Noah's Ark

Noah shook his head. The door before him was caked with mud and hung awkwardly from its broken jam. It was not even latched, the entire house having been shifted so that it leaned precariously to the one side. And it was clear from the almost complete silence, not to mention the foul stench of decomposition which hung in the air, that no one was home.

Just like the last house.

And the one before that.

And yet, for some reason - instinct, he supposed - Noah had knocked and stood there, waiting for a response.

After chiding himself for the ridiculousness of the whole thing, he reached out and pushed the door. With some effort, it lurched open with a creak and swung the rest of the way with a sickening groan, casting a single beam of light into the darkness beyond.

Ducking under the low entrance, Noah stood just inside for a moment, squinting into the pitch as he waited for his eyes to adjust. As they did, the old man found himself in a room which was not unlike the home he had known, with the exception that everything - kettles, utensils, the piles of straw which had been beds - was covered with a thin layer of mud and strewn about as if a raging river had washed through the place.

Because a raging river had washed through the place.

Taking a deep breath, Noah stepped further into the room and began the unfortunate task of picking through the debris for anything that he and his family could use. Of course, there would be no foodstuffs, but his hammer handle had broken the day before. He could always use another flint to start fires. A plow, or even a hoe, would come in handy when he went home that afternoon to start turning the soil for the garden. And then there was the wife’s list.

Stooping, he plucked up the kettle which had been tossed into the corner just to his left. The one back at the shelter was still in fine shape, but he imagined that Shem or Ham or Japheth - or, probably more likely, one of their wives - would need one sooner or later. This one was small, but holding it up so that he could see the inside, Noah discovered that it must have been sitting upright when the waters came. While the exterior was heavily rusted, the interior was in good condition.

He imagined it floating on the rising water - not unlike the ark - until it was pinned against the ceiling, the air trapped inside for nearly a year.

He decided it would be useable with a little work, and so he set it near the door. It would become the start of the pile of things salvaged from this home.

Turning back to the corner where he had found the kettle, Noah knelt and started shuffling through a pile of half-rotted lumber which had been piled somewhat less than neatly by the water. From the first plank, it was clear that the wood would not be useful, but just in case it was hiding something else, he picked through the pile until he came to a fine axe at its base. The axe head itself was severely corroded, but the handle had been made of something remarkably resilient. At least upon initial inspection, it seemed to be in fairly good shape, and Noah supposed that he could either rework this handle into something he could use as a hammer, or in a pinch, he could use this axe itself as a hammer. It went on the pile to keep.

A couple of cubits around the corner, Noah found an idol in the debris. Hand-carved from a small block of wood, the figurine fit in the man’s hand and had probably sat originally on the little shelf built into the wall directly above where it now lay. There was a drill, definitely useful, and a small spit lying in the mud, jutting out from what was once the fireplace.

On the other side of the fireplace, Noah discovered a small shelf which had toppled in the deluge. All around, and even scattered out into the middle of the room, Noah counted seven - no, eight - small wooden spoons and matching plates, which were really square pieces of wood ground smooth.

As expected, any food that had been in this kitchen had long since disappeared.

Without thinking, Noah stooped and righted the shelf as he passed. Setting it gently against the wall once more, he stepped past it to find a large stone basin which he recognized immediately as the bottom of a flour mill. Knowing that this was near the top of the wife’s “shopping list” as they had come to call it - the sad euphemism helped them cope with the grim necessity that was their life in this postdeluvian world - Noah fumbled through the mud in search of the other stone until, under a small cupboard nearby, his hand rand across the thing.

Grunting with pleasure, Noah pulled the stone from its hiding place, gathered it with the basin, and set them both with the other stuff near the door. His wife would be pleased, he thought. Maybe, if he cleaned it up, she would even have time to make some fresh bread for tomorrow.

Noah loved fresh bread. Before the flood, it had been one of his absolute favorite treats, and his loving wife had made a loaf nearly every day. When the rain came and the springs of the earth burst forth, more than a year ago now, they had practically lived on the stuff. Yet Noah loved the stuff, and so it had been devastating for him when, nearly a week ago now, he had arrived home to learn that she had dropped the bottom millstone on the ground, shattering it into three pieces.

Noah could practically taste the bread now. He paused a moment and, with a whimsical smile on his face, imagined he could smell it even now. For a moment, he nearly forgot where he was and what he was doing as the aromas of fresh bread and roasted beans - no, asparagus - wafted through his mind. Lost in the moment, he breathed deep and, to his horror, filled his nostrils with the smell of, well, death.

Coughing, Noah was brought abruptly back into the moment and the task at hand. Shaking his head and blinking, he resumed his picking.

The cupboard itself was in pretty bad shape, but on its far side, amid a mess of shattered pottery, he found a couple of jars that could surely be used. Opening them, he held each up and tilted each so that the light from the door could shine in and he could peer inside. The first one was empty; Noah imagined it had contained oil. The second one was also empty; perhaps it had contained salt which had dissolved into the water. The third, though, contained a hard, rock-like substance which Noah immediately recognized as dessicated dough. Of course, it had not been dough when the flood came; the water had filled the canister, mixed with the flour, and then dried, leaving behind a solid cake which was now half-covered in mold of various colors.

Noah set the third jar down and moved the other two to his pile before returning to a tattered blanket which had been piled in the far corner. Reaching down, Noah tugged on it, but it was stuck in the muck. Pulling harder, it pulled free, but lifted as a single sheet. The thing was stiffened by dried mud, and then the corner he had grasped actually broke free. The threads themselves were so degraded by a year under water that this blanket would be utterly useless even if he could clean it.

He turned and found what remained of a sandal. Really, it was nothing more than the sole with a rotted thong of leather. And then, as he approached the third corner of the tiny house, he found himself walking on a smattering of mud-caked straw. This had been the bedroom, he noted, kneeling to sort through the straw.

Almost immediately, he found the second sandal. And a tunic. As he neared the corner, though, the straw grew deeper. In the gloom, he thought he saw something solid in the heap and so, moving straight to the corner, he started pulling straw away a fistful at a time. One fist. Two. And then an entire mat pulled away to reveal what lay beneath.

Noah jumped back, his stomach twisting in revulsion, and uttered a startled yelp. For a long moment, he stood there, his eyes fixed on his discovery, his heart racing, and his lunch fighting to climb back up his throat.

There, crumpled - maybe huddled - in the corner, was the form of a woman. Her skin was gray, almost black, her cheeks sunken, and her mouth a gaping maw. Her flesh seemed barely able to cling to her lifeless face, and as Noah finally breathed for the first time since he beheld her, it was clear that uncovering her had only stirred up the smell.

Noah coughed, nearly overcome by the odor, and instinctively pulled his tunic up over his nose and mouth. For a long moment, he simply stared at the woman. Like everything else in the house, she had been caked with mud, and her hair, which he supposed had once been a luxurious black, was now nothing more than a pathetic gray matte.

Standing there, he chastised himself for the reaction. In the five weeks since he and his family had disembarked from the gigantic ark which they had built, he had told himself more than once that he should expect, at some point, to find bodies. But it had taken three weeks to dismantle the boat and construct the four wooden-framed homes in which his family was now living. Another week had been spent taking inventory of what they had and compiling a list of what they needed. And now, three days into the searching without a single body, he had all but forgotten that these houses had once been homes.

He remembered now.

And then he noticed something: the woman’s arms were wrapped around something. Compelled by some strange, silent force, Noah crept forward and slowly, gingerly, picked away some more straw to reveal a strange brown mess of cloth. Horror washed over him, but he could not stop now, and so he grabbed the woman’s wrist and lifted it gently, setting it aside and allowing the bundle which she had clutched to her breast in the last moments of life to roll toward him. And then, as the blanket fell away, Noah’s worst fears were realized.

Images of his own children as infants and toddlers flashed through his mind. Smiles and wavy hair. Laughter and sunshine.

The ghostly white face which stared back at him now would never know those things. She would never climb another tree or run another race. Never help in the kitchen or play with her friends. Never splash in the rain or witness a rainbow.

No, there were no rainbows here.

Noah realized suddenly that tears were running down his cheeks, and he was sobbing softly. As many times as he had tried to steel himself against the reality that the human race, minus his own immediate family, had been wiped from the face of the planet, there was no way that he could have prepared himself to see the face of a young child.

For a long time, he simply knelt there, staring at the child, utterly unable to pry his eyes from her. Thoughts raced through his mind. Why? Was it really necessary? Was it even close to fair? Surely, people weren’t so bad as to deserve this! Not all of them anyway!

Abruptly, Noah rose and wheeled about, and his legs rushed him hastily to the door and out into the street beyond, where he stopped short. Before him, the hillside stretched down to a muddy basin below. All around him, the slope was dotted with houses - homes - just like the one from which he had just emerged. In the basin, though, the several streets converged into what had been the marketplace of this mountain village. And there, at the center of town, he saw the pen where slaves had been traded. The brothel where men had dropped a sheckel or two. The shrine where the remnants of a pyre, erected in preparation for the next human offering, still stood. There was the tavern and the adult scroll store. And beyond all that was a row of shops where men could have bought anything imaginable, the market square where they would meet to buy and sell stocks in an endless pursuit of money, and the arena where they had constantly boasted of their great strength and prowess.

Noah took a deep breath and sighed. As horrible as it was, he understood. How many times had he walked through the market back home in his own village, heard the coarse language, and seen the things people did? Some of them were utterly vile. Others were simply... corrupt. It had disturbed and distressed him, a mere man. Oh, how horrible it must have been for God, omniscient and holy as He is!

Sin, regardless of degree, was grievous to God.

So grievous, in fact, that He had decided to put an end to everything and everyone.

And as Noah’s ear caught the sound of at least two of his sons fighting behind him, just up the hill, he feared that perhaps not even the cataclysm they had just survived would compel men and women to change.

Noah wheeled around and, without even considering the stuff he was leaving behind, started up the slope toward the sound. Didn’t those boys understand? Couldn’t they see how seriously God took sin? Couldn’t they...

Noah looked up, past the the source of the grating cries, past the mess that was the rest of the village, past the ledge high above where the bones of the ark could still be seen jutting upward beyond the shelters that they now called home, past the tip of Ararat where they had come to rest after so many months adrift, and stopped in his tracks.

High above the mountaintop, with dazzling splendor that Noah imagined would never grow old, a magnificent rainbow arced clear across the sky. Red and orange formed its spine, with flares of yellow, green, blue, and purple filling it out. And above it, only slightly more faint, Noah beheld a second, and even a third bow soaring across the deep blue.

The words which God had spoken - actually spoken! - as Noah had opened the door of the ark for the first time those five weeks before echoed once more in his mind.

“I’ve set my rainbow in the sky to symbolize the covenant between Me and the earth.”

And as Noah heard the words again and gazed upon the rainbow - a sight of which he supposed he would never tire - he knew the answer. God’s covenant was not just about sin and holiness and justice and mercy. All of that was in there, of course, but in the splendor of that rainbow, at least in Noah’s eyes, it was clear that at the heart of God’s covenant, despite all the wickedness and general corruption of which mankind had been - and still was, judging by the ruckus just up the hill - guilty, was an unswerving, unquenchable, unconditional, unending love.