The First Detect-Eve

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  Adam’s eyes flashed with anger and blame. I was the one who’d gotten us into this, he must have been thinking; how dare I try to ruin what little hope he had left? “Maybe He was only trying to teach us a lesson,” he said. “Maybe He’ll see how much I love Him and how sorry I am, and He’ll let us back in.”

  I noticed he hadn’t said “how much we love him” or “how sorry we are,” but I couldn’t fault him for that. It would have been a lie to include me. “We’ve been out here for eighteen winters,” I said. “That’s a pretty long lesson, Adam.”

  He glared at me, clenching his fists at his sides. I had seen that expression often since the Eden debacle; he had never hit me, but every time I saw that look, I was certain he wanted to. “Maybe if you’d even try to learn it, we could return,” he said coldly. “Maybe if you’d make the slightest effort to earn His forgiveness.”

  “Like teaching our boys to kill?” I snapped. “Is that the kind of effort that will get us back to paradise?”

  “It was no worse than killing a goat for supper!” shouted Adam. “Not once did I give them the idea it was right to kill another man!”

  “I guess they just figured it out for themselves,” I said.

  Adam kicked the dirt and released an incoherent roar of rage and frustration. “You don’t understand!” he said. “Sacrifice is not about killing! It’s meant to show God how much we love Him by giving up something we worked hard for! Something we need!”

  “How long have you been doing this?” I said, lowering my voice the way I do when I’m so angry I could burst.

  All of a sudden, he looked sheepish. “Since we left Eden,” he said, not so furious anymore.

  I nodded, holding his gaze, making him squirm. He deserved it. “So, for all this time, you’ve been going off behind my back,” I said. “Killing goats and sheep and who knows what else...taking food from your family’s mouths...because according to your demented mind, this will somehow get us back to Eden.”

  “If I had told you,” he growled, “you would have tried to stop me.”

  “As if that wasn’t bad enough,” I said, “you taught our children to do it! Taught them to kill for no good reason!”

  “I did it for all of us! I wanted the boys to grow up in Eden!”

  “And now look where it’s gotten us,” I hissed. “One son dead. The other missing. Maybe dead, too. Nice job, Adam.”

  His eyes flared, and for a moment, I thought the rage was going to resurface. I wondered if it could be strong enough to make him kill...if it had already made him kill.

  Then, the fire died in his eyes, and he hung his head. “I won’t apologize for paying tribute to God,” he said, “but I’m sorry I never told you. I should have told you.”

  It wasn’t enough to smooth things over, not by a long shot. “What else have you been doing behind my back?” I said. “How can I ever trust a word that comes out of your mouth? How can I ever forgive you?”

  “How?” said Adam, looking up at me with a gaze of icy clarity, a gaze that cut right through me. “The same way I forgave you for what happened in Eden.”

  I was shaken, but not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. “You’ve never forgiven me,” I said bitterly. “I know you. I see it in your eyes.”

  “What you see in my eyes,” said Adam, “is disappointment. Because you’ll deny it until the day you die, but you’re the one who blames me for Eden. For not protecting you. For not fighting harder for you.”

  I just stared at him as he spoke, incredulous.

  “And for that, Eve,” he said quietly, “for that, I do apologize.”

  With that, he shrugged and walked away, leaving me to fume...and think about what he’d said.

  Now, listen: I don’t give him much credit sometimes, because he doesn’t often deserve it, but once in a while, he has a way of cutting through the crap and laying something out there that I didn’t even see.

  And this, though I’d never admit it to his face, was one of those times.

  *****

  The next morning, we packed some provisions in a goatskin bag and set out on a journey to search for Cain. Adam and I agreed that no matter what the outcome might be, we had to find out what had happened to our son.

  Five days had passed since we had last seen him. He certainly wasn’t anywhere near our camp; between drinking bouts over the last day or two, Adam had wandered all around our home, calling Cain’s name in case he was alive and poking at bushes and patches of high weeds in case he was dead. There was no sign of him.

  If he wasn’t nearby, he could be anywhere...but Adam and I got the idea that if he was alive, he might be at one place in particular: our old home, where we’d lived with Cain before Abel was born.

  After I’d had Abel, I’d convinced Adam we should move, because, frankly, it was too close to Eden, and who wants to be reminded of that disaster every day of their lives? Cain never forgot the place, though; he called it “Nod” (it might have started with “no,” which he screamed repeatedly when we dragged him away from there) and he talked about it his whole life the way Adam obsessed over the Garden. Maybe he remembered it as being so perfect because he was an only child there and didn’t have any competition for our love...but I can’t say for sure. Despite how things turned out with Abel in the end, despite the fact that Cain was mostly a big grouch, he never seemed to hate his brother. They fought like brothers do, but no worse than most I’ve seen in the years since.

  Nod was over a day’s walk from our current camp, so we left as soon as the sun came up. In spite of the distance, it wouldn’t be a difficult walk in terms of terrain; nevertheless, I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  I had no idea what the trip would bring. Would we stumble upon our elder son’s corpse...or would we find him alive, only to learn definitively that he was a murderer? And if he was, what then? Could I bear to punish my only remaining child? And did he even deserve to be punished? There were no laws in the world back then, other than “Don’t eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in Eden”; the thought of what Cain might have done filled me with rage and the desire for retribution...but would it really merit punishment? And if it did, what should the nature of the punishment be? The only serious punishment we had experienced was exile; perhaps, by leaving home, Cain had already punished himself.

  Unless, of course, Adam had killed Abel, and the reason Cain was gone was that Adam had killed him, too. In which case, this trip could turn out to be dangerous for me personally.

  To be honest, I didn’t really think Adam was the killer...but I had to stay on guard, given what I’d just found out about his years of secret sacrifices. If he could cut open one animal after another in a delusional frame of mind, and do it behind my back, I had to consider the possibility that he was capable of sacrificing not only his own boys, but his wife.

  Which was why, under my knee-length goatskin, I wore a sharpened flint dagger tied with sheep-gut cord to my upper leg.

  *****

  Adam and I walked all day, sweating and puffing beneath the hot summer sun, stopping only when we came to a stream or needed a drink of water from the goatskin bag he carried.

  Though it had been many winters since either of us had been through this particular region, we remembered enough landmarks between the two of us that we were able to find our way. It was a welcome distraction, piecing together the route, recalling our journey from Nod to the new camp; it kept my mind off the troubles at hand, at least a little...and believe it or not, it even got us laughing as we reminisced.

  I say “believe it or not” because Adam and I hadn’t laughed together--or done other things together, if you know what I mean--in a very long time...and I’m talking about long before Abel’s death. Do the math: our youngest child was fifteen winters old, and we had no way to prevent pregnancy back then. We didn’t even know what caused it.

  In other words, Adam and I weren’t exactly the picture of togetherness. Imagine my surprise, then, when we ended
up telling stories and laughing...and, later, when he wiped a tear from my cheek as I cried about my boys.

  I can’t tell you how long it had been since he’d kissed me, but he even did that. And I let him.

  It happened that night, when the two of us were lying side-by-side on the grass, staring up at the starry sky. The air was thick with the sweet smell of lush, leafy greens and night-blooming flowers. The trickle of a nearby stream intermingled with the buzzing of insects and the croaking of frogs. The ground was hard beneath us, but we shared a rolled-up fur for a pillow under our heads.

  “What a beautiful night,” he said, pulling my attention away from thoughts of Cain and Abel. “Just like Eden.”

  I always wished he would stop dwelling on Eden...but I decided to indulge him this once. “Yes,” I said. “It gives me a good feeling.”

  Adam chuckled. “Remember how God used to make the stars dance for us? And the angels would lift us high above the Garden, up up up, and carry us among them as they flickered and swirled?”

  I smiled. “That was pretty amazing,” I admitted.

  “Look!” said Adam, jabbing a finger at the sky. “Look there!”

  I just caught it out of the corner of my eye: the flash of a falling star against the blackness of the sky. “There’s another one,” I said, spotting a second streak of light.

  “And right after we were just talking about them!” Adam said with childlike exuberance. “Wow!”

  “Quite a coincidence,” I said, watching for more flashes overhead.

  Adam propped himself up on his elbow and smiled down at me. “Maybe it was a sign,” he said. “Maybe everything will work out okay, after all.”

  Staring up at him, I didn’t share his hope for a moment. With Abel dead, it was too late for things to work out okay.

  But I have to admit, as he looked down like that, I saw the old sparkle in his eyes, the one from before we’d left Eden. He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t depressed, he wasn’t dying inside.

  He reminded me of the man I’d loved.

  Reaching up, I traced a finger over his lips, and he kissed it. Dipping his head lower, he pressed his lips against mine.

  And in spite of the fact that we were in the middle of an ongoing nightmare, with one son dead and one son missing...and we were far from home, with only each other to rely on...and the next day might bring us unguessable suffering...or maybe because of all that...

  We kissed. And more.

  As things heated up, I slid the dagger from my leg when he wasn’t looking and hid it under the goatskin bag. Unencumbered, I moved with my husband upon the earth, exploring his body as if for the first time.

  Everything that had come between us was forgotten, at least for a while. All my doubts and suspicions and fears about him were set aside. Inexplicably, unexpectedly, we had a night of actual happiness together.

  And I swear, though I might have been the only one who saw it, that the stars in the sky whirled around just like in the old days in Eden. At least a little.

  *****

  When we reached Nod the next day, I at first thought we had made a mistake in going there.

  Standing on the crest of a ridge, I gazed down into the fertile valley that had once been our home...and saw no sign of my missing son. Nothing but the glittering river snaking through the grassy plain, the stands of trees thickening into forest that carpeted the opposite slope.

  And, of course, the one sight that could completely derail Adam from our purpose. The land upriver, misty and twinkling in the distance, visible and reachable yet forever barred to us.

  Eden.

  Naturally, Adam’s gaze fixed on it as soon as we topped the ridge. Shading his eyes against the light of the midday sun, he stared longingly at the only place he could not enter in the world, the only place where he wasn’t welcome...the only place where he really wanted to be.

  “I think I see angels over the treetops,” he said breathlessly. “It’s hard to tell from here. Or are those griffins?”

  I knew he could have stood there all day, spying on paradise. He’d certainly done it often enough in the past.

  Which was one of the reasons I’d insisted we move.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing his arm, pulling him down the slope. “We need to get down there.”

  He resisted at first, then gave in with a sigh and another glance upriver. “Maybe we could go there next,” he said wistfully. “Just to have a peek from outside.”

  “And maybe we can get back in and get thrown out again for old times’ sake,” I said, dragging him into the valley. “In the meantime, why don’t we concentrate on finding our son?”

  Adam didn’t answer. When I glanced back at him over my shoulder, he was staring toward Eden again.

  I was feeling more charitable toward him after the night before, but I was still tempted to haul off and slap him across the face just then.

  *****

  The valley seemed just as deserted when we walked through it as it had when we’d gazed into it from above. We found nothing to suggest that anyone had been there recently--not a shelter, not the charred remains of a campfire, not even the bones of a fish or the rind of a piece of fruit.

  We walked along the riverbank, spread apart to cover more ground, but found no sign of human habitation. Even our old campsite looked as if no one had ever been there; everything had been picked clean, washed away, or covered over. It made me sad to realize how time could wear away every trace of a home that had once been the center of our lives. Our memories were all we had left of it, just as they were all we had left of Abel.

  At a rocky notch in the river, we crossed to the other bank to continue the search. We followed the bank well beyond the point where we’d descended into the valley, but turned up absolutely nothing.

  Unwilling to give up, I proposed that we double back in the direction of our old campsite, only this time cut through the edge of the forest. Adam cast an impatient look upriver toward you-know-where, then gave in with a heavy sigh and led the way.

  At my urging, we followed the treeline for quite a distance past the campsite. After a while, as afternoon leaned toward evening and this strategy proved no more fruitful than any other, Adam made a suggestion that didn’t come as a surprise to me.

  “Let’s go upriver,” he said. “Maybe Cain’s in Eden.”

  I covered my face with my hands and shook my head back and forth in frustration.

  “No, think about it,” said Adam. “What if it’s only you and I who can’t get back in? Maybe exile doesn’t apply to our children.”

  Lowering my hands, I rolled my eyes skyward. “What am I going to do with you, Adam?”

  “I can’t believe I never thought of it before,” he continued. “I’ll bet Cain’s in Eden.”

  At that moment, we both heard the crackling of branches and turned toward the forest...just in time to see Cain charging toward us.

  *****

  The instant I laid eyes on him, I knew we were in trouble.

  The expression on his face wasn’t one of joyful recognition. Clearly, he wasn’t running toward us because he couldn’t wait for a tearful reunion.

  Instead, his features were twisted in a grimace of rage. His eyes were glazed over, his nostrils flared, his teeth clenched and bared like a predatory beast’s. His long, black hair flew behind him as he ran, and his shaggy beard bounced against his chest, adding to the impression he gave of a ravenous animal on the attack.

  In one hand, he brandished a thick branch, swinging it overhead. He was naked, and he howled with violent purpose as he raced toward us.

  My heart pounded. In a matter of seconds, I flashed from shock and confusion to relief that he was alive to fear of what he might do to us...

  And resignation, for his appearance and behavior left no doubt in my mind that he had murdered his brother.

  *****

  As Cain’s club swung toward his head, Adam flung up his arms and deflected the blow. Without hesitation, Cai
n heaved the club back and swept it down into Adam’s side, then pulled it back again.

  Before he could swing it forward, I darted over and grabbed hold of the weapon with both hands, wrenching it back with all my strength. Cain roared and tried to yank the club free, but I managed to hold on.

  That gave Adam the seconds he needed to recover from the shock of Cain’s first blows. With a howl of his own, he lunged forward, slamming a shoulder into Cain’s chest, driving him back and down.

  As my husband and son dropped to the ground, Cain released the club. I had been tugging at it as hard as I could, and I stumbled a few steps back when it finally came free.

  The two of them grappled, rolling back and forth, each struggling to subdue the other. I looked on, waiting for a moment when I might need to intervene, holding on to the club with one hand.

  And keeping the other at my side, fingertips brushing the hard lump of the flint knife strapped under my goatskin. If it came down to it, if there was no other way, I would use it.

  And though I had never had to make such a difficult decision before, I had already made up my mind which one of them I would kill.

  In this way, though I didn’t think much of it at the time, I had already made the same leap as Cain. I had discovered that I, too, was capable of killing another person.

  *****

  Adam and Cain wrestled on the ground, the father at first holding his own against the son...but that quickly changed. Cain had the advantage of blind rage and wasn’t holding back, while Adam was more directed toward restraining his child than hurting him.

  Adam managed to force Cain under him and pin him to the ground...but Cain threw him off and reversed the position. Adam struggled, but Cain held both his wrists firmly against the earth, then plunged his head down upon Adam’s skull.

  Dazed, Adam stopped fighting; his head dropped to the dirt. Cain released one of his father’s wrists, then clenched his free hand into a fist and lashed it across Adam’s face.