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Final Touches© Jeannie St. John Taylor
Final Touches
“Although we don’t know the exact length of the cubit at this time, later it was about 18 inches, making the ark 450 feet long, 75 feet broad, and 45 feet high, with a displacement of about 20,000 tons. . .
Its carrying capacity equaled that of 522 railroad stock cars.
Only 188 cars would be required to hold 45,000 sheep-sized animals.”
The Ryrie Study Bible, Moody Press
“Toss me that thingy.” Shem wedged his shoulder against one of the heavy doors on the ark’s third level, leaning hard to hold it in place while he waited for Ham.
“Thingy?”Ham shrugged in exasperation, palms turned upward.
“Right there.” Shem willed his foot to stop tapping and flicked the back of his hand toward a row of ten or twelve tools lined against the corridor wall. “That metal bar. There. Right beside you.” They’d been doing this for so many years they usually worked as one man. Why were they out-of-kilter today?
“Oh. Of course.” Ham oozed sarcasm. He tossed a thick metal bar with a curved end toward Shem and it clanged to the floor, barely missing his shin. “There’re only a hundred tools here. I should have known instantly which one you meant.” Ham retrieved the long bar and levered the bottom of the door up a finger-width while his brother attached a metal hinge.
Without a word, Shem held a second hinge while his brother pounded a long square nail into it. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Not a thing.” Ham grabbed the third hinge and smacked it against the wall.
Shem glanced at his brother’s deadly-serious expression. Ham lived life bouncing from one extreme to the other. Either he played fun-jokester-guy or unpleasant-negative-guy. Both personalities annoyed Shem. “You’re in a sour mood.”
“That I am.” Bad-guy Ham, present and accounted for.
Unfortunately, Shem understood.
Things had been different for both of them since the trip to the city. For the first time in his ninety plus years, Shem no longer doubted that a colossal Flood was headed their way to wipe out everything and everyone on earth. He suspected Ham had come to the same realization. The miraculous way God had saved Father was pretty convincing.
But also frightening.
If God could save Father he also could – and would – bring destruction as promised. And Shem wasn’t ready for a flood. Not at all. So he wasn’t surprised Ham was in turmoil, too.
“Well, you know me.” Shem smiled and waggled his brows Ham-fashion.
“I’m almost always in a sour mood these days.”
Ham laughed.
Shem could hear Uncle Paseah somewhere on the second level. He and Father must have already toured the family living quarters on the third floor and headed downstairs. Shem hadn’t seen them because the ark was so dark that even with many torches lit in honor of Paseah’ visit, each end of all three main corridors disappeared from view.
Uncle had been with them ever since the trial. Shem knew Father hoped to convince Paseah to accept the One True God and be rescued on the ark with them. He suspected his uncle planned to convince Father to abandon his plans. He actually overheard Paseah offer to relocate Noah’s entire family near his home “where no one would know about the ark” and Noah’s “foolishness.” Yet despite the tension between them, it was clear the brothers loved one another.
Shem rifled through a wooden box of metal gadgets looking for a bracket. “Are we out of those things again?”
“Brackets?”
“Yeah.” Shem still pawed through the box, searching. The box was so dark inside who could see anything? The single cubit-high window running around the top of the ark didn’t provide much light.
Ham pointed down the hallway at flickering torches set in niches by every door. “You’re blocking your own light and you’re surprised you can’t find anything.” Crossing his arms, Ham scowled at the shadow Shem cast over the box. “If you’d get out of the way I might be able to find it for you.”
With a frustrated sigh Shem pressed his lips in a line, stepped away from the light and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. His brother could be so difficult.
The younger brother quickly found a bracket and positioned it at chest-level by the door they were working on. “Here?”
“Yeah, looks good.”
They set both brackets and inserted the wooden bar across the door before either spoke again.
Ham broke the silence. “Paseah sent for a wife.”
For a moment, shock locked-up Shem’s vocal chords. “For you?” Surprise and – what, jealousy? rippled through Shem. “When? Why?”
Shem knew the answer to the “why” part of the question. Ham had given up waiting for a righteous woman and decided to settle. For anyone. Sight unseen. Ham would rather marry someone he didn’t love – someone he couldn’t respect or admire – than spend the rest of his life alone.
Shem knew because the same thing tempted him at times.
Ham studied the rough plank floor. Shem followed his brother’s gaze downward, instantly distracted by memories of long days splitting logs lengthwise with metal spikes, first into squares and from there into planks. His arm muscles ached with the thought.
His brother’s voice brought him back. “Paseah started talking about some girl no one likes. Said he always thought about us when she came around because she was so much like Father. He made a joke about her being perfect for one of us because he can barely stand to look at her.”
“She’s ugly?”
Ham laughed nervously and remorse for his own rash words overcame Shem. Maybe she really was ugly. He clamped his lips to keep from blurting out anything else offensive.
“No!” Ham shifted uncomfortably. “Well, he didn’t say exactly. Maybe if she reminds him of Father I should worry about her looks.” He laughed again.
“I’m sure she’s beautiful.” A quip about facial hair popped into Shem’s brain, but he stuffed it. He managed what he hoped was a comforting smile, though Ham wasn’t looking at him. “She’s gorgeous.”
“You really believe that?” Ham’s posture betrayed his need for reassurance.
“Sure I do.” No, he did not. Marriages born of desperation rarely turned out well and no one was more desperate than Ham.
Except maybe Shem.
Japheth’s wife, Ulla, was the only decent woman he’d seen in years. And Mother. Good women were about as easy to locate and capture as the mythological unicorn.
Shem opened and closed the just-installed door as a final test and slid the bar back into place. “Good enough.”
The two men headed toward the only outside exit. Noah had installed a broad outward-opening door, which also functioned as a ramp, on the third level. He worried the ark might sit low in the water once the flood got under way, he said, and he wanted the door as high as possible. The grass-covered hill supporting the ramp was composed of dirt and rock and had risen higher and higher as construction on the ark progressed over the years.
“Think Father has any idea how much easier it would be if he’d put the door on the first level?” Ham asked.
The brothers trotted out and to the bottom of the wooden ramp that bridged the space from the ark to the top of the mound. According to Father, animals would someday stroll up the earth incline and enter the ark. Seemed a little farfetched.
They stopped at a stack of doors, hoisted one onto their shoulders and trudged back up the steep incline. Ham adjusted his load. “I still think first deck would have been a better place for the door.”
“We’re working third level today, remember?” Shem said. “We’d still have to climb.”
“You’re missing my point.” Ham bunched his mouth.
Shem rolled his eyes. No point talking to Ham until his new wife arrived and the uncertainly ended. Of course seeing her in the flesh might be worse. Hopefully she would be wonderful. “What’s her name?”
“Eudocea.”
“Nice name.” Nice name? Was that the best he could do when Ham needed support?
The sound of Japheth’s frustrated voice urging camels toward the ark from the fields offered a measure of relief. “Hay.” Shem said.
“Yep.”
They propped their door against the entrance to the next room and started for the hay storage rooms about halfway down the second floor. As they got further from the outside, natural light dimmed and the fragrance of aged pitch grew stronger.
Shem loved the smells that reminded him of his childhood. He could still see Grandfather Lamech dabbing tar on the wall while perched five cubits high on a ladder. Some of the ceilings on the lower levels rose even higher. Father had built them to accommodate giraffes and elephants. He had positioned whole trees for climbing animals and birds in some of the larger rooms.
One time, Grandfather had fallen off a ladder while helping hoist one of those trees into place. The tree was a Fir with lots of horizontal branches intended as perches for birds and small animals. Once the tree stood tall, Grandfather climbed to the top and tried to throw a rope over a nearby beam where Father waited to catch the end. He somehow lost his balance and plummeted all the way to the floor below. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt badly. Still, he hobbled around for months reliving the way he “dropped” to the floor. He got a real kick out of Mother’s dismayed reaction.
Japheth’s vehement invectives aimed at the camels as they wound down the long inner ramp connecting the third and the second floors kept Shem and Ham entertained. Laughing, they hurried down one of the many shortcut-stairways that crisscrossed the ark. Entering the hay storage room, they reclined casually on a hay pile for several minutes before their brother arrived.
Shem inhaled deeply. “The only thing that smells better than pitch is hay.”
Just around the corner Japheth shouted, “Come on, Buzz!”
“Why’d father buy that camel from Paseah?” Ham wondered, absently twirling a piece of hay “He’s the nastiest one I’ve ever seen.”
“Have you noticed the size of him? He’s nearly a cubit taller than any of our other camels.”
“Yeah. So?”
“He’s going with us. Breeding stock.”
“No!”
Japheth poked his head through the door, one arm holding taut a rope tied to the still-not-visible camel stretched behind him. Sweat dripped into his eyes, matted hair hung in wet clumps. “Enjoying your nap?” he said sarcastically.
“Little cranky, aren’t we?” Ham’s eyes danced. “You switch personalities with Buzz?”
Japheth glared at him as he led Buzz and three more camels into the room, a little closer than necessary to the hay pile, Shem noticed. Buzz’s back leg whipped sideways, missing Ham by a hair only because he jumped back.
“Why do you use him?” Ham scowled.
Japheth shook a flexible rod in Buzz’s face. “Down!” The camel sighed and grunted, lowering himself until he rested with his chest on the floor. Japheth hobbled his front leg so the beast couldn’t stand while they unloaded his hay. Then he did the same with the other camels.
“Whoa!” Ham fanned a hand in front of his face. “Get a whiff of that breath!” “Back away from him if you don’t like the smell.”
“I didn’t mean Buzz. I meant you.” Ham waggled his eyebrows.
Shem stifled a smile.
“Think you’re funny? Take a gander at this.” Japheth hunched his shoulders and showed a wet spot on his back. “Half-digested cud.”
Ham mocked the prevailing camel-wisdom. “Awwww. He’s not really mean. He’s just gets a little upset.”
Shem snickered and Buzz glared at him through thick eyelashes. At the sound of a soft gurgle from the camel’s throat, the two brothers scrambled to the top of the pile, out of range.
Shaking his head, Japheth picked up the pitchforks his brothers dropped and tossed them back. For a while the only sounds were hard breathing and metal tines sliding into hay. They had nearly finished the job when a low moaning came from over by the door. Shem glanced toward the sound.
Ham stood frozen in place between the camels and the door to the hay room, eyes wide, the pitchfork in his hand still full of hay, blonde hair standing in spikes above a face whiter than fresh milk.
From the other side of the open doorway, a brown grizzly on its hind legs stared at Ham through the semi-darkness. It was nearly two times taller than Ham, slightly smaller than a Nephilim. On all fours beside it was a silver-tipped female.
“Do not move,” Shem mouthed. Never taking his eyes from Ham and the bears, Shem slowly reached out to touch Japheth’s arm in warning. Japheth stiffened when he spotted the bears.
“Stand completely still,” he hissed.
“Like I could do anything else.” Ham whispered without moving his lips. “He’s been standing there watching us work.”
Shem wanted to tell Ham that’s what bears do when they’re curious, but he dared not risk speaking. If anyone even twitched the bear might launch at them in attack mode.
The camels, with their backs to the bears, didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Weren’t animals supposed to have a sixth sense about those things? How could they not smell the bear? Maybe Buzz’s horrendous odor was good for something after all. Apparently his smell had covered the bear smell and that had kept the camels from bolting.
“God, help us.” Shem didn’t realize he’d prayed aloud until the bear flattened his ears. Wasn’t that what bears did just before they attacked? Lunging forward with a loud, “Yaaaah!” Shem banged his pitchfork around the circumference of the door frame.
The male bear grunted, dropped to all fours and lumbered away with the female following.
Ham sprang at the door and slammed it, leaving them in complete darkness.
Silence.
Shem could hear the camels chewing and his own heart hammering in his ears. Ham said incredulously, “You prayed out loud?!”
Japheth lit the torch just inside the door. “Where’d the bears come from?”
Shem flopped backward onto the hay. “You do remember the only bar is on the outside of the door, right?”
“I have my foot braced against the bottom of the door.” Ham whispered in the darkness. “Think they’re gone?”
Shem shrugged even though no one could see him.
After a few minutes with no sounds coming from the other side of the door, Shem ventured over to crack it. No evidence of bears. He opened the door cautiously and looked both ways down the hall. “Gone.” His brothers ventured out with him. Ham came last.
“You think they just strolled into the ark and made themselves at home?” Japheth asked.
“Well . . . “ Ham still appeared shaken, “Father said animals would come. Is this how it’s going to happen? Is the Flood starting? Are the bears just the first?”
A sudden realization shot through Shem. “Bears!” The animals had gone in the direction of Father and Paseah. Shem dashed down the corridor, fear prickling the hairs on the back of his neck.
Before he’d gone two cubits, he heard Paseah scream. All three brothers ran toward their uncle’s voice, arms, legs and adrenaline pumping. Father hadn’t made a peep. Where was Father?
