by Jack Geurts
The brothers are shocked by this. They begin to back away from him, shaking their heads. Only Levi stays with Sim.
“Dude...”
“I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole.”
“That’s some eugenics shit.”
On a totally unrelated note, one of the brothers asks, “Hey, anyone seen Reuben?”
*
Inside the tent, everyone has been introduced and they’re sitting around the table. Which reminds me...
People back in these days didn’t have chairs and tables like we think of them today, where we sit up off the ground with our legs at right angles.
That’s not the way the ancient people of the Middle East sat. That’s not the way anyone sat. Unless you were a king, of course – then you could sit however the fuck you wanted to.
So when I say that everyone was sitting cross-legged on cushions around the table, the only people that it’s strange for are the king and his son. And you, dear reader, who may be reading this while seated in a chair of your own. Perhaps on a couch, or a train, or in class.
Perhaps in the driver’s seat of your car, barrelling down the freeway at a hundred miles an hour in the pouring rain – in which case, you should stop reading, put the phone down, and focus on the goddamn road, you maniac!
I digress...
So Jake’s is sitting directly across from Hamor, yeah? Six and twelve. Leah and Rachel are sitting on either side of him (ten and two). Dinah and Sheck are at nine and three, and two of Hamor’s guards round it out at five and seven.
It’s a totally anachronistic metaphor for their time (get it?) – since clocks won’t be invented for another few thousand years – and also for our time, since who the fuck uses an analogue clock anymore?
I should probably have just left it at ‘they’re all sitting around the table’ and been done with it. But it’s too late for that now. The digital ink is dry. There’s no going back.
Billie enters the tent from a side-flap, straightening her dress. Zillie, who’s been serving bread and wine for the entire table single-handed, whispers, “Where have you been?”
“What do you mean?” Billie says. “I told you I was going out in the field with the men today.”
“No, you...”
Before she can ask any further questions, Billie sets about helping her fill the wine cups. Zillie eyes her suspiciously.
Jake opens up the discussion by saying, “I gotta be honest, Hamor. The thought of this...” He pauses, the word tasting bad in his mouth. “...interracial marriage...doesn’t quite sit well with me.”
“Dad!” Dinah says.
“Jake!” Leah and Rachel say, in unison.
“No, it’s quite alright,” Hamor says. “I’ll admit it doesn’t sit right with me, either. You always want your son to marry one of your own.” He clarifies, “My own children, I mean. At the very least, a cousin.”
“No, I understood what you meant,” Jake says, as if it’s all perfectly normal.
“But they’re in love,” Hamor goes on. “How can we stand in the face of that?”
Sheck and Dinah smile at each other.
“That’s very mature,” Leah says. “I agree. Let’s forget the old notions of racial purity and move forward as one. Let the marriage of Dinah and Prince Sheck be a symbol of our peoples coming together.”
“Here, here!” Hamor says, raising his wine cup.
They all raise their cups, Jake a little more slowly and reluctantly than the others. He’s not on board with this, but one look at the armed guards on either side of Hamor – and the knowledge that there’s more waiting just outside – don’t give him much wiggle room.
“No one’s joining anyone!” says a voice.
With that, Sim enters the tent, followed by all his brothers (except Reuben).
Dinah fumes. “Get out of here, Sim!”
“No,” Sim says. “Not before I’ve said my piece.”
“I think you’ve said quite enough already...” Rachel looks around for someone but can’t find them. “Where the hell is Reuben?”
The brothers shrug and look around.
“Will someone get him out of here, then?” she says.
“No!” Sim steps forward. He looks at his dad. “You’re just gonna let this happen? Let your daughter get defiled by his foreign dick?”
The king gasps, offended. Sheck just ignores it. Jake says nothing.
“Enough!” Dinah says. “What is it with all this racial purity bullshit?”
“God said...”
“God said don’t fuck before marriage either, and we already did that.”
A stunned silence descends upon the room. Sheck is looking at her, wide-eyed in disbelief.
“That’s right,” Dinah says, a little more timidly. “I’ve already been, quote-unquote, ‘defiled’. As far as y’all are concerned, I’m damaged goods. No other husband would have me now.” She turns to Jake. “If you want me to help you build this great nation you’re supposed to be the father of, dad, then he’s the one I’m doing it with.”
Jake looks from her, to Sheck, to Sim – whose face is twisted up in a hateful rage.
“The die has been cast,” Dinah says. “The eggs have been broken. The ship has left port. Let’s try to roll a seven, make a nice omelette, have a safe voyage, or whatever other cliché you’d prefer. The point is – what’s done is done.”
Silence.
“Technically, also a cliché,” Leah whispers.
“Yeah, I know that, mom,” Dinah huffs.
Leah backs off, like, “Okay...”
At that moment, Reuben (Jake’s eldest son) enters the tent. He’s in a much better mood than everyone else – spritely, one might say – but he quickly senses the tension.
“Whoa, what’s going on in here?” he says. “Someone die?”
“Where the hell have you been?” one of the brothers asks.
“I told you, I was helping out around here today.”
Zillie, hearing this, shoots an accusatory look at Billie, who blushes and looks away.
Meanwhile, Hamor’s watching Sim very carefully. The second-born is basically trembling with rage by this point, like he could explode at any second.
“I’m a little worried about this guy,” the king says, pointing to Sim.
“You should be,” Sim fires back.
“Did you just threaten the king?” Hamor says, indignant.
“Are you the king?”
Hamor frowns, confused – as if under the impression he’s being tricked. “Why...yes, of course...”
“Then I’m pretty sure I just threatened the king.”
Boom.
Nice burn, Sim.
“Don’t worry about him,” Leah says.
Rachel adds, “He’s harmless. Just needs to blow off a little steam.”
“I do not!” says Sim.
“I don’t know...” Hamor says, concerned. “He seems like the kind of fellow who would go around to my enemies, put an army together, besiege the city and storm the palace, just so he could kill me and my son to repair his bruised ego.”
“How has his ego been bruised?” Dinah says, exasperated. “This has nothing to do with him.”
“It has everything to do with me! You’re my sister. We’re family. Like it or not, the person you choose to marry impacts all of us. You don’t see any of us marrying Canaanites, do you? And once you’ve done it, what’s to stop Joey from going, ‘Oh, well – Dinah did it, so I guess I can too?’”
“Why me?” Joey says.
Ignoring him, Sim continues. “What happens in a few generations when we’ve all taken Canaanite wives because suddenly it’s the norm? And then all our kids marry Canaanites. A few generations from now, our grandsons will still have their foreskins and they’ll all be worshipping Baal or whatever.”
Silence.
“So it’s...assimilation you fear?” Hamor says. “Losing your ethnic and cultural heritage, your uniqueness?”
; Sim huffs. “I guess...if you wanna get all fancy about it.”
Hamor takes a moment to think it over. “What if...now, this may sound crazy, but hear me out...what if we all agreed to undergo circumcision? Would that make this wedding easier to swallow?”
Dinah interjects, “Hamor – you don’t have to...”
“No, it’s alright.” He turns back to an intrigued Sim. “If we are assimilated to you instead of you to us, would that be agreeable to you?”
Sim looks around the room, stunned by the turn of events. He isn’t prepared for this at all. “Uh, yeah...I guess.”
“Great!” Hamor says, with a grin and a clap of his hands. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
*
So the very next day, anyone with a penis makes their way out through the gates of Shechem in single file. Judging by the looks on their faces, they aren’t exactly thrilled about the king’s royal decree.
Up ahead, Sim is waiting with his brothers by a cluster of ‘surgery tents’ where the foreskin cutting will commence. Sim has a sinister, almost lustful smile on his face as he sharpens his circumcising knife, saying, “Come on, fellas – don’t be shy.”
Needless to say, it’s making the Shechemites a wee bit nervous as they approach.
It’s also making his brothers think that it isn’t just pride, racism or a weird covetousness over their sister that is motivating Sim’s actions, but something deeper. Something darker...
One by one, the Shechemites disappear into the tents, and for the rest of the day, their screams can be heard all the way to the throne room of Hamor.
The king listens as he stands by his window and watches the mass circumcision take place down below. Prince Sheck walks up alongside him and says, “You sure about this, dad? You’re sacrificing an awful lot just for me.”
“It’s not just for you,” Hamor says, mysteriously. “It’s for all of us.”
Sheck frowns, and Hamor goes over to pour himself a goblet of wine.
“Sim was right to be worried about assimilation,” he says. “But little does he know, circumcision won’t help anything. Now, it’ll be even harder to tell his people apart from ours, and over time, we’ll consume them. By marriage and trade, we’ll take their flocks, their servants, their riches. We aren’t becoming them, they’re becoming us – they just don’t know it yet.”
“Jesus...” Sheck says. “That’s brilliant. Were you planning that the whole time?”
“I had it in my back pocket in case things got desperate. Besides, circumcision’s not so bad. It’s cleaner, makes your dick look bigger. Less likely to get an STD.”
“I s’pose,” Sheck says. He considers something. “Although...you and me’ll have to get circumcised, too.”
Hamor shrugs. “Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette.”
*
Three days later, everyone (including the king and the prince) has been circumcised, and the local economy has more or less ground to a halt while they recover.
Still, Sim begins to suspect that he may have gotten the short end of the stick.
He sees Dinah overjoyed as she plans her wedding.
He sees his brothers talking to the local women, who are out doing the work their husbands would normally do.
Shit, even Jake’s come around on the whole idea. Sim can already see him warming to the idea of a Canaanite concubine. He’s even heard his dad say to Leah, “This must be a sign from God. He must want us to stay here and assimilate with the local population. It’s like a shortcut. Instead of waiting generations, we’ve grown into the quadruple digits overnight.”
Finally, Sim snaps, and goes to sit with Levi by the fire. “Something’s wrong here, man. I can smell it.”
Levi gives a dismissive wave. “You’re just pissed because you got what you wanted and people are still happy.”
“Jeez, you make me sound like some kind of Grinch.”
“Well...” Levi says, leaving the sentence open-ended while he warms his hands.
Sim takes a pull from his wineskin, thinking deeply. “It’s just...it’s too easy. You saw how long it took Hamor to play the circumcision card? That motherfucker had it ready to go when he came in. He was planning on it.”
“Then why’d you agree to it?”
“Because I didn’t realise it at the time. I was too caught up in...”
“Wanting to kill some foreign people so bad that you leapt on the opportunity to cut a few thousand foreskins off?”
Sim doesn’t know what to say.
“You really need to work on that, man,” Levi says.
“Which? The racism or the bloodlust?”
“Both, ideally. And you might wanna shine a light on whatever weird thing you’ve got going on with Dinah. I mean, I’m here – if you wanna talk about it.”
Sim gets defensive. “What weird thing? I don’t have a weird thing with Dinah.”
“Involving yourself in her sex life, her wedding plans? That’s her business, man. How does it affect us?”
“I thought I made a fairly compelling point the other day as to exactly how it affects us. Now are you gonna help me, or not?”
“With what?”
Sim doesn’t know what, exactly. Not yet, anyway. He takes another pull from the wineskin. Alcohol will help him think.
He looks out at the people milling around. Women, mostly. One guy is getting around on crutches, a pained expression on his face.
That’s when it hits him.
“It just hit me!”
He looks over at his brothers, flirting with a group of Canaanite women.
“Get the boys drinking,” Sim says. “Then meet me over there, where that guard tower is. Do you see it? Do you see it?!”
“Yeah, I see it. Jesus...”
“Meet me over there when it gets dark.”
*
When it gets dark, the suggestible (and now quite drunk) Levi meets his brother over by the guard tower built into the city wall. Up above, an archer is hobbling around, still pained by the circumcision. For some reason, he’s singing – and not singing well.
Sim is standing at the base of the wall, and he beckons Levi over, trying to hurry him up.
“Jesus, are you drunk?” he says, when Levi gets close.
“No,” Levi says, stifling a giggle. “And don’t call me Jesus.”
Sim lets out a frustrated sigh. “Goddamn it.”
“Well, you told me to...”
“I told you to get them drinking. I didn’t tell you to drink. Christ, Levi, I need you sharp.”
He begins digging around in his pack for something.
“Well...” Levi shrugs, then gets distracted by the guard’s awful singing up above. “What is he doing?”
“He’s practising his solo for Canaan’s Got Talent,” Sim says. “The judges will not be kind to that man.”
Finding what he’s looking for, Sim removes a grappling hook and looks up, judging the distance and timing the patrol of the guard. He hurls it when the guard is right in front of the window.
The grappling hook soars through the air, into the window, and catches the guard in the throat. Sim pulls back sharply and the hook pins him to the wall. The singing instantly cuts out and is replaced with a horrible gurgling sound instead.
Using the wall (and the guard’s neck) as an anchor point, Sim and Levi climb the rope into the guard tower, daggers in their teeth. As they clamber inside, Levi looks upon the mangled remains of the guard’s neck. His eyes are still moving – he’s still gurgling a little.
“Jesus...” Levi says. “First the circumcision, now this...”
But Sim’s already by the door, checking to make sure the coast is clear. “That guy’s singing was more violent than anything we’ve done to him. Besides, he sounds better now.” Sim looks back at Levi. “Grab his sword. Let’s go.”
Levi does as he’s told and they proceed along the walkway atop the city walls, ducking in and out of torchlight. After stealthily taking out a
nother guard and stealing his sword, Sim and Levi make their way down to ground level...
*
A few hours before dawn, Sim and Levi return to the camp to find their brothers still up drinking – talking loudly and roaring with laughter. As they come into the light of the fire, the brothers see that Sim and Levi are exhausted, breathing heavy.
They’re also covered in blood.
“Jesus, what the fuck happened to you guys?”
Sim and Levi don’t respond. They just stand there, as if at any moment, they might fall down flat.
Finally, Sim says, “You guys, uh... you guys wanna loot some shit?”
The brothers look at each other.
If they were sober, they might have been a bit more rational. A bit more level-headed. But these are some Bronze Age barbarians. Add liquor into the mix, it doesn’t take a whole lot to nudge one of them from ‘fun night around the campfire’ to ‘Viking pillage’. Get a bunch of them together, forget about it.
In unison, the brothers turn back to Sim, like, “You bet your blood-soaked tunic we do.”
So they all grab their weapons – one of them asking, “Where the fuck is Reuben?” – and head through the now-open gates of Shechem. They begin going door to door, taking all the valuables, the livestock, the food, waking women and children and taking them into captivity.
It doesn’t take the brothers long to realise that every single man in the city is dead. It takes them even less time to realise why.
As the men lay sleeping or otherwise bed-bound with pain while they recovered from their circumcision, Sim and Levi went door to door slitting throats.
An act of heroic, manly valour if ever they’d seen one.
Jude is paired up with Levi, and as he enters his first house to behold what his big brother has done, he turns to him.
“Jesus Christ – how the fuck did he get you to go along with this?”
The older man looks guilty and ashamed. “I don’t know. He said it was a pre-emptive strike. They’d do the same to us if they got the chance.” When Jude just stares blankly back at him, Levi gets defensive. “It was convincing, alright?”
Jude just shakes his head...
...then proceeds to loot the house and take the dead man’s family as his own personal slaves.
