the bed. He felt her sweaty fingers rub his earlobe. His body relaxed. He lay beside her watching through the window as the fire blazed in the grass. He saw illuminated shapes bucking and braying. The cows and goat tied up along the fence. Then he heard her stomach give a long painful-sounding growl.
“I’m sorry I made you sick,” Cain said as the tears rolled down his cheeks and onto the blanket.
“Don’t worry,” she sighed. “It was probably the rabbit meat.” The smoke began to blow in through the window and stung Cain’s eyes.
“Your father should have never let the grass get so long,” Eve whispered as she rubbed Cain’s earlobe in the dark.
In the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark, they knew nothing about what would happen
—Matthew 24:38–39
Naameh and the Ark
Naameh sighed with relief as she entered the cool still air of her shop. She brushed the sand off her robe and unwrapped her long gray hair.
“I was up late stitching,” Naameh said as she began to sweep in the dark room. The bones in her knees chirped and her wooden foot banged against floorboards.
“We went back through the guest list I and realized we were going to need more tablecloths.” It was five days until the wedding of her youngest daughter, Mal and Naameh had been spending her days in the shop, and her evenings preparing for the wedding—cleaning the ark, sewing new tablecloths and curtains, and finishing the matching wedding robes for her five grandchildren.
Naamah checked the tall jars that lined the walls of her shop. The first jar was full of creamy giraffe’s milk. She lifted the second lid—it was empty.
“Only one jar?” Naamah tsked. “Noah wanted to finish the lattice on the fourth floor before the guests arrived.”
“Why is there only one jar of giraffe’s milk?” Naameh asked again. When no one answered. Namaah finally looked up. She was alone in the shop.
“Old lady talking to herself.” She shook her head, quietly laughing at herself, the wrinkles in her plump cheeks gathering around her eyes.
“Mal!” She knocked hard on the door that led to the cellar.
“Hold on a moment,” Mal said, running up the stairs with a basket of ostrich eggs hanging from each forearm.
“I was just saying thank you for getting the milk in.” Naameh smiled, gently brushing the sand off her daughter’s forehead.
“I should have started with the giraffes.” Mal explained, a little winded. “By the time I got the first jar the sand was blowing in every direction. I know dad wanted to finish the fourth floor.”
“You leave your father to me,” Naameh reassured her. “Now, go put those eggs down so we can open the shop. People are already lining up.”
Naameh walked to the front door and openned it a crack. A hot gust of sandy air blew in with the first customer.
“Rayah! How are you?” Naameh smiled holding her hands out expectantly. Rayah brushed the dust off as best she could before hugging Naameh.
“Well look at you, you’re just covered in sweat and sand.” Naamah tsked. Rayah and her daughter made the walk once a week from their small farm just down the road. Always with fresh-cut timber and a dozen eggs. “I wasn’t going to come in this wind, but Chalah was sick and I . . .”
“Hold that thought, deary,” Naameh cut her off. “It’s just too much to ask people to wait out there.”
Rayah furrowed her brow. “There’s a lot of people in line.”
“All the more reason. Just tell them to brush off as best they can before they get inside.”
“Grab that broom against the wall, Mal.” Naameh pointed.
After a lot of bustling, brushing, and shuffling the shop was filled with women of every age in a long line snaking along the walls of the now very hot and very sandy shop.
“Everyone okay?” Naameh looked around smiling reassuringly. There was a cheerful murmur of agreement.
Naameh focused on her first customer, “Now Rayah, you were saying your husband was not feeling well?”
“It’s his gut. He saved a flank of ibex that I told him to throw away.” Rayah looked around at the women, who knowingly nodded to each other. Naameh was tickled. She lived for these stories. “So I catch him in the middle of the night, mid-flank” Rayah mimicked her husband chewing dead-eyed. “And mind you the meat has already turned green at this point.” Rayah’s ten-year-old daughter pipes in, “And two hours later he’s—” her small body doubled over as she mimicked throwing up. The shop erupted in a chorus of laughter.
“So we need a cup of Noah’s giraffe milk in exchange for the wood.” Rayah placed the arm’s-length timber on the floor. “And one ostrich egg for these,” her daughtered added, handing Mal the basket of chicken eggs.
Mal ladeled a cup of giraffe’s milk and handed them an ostrich egg. “And give them a little extra giraffe’s milk. We want Chalah feeling better by your wedding day. Noah is roasting an ostrich and a fresh ibex!” Namaah laughed. Mal blushed and the women laughed in anticipation of the big party.
Over the four generations that Noah’s family had milked giraffes, it had come to be known as the cure-all in the valley. Anyone complaining about gut pain, headaches, sore feet, or a baby two weeks late—giraffe’s milk was the cure. It was the first suggestion out of everyone’s mouth. And Naameh’s shop was the only place to get it.
Naameh never confirmed that giraffe milk had healing properties. But she never denied it. Smiling out of the corner of her plump mouth and touching her nose, she said, “The results speak for themselves.”
Noah never interfered in Naameh’s shop. And she never commented on how big he built the ark. His one demand was that she only trade giraffe’s milk for timbers. “We can’t build the ark with egg shells,” Noah would repeat whenever the topic came up.
It was late in the afternoon by the time the last woman had left the shop. Mal sat exhausted on the large stack of wood planks.
“Just leave those for the boys to pick up in the morning,” Naameh said, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “I don’t imagine they got much work done in this wind.”
Outside the shop, the wind whipped back and forth under the gray clouds that covered the valley like a blanket. Naameh leaned on Mal’s arm as they slowly navigated the sandy path in the long shadow of the massive four-story ark that towered over the two-room mud and stick homes that dotted the now treeless valley. The ark was by far the largest structure in the valley. After visitors got over the initial shock of seeing a four-story boat in the middle of the desert, they would often comment on the smooth timbers that lined the boat’s massive hull. The first two floors of the boat were made of long smooth timbers, the last testament to the tall gopher wood trees that had once dotted the valley. But as the eye moved up the ark, the timbers became shorter and shorter, until the fourth floor was nothing more than a patchwork of arm-length wood of different shapes and colors.
They continued along the path. They walking past a pair of giraffes who were eating the last cluster of dusty green leaves off the top of a bush. The ostriches, sittting low over their few remaining eggs, squawked at them as they passed. They continued past the pig pen, past the cows and camels. A particularily cold gust of wind blew across