Leah’s father has always despaired of finding her a man capable of treating her with the kindness she will need to survive. And our greatest fear for Job’s future has always been the impossibility of finding him a wife who would not take advantage of his unassuming nature and enslave him in ways beyond the chains that should be forged by love. It is indeed part of why we have ordered him to remain close to home, these past few years; not just because of the danger he faces from rapacious people like Kenneth’s family, but because too many of the local girls have divined at a glance just how much power they would have over him if ever they ensnared him into marriage. I have seen what rides the shoulders of those with the kindest eyes and sweetest faces and shuddered at the thought of my poor son, subjected to their version of love without any rider of his own to provide him the strength he would need to have any will of his own.
So, yes, I understand why Leah’s father thinks his daughter and my son might be the greatest hope for one another. But as we all sit together in our home’s largest room, the unshuttered windows admitting a hot dry wind from the west, the conversation erupts only in fits and starts. Three-year-old Miriam cries nonstop and tugs at her mother’s leg, upset beyond reason that the gathering isn’t about her. Ten-year-old Paul, who always resents the attention she gets, tugs at her ear and makes her cry. Leah averts her eyes to avoid meeting Job’s, he struggles to find words that won’t be embarrassing or shameful, and the air itself thickens like amber, trapping us all in an afternoon that seems to have stopped like time.
A few minutes after Faith goes into the other room to stir the stewpot—Paul following so closely behind her that he might as well be a second rider, clinging to her with the insistent intimacy of a mistake—I mutter that I better go check on her and find my beloved wife weeping in utter despair that anything will ever turn out all right. Nothing I say to her, no reminder of how shy I was the day we met, will staunch the tears. I ask her what’s wrong. She draws close and beats at my chest with her fists, while Paul continues to tug at her apron. She asks me, “What did God think he was doing, when he gave us one son too good for this world?”
This prompts a tantrum from Paul, who hates the special regard his mother has for Job. The screeching begins.
Dinner is grim.
It is not until much later, when the smaller children have been banished to bed and the adults have wandered to a different part of the house to talk about something, anything, but the fiasco we believe we’re experiencing, that I look out the window and spot something in the gathering twilight that takes my breath away.
Unnoticed by any of us, Job and Leah have stolen off together, to the edge of the meadow, well within the distance we have declared safe for him but farther than he has ventured since the last time he was rendered bloody from a neighbor child’s hurled stones. It is late in the year, and the sun is just starting to set. They stand facing one another, but not eye-to-eye the way they would be if about to kiss. She’s looking down at his feet, her long hair hanging like a curtain over any emotions that might be betrayed by her features. He’s doing something that most people would consider obscene even in marriage, and downright scandalous when seen in two young people who have only met a few hours ago: reaching past her face to stroke her unhappy, self-loathing rider on the back of its head.
From the window, I can see the face of Leah’s rider far more clearly than I can see her own. I can see that stormy scowl so redolent of misery resist his touch, and even grimace from resenting it. And then I see that scowl falter, come back as angry as ever as the rider realizes it’s losing, and then disappear completely. The rider’s features smooth over, becoming placid. Its eyes close. It adopts the expression of a baby lost in sleep. It becomes a cherub, as unpolluted by darkness as his own.
As Leah looks up to face my son, the curtain of blonde hair falls away from her delicate profile, revealing cheeks slick with tears that are just beginning to curl into an unaccustomed smile.
Job and Leah don’t kiss, yet, but instead just stand there looking at one another, their lips moving in words I would almost kill to hear. She looks down again, but this is just a flicker, a moment of vestigial reflex no longer relevant after a lifetime. Her rider continues to doze. His never stirs. The setting sun makes the meadow glow red, cradling boy, girl, and riders in what might as well be a wreath of flame.
The news that a boy and girl ridden by cherubim—his that way from birth, hers created by a moment of kindness from him—have betrothed spreads from village to village, bringing not just curiosity-seekers but monsters, seeking to spread the hurt as a matter of principle. Our neighbors close ranks. Many of those who abused Job in the past take to watching the roads in and out for strangers whose riders signal their intent to do harm.
Even that human viper Kenneth takes part, driving his boys against a caravan of ragged and unshaven men whose riders all bear faces marking them as the worst kind of vindictive destroyers, the kind of men who spread misery not out of greed or hatred but for the sheer joy of shattering the lives of those more fortunate than themselves. Kenneth and his sons confront this wolf pack, determine that they have come from many miles away to entertain themselves by committing malicious mischief against this couple they have heard about, this man and woman who consider themselves so special, and with remarkable efficiency sent them on their way, missing coin-purses, wagon, clothing, a number of teeth, and in one case a right eye. I do not forgive Kenneth and his family for what they have done to mine in the past, but I now give him a nod when we make eye contact encountering one another in public. Maybe he’s decided that his family has tormented Job enough.
My brothers, alas, are less sanguine about our newfound hope for a better future. They buy me ales at the inn and congratulate me on the upcoming new addition to the family but turn dark as the brew poisons their blood and hint at bad times to come.
Noah says, “I fear for the children of such sinless people. Whether ridden by cherubim or demons themselves they’ll have the misfortune of growing up with parents unable to summon enough anger or hatred to protect them from anyone not quite so pure.”
Eben has other worries. “They will have trouble if they become parents. A mother and father without so much as a dark thought in their heads will never be able to tend to children prone to lies, cruelty, or worse.” He goes on to tell us the story of a mother and father he knew during the five years he lived further down the coast, whose riders were, though not quite cherubim, also not quite formidable enough to arm them against their son, who was a little monster. By the time that boy reached adolescence, he ruled their home like a despot, reducing mother and father to beasts of burden too terrified to do anything but indulge his slightest whim. Nor did it ever end for them, for why would such a little monster ever seek a life away from his parents, when his parents were so incapable of denying him?
Eben tosses back another drink and tells me that I should take special care that Paul does not end up like that. “You need to take him in hand now or know the nightmare he will become later.”
It is all true, every word of it, but from the way my other brother Noah peers with sudden alarm over my shoulder I know that my rider reflects the extent of my growing anger. He mutters some words about how I should take all this as well-meaning advice and not as mockery.