelves.

  “What kind of books does he have?”

  “Books about healing and crops and livestock. And the teaching books for the children. They came from schools, mostly, from the city.”

  Rachel seemed on the verge of pursuing that further, then took a sip of mead. “You were telling us about the building of the Ark.”

  He regained his animation at that. “It was a wonderful thing to see, and they let us kids help where we could. Well, first we built the church with a tall steeple for the bell. The church is in the center, and the households are built in a big circle around it, all twelve of them.”

  “The Doctor has an eye for symbolic numbers,” Rachel noted. “Does one family live in each household?”

  “More or less, but the people who didn’t have
families, and later the Barrens, were divided up to live with the families. There were about eight to each household in the beginning.”

  “Then there were nearly a hundred people in the Flock?”

  He nodded, staring into the fire. “There were ninety-five of us when we built the Ark, and a hundred and fourteen when Armageddon came. But after that . . .” He shook his head, and his eyes seemed to sink back in their deep sockets. “We didn’t even know what had happened, not for two days afterward. I always thought . . . well, it seems like we should’ve known. But the day of Armageddon was just another sunny day, when we looked back on it. Hot for September, an east wind blowing. The smoke came on the wind and covered the whole sky. We thought it was just a bad forest fire, but the Doctor’s radio went dead, so he and my father decided to go to . . . to the town south of us. They had the truck loaded up—”

  Rachel cut in, a little startled, “The truck?”

  “Yes. We just used it to go into town to trade vegetables and herbs for seed and lime and anything we couldn’t make for ourselves. Anyway, it was two days after Armageddon when my father and the Doctor headed for town in the truck. When they got to the highway—”

  Now it was Mary who interrupted him. “The truck started?”

  Luke shrugged. “Sure it did. It was over twenty years old, but we kept it in good shape.”

  “Oh, then it was built before electronic ignitions.” He gave her a puzzled look, but she didn’t try to explain EMP, instead asked, “What happened when your father and uncle reached the highway?”

  “Well, they didn’t see any cars, but about a mile down the highway they came onto a bunch of people—maybe twenty of them—walking south. The Doctor said they were like ghosts, all gray, their eyes dead, most of them sick or hurt. They told him they came from a place near Salem, and they’d seen the mushroom clouds over Salem and Portland before everything began burning. They said everywhere they’d been, they’d seen nothing but grief and death, and there were thousands of people like them, dying along the roads. Then one of them looked in the truck and saw the food, and they swarmed over it, clawing at each other like animals. That’s when the Doctor and my father left the truck and headed for home. As soon as he got back, the Doctor called us to the church and told us Armageddon had come. I remember the way he shouted out the news. I’ve never seen such joy in a man’s face. It was like he’d already looked on the countenance of God. And we thought. . .” Luke paused, frowning. “We thought we’d be leaving this world soon, that Jesus would come and lift us up to heaven. . . .”

  In the ensuing silence Mary waited for Luke’s conclusion, his explanation for what could only have been a monumental disappointment.

  At length, he took a shaky breath. “But the Bible says a day is like a thousand years unto the Lord. The time that came after that—the Long Winter—the Doctor said it was another test God made of us.”

  “Is that what you think?” Rachel asked quietly.

  He didn’t look at her. “The Doctor said it was.”

  And Luke was not going to deny the Doctor. Yet Mary was sure now that what she read in his eyes was doubt, if not denial.

  “It was a hard testing,” he went on dully. “Turned bitter cold in just a week, and we lost all the crops still in the ground. Most of our livestock died, and there wasn’t a single person in the Flock who wasn’t sick at least once that winter. Mom was one of the first to go. The Doctor said she had pneumonia.”

  Mary looked at Rachel, remembering that dark and terrifying season. She said, “We had our own Long Winter here.”

  “Did you? Was it dark all the time, like dusk at noon?” Then at her nod, “I thought the darkness was . . . just at the Ark.”

  Mary managed not to laugh at the naiveté of that. “The darkness covered all the northern hemisphere and probably part of the southern.”

  Luke’s jaw went slack. “How do you know that?”

  “Because some scientists predicted the nuclear winter many years before the End.”

  “Scientists? They predicted . . . the Long Winter?”

  Mary glanced at Rachel, but she remained silent. Mary said, “Yes, Luke, that’s part of what science is about—understanding things well enough to predict what they’ll do.”

  Luke seemed to consider that. But then he said, “So the Lord chose to further test everybody in the world.”

  “Just everybody in the northern hemisphere,” Mary replied irritably. “At least, with nuclear winter. Economic and social collapse, along with Lassa and other epidemics—I guess you might call that a testing.”

  Luke nodded, recognizing none of her irony. “The Doctor said all the world would be destroyed at Armageddon.”

  “And yet we’re still here—and so is the Ark.”

  “Yes. Those who survived are the chosen of Christ.”

  Mary was about to point out that the odds were high that most of the survivors in the world had never heard of Christ, but Rachel adroitly intervened. “Luke, how did the Flock survive the Long Winter?”

  A frown settled in on his features again. “A lot of us didn’t survive it. We made one of the households into a hospital, and it was always full. And with our fall crops and most of the livestock gone, we didn’t have enough food. It was a time of dying, everybody wasting away, always too cold, too hungry, too sick, too burdened down with grieving. Before the thaw came, we buried seventy people. And five newborns. The babies—they were all born sick or dead, one of them so strange, its mother went crazy. Oh, Lord, I couldn’t understand it! I couldn’t understand why—” The sudden outburst was as suddenly cut off. He looked down at his hand clenched on the wineglass, relaxed it. “It was a hard testing, and if it wasn’t for the Doctor leading us on through prayer and faith, none of us would be alive.”

  Mary rose and refilled his glass, as well as hers and Rachel’s. She felt his grief, a leaden ache under her ribs, knew it as she did her own. Yet she was thinking how ironic it was, his grief and his gratitude for life, when he clearly believed in a better life after death, perhaps even believed in an imminent apotheosis. She sat down on the floor again, asked, “What about your father? Did he die in the Long Winter, too?”

  Luke took a swallow of the mead. “This tastes like . . . when the women are making jam. No, my father didn’t die that winter. It was in the Blind Summer. He and I were the only ones left of our family then. My sister and brother passed on in the winter, too. I thought it was over for us, the dying. Then one day my father was out plowing, and the horse got spooked. He went around to her head to talk to her, but she bolted. Trampled him to death.”

  Neither Rachel nor Mary broke the silence for a time. Finally Rachel said, “Blind Summer is an apt term. The scientists predicted that, too.”

  He turned, surprised. “They knew the sun would get hotter?”

  “They knew the ultraviolet radiation would increase. The sun didn’t change, Luke. Nothing happening on this little pebble whirling around it could affect the sun. Oh, Mary, remember the headgear we rigged for our animals? But the wild animals . . . when I think of the suffering humankind inflicted on those millions of creatures—we had no right to do that. We might choose to destroy ourselves, but we had no right to destroy so many other creatures.”

  Luke objected, “But Armageddon—it was the Lord who brought down the fire from heaven to punish the sins of men.”

  Rachel let her annoyance show. “Those fires didn’t come from heaven. Human beings made those fires. I’d like to believe that any—that god is above all just. A just god wouldn’t make the innocent suffer so hideously with the guilty.” She waited, while Luke stared at her, doubt burning in his eyes, then she shook her head ruefully. “But I’m getting into theology again. Since you speak of the Ark in the present tense, I assume it survived. How many people live there now?”

  His mental shift of gea
rs was obvious. “How many? Well, there were fifty-three of us when I left.”

  Mary closed her eyes, and for a moment she felt dizzy. She was trying to imagine fifty-three human beings alive in one place. That was a community—a place where there was real hope for the future of humankind, a place where . . .

  But Rachel seemed to take that revelation and its potentials in stride. “Then you’ve had some increase since the End.”

  “Yes. We took in eight people who found their way to the Ark during the Long Winter. The Doctor said we had to take them in, since they were good Christians, and the Lord had led them to the Ark.”

  Rachel nodded. “You said you lost seventy of your maximum of a hundred and fourteen in the winter, and I assume you’ve had some deaths since. How many births have you had in the last ten years?”

  Luke didn’t answer immediately, again on the defensive, and Mary wondered why it should bother him to admit what was obvious and inevitable, considering what these people had suffered.

  Almost grudgingly, he said, “We’ve only had three babies live. The Doctor says the radiation made the women barren.”

  “And the men sterile,” Rachel pointed out. “You said the day of the End was sunny with an east wind? You must’ve had more fallout from the Willamette Valley than we did. Well, at least some of your flock are still fertile. You seem to be multiplying and bearing fruit, even if it’s slowly.” She paused, as if waiting for Luke to comment on that, then when he didn’t, she asked bluntly, “Are you one of the fertile males?”

  His cheeks reddened, but he answered the question. “Yes, I am.” He glanced fleetingly at Mary, and she felt within her an equivocal sensation that she identified as hope.

  It is possible, and she wondered if that made it inevitable.

  Rachel accepted Luke’s disclosure with a nod. “In that case, I’m surprised you left the Ark. I’d think you’d be too valuable to the Flock.”

  Mary thought irritably that Rachel made him sound like a prize stud, but she said nothing, and at length Luke replied, “Yes, I guess I am . . . valuable, but I had to go.”