Heathern Read Online Free Page B

supplied their clothes he must have provided detergent as
well. Perhaps he had trouble with shoes; most wore sandals
fashioned from strips of tire and rope. A girl sitting in the
front row, her hands clasped before her in her lap, spoke to
us. The rest of the class was preternaturally still.
    "We were-" She halted, and scratched her head, searching for the word she wanted; each of her hands bore an
extra thumb. "Discussing, that's it. We were discussing the
fall of man." She laughed. "Man's first disobedience. The
fruit of that tree."
    "You're studying Milton?" I asked.
    He looked at me; I stared between his eyes as he spoke, as
if I were being interviewed. "Biblical interpretation of every
sort has its purpose, you know." Avi and I frowned in
unison, as might twins, each of us surely thinking that we
had found nothing more than the usual fundamentalist
continuing to eat through the woodwork. Scholars sus pected that American students would find the legend of
creationism no more comprehensible than the theory of
evolution, therefore remaining untainted by either, but I
had my doubts, and suspected Macaffrey of being one of
those keen to demonstrate to the young that the only proper
logic is none at all; so I imagined, until he began.

    "Let's recap for the benefit of our guests," he said. "The
key to understanding the first chapters of Genesis is remembering that nothing in it is written as it happened.
What do we call such writing?"
    A girl with hair the color of crow's wings lifted her arm,
her hand reaching no higher than her head. Another child
of that test group; her legs were little more than stubs
propping her squat body aright. "Allegorical," she said, her
voice raw, sounding as if she'd smoked and drank heavily,
awaiting exit from the womb. "Truth bedecked in Halloween drag."
    Neither game nor video could have seduced Macaffrey's
audience into taking their eyes off the screen he presented.
"Good, Marge. So face facts. Seven days represent billions
of years. Keep in mind that this was written for people who
didn't know from hours. With that ground planted, let's get
to the growing. What was that snake, and what made it
special?"
    "They meant Neanderthal people," said a boy. "Godness
liked Neanderthal people. They couldn't talk but they
communicated."
    "They had flowers at their funerals," added another boy,
perfect enough but for the ragged scar transversing each
cheek.
    "They saw Adam and Eve," said Macaffrey. "Who were
they?"
    "Cro-Magnon," shouted a girl. I looked and looked
again, but saw nothing wrong with her. "God liked them.
They acted without a script."
    "They yearned to burn," said a boy standing on his hands; without legs, he waved like wheat in the wind. "No
patience."

    "There're two kinds of people in the world," said
Macaffrey. "The Garden was the world as it once was, as it
was intended to be. Everything was very peaceful for a very
long time. Both groups kept to themselves. They did as
they'd always done. There were no problems. No disruptions. They were very afraid, and didn't know why. What
was the matter?"
    "They knew they weren't complete," said the girl with
four thumbs.
    "Their creation, though perfect, wasn't whole. It was
divided, as They were. Godness knew that our intermingling would cause no end of trouble but knew as well that
the choice would have to lie with us. She put the flea in the
serpent's ear-symbolically, of course." The students
laughed, as if knowing well the answer to a riddle just
heard. "We've known responsibility for our actions ever
since."
    "So what happened?" Avi asked, as if hearing it for the
first time.
    "Opposites magnetize," said the crow-haired girl.
"Wanting to mindblow, they aimed bedways."
    "Cain and Abel were the first children," said a boy,
scratching his ear with his toe as he spoke. "They suffered
for being first."
    "For being human. Their children's children were as us,"
said Macaffrey. "They know They