996 BC
DESERT
Absalom stands with his back to his father. David watches him closely. He inhabits his young body with perfect ease, though his neck, hidden beneath a shock of black hair, seems stiff with disbelief or astonishment.
“I’ve always wanted to see this,” Absalom says, quiet, maybe only to himself. But David hears.
“No life’s complete without seeing it.”
“How did you stand the heat?”
“I had no choice. Or the haze. That never goes away.”
Absalom turns toward him, shakes his head. “It’s like something from another world.”
“It is another world. You want to go in?” David says.
“The water? I can’t swim.”
“Impossible to drown. Not here.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see. But don’t get it in your eyes. It burns like lye. It blinds.”
David wades into the salt sea. Absalom stands on the shore, watching.
“Well? Are you coming?”
“You promise I won’t drown?”
“You of little faith.”
“Promise?”
“Son, you couldn’t drown here if Joab was trying to hold you under.”
“Why?”
“Stop asking questions. Come taste and see. Only, don’t taste. . . .”
Absalom slowly wades out behind his father. David leans back and floats. His shoulders, arms, knees, feet buoy above the surface. Some force beneath him seems to hold him aloft.
“You see? Even the most committed man cannot drown here.”
“Why?”
“Salt.”
“Why salt?”
“The Jordan comes to die here. Nothing gets out alive. All its water gathers in this sea, and never leaves. Except back to the sky.”
“And that makes salt?”
“Somehow, yes.”
“This is where you came?”
“I did. Not much older than you. A good place to hide. The heat and the salt make the haze, the haze makes it hard to see anything beyond a hundred spans You can hide here in plain sight. And the nights don’t turn to ice like in the high desert. Me, my men, we would come here sometimes for no better reason than to warm up.”
“What were you like, at my age?”
“I was a few years older when I came here. Seventeen. Maybe eighteen.”
“What were you like?”
“There were two of me. At least two. One sure, the other not. One vain, the other, well, not humble. Afraid.”
David sees himself then, thin and fast, fearful, hopeful. Wondering if this was the day God would smite Saul, and restore him. Wondering is this was the day Saul would catch him, his back against a wall, and destroy him.
“One day, it was just your uncle Abishai and me, we were beset on the road to Jericho. A pack of brigands. I’ve improved the road since then, but still it’s a dangerous place. Then, it was desolation, a haunt of jackals.”
“What happened?”
A ragged man emerged from a cleft in a rock face. He was beggarly, harmless. Only wanting bread. As he neared, another man stepped out. This one large, menacing. A scar twisted down his neck and chest. Then five men, the last three coming from different hiding places, each hefting a weapon. They surrounded David and Abishai.
“We killed them,” David says.
“Just like that?”
David laughs. “Well, it took some doing. We bled a little. Abishai lost a tooth. I got this. . . .” David shows him a scar pleating his left shoulder. “But soon all five were dead, or nearly so. We let two live. Against Abishai’s wishes.”
“Why?”
“That’s his nature. To finish the job.”
“No, I mean why let two live? They wouldn’t have done that for you.”
“Ah. Hmm. Mercy. Mercy’s never a bad thing. And there’s some use in it. A maimed bandit tends to be a warning to other bandits.”
Both are silent.
“I remember best how alive I felt,” David says. “Afterward. It’s like the world begins anew.”
Absalom stares at him, in wonderment or bewilderment.
“It’s hard to feel that, to feel life, feel it in your body, without. . . .” David sweeps his arm toward the vast emptiness stretching to the west. “Without that. That was my closest companion for a long time. Tried to kill me many times. Did the opposite.”
“Can you feel alive and not have that?”
“I don’t know.”
***
It’s Absalom’s thirteenth birthday. David has brought him here to show him the ways of the desert, its hardness, its beauty. He fears his sons, all of them, are growing soft from lack of want. He wants them, as each comes of age, to know wilderness. To sleep in its hollows, forage its scarce food, witch its hidden water. He wants each to feel the watching and the lurking and the stalking of wild things. To know the fear that can only be known when death is a real possibility.
“Tell me a time it almost killed you.”
“Didn’t I just tell you one?”
“I mean the wilderness itself. Not men.”
“I wrote songs about it. I’ve forgotten most of them. Let’s see. The time . . . there’s so many snakes out here. I once, in a cave, woke covered in them. Saw-scaled vipers. I was their nest, their pit. These are snakes, one bite and you’ve no more than a dozen steps left in you. Beautiful in their own way. Backs like fine jewellery. That was a tricky business, getting them off me. Joab helped, though—here’s a secret just between us—that man is terrified of snakes.
“The worst was not the wild things. You made your peace with wild things. And they with you. A mutual respect. There was a lion, he and I got almost onto friendly terms. We’d see each other, maybe once or twice a year, and kind of nod to one another, and leave room for the other to pass.
“No, the worst was people. Even the ones you walked beside. The desert makes you a survivor, if you survive. It strips you down to your worst instincts. You’re always wary, always ready. When men came into my camp, I never trusted a one. I couldn’t. Not at first. Some not ever. Betrayal is never far. But the desert, it also breeds loyalty. It’s hard to put into words. Betrayal and loyalty, they sit side by side. The man who’s deeply loyal, he’s the one can harm you most. The man who plots your downfall, he might be the one who saves your skin.”
“So like the court,” Absalom says. Not a question.
“Yes, like the court. Except, the court is rather thin on loyalty.”
***
After dark, they sit in the dark. Absalom asks for fire, but David wants him to learn that here being cold, and unseen, is often preferable to heat and light.
“Of all my sons,” David says, “you’re most like me.”
David thinks Absalom smiles.
“You flatter me.”
“Maybe I’m warning you. Some parts of myself I only saw long after they’d worked their harm, and were hard to be rid of.”
Absalom gives no reply.
“Do you want to hear more?” David asks.
“If you want.”
“Ah, right there.”
“What?”
“You know already,” David says. “You know better. And maybe you do.”
“But you’ve brought me here because you think otherwise.”
“Or because I don’t know myself. I don’t know if you need a desert to make you a man. I did, is all I know. Your entire life, son, you’ve never lacked for a thing. I lacked for most things. Much of what I learned, the desert taught me. Stone. Dirt. Scorpions. Snakes. Wild dogs. Wild men. Bad food. All were my teachers.”
David senses Absalom’s become bored, or annoyed.
“You think you don’t need teachers like that?” David says.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just . . . I can’t live your life.”
“True. But you might benefit from some of it.”
“I’m listening.”
“The devil that lives here in the desert, he’s not the same devil that lives in the city. That devil’s indulgent. Anything you want, he brings. You send for him, he hurries. A ready servant. Almost grovelling. He’d not dream of saying no to you.
“But the devil in the desert, he’s cruel, and hard, and stingy. He delights to refuse you. He revels in your suffering. He makes you scrounge and beg. Yet this is his undoing. His endless deprivations nearly kill you, but then they make you . . . a man.”
“Ahitophel teaches these things.”
“Oh! Ahitophel? What does he say?”
“He says that you went into the desert a boy and came out a man.”
“Well, there you have it. He’s a man of wisdom. But how does this help you, son, only knowing this?”
“Can I not imagine it without having to experience it? Isn’t that what you mean, that I can benefit from your life? Do I also have to repeat it?”
“Earlier today, I had you go into the cave first. I watched. Many living things seek refuge in a cave. Lions. Wolves. Snakes. Scorpions. They no more welcome intruders than any a man would in his own home. You entered that cave like you were entering your bed chamber. You didn’t look for tracks, bones, feathers. Tufts of fur, the skin of an asp. You didn’t smell for scat or musk. You turned your back on shadows. If something dwelled there, it’d have you eaten you already.”
After a long silence, Absalom speaks. David hears both wanting and resentment in his voice.
“You think only the desert can teach me to be a man?”
“Maybe.”
“You intend to banish me here?”
“It’s crossed my mind. Your mother’s an obstacle. But maybe it’s time to take you away from Ahitophel and put you in the hands someone else.”
“Who?”
“Joab.”
“Jaob? You’re kidding? Joab?”
“He knows things up close Ahitophel only knows rumors about. Not all wisdom, son, speaks with a golden tongue. Some hardly speaks at all. It’s all just doing. That’s Joab.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You do. But choice and freedom aren’t the same thing. Say no to this, it narrows your choice.”
“Can I choose both?”
“Ahitophel and Joab?”
“Yes.”
“Can you?”
“I want both.”
“I doubt it’s possible. One tends to exclude the other.”
After a long silence, Absalom clears his throat.
“You’ve come to a decision, then?” David says.
“Am I . . . are you . . . is this to groom me . . . for the throne?”
David lets out a strange sound, half laugh, half sigh.
“Among things Joab might groom you for, the throne’s not one of them.”