enough, Cain nods.
—It’ll be different to stay in one place, says Zoru.—But you’ll get used to it.
The boy nods eagerly.—I’m tired of wandering.
Zoru’s eyes hook Cain’s for a moment before pulling away. Momentarily he feels the sadness of never having asked Henoch: So, what would you like to do? Nor his wife for that matter.
He bends into the fish, and bones crackle under his teeth. Hot oil slickens his lips.
No point in regret. If he needed to wander this far, so be it. Nothing to be done about it now. What could be done, though—what he could do—
Cain lets his gaze rest upon his son. A project of some sort is needed, something to bring them together. After all this time, there is still much they do not know about each other. Too much. And yes, he can hear the malcontent voice in the back of his mind demand, How much can any of us truly know another? To which he answers, That is beside the point. I must make the effort.
The boy is watching him again.—What now? he demands.—You keep staring at me that way you do sometimes.
—Think nothing of it, grimaces Cain, turning his attention once more to his supper.
The boy doesn’t speak. Cain has to wonder what the child means by the way you do sometimes.
Now is not the moment to broach the subject of a project. Time for that later. They have never lived together in one place as a family, and his own experience in this regard is not encouraging. He must wait and decide how to proceed. He must think carefully. He must hit upon just the perfect plan.
But first they must all work together to make this wild place a home.
36 the mistake
When they wake the goats are gone.
It is Zoru who finds the tethers bundled at the boy’s feet. The child, barely five years old, sleeps the sleep of the innocent, but his mother stares at the boy in a haze of uncertainty, as if knowing that she must act swiftly, or these may be the last innocent moments of his life.
Cain watches as she twists the rawhide in her fingers. Her breathing is quick and nervous and she gazes about her like a fluttery squirrel, but Cain has gone to piss behind a screen of hemlocks. As the urine streams out, fury floods in to take its place. Cain voids himself and watches his wife and can almost hear her think: What to do?
Before she can decide, he is there like a vision. Like a swarm, like rage.—Where are they? he hisses.
Zoru glances as if baffled.—Where are what?
The palm of his hand spins her to the ground. Long moments pass before her face rearranges itself into pain. Black spots drip into the brown earth, spreading like spilt wine. There is something satisfying in this. A tormenting voice in his mind keens, More! More!
Had his father heard such howling?
—Vex me not, growls Cain. His hands tremble. Part of him wants to vomit in rage and fear. He has not felt this way for a long time.
Zoru blinks away saltwater and raises her head to see her husband looming over her child. The look on her face suggests that Cain has ceased to be human. In his hand he hefts a gray stone. Zoru screams.
•
Cain stands with the stone in his hand. It is a good stone, smoothened by wind and rain till its warm soft curves fit his palm like the skull of a small animal. It feels like a friend. It feels like the stiffest erection in history and something perfectly suited for the job at hand: to pulp the head of a child lying helpless on the ground. It has no sharp edges or brittle corners, nothing to cut flesh, draw blood, make a mess. It will simply stave in the skull of the five-year-old and crush the brain beneath to a useless tangle of sponge. Cain knows perfectly well what the stone will do and how to use it for maximum effect. After all, he has done this before.
Zoru screams.
It is a scream to wake the dead: in this case it wakes Henoch, who responds not by screaming in answer or jumping up to flee or diving into his mother’s arms. His response is to lie as still as a lizard on a rock and stare up at his father with almond-shaped eyes the size of hen’s eggs. Moss green those eyes are, like his uncle’s. His dead Uncle Abel whom he’s never met.
Perhaps his reaction saves his life. Run from the hunter and the hunter will chase. But lie still—
Cain stares down at the child, his son. Not his brother: his son. The boy gazes up like some small furry creature. Cain feels the battle swirling within his arms and heart and mind. The battle between the desire for blood and the desire for calm. Calm would make him feel better later. Blood would make him feel better now. He can almost hear voices beside him whispering, screeching, debating in measured tones. The boy needs to be punished, says one.
It was a simple mistake, says another. Have you never made one?
This mistake stands to kill us all.
He’s just a boy.
He’ll not get much older if we all starve to death.
Don’t be dramatic. There’s plenty to hunt, and fruit besides.
Nonetheless he needs to learn.
Exactly! To learn, not to die.
Cain’s arms tremble. Something is burrowing through his bicep, some worm or centipede, that causes it to twitch. He flexes his arm, raising the stone alongside his chin, and Zoru shrieks: Don’t!
—Oh hush, woman.
—Father, whispers the boy.
—It’s all right, Cain mutters.
—Father, the boy repeats.—You’re not going to kill me, are you?
—Of course not.
Shame crashes across him then like surf, like a cataract or waterfall, but not cleansing. Just the opposite—dirtying, like a bath of sputum. He wonders, What is wrong with me? What do I lack? What normal family feeling, what sympathetic connection to others has been left out of my frame? First my brother. Is it someday to be my son as well?
From the past his father roars You are an abomination . . .
Memories of the wolf-faced boy flicker beside him as well:—So in a way it’s as if you killed him too.
Cain shudders back to the present and forces a smile—never his best skill—that leaves his face looking sepulchral. Through exposed teeth he grits, I could never hurt you. How could you suggest such a thing?
—You have a rock.
He looks down. He does not even remember picking it up. The stone rests in his hand with undeniable ease, a slightly embarrassing friend: an acquaintance from younger, more impetuous days, one who has witnessed such things as would cause scandal if unearthed now.
—This? It’s . . . nothing.
The
