Sans Ransom

Bildad's Maggot

Arnold waddled toward the door dumbfounded. Actually, he was the only one in the audience who was profoundly moved.

"You do this every year on Nisan 14?" 

The young fat black woman nodded back with an excited smile.

"Yeah. We don't always speakers as 'interesting' as with did this year, but yes its something laid down in law for us New Israelites." She did the airquotes when she said 'interesting.' "Sorry about that," she said and made the big-teeth awkward smile.

"No!"

"No, what?"

"No. I enjoyed it. Well...enjoy is not the right word but...a lot of what he said made sense."

"Made sense?"

For a moment, it was hard to distinguish inviter and invitee. 

"I mean. I-I don't want to sound rude or negative, but a lot of the people I'm around--they might as well be worms. Why should that Michael angel guy come down and save a bunch of us worms?"

The fat black woman smiled and shook her head.

"So how can mortal man be righteous before God,
Or how can one born of a woman be innocent?
Even the moon is not bright
And the stars are not pure in his eyes,
How much less so mortal man, who is a maggot,
And a son of man, who is a worm!"

"What," Arnold said with a lost look on his face.

"The book of Job. One of his so-called friends said that God views us as worms or maggots."

"And?"

"And...he was wrong. Even though the ransom for Adam's fall from grace was never paid for, that don't mean that God don't love us! Look at all that's around us--the beauty of nature that we can enjoy, the bond of family, the warmth of the suns rays on your face on a winter afternoon. And yet we still want more. Imperfect mankind--greedy and never satisfied. We want everlasting life, the dead back, and perfection too. Isn't what we have already enough to be grateful to God for?"

Greedy and never satisfied. Arnold thought of his boss writing the check and depositing it in his Wells Fargo account with a thick, dishonestly satisfied smile on his face. He thought of the moment when Aunt Chelsea was lowered into the ground. Dust to dust, never to become anything more than dust again. Asleep forever. Eternal nothingness as a reward for the good she did in her life and the smiles she tried to put on the faces of ungrateful strangers.

Goodbye forever, Aunt Chelsea.

"I came here because--I came here because of two situations I've recently faced. One is a case of my boss being--as you said--greedy and never satisfied. The other is a case of my Aunt. She died, but, I want something more for her. I want to see her rewarded for who she was. In a universe so organized, I can't simply just accept that injustice is here--and here to stay forever. There has to be something more."

The fat black woman didn't understand him and was too afraid to ask for clarification. Normally, now she would invite the new one back for next week's speech like a good well-trained, well-behaved New Israelite. She didn't have the courage to do so after what she considered to be such a horrendous Passover speech.

Then Arnold said something that surprised her.

"So, next weekend? There'll be another speech?"

She couldn't believe it! He wanted to learn more?

"Yes. Uh...yeah. Ten o'clock."