Tempting

There was noise and violence in the valley last night. I saw lightning, but I heard no thunder. That was you.

Ok.

Ok?

Well, what should I say? I kill people all the time. ‘sin the job description. Your father’s as well..

Tell me something.

Before we are through here I’ll tell you many things…

Josh ignored this and asked:

Why?

Why?

Yes: Why?

If you really mean that, I’m disappointed. I really thought you had a bit more on the ball than that. It’s puzzling really. “Why.” You sound like one of them.

I AM one of them.

Is that really what you believe?

It’s what I’ve been told.

Told by who?

Told by the air, told by the people, told by the prophets and my brothers and sisters in the streets, and in the desert. Told by the writings of my father. Told by the truth that guides me even now, tonight.

No truth brought you to this cave boy. If you believe that anything happens here without benediction from your father and I, than perhaps you really are a man. Pity. We had expectations.

None though, that you thought you might share with me. The only child of the only supreme being, and I’m not even looped into the family business.

Oh, but you are. A different man would have seen the path and made his way. The things your father and I decide to do to, with, or for the race of men is for the two of us to decide. From you, we only require loyalty.

Loyalty and conquered lands. I will not be your hands and voice to take up swords and shout out threats. My father made me. He - of all people - understands the things I’m capable of.

That’s what you really think isn’t it? That he made you, and guides you, and knows all that will become of you?

If I’m wrong I pray you educate me. I haven’t been sleeping well and I’m running out things to pray about.

Very well. An education then. But not here in the baking desert. Let’s walk and talk, shall we?


They started out walking, but soon, gradually enough so that Josh didn’t notice right way, they began to float. Rising gently on the easy desert winds like a child’s balloon. Lu - as most good teachers will - began his lesson with a question.

When was the first time you realized that you were different than others?

As far back as I can remember. My mother likes to tell a story about the time the giant mammoths of Zanzibar came through the Old Road in Galilee. She and my father took me to see them, as did - it seemed - every family for every child in the entire country. The crowds in the square were the largest anybody could remember, even today. The merchants and whores of the village were overwhelmed by the onslaught of curious folk. It seemed to me, at the time, that there was a wine-steward every block and even in the hot noon-day men weaved and stumbled from drink. By the time the show began the crowd was wine-filled, passionate, and unruly.

A gigantic stage had been created, and it was there the great beasts were performing. Flanking them were the musicians, playing music without words and creating it on the spot, in synch with the animals. I was eleven months old, and I remember those two mammoths as if they were in front of us here, now. The wrangler had them stand at attention and climb onto one another, but - really - the beasts themselves were enough of a show. I would have stayed there with those amazing creatures for as long as they would have me, they dazzled me so. Unfortunately, my time there was cut short.

Lu knew what had happened but he let the boy continue in hushed, almost reverent, tones:

Just as the wrangler was preparing his final trick, disaster struck. The wrangler had meant to finish the show with a great amazement. A barker was brought out to rile the assembled and announce the surreal intentions of the beast-master:

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention if I may? For this next trick, I will need a volunteer from the audience. Who here would assist me with these wild and ferocious beasts? Who among you…

But he needn’t have continued. The crowd, numbering now - it seemed - in the tens of thousands, let go a mighty cry as one voices, and raised there hands up high. Jumping at the chance to play pretend with these alien land-leviathans. The barker, dressed from head to tow in black loose fitting linens, paused scratching his beard and acting out his decision. Within a few moments he addressed us once again:

Good people! We have our assistant. Thank you ALL!

Then he knelt at the front of the great stone edifice and was lost to sight for a few minutes. The crowd murmuring it’s wonder and swaying visibly from the grape, was just beginning to loose it’s collective patience when the barker spoke again:

Please welcome KIT! Our dear lovely girl!!

He held her up. She couldn’t have been a day over three and all wrapped in white linen. She was clapping and squealing as the Carney put her on display, waving her in little arcs at the edge of the stage. After the long cheers had subsided, the trick was prepared. The wrangler walked one of his beasts to the far right and the other to the far left so that they faced each other with the stage vacant, save for the wrangler himself. It was then, with the monsters arranged just so, that I really came to appreciate the sheer immensity of them. Both were at least 15 feet high at the shoulder, with ferocious looking tusks flashing downward, almost resting on the rocks. They looked about as invincible as anything alive and just being around them had put the crowd - myself included - into a sort of trance. What sort of benevolent deity would put it’s energies into the creation of an awful beast like this?

I remember the barker having a short conversation with a large man in the front row. They were pointing at the animals, and at the little girl, wandering the stage now and still squealing and clapping. She’d ranged to the far side of the stage by the time the wrangler got done talking. He looked surprised to see her so far away, and mimed a hands-on-hips disappointment before getting after her. She saw him and began to run the opposite direction. Running AT one of the mammoths and still squealing and clapping. I saw what was about to happen, and moments later, everyone else did as well. The mammoth stiffened somehow. A shock of muscle tension racked his mighty ribcage and the awful tusks were raised. As the child closed, the thing let out a low, lethal-sounding growl. The babe was doomed, and the crowd could only watch.

Then, all of a sudden, she wasn’t. A hand shot up from the crowd below us and grabbed the babe by the ankle. She tripped and fell but the hand gripped her fast. The mammoth bellowed, and was readying his attack, but another man, the one who’d been talking to the barker before the trick, had jumped up onstage and grabbed the girl while the wrangler moved to calm the raging pachyderm. The relief was an audible “whoooooo,” from the assembled and a comfy, grateful buzzing began. The man was - of course - the father of the child and he was holding her, still on the stage, and whispering comforts into her face, and telling her that everything was all right.

That’s when the great beast attacked. Nobody had noticed it’s advance because the beast master had stepped off stage for a drink of water just after calming the thing. The monster took two steps forward, and drove his left tusk through the girl’s father back, and through her own chest, skewering them like pieces of chicken on a roasting stick. The father’s head lolled back on his shoulders and a thick spew of dark arterial blood fountained from his nose and mouth. A shocked silence fell over the crowd, but it was replaced by a revolted hum that rose with the killed father and daughter as the enraged animal reared and brought them up. For a moment, all were captured in silhouette against the sun: Beast and victims. Then the mammoth roared a great roar, and spiked them down upon the rough surface of the gigantic stage. The crowd screamed then, and began to disintegrate into madness.

I remember a lot of things after that, but they flash through my mind like so many moths around a lantern light. I saw the girl and her father split open on the stage. Flies already gathering over the crimson pools growing there. I saw the girls arms twitching and jumping. I saw the murdering beast rear up again, this time bringing both his front feet down directly the fathers head and upper body. I remember a red mist, and the stench of blood and fluid cooking on the sun-bleached rocks. I saw the other mammoth come unhinged by the violence and charge his wrangler. Impaling the screaming man on his right tusk without loosing a step and driving both tusks deep into the neck of his opposite number. There was another sound then: The sound of two giant mammoths broadcasting hatred, coupled with the desperate screams of those who’d come here to be amazed. The beasts tumbled into the crush of onlookers, crushing and maiming the unlucky few who couldn't get clear. The barker had surveyed the scene from offstage and tried to duck into the crowd while the fighting happened. Instead, the mob fell upon him and rained steel. Daggers, knives, swords, hammers, pumped and jabbed until the mans arms,legs, feet, and head had all been ripped away from his body and and flung into the heaving masses. Later, safe at home and resting, I heard my father Joseph relate the day to my old mother. He told her all and left nothing, adding only this: He said that the girl who was crushed was a godless heathen. You see, Jospeh had learned that the child's family worshiped the old Gods. He said and that her fate, and her father's fate were sealed many years ago, when they refused to accept our one, true, God.

That’s when I knew I was different, Lu. Different and doomed. I knew my real father would agree with the ignorant lout. I knew that he had no concerns for those who didn’t pay him respect and loyalty. That day was awful for families from here to Persia and back, but the townsfolk, MY folk, saw the destruction of four godless animals where I saw the unmendable grief of families. The holes left in the lives of loved ones and the pain. Grey, evil, and endless.

Boy you are odd. I’ve gotta get to your dad. The problem is bigger than we’d thought.

Bigger and unmendable, like the grief of those who died under the elephants.