just getting you, you old grouch,” Naameh laughed. “Everyone huddled into the shop.”
“And you . . .”
“And I made sure to get your wood.” Naameh rolled her eyes and started up the stairs.
“You’d give the roof away if it wasn’t nailed down,” Noah muttered to himself.
“What was that?” Naameh stopped on the stairs.
“It’s a business, is all I’m saying,” Noah said louder.
“We have a wedding in five days is all I’m saying.” She pointed at the disorganized sacks on the floor.
“We roasted up the chickens,” Noah said, eager to change the subject. “I’ll make you a plate.”
Naameh stopped on the third floor to give hugs and kisses to her five small grandchildren playing on the floor with carved wooden animals. Her knees were sore and her legs burned by the time she made it up the final set of stairs to her bedroom perched on the deck of the ship.
She sat down on her bed. Outside her bedroom window the clouds were still looming, now darker as the sun was setting. The wind didn’t seem have moved them. Naameh untied the leather straps to her wooden foot and massaged her stump. The skin was thick and calloused and her calf muscle was tight and sore.
From her bed she could see smoke rising from the cooking fires burning at the homesteads that dotted the valley. She could see the small frames of Rayah and her daughter hunched over a fire outside their one-room clay house.
She remembered being a small girl and sitting around the cooking fire, her mother reassuring her, “You’ll find somebody.” The other mothers nodded along, “Oh yes . . .” their voices overflowing with so much pity that Naameh was convinced there was absolutely no way she would ever find someone to marry her.
Naameh remembered the first time she had seen the ark. She was fourteen and had finally managed to convince her mother that she could navigate the rocky hills that seperated their valley from the ark. Naameh had stood in awe as she watched Noah’s father Lamech on a tall ladder. He was hammering long timbers onto the unfinished second story. Noah had handed her a cup of giraffe’s milk. She noticed his fingers were stained the color of the timbers.
“Why is your dad building that boat?” she asked.
“A flood,” Noah shrugged. “Someday this whole valley is gonna be underwater.” His hand panned across the hills surrounding them.
Naameh remembered trying to imagine the ark bobbing up and down on water the way sticks floated in the puddles in her garden.
“When?” she asked nervously. It had never rained enough to even cover her ankle.
Noah shrugged again. “What’s wrong with your foot?” he asked, pointing at her calloused stump. Naameh tried to stand up as straight as she could, took a deep breath, and with as much pride as she could muster she said, “I don’t have one.”
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