addy died without ever passing on the Promise. Maybe he left it too late. Or maybe he viewed it as a deal strictly between him and God and nobody else's business. I for my part was relieved. Chasing the Promise, Daddy had left his homeland, traipsed five hundred miles north to Haran, then that distance again down to Caanan, then to Egypt, and back again to Caanan, and all he had to show for it was one small field with a cave begged for and bought with his own money. "That damned Promise," Mama had called it, she who had watched it become Daddy's obsession. I wanted no part of it.
Ishmael, my half-brother, come up from the Negev where he had settled, and together we laid Daddy to rest beside Mama, the two of us bearing the body into the cave, facing each other as we lowered it upon the bier. Ishmael's eyes glittered in the gloom, his features set hard and humorless. He had a reputation of being quick tempered and violent, as soon kill you as look at you, they said, the Wild One, they called him. Him and me had played together once. Then Daddy drove Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the desert with only a small skin of water and a little bread to an almost certain death. To satisfy Mama's jealousy, it was said, but I always suspected it had to do with the Promise. Whatever the reason, Daddy had done it. By a miracle they survived, and now Ishmael had wives and offspring and holdings of his own.
Ishmael was the first-born, but he had made it plain to me that he neither wanted nor would accept anything from Daddy, who, I thought, without divine intervention would have murdered us both.
"Why'd you come?" I asked.
"I needed to see him dead." Ishmael said.
After Daddy's period of mourning was up, Keturah chose to return with Ishmael to the Negev, although I assured her that she had a home with us as long as she wished and was welcome.
As it turned out, I didn't escape the Promise after all. It come years later, after the twins, Esau and Jacob, was born. We had been living for some time near Beer-lahai-roi in the south. Then the rains failed, and the land would no longer support us. I left it as long as I could, then as Daddy had done earlier in similar circumstances, I headed for Egypt. But as we was camped along the way at Gerar, all set to start out on the last leg of the journey the next morning, God showed up.
"Forget about Egypt," God said. "You hang around here so I can look after you, because I'm going to multiply your seed like the stars in heaven, and I'm going to give you all these lands just like I promised Abraham I would, and all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed through your seed."
Just like that. Popped up, pronounced the Promise and left, offering me no opportunity to argue, much less decline, even if I'd had the nerve to do either.
"Stay here," God had said. Now, that part I liked. I hadn't been looking forward to the discomforts of the rest of the journey, the hassle of finding a new place and having to adjust to new customs. Things looked better here in Gerar than in the desert country we had left. Maybe we could ride out the drought here.
Next morning I went to see Abimelech, king of the territory, reminded him of the agreement he and my daddy had once made not to harm one another, presented him with some pretty extravagant gifts, made a bunch of concessions I'd just as soon not have made, and finally got permission to settle in the area, wondering by that time if it was worth it.
The drought eventually passed and I prospered, my fields and flocks, servants and slaves growing every year. One day Abimelech come to see me. "People are complaining about you hogging the water," he said. "Maybe you've got too big for us. Maybe you ought to think about moving on. Now, I'm asking politely."
We moved east to the wadi of Gerar and dug a new well. "Our wadi," the local shepherds said, "and our water." So we moved on, digging wells, staying a season or two, then giving them up, until finally we was back at Beer-sheba, the land of my youth.
I halted my people and went on ahead to the place where our old encampment had been. I looked around, placing things. Here Mama's tent had stood. There she had cussed Daddy in front of the whole encampment. And over there Daddy had cut the wood and loaded it on the mules and we had headed for the land of Moriah. And there the hissing and the glaring had changed everything.
Suddenly I was mad, blind, boiling, teeth-gritting mad. I kicked the dust, sending it spurting out in front of my shoes. I snatched up a rock and heaved it as hard as I could at a tamarisk tree. I throwed back my head and screamed at the top of my voice, "Sons-of-bitches! All of you! God damned sons-of-bitches!" Though if I had been asked, I couldn't have said just who the sons-of-bitches was.
After a while I went back and called my people together. "This is it," I told them. "All my life I've tried to get along, bent over backwards to keep the peace. Whenever there's been a dispute, I've give in, moved on. And where has it got me? Nowhere. Now I'm back where I started, and here I stay. Here I take my stand and here I fight if I have to."
"And about time, too!" my people said and and grinned at each other and broke out their swords and spears and shovels and set to digging another well.
That night God showed up. "Fear not, I am with you," he said and droned out the Blessing again and vanished.
"Damn you!" I said to the place where he'd been, "And damn your old Promise, too!"
The next day old Abimelech turned up. "Quite a spread you got here, bigger than I realized. And we noticed riding in, most of your people out there are armed."
"Damned right!" I told him, "You run me out of Gerar, but you're not about to run me out of here!
"Hey, wait a minute," Abimelech said. "I didn't run you out. I wouldn't have done that. Why, I knew your daddy. No, I just suggested you leave and, as I remember, I done so politely. And shoot, big as you've got to be, nobody's going to try and mess with you now. I just don't want to have to worry about you messing with me. So, let's seal a pact that we won't harm one another and let's be friends."
That was more like it. Later that day, the well-diggers struck water, enough for the whole encampment and more.
The boys, Esau and Jacob, growed to manhood at Beer-sheba. Esau, "Red", they called him, was a man of the fields, a loner like me, simple and honest and straight as they come. We understood each other, him and me, could spend hours together with no word passing between us and be at ease.
If Jacob had had a nickname it would have been something like "Slick," because give him half a chance and he would take advantage of anybody. It was a trait I despised. Rebekah, on the other hand, must have admired it, or else been willing to overlook it, for Jacob was her favorite. When Jacob skinned Esau out of his birthright, all she said was, "Well, now, you can't blame somebody for looking out for number one."
"Don't worry about it," I told Esau. "Now you're free to do as you please. And you can be sure, I'll see to it you don't lose anything of value. As for Jacob, just be patient, he's going to get his."
As the years piled up on me, my eyesight begun to go, and I was no longer able to roam the fields. I spent my days laying on a pallet at the tent door or maybe in the shade of a one of the tamarisk trees just outside, dozing and dreaming and waiting for Esau to come in from the hunt so that we might make a meal together on whatever game he had brought.
Meanwhile, Rebekah was singing Jacob's praises to everybody in earshot. "He'll go far, my Jacob will. He's got a head on his shoulders. And he's got ambition. Not like that clod of a brother of his. It's a shame he's not the oldest. He's already got the birthright. He ought to have the Blessing and the Promise, too."
Listening to that or words like it sowed a seed in my head. Why not? I loved Esau. Why saddle him with the Blessing and Promise? But there was no way I could avoid passing them on to the first-born. The people wouldn't stand for it. And then there was God, and who knew about him? But what if I was maybe tricked into it? They would have to accept it then. I thought out a plan and explained it all to Esau.
"You actually think it will work?" Esau asked.
"Why not? Even if it don't, we ain't lost nothing."
Gradually over the next few weeks, my eyesight worsened, and I become more feeble. It got to where I needed help even to stand. One day when Rebekah looked in on me, I told her in a weak quavery voice, "I'm not long for this world. It's time I got my affairs in order. Go fetch me Esau, if you please." And when Esau come I said, "Get your hunting gear, son, and go out and get me some game for my supper. It will build up my strength. And then after supper, I'm going to give you the Blessing."
Rebekah didn't waste any time backing out of the tent. When she was gone, I told Esau to give them three or four hours, then come on back.
They managed it in two, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face. Here come old Jacob, hunching along, hugging a big bowl of hot stew, goat from the smell of it, wearing Esau's clothes which was way too big for him, and on his arms and around his neck what looked like goat skins. Esau was hairy all right, but goat skins ?
"Who's that?" I asked.
"Esau," Jacob said, trying to deepen his voice.
"Don't sound like Esau, sounds like Jacob. Come here, let me feel your arms"
Jacob set the bowl down and put his arms out to be felt.
"You sure you're Esau?"
"I'm Esau," Jacob said. "Come on, now, let me help you up so you can eat, and then you can give me the Blessing and Promise."
"I'll give them to you now," I said, "and eat later."
And I spoke the solemn words of the of the Blessing and then passed on the Promise.
When Esau returned I was still laughing to myself. "I see it worked," Esau said.
"Like a charm," I told him. "Them two are made for each other, Jacob and God, but neither one of them better ever turn his back on the other. Now there's just one last thing left to do. Tomorrow or the next day, I want you to mention to somebody who'll spread it around that the only thing keeping you from killing Jacob right now is that it would break my heart to see you become a murderer, but that the very minute I kick off, Jacob is a dead man. And try to look mean when you say it."
"I see. You want to give him something to think about while he's counting his blessings."
"And he's going to have a long time to think, because I expect to be around for quite a while. Of course, I'll keep that to myself.
"You beat all, Daddy. Where in the world do you come up with all this stuff?"
"From a lifetime of having things done to me. Now, come on, son, set down. We're having goat stew for supper."
