“Sar,” I said, “they’re going to let us go hunting with them next time they go, as soon as they get back.”
Sar jumped up and grabbed my shoulder. “Ur. That’s great news. Let’s get to work then. They’ll be so happy with our good work, they’ll just have to let us go. They’ll have to.”
“It’s already a promise. They will let us go.”
Sar grinned. “But there’s no harm in working hard to give them the extra reason to know how good we are.”
I laughed with him and began leading the sheep to water.
We were going up the hill near where Sar and the other people gathered on the day of rest when we heard the drums. Sar quickly twisted around and took off at the sound, and was half-way down the hill when I caught up with him.
“Sar, Sar,” I said, catching my breath. “The sheep, the sheep.”
“They’ll be fine,” he said. “The elders are home. We’re going hunting.”
Sar pulled out of my grip and raced down toward the homes of our people. I turned back toward the sheep, picked up a rock, and threw it at a tree in frustration. There was the flock, on the hillside, gathered with a radiance all their own. “Stupid sheep,” I said to them.
Two little lambs came up and rubbed themselves against me. “Silly fools.” One of them seemed to be walking funny. I bent down and lifted it, checking its feet for sores. I found a wound. It was small, but it would get worse without care. I poured water on it and lifted the lamb up on my shoulders. Circling around the flock I watched for any nervousness among them—they could sense wild animals near. But they seemed calm, so I sat down on a big rock again, examining the little lamb’s foot more closely.
There was still no sign of Sar when I finished. I closed my eyes. But the little lamb nuzzled my hand. “Silly lamb,” I said. “Silly foolish lamb.” I petted it.
As the evening came I began to sing. I had sung three or four verses when I realized there was someone else singing with me. It was Sar, joining in on the last verse of the song as if he didn’t know how not to.
As his voice carried closer and closer, I could tell from his face that we were going hunting in the morning. I yelled so loud and gleefully that the little lamb almost fell off my shoulders.
Both of us were grinning enough to split our faces.
“Ur?” Sar said, suddenly sober.
“Yes.”
“What did you all do on the day of rest yesterday?”
“Without an altar, you mean?”
Sar wouldn’t meet my gaze, and he held his body tensely, as if to spring off like a wild goat. “Yes.”
“It was just the same. We didn’t do anything different.”
“But how? You didn’t have an altar.”
“Sar, an altar and its sacrifice don’t mean anything if you don’t have the Spirit of God in your heart.”
Sar didn’t say anything. I might as well be trying to wound the wind.
“Do you know what I mean, Sar?”
“No. I don’t.” Sar flung his hand out toward the flock of sheep in their soft woolly clothing. “Ur, you’re like one of these lambs. They bleat and bleat, and I hear them. But I don’t know what they mean. That’s what your speeches about God are like to me.”
I took the lamb off my shoulders. “Sar. Do you see this little lamb? He came limping to me, bleating pitifully. So I took him up in my arms, and I have been carrying him all day. This is what God does for us. Now do you understand?”
Sar stared up at the coming of the starry night. The little lamb was warm in my arms, keeping off the worst of the fall chill. I waited for Sar, his face to me in the moonlight like Abel’s must have been to Adam’s.
“Sar?”
“No, Ur. I do not understand.”
Shining in Our Hearts
The wilderness of Sinai, circa 1500–1300 BC
1.
The further they got away from the palaces of Pharaoh and the hovels of Goshen, the more troubled the mixed multitude became. Around the fires at night, Beulah’s mother had sung with the others freely at first. But, now, as the days went by, and they got further and further into the desert, increasingly Beulah’s mother saw many hanging back from the fireside, drifting into the chill of the sepulchral dark of the desert night. Mocking laughter would sometimes spread out from them and find her as she listened between verses. “What about Egypt?” Beulah’s father would mutter, as he tied up the livestock at night.
What about Egypt? What about the Egyptians? What were they doing tonight? Did they still mourn the loss of their dead oldest sons? Did their memories of the signs and wonders that had been done among them roam like lost beasts in their subconscious? Or had they gone back to the gaudy love of their priests, and their reproachless intoxications? Beulah didn’t know.
Night had fallen like a blind cave. Lying in her small bed inside her family’s tent, Beulah could hear the night singing outside the tent. She pictured the bowed heads and folded hands of the people gathered. She could not distinguish her mother’s soft voice from the stronger voices of the others. But Beulah knew her mother sang, for the song they now sang was one of her favorites, one about lost children. The song always reminded Beulah of an Egyptian boy in Goshen. His name had been Thutmose. Some of the Egyptians had come to live in Goshen when Beulah was a baby, yearning for some peace and kindness. They had gotten peace and kindness, but also persecution. Many of them now traveled with Beulah and her family away from Egypt. But not Thutmose. He slept in the dust back near the Nile River. The scent of the trees and herbs in the fertile spot he had been buried would sometimes sneak like a symbol into Beulah’s brain as she breathed in the still and dead wilderness air day after day. The boy had been kind to her, a few years older than her, but willing to show her how to help with the livestock, and how to play some of the games that the children used to play in the streets of Goshen. But he had died of the plague. Many young children had died of the plague that year. Father said he thought it was God’s way of sparing them from the visitation of God’s wonders and signs on Egypt that were to come. At least that’s what Father said now. Beulah couldn’t remember how he had explained the tragedy while it was happening in Egypt.
The front flap of the tent rustled. Beulah looked past the dead fire pit beside her bed to the little square of sky the open tent door revealed. Beneath it, Zillah’s dark hair, tangled and full of wisps, shone in the moonlight as she leaned her head in. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” Beulah said. Zillah was a distant cousin and her best friend. She wore ribbons to hold her flowing hair back. It was snarly and sticky from her running around all day outside. Beulah’s hair had no ribbon. It fanned around her face on the pillow. Her body lay spectre-thin and pale underneath some old worn animal skins.
“We are pulling up stakes at noon tomorrow,” Zillah said, hurriedly and breathlessly as usual, her merry words tumbling out. “So I will have some time to visit you in the morning. But I came now, too, because that song is so sad and melancholy.”
“Sad, but true. Why is the gathering going so late?”
“I don’t know.”
Zillah sat next to Beulah’s bed and put her hand into Beulah’s. Their hands were the same size, but one was strong and tanned from playing and helping all day traveling through the wilderness. The other was tremulous and weak from day after day lying in bed or being pulled behind