[one]
He wasn’t sure if it was leprosy or just a severe case of jock itch or what, but he'd decided it was better to be safe than sorry.
In his tent in Tabor, Uz Arphaxad was lying on a plank of wood suspended between two stacks of mud bricks, completely naked except for the two slices of cucumber that covered his eyes. For decency’s sake, he kept his hands cupped over his genitals.
He could hear the priest puttering around on the dusty, dirty beaten earth floor as he mixed together an assortment of strange ingredients. The priest took some cedar, scarlet, and a bit of hyssop and tossed it into a big ceramic bowl, then reached into the right pocket of his tunic and produced a dead, headless bird. He held the poor piece of poultry over the bowl and began to wring it out like a wet washcloth, its blood spurting out of the hole where its head used to be attached.
“I still say that none of this would be necessary if you’d just air out your loincloth every so often,” said Arphaxad’s assistant Boaz, who was seated on a stool nearby, digging the grit out from under his fingernails.
“It’s a bit late for that now, Boaz,” Arphaxad replied. “I need to nip this thing in the bud before it gets any worse.”
“Honestly, I have my doubts about the efficacy of this treatment,” Boaz said.
“I assure you that it has a one-hundred percent success rate,” the priest interjected. “We know this as an inarguable fact because this treatment was prescribed by God Himself.”
“You hear that, Boaz?” Arphaxad said smugly. “We have science on our side here. It’s pretty hard to argue against the word of the Lord.”
Boaz sighed and shrugged.
From his left pocket, the priest produced a bird that was still very much alive. It squawked loudly, clawed and pecked at the priest’s hands, and flapped its wings wildly. With some struggle and the uttering of a few expletives, the priest dunked it into the bowl, submerging it in the red, viscous liquid. Then the slippery, blood-slicked bird broke free from the priest’s grasp, flew a few frantic loops around the room and escaped through the front flap of the tent.
Boaz cocked an eyebrow and wiped away the droplets of bird blood that now speckled his face. Arphaxad sat upright, wondering what the hell all the commotion was.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Arphaxad, just lay back and relax. Everything is going exactly according to plan,” the priest assured him.
The priest scooped up a handful of his peculiar concoction and began to drizzle it across Arphaxad’s body. Arphaxad was particularly ticklish and giggled as the lukewarm bird blood landed on his bare flesh.
“In seven days, you’ll need to shave off all your hair, wash your entire wardrobe, and take a nice long bath,” the priest told him as he finished up by upturning the entire bowl onto Arphaxad, splattering the foul-smelling substance all over him. “On the eighth day, you’ll need to find two unblemished lambs and a ewe, along with some fine flour and a log of oil, and take those items over to the tabernacle and offer it all unto the Lord. After that, you’ll not only be cured, you’ll also be immunized against leprosy for the rest of your life.”
“Oh, the miracles of modern medicine!” Arphaxad rejoiced.
Suddenly, the goat-hair flap of the tent flew open and a woman in a flowing white robe rushed into the room. There was a large crimson stain on her dress, in the vicinity of her groin, and a trickle of blood ran down one of her legs.
“Mr. Arphaxad! Mr. Arphaxad!” the woman cried.
Arphaxad sat up and peeled the cucumber slices off of his face. When his eyes finally focused, he gasped.
“Boaz, toss me my loincloth, will you?” Arphaxad asked. Boaz handed it over and the lady momentarily turned away as Arphaxad strapped himself in.
“Damn it, woman! How dare you barge into my tent in such an unclean state!” he yelled. “You’re supposed to sequester yourself for seven days during this time of the month. Don’t you realize you could infect us all with your uncleanliness?”
The woman had a puzzled look on her face. Arphaxad pointed an accusing finger at her crotch. She looked down and blushed.
“Oh, Mr. Arphaxad! It isn’t what you think!,” she said. “It’s a rather strange story, actually. I was running down the road on my way here, and right when I round the corner onto your street a big, blood-soaked bird comes flying right at me like a bat out of Hell. The damned thing was having a conniption fit and tried to take refuge under my skirt.”
Boaz snorted in a failed attempt to stifle laughter. The priest pretended not to hear her, and quickly gathered his equipment and left.
“A likely story,” Arphaxad scoffed. “Well, who the hell are you and what do you want?”
“My name is Bashemath, and I’m here because of my husband, Jobab the Moabite,” the woman said. “He’s been murdered!”
“Whoa, now! Just take it easy,” Arphaxad said. “Let’s not jump to senseless conclusions here. What makes you think he’s been murdered?”
“Two days ago, Jobab took our oxen out to let them stretch their legs a little, but he never came back home,” Bashemath explained. “Yesterday, I went over to his brother Zepho’s house to ask if he’d seen him, but he hadn’t, so we went out searching for him.”
“And I suppose it’s safe to assume that you found him, then,” Arphaxad remarked morbidly.
“We did,” Bashemath said, tears welling in her eyes. “We found him lying face down in the dirt at a wadi about halfway between Beth Shemesh and Shahazimah. His head was completely bashed in, and all the oxen were gone.”
“Are you getting all this down, Boaz?” Arphaxad turned and asked his trusty assistant.
Boaz was one step ahead of him. He already had a chisel in hand and a stone tablet cradled in his arm and was furiously scribbling away.
“So can you help me, Mr. Arphaxad?” Bashemath asked. “Can you find my husband’s killer?”
“Of course I can, woman!” Arphaxad insisted arrogantly. “I’m only the most talented detective this side of the Sea of Galilee. But I must warn you, my expertise comes at a cost.”
“Anything, Mr. Arphaxad! I’ll give you anything you want,” Bashemath said. “I just want to see the man who murdered my husband brought to justice.”
“Very well, Miss Bashemath,” Arphaxad said. “I shall require a retainer of five sheep in order for you to secure my services.”
“I’ll have them transferred to your account by sundown,” she assured him.
Arphaxad wanted to seal the deal with a handshake, but as it turned out, Bashemath didn’t even have a right hand to shake with. That’s a little odd, Arphaxad thought, making a mental note of it. He and his new client settled for a simple nod of agreement.
“In that case, I shall begin my investigation immediately,” Arphaxad declared. “Boaz, fetch me my good leather sandals and my staff and go outside and prepare our asses. We have a murder mystery to solve.”
[two]
“Get out of here, you abominable beasts! Go on, get!” Boaz hollered at the top of his lungs while flapping his arms about, dispersing the venue of vultures that were gathered around the limp, lifeless body of Jobab the Moabite.
Arphaxad climbed off of his ass and ambled over. He prodded the corpse a couple times with his staff.
“Just as I suspected, Boaz,” Arphaxad said. “This man is definitely dead.”
Boaz rolled his eyes. “Was that ever in doubt?”
“Of course it was in doubt!” Arphaxad cried. “Everyone knows that there is nothing on God's green Earth less reliable than the testimony of a woman. So long as she has breasts and the ability to bring forth offspring, that Bashemath and all ladies like her are not to be trusted.”
Boaz didn’t want to get into this argument again, so he kept his mouth shut. He knelt down beside Jobab’s body to get a better look.
“It appears that he died from blunt force trauma to the skull,” Boaz concluded.
“What makes you say that?” Arphaxad asked.
Boaz shot him an incredulous look. Jobab’s head resembled a watermelon that had been caught underfoot in an elephant stampede.
“Alright, so we’ve determined the cause of death,” Arphaxad said. “Now the next step is finding the murder weapon.”
Arphaxad used one hand to shield his eyes against the blinding sunlight that beat down upon them as he took a precursory glance around the wadi. “Hmmm… I can already sense that this is going to be a tough one.”
“Actually,” Boaz said, “I’m pretty sure I’ve found the murder weapon already.”
A few feet beside Jobab’s body was a stone approximately the size of a pomegranate, streaked with blood. Boaz retrieved the rock and handed it to Arphaxad, who turned it over a couple times, inspecting it from every possible angle.
“Fine work, Boaz!” he said. “This is almost certainly what was used to smite poor old Jobab.”
Arphaxad tried to pocket the rock so he could take it home for further analysis, but it was so heavy it split the seams of his robe and fell to the ground with a thud, narrowly missing his toes.
“So I guess the next order of business is determining the motive for the murder, right?” said Boaz. “And from there we can start identifying some suspects.”
“Damn it, Boaz! Have you learned nothing in all the years that you’ve been my assistant?” Arphaxad exclaimed. “Our next order of business must be to make things right in the eyes of the Lord! Only then can we turn our attention to petty, insignificant matters such as suspects and motives and unsolved murders.”
Boaz had been through this many times before. In his eagerness to forge ahead with the investigation, he had forgotten how much of a stickler his boss was for staying in God’s good books.
“First things first, we need to determine what the nearest town is,” Arphaxad explained. “We’re about halfway between Beth Shemesh and Shahazimah, so I suggest that you get on your ass and start riding to one and I’ll head on over to the other and we’ll see who gets there first.”
Boaz wanted to ask exactly how they would know which one of them had arrived at his destination first, but Arphaxad was not allowing any room for interruptions.
“Once we’ve determined which town is nearer to the scene of the crime,” Arphaxad continued, “we need to get the elders of the community to decapitate a cow and wash their hands over its carcass. Then – and only then – can we continue our investigation into this heinous crime, safe in our knowledge that the Lord is squarely on our side.”
To be continued..........
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