Old Testament Tales by Bob Hartman

Author:Bob Hartman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lion Hudson
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sure enough, there was a footprint – a single, purple footprint – on a stone slab.

“What do you think it means?” he asked.

And I shook my head. “Don’t know. Might belong to the perpetrator. But why is it purple? And why is there only one?”

Visions of a hideous, hopping, purple-footed fiend filled my mind. And I wracked my brains to remember – had that mysterious stranger moved on two feet or one?

“Maybe he just put one foot on the slab,” suggested Ham. “And the next one landed in the dirt.”

It was an explanation that had some merit. It was sorely lacking in drama, though.

“No, we’re looking for a one-footed man,” I said. “Or someone who goes about on one foot. A hopper.”

“But I don’t think there’s anybody like that in town,” the boy replied. “And why would he leave a purple stain behind?”

The boy was eager, but lacking in experience.

“Obviously he came from another town,” I explained. “That’s why we’ve never seen him before. As for the purple stain, I think that maybe he comes from a town where they paint themselves purple. A purple hopping person from a purple hopping town. Where they hate Baals and bulls and Midianites. Find that town and we find our man.”

I grinned. That was my first guess. And my first guesses were almost always right.

Ham scratched his head. “But I’ve never heard of a purple hopping town. Couldn’t it be something simpler? Couldn’t he have just – I don’t know – stepped in something purple?”

I patted the boy on the head with an understanding smile. I’d been young once. And innocent. How could I explain to him that the world was a complicated place?

“You go and look for your purple puddle,” I humoured him. “And I’ll ask around about that hopping town. See you later, kid.” And we went our separate ways.

He caught up with me a couple of hours later.

“I think I’ve found something!” he said excitedly.

“Calm down, kid,” I replied. “Let’s have it, one step at a time.”

“I remembered what you said about the puddle,” he began. And I couldn’t help but chuckle. The kid didn’t even get the joke.

“So I asked myself,” he went on, “where I could find a purple puddle? And it came to me right away. In a wine press! That’s where people squish the juice out of grapes, yeah? So I went to the wine press.”

I shook my head. “Sorry to disappoint you, kid, but there must be dozens of people who have used that wine press. There’s no way we can narrow it down to one. And besides, I just talked with someone who has a cousin who lives in a bouncing town. And where there are bouncers, there must be hoppers…”

But the kid ignored me. He wouldn’t let go of the wine press thing.

“I thought of that,” he continued. “But for the print to be left behind, the person’s foot would have had to have been wet. Which means he would have been in the wine press the same day the statue got wrecked.

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