Noah's Dove
A few hundred years after the flood, the ark up on blocks, he would sometimes go up to the third story window to better remember the delicate way she had alit upon his outstretched hand, the olive twig in her beak. She was so light from the journey she was hardly anything at all. The twig was almost heavier than she was. Her little heart was pitter-pattering. He fed her seeds and she slept in his palm, her hooded eyes trembling faintly, as if she was dreaming of all she had seen. He didn't need to send her back out again, the olive twig was proof enough, but he wanted to be sure, and, when she didn’t return, he knew the waters had receded. Now, years later, he still couldn’t help but keep an eye on the sky in the hope that she would come back to him. The waiting had made him bitter. He’d gotten fat and surly, his gut protruding out from the smudged t-shirts he wore. By day he worked the vineyard he’d planted around the ark. By night he drank its fruit out of faceted water glasses. Easy to lose track of their number. His wife had left him long ago. His sons didn’t respect him. Ungrateful pricks. If it wasn’t for him, nothing living would be alive. But to them he was just an old shipwright, nails cracked and blackened from errant hammer falls. He missed those days when he had purpose. The rush to get the ark built. Asking the boss for more time, even as the sky clouded over. He was driving the last nail when he felt the first drop in his scalp. Then the beautiful floating weightlessness of the ark being lifted up as everything else was being drowned. He and God didn’t talk much anymore. They’d been meaning to catch up, but, conflicting schedules. Tentative plans for a summer fishing trip. Every night he drank glass after glass, then crawled into the tent he’d pitched on the deck. He’d never built a house out of fear that God would grow angry again and send another flood. He almost prayed for it. How good it would be to feel the ark, which he kept tarred and seaworthy, being lifted up again. Letting the sea take him wherever it wished. But these were dry years. One hot night, drunk, he stripped naked and crawled into his tent. His youngest, Ham, came up onto the deck looking for the hammer to build a dovecot. Peeking into the tent, he saw his old man sprawled naked. As if it might help rinse the image from his mind, he told his brothers. “So dad’s naked and drunk again, what else is new?” Japeth said. “Yeah, tell us something we don’t know,” Shem said. “If it’s bothering you so much, cover him up,” Japeth said. Ham just stood there. He was the most sensitive of the three. “Fine, I’ll do it for you,” Shem said, and took the blanket off Ham’s bed, and went up into the ark, followed by Japeth and Ham. He entered the tent backwards so he wouldn’t have to see what his brother had seen - fuck that shit - and tossed the blanket on top of his dad, waking him up. For a moment he thought the dove had come back and alit upon his chest, only to find he was covered in Ham’s itchy blanket. “Who the hell does that boy think he is? Such a little bitch. Must’ve gotten it from his mama. I hope Japeth and Shem make it big and he has to serve their servants.” Ham heard every word. In the morning, hungover, Noah remembered neither the blanket nor his curses. He climbed up to the third story and stood at the window. Dawn was breaking, mourning doves cooing, but none were his dove. But he reached his arm out anyway, like some will do when they’re dying.