Sinners and the Sea by Rebecca Kanner

Author:Rebecca Kanner [Kanner, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Christian, Religious, General
ISBN: 9781451695250
Google: IJfn3yXg2kUC
Amazon: 145169525X
Publisher: Howard Books
Published: 2013-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

THE TOWN’S LAUGHTER

Within a few days of measuring and cutting the new lumber the cousins brought us, it was not just the townspeople who came to jeer. Soon there were more faces I did not recognize than those I did. The small mob turned into a crowd and then into a throng many times larger than that which had gathered outside my father’s tent.

“Only I will speak to them,” Noah told us, and glared at where he thought our eyes were.

We obeyed. Even Ham. But being ignored did not seem to have any effect on the hecklers.

I had never known what a terrible sound laughter can be. It is many times worse than the sound of hammers banging away day and night. After a while you grow accustomed to hammering.

I stuffed wool in my ears, but their voices found their way past it.

“Where is the sea you will sail?” yelled a man with two black eyes and a dagger twice as large as Ham’s in his belt.

Noah heard the man, and he answered: “It waits in the sky for the ark to be finished.” Had he given up on the sinners, or did he still hope to sway them to righteousness? Though he was my husband of nineteen years and I usually knew what he was thinking, this time I could not tell from the tone of his voice. Perhaps he himself was just as uncertain of the flood as I was.

His response caused the crowd to become even more unruly. Someone shouted, “Then put down your hammers and leave the sea where it is!”

If they had truly believed the unfinished ark was delaying the rain, surely they would have helped build it. This would have been a great relief for Shem, Japheth, and Ham. But it was hard to believe there would ever be rain. The sun beat down like fists of fire upon the backs of my boys as they did what Noah commanded from sunup to sundown. Sometimes I could see Ham’s lips moving, and I knew he was cursing under his breath or uttering insults he did not speak aloud. Japheth scowled at the more blasphemous shouting, and Shem only looked into the crowd if he heard a woman’s voice.

Noah was consumed with thoughts he did not share. He was the first to rise each morning, and even after the sun went down at night, he would talk quietly to himself until he fell asleep. Because he did not see as well as he had when we first met, I could not watch to see where he looked in order to better know what was on his mind. He might be gazing upon one son, thinking he was gazing upon another.

When the time came to knock copper into nails, Noah did a demonstration for the boys. I heard the banging of hard, heavy objects. Not long after this, I heard another sound—a single bang that was muted. Then Noah’s voice, not at all muted, calling out to God not in praise but in anger.

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