BEDA Day 22: A short story...

Hey guys. Um....I am going to post a short story here. Keep in mind this is a work in progress. It is by no means a finished story. If you read it, could you give me some feedback? My concerns are that it reads too fast and there is no emotional investment for the reader. I just read it and felt totally alienated emotionally, but I am the writer, after all. So let me know what you think. Do I need to slow it down with a little more emotional tension? You can give me feedback on other things as well... Tell me what you think the point is...etc.

Flock

By: Sara J Perkins

It is a well known fact that one’s persuasive abilities increase with volume. It is another well known fact that volume increases with wine. No stranger to this, the master of Israel’s wine house always keeps an assistant on duty and a firm staff close at hand. More than once he’s had to employ these precautions against men who forget they are men and not beasts. A slip of the mind that happens to even the best of men, especially, it seems, today, the day of the big debate between King Saul and the Bethlehemite, David.

Within an hour of the debate’s completion, Israel’s House of Wine was filled to capacity. Men of all ages, some clad in tunics, others dressed in robes, coated every surface of bench space. Cheeks glowing, beards pooling with wine, they chattered amongst each other with such enthusiasm that hardly a man could distinguish the words of the person speaking to him.

Two men, sitting at the center of the longest table, had given up on speaking and sat in silence, listening to the babble. Their names were Absalom and Asahel. They had been together since early that morning--well before sunrise--when they got in line to see the debate. It had been a long few hours, and they were content enough to sip at their wine, nudging one another here and there, as a cue to listen in on something humorous.

Absalom had just directed his elbow into Asahel’s bicep, making eye contact and nodding toward a man across the table from them. The man had locked his lips around the mouth of his flask and thrown his head back for the sake of gravity, but the wine was flowing out of his flask faster than he could swallow it. It was spilling out the edges of his mouth and weaving itself through his cropped greying beard. This was Joab, he was known for his calculated toughness, for being both strong and intimidatingly witty. As a man who generally never flinched without strategy, Absalom and Asahel were quite amused to see him behave so impulsively. Laughing to each other, they watched as he downed the last drop of wine and slammed his flask on the table while simultaneously whipping his head into regular position. However, the quick jerking of his head had caused the wine building up in his beard to projectile as he moved. It reached his pale tunic at about the same time that his flask hit the table, leaving him with a necklace of wine splattered across his chest. A moment later and Absalom and Asahel were besides themselves with laughter, grasping at each other’s sleeves to keep from falling on their faces with amusement. They were not the only ones who noticed. Several men in their proximity had stopped conversations to laugh along, as well. Joab, realizing that he was the subject of their merriment, discovered the mess he’d made and scowled, as he rubbed away at his chest, before removing himself on the premise of getting more wine.

Joab’s real intention was to make his way to the wash room. Weaving his way through the crowd, he caught what he could of the conversations that he passed. A few men were discussing the day’s weather, others were still marveling at the event’s decor. Joab listened to them analyze patriotic rosettes as he passed into a tiny room shaped with the same cobblestone walls as the main house and lit by nothing but a low oil lantern flickering away next to the wash bowl he sought. He began scrubbing his tunic, meanwhile considering the men’s conversation. He had to admit, those rosettes had been something to behold. The whole ordeal, in fact, had been decorated with such acute attention to detail that he made a note to personally congratulate the man who’d conducted it. It struck him that, that man might have been King Saul, himself. The more he reflected on it, the more obvious it seemed. It would be King Saul, he thought. Joab had never approved of the King’s taste for frilly embellishments. This morning, he nearly fell on his face when he saw the King step onto his speaking box in a long robe that was brighter than the day and shinier the sea, itself. All those colors had seemed inappropriate next to David’s humble shepherding tunic. Very inappropriate, he decided, stepping out of the room and actually heading to get more wine this time.

At the long table, Absalom and Asahel were still occupying themselves with what they could hear and see of the goings on. Having already laughed themselves out over the spectacle of Joab, their attention was currently directed at an enormous man at the table farthest from the entranceway. His head and shoulders were visible above the sea of heads between them. He was wide set and more muscular than any man they had ever seen. They did not know his name but were beginning to form suspicions by the time Joab reappeared, clean tunic-ed and a full flask in each hand. Smiling into the faces of the men watching him return, he posed a question that had nothing to do with the subject of him or the wine he carried.

“What did you fellows make of Saul’s robes today?” he said with a rolling eye and a twitch of the eyebrows. He’d spoken loud enough that at least a handful of men in their direct vicinity had picked up on the subject.

The crowd responded with an amused, “Oho!” that crescendoed in unison. That, alone, was enough to pick up the curiosity of few more stragglers. From what Asahel could tell, this was suddenly the most focused conversation anybody had seen all day. He scanned the room, focusing on how many people around him were still engaged in other conversations and how many were joining in on Joab’s banter.

“A bit ridiculous if you ask me!” chimed in someone Asahel couldn’t see, but whose voice he recognized as his friend, Solomon’s. The crowd laughed its approval.

“I was looking to elect a King, not a goldfish, Saul!” hollered another man. The crowd went on like that for awhile, the laughter rising as each man felt the need to throw in his own joke or two.

After about two minutes of this, Absalom cut across an older man named Jesse, sitting to the left of him.

“I don’t know,” he said with a mischievous smile, “maybe David shouldn’t have dressed so plainly. I mean, at least Saul tried.” It was the inflection in his voice that confused people. A few of them understood and responded with mocking “ooo” sounds. Others merely laughed awkwardly, and the rest stayed quite. Joab, rolling his eyes at Absalom, was issuing an exaggerated “haha” sound. When he stopped, he took a moment to compose himself, before adding, quite seriously, his opinion on the matter.

“No, I think David did well to dress the way that he did,” he said.

“Yes,” continued the man Jesse, voice stern, “it was very humble, shows that he is a working man, like us--”

“'Working man?' When has David ever worked?” interjected Absalom, irritated. “He’s been living in the palace since boyhood!” Several angry murmurs shot through the crowd in response.

“Hold on, now,” piped in Asahel, shocked at his friend’s rudeness. “What can we possibly know of these things? We’re far too young to have been--”

“I heard it from Saul, today, in his speech,” cut in Absalom, “You were there, you--”

“Heard it from Saul?” scoffed Joab. “I could count, on one hand, the number of good things that have come out of that man’s mouth! Now,” he paused, intent on Absalom, “you listen to me. David is a great warrior. He has done great things for Is--”

“David is a murderer.”

The yell came from the enormous man Absalom and Asahel had been admiring earlier. The man’s volume, alone, could have silenced the room, but what he was insinuating greatly amplified the effect. As every eye in the house turned toward him, the enormous man got to his feet. He was nearly too tall to fit below the cold, cobblestone ceiling. The people marveled as they took in his gigantic shape. He appeared to have more muscles on one leg than any of them had ever seen on one whole person. When he reached his full height, he spoke again.

“From what I hear,” said the man, “that David has spent the years running across the land, killing every--”

“No. You’re wrong!” came a young voice that carried in pitch rather than volume, “David was fighting for Israel!” Every eye in the house searched for the source of this bold interruption. They found it in a small boy of about fifteen, standing up on the far end of Absalom and Asahel’s table, entire arm pointing fiercely in the direction of the gigantic man. “It’s Saul that’s the murderer!” he continued. “Don’t you know how he’s been trying to kill off David for years?”

At the end of the boy’s proclamation, every man in the house reacted. Most cried cheers of approval and hurtled their own insults at the giant man, others contradicted the boy, telling him he was too young to understand these things and shouldn’t be spreading such lies, while still more focused on getting him to come down from the table and out of harm’s way, but by the time they got him down, the effort seemed futile. In seconds, the whole wine house had erupted in furious arguments. Men who had contradicted the boy were intercepted by men cheering him on, and each became so quickly absorbed in making himself heard over his opponent that nothing else seemed to exist. Joab, shouting directly into the face of a younger, much fitter man who had him by the collar, was not the least bit aware of the savage argument his friend Jesse was having with a foreign looking man in strange, flowing pants or of the wrestling match that broke out, within an inch of his foot, after Asahel had taken a swing at Absalom for getting them in this mess. The level of commotion in the wine house had far exceeded itself, and hardly a soul was in the state to notice it.

The house master appeared to be the only exception. Behind the bar, he was scrambling over his assistant, frantic to get to his staff before anything serious happened, but just as he wrapped his hands around its thick body, the uproar ceased.

An old man, with a look frailer than death, had called for silence with authority that went beyond the comprehension of an average man. It was Samuel, the most respected man in all of Israel. He had gotten to his feet and, with the support of a worn staff, was limping around the benches, instructing men to return to their seats.

“The argument you men are having is senseless,” he said, addressing the men as he continued to limp among them. “Only the Lord, Yahweh can appoint the King of Israel, and I have it on his authority that Saul is a sinner, unfit to rule. He will be replace by David in the days ahead.” At this announcement, many of the men began to cheer, but Samuel silenced them with a scold. He directed the last few men to their seats and made his way to the door, exiting with a finality that inspired the David supporters into a boisterous applause.

Absalom and the more dedicated Saul supporters sat in silence while the rest of the room joined in a hearty chorus of “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands!” They sang with complete abandon until the house master emerged from behind the bar, staff in hand, and began herding them out the door.