Daddy didn’t make us go to church that Sunday. He said it was because I’d been sniffling all weekend. I wondered, though, if it was because he wasn’t up to seeing folks and shaking hands. As it was, the few people who’d seen him with his shiner and busted lip had got to talking already. I was sure he didn’t want to invite more gape-mouthed stares than he had to.
“Besides,” he’d said, “all anybody wants to do is bend my ear one way or the other about the meeting the other day. It’s hard for a man to sit and listen to a sermon when he’s got half the town staring at the back of his head.”
It didn’t bother me one bit, not going to church that morning. Daddy’d let us stay in our pajamas and I didn’t even bother putting a comb through my snarled-up hair. How we moved around that morning was lazy and slow and it felt awful good to me.
Daddy put together a hot breakfast of chunked potatoes, bits of sausage, onion, and scrambled-up eggs. He made sure we said a prayer together before we ate.
I couldn’t take more than a couple bites before my stomach felt full to busting. Ray didn’t seem to mind. He ate the last of my breakfast like he’d never seen such good food before in his life.
“Daddy,” I said. “Can you please tell us a story?”
Daddy nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Yup,” he said. “I reckon I can.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, pushing his lips upward so they almost disappeared under his mustache.
“Now, a man named Isaac married a woman named Rebekah. After a while they found out they were going to have a baby,” Daddy started. “But instead of just one, they had themselves two.”
“This is from the Bible,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am. Telling stories is the only kind of preaching I know how to do and it’s Sunday. So this is our sermon,” Daddy said. “Now, those twin babies wrestled around inside the womb, fighting over who was going to be born first.”
Ray put an elbow on the table, resting his head against his fist, still shoveling food into his mouth but not taking his eyes off Daddy. His folks never had been ones to drag him to church or to read out of the Bible after supper. Lots of the stories that were old to me were brand-new to him.
“When it came time for those babies to be born, it was Esau that won the race.” Daddy lowered his arms, resting his hands on his lap. “But Jacob, he had a hold of Esau’s ankle, like he meant to pull him right back inside so they could keep on fighting.”
“Babies can do that?” I asked.
“Course they can,” he said. “I mean I guess I wouldn’t know from experience exactly.”
I tried picturing it, but wasn’t all the way sure how any of it worked, birthing babies, that is. As curious as I was, there was no way in heaven or on earth I was about to ask Daddy. Especially not with Ray sitting right there. Just the thought of it made my cheeks burn.
“Now, Esau was hairy as a bear even then on his first day,” Daddy went on. “But Jacob was bald as a badger. Esau ended up being a hunter and Jacob stayed at home with his mother most days.”
“Jacob was her favorite,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Mothers shouldn’t have favorites.”
“No, darlin’, they shouldn’t,” Daddy said. “One day, when the boys were grown, Esau went off hunting like he always did. Jacob, of course, stayed home making soup.”
I imagined Jacob standing at the cookstove, bone broth bubbling in a big old pot over the fire. He stirred it every now and again, adding a pinch of salt or a shake of black pepper. Maybe he chopped onion and carrot to add in the mix, letting them get soft in the simmering liquid. I decided he hadn’t bothered putting on an apron. Daddy never wore one when he was cooking.
“Esau came home, starving near to death,” Daddy said.
Esau would’ve come staggering into the kitchen, not from being drunk but from being fall-down tired. His shirt sleeves were rolled up above his hairy arms and his beard was grown out down to the middle of his chest.
Loud as Esau was, panting and heaving and with his stomach growling like a mad dog, Jacob wouldn’t turn to him. He just pretended not to know his brother had entered the room.
“Esau begged Jacob for a bowl of that soup,” Daddy said. “Jacob, though, he didn’t believe anything was free. Not even a sip of broth for a starving man.”
I pictured Jacob to have a nasty curl of the lip and a wicked narrowing of the eyes.
“‘I’ll trade ya,’ Jacob told his brother.” Daddy leaned forward. “Esau, he was so desperate he would’ve agreed to anything.”
That sneak Jacob ladled up some soup, letting the steam carry the smell of it to his twin. He’d give him that bowl, and maybe even another, for the promise of Esau’s birthright.
“What’s a birthright?” Ray asked.
“Esau was oldest,” Daddy explained. “That meant he’d get everything—all the land and sheep and such—after their father died.”
“Did they have a lot?”
“Yup, son, they sure did.” Daddy nodded. “Now, Esau was sure he was just about to die of hunger anyhow, so he didn’t care about giving up his birthright. He agreed right away. Nobody in the history of the world ate soup so fast as Esau did that day.”
I thought Esau’d forgotten about his sold birthright as soon as he had a full tummy and went off to rest. Jacob, though, he wasn’t like to forget. Not that ankle-grabbing cheat.
Daddy went on to say that it was getting close to the time when their father would pass on. He lay on his deathbed, calling for his son Esau to come on and get the blessing due him.
“But first, he sent Esau out hunting,” Daddy said.
“What was he huntin’?” Ray asked.
“Don’t know,” Daddy answered. “Maybe some deer or something. Whatever it was, Esau was supposed to make it into a stew for his father.”
“They eat a lot of soup in this story,” Ray said.
“You’re right about that. You are.” Daddy nodded and smiled. “Well, soon as Esau left, the mother got to scheming. Jacob and Esau’s father was just about blind. She thought they could use that to their advantage.”
She’d told Jacob to get dressed in animal skins that would make him pass as his brother. I wondered if he stood in his room, the fur strapped to his arms stinking to high heaven of outside and sweat and musk, and if he had even a flicker of a thought that he ought not trick his father.
If he’d had such an idea he sure hadn’t given it a second thought.
“So Jacob, wearing his Esau costume, took some stew his mother’d made and spoon-fed it to his father,” Daddy said. “And Isaac, convinced it was his firstborn son, went on and gave him the blessing.”
Jacob’s hand under his father’s thigh, his mother looking on. The blessing only given once, placed on the head of the wrong son. They were just words out of a dying man’s mouth, but once they’d been said, there was no taking them back.
“Esau came back and brought his own stew to his father,” Daddy said. “By then it was too late. Jacob was so scared, he went running, swearing he’d never come back just so long as his brother was there.”
I wondered if Jacob had even bothered to take the fur off his arms before he went.
Daddy left off there, saying something about us cleaning up the breakfast things. I knew Opal would’ve said we should leave them to soak until the next morning when she could do them up. Daddy didn’t like doing such a thing though.
He washed, Ray dried, and I put away the dishes. All the while I thought about the day when Jacob finally went on home. Only reason he’d returned was because God told him he’d better. He shook in his boots all the way there, sending his wives and children and servants out ahead of him like a coward.
I’d never felt sorry for that lying weasel Jacob.
But then Esau’d come rushing through the crowd, making a beeline to his brother. Instead of socking him a good one in the nose or shoving him to the ground, he threw his arms around him and welcomed him home.
The prodigal brother had made his way back.