shot a smug smile up at his brother who was perched on top of their dad’s shoulders. “Put me down! I want to walk.” Abel insisted, his small hand punching Adam’s shoulder.
The three walked through the dark in a tired silence. Cain switched the heavy satchel from shoulder to shoulder every few paces.
When they finally left the forest, the sky was purple and dotted with red clouds. Cain could hear the cows calling from home. He felt his chest tighten and the day’s excitement was replaced with worry over all the things he had left undone. The vegetables needed watering, cows and goats needed milking, the eggs gathered, the tall grass around the house still needed to be burned, firewood chopped, the berries needed picking . . . and the list went on. Cain pulled the satchel up against his back and hurried along the winding dirt path home, leaving Adam and Abel behind him.
Once he was through the wooden gate, he hurried to the stable and milked the first cow he saw. Then using the weight of the satchel to counterbalance the nearly full jar of milk, Cain made his way along the small path though the tall dry grass into their darkened house.
Cain could hear his mother and baby brother Seth gently snoring in a duet from her bedroom nearby. He quietly struck the flints together a few times to light the oil lamps on the dining room table.
“Cain?” Eve called with a gravelly voice. “Cain, is that you?” She had clearly been sleeping.
“Don’t worry, mom, it’s just me,” he whispered, peeking his head into her dark bedroom. Her back was propped against the wall and her legs were hidden under blankets. She was exactly where Cain had left her. The only change in the room was that the water, berries, and bread he had left her that morning had been eaten. He dropped the satchel on the dirt floor and one of the fruits rolled out toward the bed.
“We missed you,” she whispered.
“I missed you too.” Cain smiled and kissed her on the cheek before he lit the bedside lamp. The warm glow illuminated Eve’s tired eyes and sallow cheeks. He picked Seth up off the bed and gently lay his sleeping brother on the floor.
“Hey, buddy,” Cain whispered in a light, bubbly voice, gently tickling Seth’s belly. Seth woke up and his wide brown eyes rolled around the room before resting on Cain. He tossed Seth’s wet clothes into a basket, wiped and rewrapped Seth in fresh cloth, before laying him back down on the bed. Eve rubbed Cain’s earlobe appreciatively. A spark of joy ran from his ear all the way down to his toes.
“How was your day?” Eve asked. He poured her a small cup of milk. He thought about telling her that they had found a branch snake. That he was so scared when the turtle popped his head out. But then dad had let him name it. But then he thought about her lying in bed all day, and all the chores he had skipped, and Cain swallowed his excitement.
“The walk was kinda boring.”
Eve’s eyes flashed with a brief smile. “I definitely don’t miss hiking.”
They sat on the bed in silence until Seth started to gently snore.
Cain remembered going on long walks in the woods with his mom and dad. Riding up on Adam’s shoulders, and Abel wrapped tight against his mom’s chest. He remembered her strong hands digging out bright pink and yellow flowers to replant them along the fence in their garden. His dad would stuff his pockets with tree nuts and berries, and fill scroll after scroll with drawings of the strange animals they found.
But something had changed when Seth was born. The night of the birth Cain sat at the dinner table just outside his mom’s bedroom. His stomach knotted as he listened to her scream in pain. His dad sat next to him nervously eating berry after berry from a wooden bowl. All night he watched the midwife run out of the room with blood-stained sheets, then return with her arms full of water and fresh bedding.
“Was it like this when I was born?” Cain had asked during a long terrible silence.
“It’s always like this.” Adam winced as his wife screamed again. Cain didn’t remember falling asleep. But when he woke up, his head was on the table. He could see his mother was lying still on the bed. His new baby brother, Seth, lay next to her. Her head was in the sunlight. She wasn’t moving. She looked dead. He walked to her bed and gently nudged her. She made a guttural sound and he felt his stomach unclench.
But when Eve finally woke up, she was different. It was hard for Cain to say how exactly. She didn’t pay attention to what was happening. She kept forgetting things, and she barely ate. Day after day she lay in bed, her legs under the covers, Seth beside her. The brightness in her eyes slowly faded into a dull tiredness. Her body was still there, but part of her was gone.
After month’s her rosy, plump cheeks became pale and hollow. Her treasured flower garden grew wild and filled with dead branches and weeds. Rabbits and deer began to eat the vegetables. The grass grew long and wild. Eve finally struggled to produce milk and Adam started feeding Seth cow’s milk in the mornings before she woke up and late at night after Eve had fallen asleep.
During the day Adam would take Abel on long hikes, just the two of them. They’d leave early in the morning before Cain woke up. On the first of these walks Cain found a note his dad had left for Eve. Adam wrote that he had left to work on his scrolls and that she was now responsible for taking care of the house and the garden. Cain looked at his mother asleep on her bed. He put the note in his pocket and walked to the garden. He milked the cows and goats, and then swept the house. He placed a bowl of berries and a cup of milk by his mother’s bed and one on the table from his father and Abel. When Adam returned he smiled and nodded at Cain who felt tired, but proud of his work.
The next day the muscles in Cain’s arms and legs ached. But he forced his tired body out of bed. To make the walk around the garden more manageable Cain decided to use a flaming log to clear a path through the tall grass. Slowly lighting the stalks then stamping them out with his sandal.
Each day his chores felt a little more manageable, until the snake came. Cain had caught glimpses of something in the garden. Flashes of brown and yellow, the end of a tail disappearing around a corner. He began carrying his bow and arrow everytime he left the house.
He was picking berries when he heard his mom scream. He ran back to the house with the bow out and an arrow notched. He found his mom sobbing, the bed covered in blood. The snake had come into the house and bit her on the heel as she slept.
“What if it had bit Seth!” Adam shouted at her that night. She should have never let the grass get so long, he said. It was her fault that she’d been bit. She couldn’t just lie in bed. There was work to do. Their sons needed a mother.
Cain sat the dinner table watching. He had never seen his father yell at her before. Adam’s fist balled up as if he was going to hit her. And his mom just lay in bed, silently staring at the wall. Tears rolled down her pale cheeks and onto her pillow. He felt a knot in his chest. This was all his fault. He should have burned all the grass. He should have told someone that there was a snake in the yard.
“It’s my fault.” Cain said quietly.
“What?” Adam shouted at him.
“I should have burned all the grass,” Cain said, trying to hold back tears of his own.
Adam stared at his son and balled up his fist. “Don’t let it happen again.”
Cain nodded. Then he walked past his father and picked up Seth, who was crying in his soaking wet clothes. Cain laid Seth
