The End Has Come

Finally, and too late, Thomas thinks: The right question. He’s never known them, or wanted to, so certain was he that because they were his sons and his blood, they were whatever he imagined them to be. That as his creation, they were his to shape to his whim. Thomas remembers being small, stumbling up the hill after his father, Joseph following behind, kicking his brother’s shins when he thought no one was looking, because Joseph was dumb enough to think people ever stopped looking. Their mothers down in the valley, having abandoned them to a rare moment alone with their father, who wanted to show them their legacy. “This is where we lived, before God gave us the promised land,” Isaac told them, then pushed them inside one of the compound’s small rooms and locked them into the dark. “Can you imagine it?” he shouted through the door. “Closed behind these walls for a decade, wondering if the Lord had left us enough world to return to.” Their father left them in the dark for a day and a night: A lesson in captivity and faith. Joseph screamed and kicked the walls and wet his pants. Thomas abided, quiet and calm, retreating to an even darker room in his mind. He’s always been good at waiting. By the time their father finally let them out — “Breathe deep, boys! Now you understand how grateful you should be for fresh air, for sky!” — Joseph was a wild creature, and stayed that way. Thomas knew enough to smile and thank his father for the field trip, and has been the favorite ever since.

That the old man thought a few hours in a dark room could do the job, allow the children of the new generation to see through the eyes of the one that came before — that he thought this necessary? His father, Thomas thought then, and thinks now, is a fool. He can’t see his own stain. The Earth has been purified, and its people along with it, but Isaac still bears the taint of the world before, and the years between. There was a reason Moses and his people spent forty years wandering the desert — it gave the old ones, the ones warped by an unholy life of servitude and false idols, the chance to die. Thomas has always thought it was gracious of Moses, at least, to do so on schedule.

“We should get this done before he snaps out of it,” Thomas says.

“Maybe this time he won’t?”

“All the more reason.”

The brothers don’t agree on everything. Joseph wants to see the world beyond the valley, wants his children’s and his grandchildren’s futures uncircumscribed by the duties of blood and power. Thomas wants to rule.

They agree, however, on this.

“Do we make it look like he did it to himself?” Joseph asks.

The idea is tempting, but Thomas needs his father’s legacy to loom. He shakes his head. “He did it,” he says, stepping on the stranger’s chest, bearing down like the man can still feel pain, and if only it were possible. “Assassination. Self-defense. A good story.”

They’ll need to adjust the pageant next year, write a new closing act. Joseph will write it. He’s always liked a good story.

The old man is peeing again. Joseph looks away. Thomas laughs.

“I don’t know about this,” Joseph says, nervous now that the time has come, nervous despite how long they’ve been waiting. At least the old man won’t die alone. He knows his father would have hated that. “What about God?”

“God loves killing,” Thomas points out.

Brother killing brother, Joseph thinks. Yes. Fathers killing sons, husbands killing wives, gods killing soldiers, generations, cities — yes, all of that. But sons killing fathers? “I had to read that fucking bible as much as you did,” Joseph says. “Patricide is a no.”

“What does the old man always say? We’re writing a new bible now. Correcting the mistakes of the old one. Brave new world.”

The old man is crying.

“This is fucking embarrassing,” Thomas says.

Joseph wishes he could have heard the stranger’s story. Thomas knows, but refuses, as usual, to share. Joseph stole the stranger’s photograph from his father’s bedside. He likes the look of the woman in it, the smile that can’t imagine the world could end. She looks innocent, the way his father looks now, even though he had imagined it best of all.

“I loved you best,” their father says, talking to neither of them. Talking to me, Joseph imagines, but lacks the will to make himself believe. Talking to his father or his lost whore, Thomas thinks, someone he loved before he forgot how. Maybe to his Lord, that monster in the sky to whom they’re all supposed to be grateful. Gratitude and fear, this is the old man’s recipe for love. Thomas has no talent for either, and when he looks to the sky, he’s never seen the beauty his father goes on about, never appreciated its capacious blue. The sky is where death comes from, everyone knows that. The sky fell once, can fall again, and because of that, Thomas owes it obedience. But not gratitude, and not love. He owes no one that.

The old man blinks rapidly, spittle frothing at weathered lips, then says, “What?”