I allow myself to be mollified, and return to my drink. But when I walk home, later that night, more than one of my neighbors, passing me on the way, walks a little faster when they see me, or the terrible aspect of my rider. For I know that my brothers are right.
I sleep that night in a downstairs bed to avoid frightening Faith with the rage of my rider. She will never miss me, not when Paul still insists on sleeping between us, a living barrier erected to exclude his invasive father from the territory on his mother’s side of the bed. My dreams are terrible, though when I wake I don’t remember how. With dawn still hours away I trudge to the outhouse and return, taking a protective detour past Job’s door, which is always ajar, an invitation to a world that he insists on treating with trust. He is sleeping. I stand there for long minutes and listen to him breathing, marveling as any father would at the miracle of a boy now on the threshold of becoming a man, and reeling from the terrible vertigo that can only be known by a parent of a child in danger.
Job and Leah become husband and wife seven months later, in the tradition of our village. We stand them in the public square, carve a tight circle in the dirt around both, and bid spend four hours back-to-back, their riders pressed together in mutual acceptance of the respective sins borne by both man and woman. This has always been, by our teachings, the most intimate covenant by which the betrothed can demonstrate not just their love for one another, but their acceptance of the very worst to come.
Tradition among us holds that if either the bride or groom can be driven from the circle before the time is up, their sins will always stand between them and that they must therefore not be wed. Friends, family, and strangers are encouraged to surround them shouting whatever they can, to drive the pair apart… sometimes bribes, sometimes declarations of love, sometimes just mocking recitations of all the reasons why they’re bound to make one another miserable. In my day I have seen many a wedding end with the bride breaking down in tears and fleeing, face in hands, minutes before the end of that four hours, and have never doubted the ceremony’s efficiency at preventing marriages doomed to misery.
Other villages do it differently, I hear. Eben says that some far from here, which he visited during the years he spent as a wanderer, have a specific series of prayers recited by a designated holy man. This makes no sense to me at all, as I have never seen a man anywhere who could be called holy. Even Job isn’t holy, the more appropriate word for him being innocent. All I know is that if I ever did meet a self-professed holy man who claimed the power to preside over the most intimate moments of my life I wouldn’t let him speak prayers about anything having to do with my family unless I first spent long minutes examining whatever rode on his back. I personally suspect that the riders of these holy men may be even worse than those carried by those of us who don’t claim freedom from sin.
For hours Job and Leah stand back to back inside the small circle, the spine of his sleeping rider pressed tight against the spine of hers, both demonstrating a level of divine peace well beyond the reach of those of us whose riders snarled and spat and brandished our worst secrets on this special day. Both Job and Leah are calm, smiling, confident of their ability to outlast the ordeal.
Outside the circle, the required ritual abuse by our neighbors is mostly restrained, limited to little more than good-natured teasing. The unmarried girls cavort and waggle their tongues at Job, promising him endless nights of wanton abandon should he abandon his foolish devotion to this girl with no idea how to set a fire in a wedding bed. The unmarried men advise Leah that they understand her ignorance in these matters, but feel obligated to tell her that Job has a root doomed to remain soft for life and that she’d be better off spreading her legs for a man who can make his stand at attention. There is a bad moment when Kenneth strides from the crowd and circles the pair, looking over both of them as if appraising pigs that have come to market, but after two orbits he nods his head and ambles away, with a nod at me that I can almost consider friendly. It is never possible to tell for certain, but there is nothing in his eyes or in the eyes of his rider that betrays simmering malice against my son and his bride. He doesn’t seem to be letting the day pass without incident only so that he can indulge his cruel appetites later. There is reason for hope.
The afternoon is of course not completely without trouble. Paul, who we gave the honor of drawing the circle, grows upset that his contribution is over with and that he is no longer the focus of all eyes. He starts whining that he’s bored and then wailing that he wants to go home, and is unstirred by appeals that this is his brother’s day and that he should be as happy for him as we all are. Miriam gets sick from something she’s eaten and is soon as cranky and as inconsolable as her middle brother. The tension Faith has felt up until this day combined with the poor behavior of our younger children makes her blame me for being so useless a father.
But all of this falls far behind next to something else I see, something that I have never heard tell of happening before, and that as far as I can tell only I can see, because I will afterward question my wife and friends and neighbors and find not a one who confesses to beholding what my eyes are blessed to behold now. As I watch, amazed, Job’s sleeping rider turns its little head and, without ever opening its eyes, brushes its lips against the cheeks of Leah’s rider. Her rider, without opening its eyes, turns its head and kisses his on the lips. Both riders then turn their attentions back to those they ride. I look up at the faces of my son and his bride and see from both blinding smiles that both are fully aware of what just happened, and both know what it means. This is not just the only possible union for a boy born without sin and a girl who lived too long without hope; nor is it just the loving union we all hoped for. It is the kind of union they write about in the stories, the kind that is not supposed to happen in the real world. Maybe it is why even Kenneth would not wield his evil against them. I can only dare to hope, my knees turning weak at the thought.
As the ceremony ends a great weight lifts from me as a cheer erupts from my friends and family and neighbors and the couple is mobbed by well-wishers who hoist them aloft and carry them about like trophies for long minutes before once again allowing their feet to touch the ground. Another cheer splits the sky as the couple kiss a second time. Job embraces his mother and then me and tells me that it does his heart well to know that I was watching on this glorious day. Leah kisses me on the cheeks and tells me that she will take joy, from this day forward, in being able to call me father. Even Paul senses the tug of family and congratulates his older brother. The songs and dancing begin, and then the feasts. It should be the happiest day of my life.
I can only wish I knew why I remain afraid.
Another two years later, something big happens. I do not know how to classify it in my heart. There must be a special word for an event of staggering undiluted evil that can only stun you with its depravity, that you are bound by all standards of human decency to regard with and that you cannot help face with any emotion darker than relief. But I do not know it. I can only report what’s happened and try to measure my feelings later.
Kenneth has been murdered.
It should be no surprise. His family has if anything gotten worse over the past few years, robbing homes and stealing livestock and growing their little colony of corruption by taking girls by force and making them too frightened to leave. In the last three years, three men who decided to stand against him had their homes burned, and one disappeared on his way home from an errand, leaving no signs of the nature of the misfortune that befell him. Kenneth was always in a public place, making himself visible, whenever these things happened, though he never showed any surprise whenever somebody came running from a distance to report the news. Nor were his sons anywhere to be seen. There was always a terrible, mocking knowledge in his eyes, showing us how much he relished our awareness that the responsibility remained his even when his hands were empty and displayed in plain sight. He loved our impotence.