Wives of the Flood

by Vaughn Heppner

  Ham squinted. Far away it rained. He took a deep breath. There was no land anywhere on Earth. Only they lived. No birds or creatures that walked on land had survived the dreadful doom, the wrath of Jehovah. Only what remained on the Ark among land animals lived, in the entire world. Sobering, sobering…Ham turned away, shaking his head.

  It was always too much.

  A hand squeezed his shoulder.

  “It won’t last forever,” Noah said.

  “Why everyone and everything?” Ham asked.

  “Wickedness had reached a dreadful pitch.”

  “It didn’t seem that bad, Father. I-I mean, it was bad, but this?”

  Noah nodded. “None of us is holy, my boy. We’re human. We sin. We’re stained by sin. We don’t realize the awfulness of sin, how terrible it really is. Our very sin blinds us to its wretchedness. But someday… someday there will be no more sin. The Redeemer will pay for our sins. Those of us who believe will thus be saved from Sheol, from the Lake of Fire, the second death, just as we’re saved from the end of our world.”

  “I wasn’t that much better in terms of sin than those who perished,” Ham said.

  “Nor I either,” Noah said, “not when compared to Jehovah’s holiness. It was His grace that saved us, that will redeem us in ages to come. Because you believe in the One to Come, Ham, and have turned from rebellious sinning, repented, that is why you were saved now and will be on that Day.”

  For a time Ham was silent.

  Noah cleared his throat. “You said it was too hot below?”

  “The blankets on the hippos and behemoths dried out again, while condensation has pooled on the walls.”

  “How much humidity?” Noah asked.

  “I think we should open to half.”

  Noah considered it and finally opened his window to half.

  “I’ll do the other side,” Ham said.

  “Maybe you should have your mother check your forehead first.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  Noah clapped him on the back and began to work along the walkway, levering open one half of each of the cubit-wide windows. Ham climbed down the chute, went to the windows on the other side and adjusted each of them.

  As the air circulated from these top-level windows, the cooler outside air sank to the bottom of the Ark and was warmed as it did. The hot bottom air rose and thus cycled easily out the windows. All this was helped of course by the push of the pistonlike action of the moon-pool. What had surprised Ham the most about the air circulation was the constant need to get rid of heat, the heat generated by the thousands of animal bodies. At times, he imaged the Ark as a floating lump of charcoal, radiating heat to the outside watery world.

  Finished with the chore, Ham ambled to Gaea’s tiny herb garden. His mother squeezed among tabled rows of potted, slotted plants. She wore a white dress and a concentrated scowl as she sprinkled water from a can. As the Ark swayed, she kept easy balance, although she always kept a hand on a table.

  Ham breathed deeply, drinking in the garden-like odor. Gaea could always be found here. He didn’t blame her. If one discounted the constant back and forth ship-sway, the greenery and smell here made it feel like you were back on the ground, back in the world they knew.

  “Ham! What happened to you?”

  He opened his eyes at her touch.

  She fussed over the angry knot and guided him into the next room, making him lie down on the cot. She put a damp rag over his forehead and bade him drink hot broth. After she checked his forehead, she asked questions about how his head felt, any dizziness, ringing in his ears, had he vomited, those sorts of things.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “I think you should go to your room and sleep. You may have a concussion. I’ll send Rahab to check on you.”

  He nodded, but that hurt his head. He wondered if that was his mother talking him into feeling the pain. But he did as ordered and shuffled to his room. The tiny cubicle held a cot, some paintings on the wall, a porthole open at the moment, two sea chests and several of Rahab’s dresses lying on the pegged-down table and chairs.

  He picked up a kitten sleeping on the bed and lay down, with it purring on his chest.

  His eyes fluttered later as the door opened and closed.

  “Ham! What happened to your head?” Rahab asked, kneeling beside him.

  He winced. The knot throbbed, worse not better. He told her what had happened as she held the kitten, stroking it.

  Then he noticed that her eyes were puffy. “Rahab, why have you been crying?”

  She squeezed the kitten to her breasts and looked away.

  “Rahab,” he said gently, touching her shoulder. “What is it?”

  Tears leaked from her eyes.

  “Oh, Rahab. Darling. Please, tell me what’s wrong.”

  She set down the kitten, which mewed, and held onto him. “Oh, Ham,” she said, weeping. “I’m barren. Barren!”

  He stroked her back. All the wives of the sons of Noah were barren.

  “Europa is pregnant,” she said.

  Ah. For just a moment his hand stopped. Then he stroked her back again. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, isn’t that good news?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Did you talk to Gaea about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rahab.” He held her shoulders and then wiped one of her tears. “What did mother say?”

  “She laughed.”

  “Mother did?”

  Rahab nodded.

  Ham had wondered before how they were going to repopulate the world when none of their wives had ever borne children.

  “I told her it wasn’t a laughing matter,” Rahab said.

  “No,” Ham said. “What did mother say then?”

  “That children are gifts from Jehovah. That the reason Europa, Ruth and I have been barren all these years is because Jehovah has closed our wombs. But once in the New World she feels that Jehovah will surely open them.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “Oh, Ham, how can I be certain I’ll ever have children? Europa is pregnant and I’m sure Ruth soon will be too. But what about me?”

  Ham grinned, and he wiped away another tear, and then a second. He lifted her chin and kissed her lightly. “You want a baby, is that it?”

  “Yes,” Rahab cried.

  “If Europa is pregnant then maybe you soon will be too.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Let’s find out,” he said, drawing her into bed with him.

  18.

  Europa touched her stomach as she moved to the next stall and slid aside a wooden slat, pouring grain into a chute. Pregnant. That’s what she was. Jehovah had answered her prayers. And yet…

  With a callused hand, she picked up the feed pail, shuffling to the next stall and repeating the slat-opening procedure and the pouring of grain. The big ship shifted underneath her, but she had long ago developed her sea legs.

  There would be no attendants helping her during the pregnancy or assisting when the baby was born. Like a peasant, like a wild beast of the field, she had to rise and work regardless of her pregnancy and wear herself out in drudgery. For so many years, she had envisioned it otherwise. She had scrimped and saved and one by one secured the freedom of her enslaved siblings. Her father would have been proud—he had taught her well.

  “That’s nothing now,” she whispered, heading to the storage room for more grain.

  The Flood had seen to that. Everything was gone and forever wiped out. What sort of world would she bring her baby into?

  “You shan’t be a king or a queen, my baby.”

  They were peasants, a handful of them in the entire world, grunting like animals as they scrabbled to survive. If that wasn’t enough trouble, her husband brooded, his mind absorbed with spurious calculations and speculations. In the world to come a man like Ham, strong, inventive and cunning, would be better suited than her husband who wa
s erudite, a deep thinker and given to pursuing the silliest of notions. A straightforward brute like Ham thrived in worlds needing hard work and a passionate zeal to win. Men like Japheth needed people who respected philosophic acumen. Lately he had become absorbed with a need to record everything for posterity. She shook her head. What good was a writer in a world devoid of readers?

  “Endure,” she whispered, listening as she rattled grain into her bucket. If she couldn’t be a queen, she could at least train her children to become royalty; or perhaps her grandchildren could be rulers.

  She grimaced, realizing that she was back where she had started: plotting for her relations to rise in the world. The first time her brothers and sisters had forgotten all her hard efforts. She wondered if it would be the same with her grandchildren.

  “Not if I can help it,” she said, touching her stomach again, marveling that after all these years she was finally with child.

  It almost seemed like a miracle.

  Perhaps it was.

  It gave her hope, of sorts. But she had been so long without hope. Would it prove enough?

  19.

  The knot had almost disappeared when Ham knocked on his oldest brother’s cabin door. Gaea had told him to fetch Japheth. Ham knocked again. He’d searched all over the second deck, Japheth’s area of supervision, and hadn’t been able to find him.

  “Japheth,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the wood.

  He glanced both ways along the narrow passageway. Where had Japheth hidden himself?

  Ham tested the latch. Open. So he popped the door a crack and peered in. No one was here. His eye widened. Pegged to the further wall was a small table and chair. In a hole in the table was a cup and beside it an upright quill and a papyrus roll.

  Although Ham knew that Japheth would be angry, his curiosity won out. He stepped in, closed the door, shuffled to the stand and saw scrawled: My Journey on the Ark.

  Ham removed the wooden lid and found the cup a quarter-full with octopus ink. The ostrich quill was cut for writing and stained at the tip. Ham slipped a scroll from its leather tube and unrolled it enough to feel that this was top grade papyrus.

  He idly scanned it, noting there were entries dated such as Ark, Day 15, or Ark, Day 103. He went to the beginning and read the first entry.

  Ark, Day 1: Today the Old World ends. There is lightning, geysers, earthquakes and rain! How it pours. The drum of it beats doom to the earth.

  Trust Japheth to have a pretentious style. Ham unrolled more.

  Ark, Day 17 caught his eye: Terror and horror upon horrors froze all emotions today with stark fear. Rain lashes, whirlpools swirl and the Ark scraped over a mountain. The grind made Ham’s face look like a skull. He needed a drink. We all did. I vomited my lunch. Even father paled. Shem fell to his knees and prayed aloud. There was grinding, groaning and the scrape of doom. Ham and I ran down stairs, ducking beams, blabbering. He picked up boards. I grabbed a hammer and nails. The grinding sound, the awful sound, when would it end? We reached the bottom and watched, waiting for a breach and water to geyser and end our days.

  Then, thank the Holy One, the Ark slid off the mountain. The grinding stopped. Boards clattered and Ham sank to the floor, weeping. I laughed like a maniac, glad to be alive and not drowning in doom.

  Please, O Jehovah in Heaven, don’t give any more days like this.

  Ham pursed his lips, debating picking up the quill and blotting ink all over the entry. He hadn’t been crying. He had been terrified, and relieved once the Ark floated normally. But weeping?

  Ark, Day 41: Hallelujah! The rain has stopped.

  Ark, Day 46: It rained again, but not the savage downpour of before. This is a local phenomenon. Thank Jehovah for that. As the first drop hit, dread that it would never end filled me. Father says that one day we will walk on dry land again. I pray he is right.

  Ark, Day 61: One would think that long exposure might build up a tolerance to this existence. It isn’t so, at least not for me. I loathe narrow corridors, cramped rooms and close air. To run again until sweat pours out of me and I’m gasping, to swing my arms without bumping into wood, I ache for it. The animal noises drive me mad. Never is there peace, a moment of silent repose. How long, O Jehovah, will this last? I’m thankful of course that You saved me, that I’m not dead and doomed, but isn’t this the next thing to being a corpse? Dry up the Earth, dear Jehovah, please, I beg this of You. Noah said You have saved us, but saved us from what? This isn’t life.

  Ark, Day 72: Europa is troubled. She says I sit and stare out the porthole too much. Ah, dear wife, you must let me be, let me be. I gaze for freedom. I imagine myself as a seagull or eagle soaring in the clouds, free to stretch, to roam and to escape these constricting corridors. Sometimes I grow queasy when I awake from sleep, knowing I must tramp yet another day up and down these creaking, groaning corridors, checking the creatures, bumping into the walls and speaking to the same people again as I have for weeks on end. When, oh when, will we land?

  Ark, Day 85: O what a glorious sight I saw—an entire pod of whales. From my porthole, I witnessed the geyser of water and the sprouting of huge heads. Entranced, I watched them pass, each beast rising in turn and moving through the worldwide sea.

  That answers one of my questions. Sea creatures have survived the cataclysm. I wonder now if we could fish for food. Success seems unlikely. The vast volume of water means that the surviving fish will be scattered in tiny pockets. Perhaps they will be curious of us and come near.

  Thank you, O Jehovah, for letting me see the whales. The sight gives me hope. May this hope continue to spring eternal.

  Ark, Day 90: Ah, this is interesting indeed. The Ark plows through a vast mat of vegetation. Leagues upon leagues of it have clumped together to form a seeming land bridge of seaweed. The waves, I suspect, have forced together the flotsam of a dead world.

  I went to the moon-pool and with a long line and hook dragged up pieces of the seaweed. Roots had sprouted from the various plants. Wedded to the fifth piece of seaweed I found insect eggs. This is significant. Once and if the water recedes, plants will grow again all over the world and insects will undoubtedly hatch after the ground dries out—Noah says it will so it must, for father is never wrong. Didn’t my father predict the Flood? But I digress. What I find most interesting— Ham looked up as the latch rattled. With a guilty start, he rolled up the volume and slipped it into its leather tube.

  Japheth came up short as he stepped into the room and as Ham set the volume on the desk. They stared at one another. His tall brother glanced at the volume and then back into his eyes. Japheth’s face turned crimson and then pale and darker crimson again as his nostrils flared.

  “Thief!” Japheth cried.

  “Thief?”

  Japheth lunged, grabbed him by the tunic and shoved him against the wall. “What are you doing in my room?” he shouted, spraying spittle.

  “I was looking for you.”

  With eyes reddening like a berserk bull, Japheth shook him. “You read it, didn’t you?”

  “Let go of me.”

  “Thief!” Japheth cried. He shook Ham harder, bumping his shoulders against the wall.

  Ham shot his hands up between Japheth’s arms, knocking off his brother’s hands. Japheth snarled. Ham shoved him in the chest. His brother staggered across the small room and thumped against the door.

  Japheth’s eyes widened with rage.

  “If you’re going to get mad than so should I,” Ham said. “I wasn’t crying. It was sweat. I was sweating from running down the stairs. If you’re going to keep a journal than at least write the truth about me.”

  “What?” Japheth shouted. “What?”

  “When the Ark slid across that mountain,” Ham said. “You and I ran below, remember? You said when the Ark slid off I started crying. That’s a lie. I was sweating.”

  Japheth shrieked and leapt across the room. Ham’s reaction was automatic. He didn’t hit his brother because he knew his father w
ould be furious. He wrestled Japheth into a headlock. Japheth raged, squirming, forcing Ham to lock harder.

  “Settle down, will you?” Ham said. “Get ahold of yourself.”

  Japheth was incapable of speech, which gave Ham an inkling of what he’d done. Japheth was the family thinker. He prided himself on logical thought, on keeping his composure at all times.

  “I’m going to let you go,” Ham said. “But if you come at me again I’ll put you in another headlock.”

  Japheth panted, silent.

  Ham let go and stepped for the door, although he faced his brother.

  Red-faced, Japheth straightened and glared at Ham.

  “I’m sorry,” Ham said.

  Japheth squinted.

  Ham wanted to tell him again that he hadn’t been crying. Then he noticed tears welling in his brother’s eyes. He looked away, and he darted out the door and hurried down the corridor. He wondered how Japheth would enter this in his volume.

  20.

  After that, neither Japheth nor Ham talked to each other. It was most noticeable at the family table. The eating quarters were in a long, narrow room and with a narrow table. Japheth and Ham had taken to sitting at opposite ends.

  As Shem and his wife rose from the table one day, Gaea said, “Ham, Japheth, I want the two of you to wait.”

  Noah excused himself and so did Rahab and Europa.

  When the door closed, Gaea motioned them. “I can’t keep swiveling my head to talk with each of you.”

  Reluctantly, Ham rose and slid to the middle. So did Japheth. They sat beside each other and across from their mother.

  “This must end,” Gaea said.

  Neither Japheth nor Ham offered a word.

  “You’re the oldest, Japheth,” Gaea said.

  Japheth held up a thin-fingered hand, the tips stained with octopus ink. “He trespassed and used property he had no right touching.”

  “He did go at my request,” Gaea said.