Chapter 180
Fish Face
©Jeannie St. John Taylor
“The waters increased
and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. And the waters prevailed
so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven
were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen
cubits deep.” Genesis 7:17b, 19 -20
Shem
shook the fin of a smoked salmon between his thumb and forefinger. “You might
want to stay by the door so one of these guys doesn’t smack you in the face.”
Row after row of the large fish hung from racks rising all the way to the
ceiling in this room.
A bemused smile
lit Atarah’s face. “You expect a dead fish to wriggle over and slap me in the
fa . . . Oof.” She pushed a salmon away from her nose with two fingers. “Yuck.
Okay. Okay. I’m backing up. Standing by the door.”
“I
tried to warn you.” Shem laughed as he walked over to her with two fish laying
across his forearms arms.
“That
thing swung over and whapped me,” she complained. She wiped oil off her nose
before accepting the large smoked salmon then dropped one of them as she
fumbled the other onto a wheeled flatbed just outside the door. “Heavy.” She
retrieved the fish from the floor and tossed it onto the cart. “I find the
sheer quantity of fish in here astounding.”
“This
is nothing.” He grunted as he unhooked another fish. “There’s room after room
chock full of them.”
“What’d
you do, stick a sign outside the ark announcing, ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ and
they all swam on?”
“So
that’s what you think? We snapped our fingers and all the food here just
magically appeared?” He rolled his eyes, feigning dismay. “I’ll have you know
Ham and I caught every fish in this room from a river near here. Plus we
personally stored buffalo and camel and hundreds of other kinds of meat. Some
suitable for human consumption. Some appropriate only for enormous carnivorous
beasts.”
“Most
of the carnivorous beasts I’ve seen here are still young.” Atarah paused to
make her point. “That means they’re small.”
“Okay.
You made your point. I might have exaggerated a little with the ‘enormous’”.
“You
just exaggerated again with the ‘a little’.”
He
bunched his lips to hold back a smile, but his eyes danced.
“Did
you know,” she asked, studying one of the fish, “that our city has an idol like
this? A fish carved from wood, covered with hammered gold. And people bake
cakes to the god and do evil things in his honor!”
“Hard
to understand,” Shem agreed. He felt love for this woman surge through him
anew. She’d come to understand the illogic of idol worship even though she’d
been raised with false gods. God had protected her spirit and saved her for
him.
“No matter how
hard I try, I can’t figure out why people do evil when they worship. I mean,
stupidity is one thing, but most gods demand outright evil, and that’s a whole
different thing.”
“You’ve
never heard about Satan?” For some reason Shem hadn’t even considered the
possibility that no one had explained the source of evil to her. He kept
forgetting that his upbringing had been entirely different from hers.
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About Jeannie St. John Taylor
Jeannie St. John Taylor, best selling author and two-time Gold Medallion finalist, is the author of five non-fiction books as well as fifteen books for children. She writes and illustrates in the office-studio her husband built on their beef farm ten minutes from the skyscrapers in downtown Portland, Oregon. She and Ray have three grown children. Her books include: Culture-proof Kids, Building Character in Your Children, AMG Publishers, Am I Praying, Kregel and How to Be a Praying Mom, Hendrickson Publishers
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