Adam feels a river of breath-light pour into him, two rivers side-by-side, filling him. His lungs rise, then fall. He hears a tiny flutter in his throat and the gentle whoosh of air passing out through an opening below where the rivers poured in. He’s on his back and his side aches.
Adam opens his eyes. The atmosphere is steamy and pastel. He expands his lungs through an effort of will and the two openings where the rivers poured in tingle and send an urgent message to the center of his headsmell. The Garden of Eden reeks green, citrus, dank, sugary, electric. I’ve been here before. He inhales through his nose again and detects a different scent. He twists his head to the left. An inchoate figure lying on the ground beside him gradually comes into focus. Its eyes open and it rolls its head to the side to look at him.
“Hi.”
The sound curls around inside his ears and reverberates inside his head. The power of sound. This is magic. He notices other sounds surround him—birdsong, leaves rustling, the chatter of a rushing stream—and sits up. Space. Adam doesn’t quite know what space is or why these noises keeping popping into his mind. Words. These are words. Are words magic? Adam reviews what he’s heard in his head: smell, I’ve been here before, the power of sound, this is magic, space, words. Is this the beginning of a story?
Adam senses movement beside him. The figure who said “Hi”—and Adam realizes that was a word, too, just heavier than the ones in his head—is standing, somehow like him, but different. Adam looks beyond the figure at the trees and bushes and creatures animated with an iridescent glow. The individualized flora and fauna move independently of each other but also flow together as part of a single organism. Mother. She. Adam doesn’t know what these words mean. But the figure standing beside him is part of it, too. Adam shares something with this figure but doesn’t know what it is. She’s beguiling. She. The pull she exerts on him both excites and frightens him, as if his existence will merge into hers if she is not contained. He feels a sharp pain and grabs his side. He opens his mouth and shouts.
“I am Adam! You are Eve!”
Adam listens to the echo of his voice rumble through the garden. He doesn’t know where these words come from. His intent had been only to frighten the figure so she would back away. Adam contemplates the power of what just happened. Naming. It caused this Eve to shrink into herself a little and the iridescence of the flora and fauna dimmed. Adam feels safe. Or safer.
Eve eats an apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It gives her ideas.
“I want to have a baby,” Eve tells any animal who will listen. The hippopotami are sympathetic, as are the deer and the baboons. Really, all the animals are totally on board. But when Eve asks them how this happens, baby-making, none of them answer because none of them can talk.
“I can.”
Eve turns around. It’s Snake. His little pink tongue darts out and waves in the air, then slides back in his mouth. Eve thinks that’s cool.
“You can talk?”
“Yes.”
So Eve puts the question to Snake. Snake gives her an answer. Eve is stunned.
“Seriously? That’s how babies are made?”
The corners of Snake’s lipless mouth curl up. He pokes his pink tongue at Eve and wiggles it. Eve puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head, dubious.
“That’s absurd. It’s ridiculous on its face. It’s so”—she searches for the word—“undignified.”
Snake’s eyes are opaque, reflecting neither agreement nor disagreement. Eve drops her hands to her side.
“So how do I get him to do that?”
“You’ll figure it out.” Snake blinks, which is impossible, because snakes don’t have eyelids. “Having his baby is the only thing that matters.”
Snake turns with a hiss and slithers away into the weeds. Eve hears Adam off in the distance. Wolverine! Anteater! Giraffe! Adam’s way too into naming the animals. It’s unnatural. Eve stares at passing clouds in the sky as if they might part to reveal the answer to a question she’s unable to articulate. She feels wistful, like fog hovering over a river and floating around the bend. But then she notices a hissing sound inside her head and is comforted. Her mood changes to one of hope.
Adam is overburdened by the task of naming all the animals. There are so many, and it’s hard to remember which names he’s already used. Plus, they don’t cooperate with the process. He has to wander around the garden until he finds a random animal to name. It would be much easier if they formed a line beneath the Tree of Life and he could just do it one, two, three: Salamander! Next! Fox! Next! Raven! Next!
And Eve is unsupportive. Not only does she fail to appreciate the importance of his work—imagine the consequences if a creature he named robin should have been named rhinoceros!—she’s taken Dingo as a pet. Eve feeds Dingo and pets Dingo and cuddles Dingo and laughs when Dingo wags his tail. Adam clinches his fists and blinks. I’m not jealous say words in his head.
“Ahem!”
Adam breaks from his reverie and turns. It’s Eve, sitting under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Dingo at her side, a half-eaten apple in her palm and juice running down her chin. She smirks, as if she knows something he doesn’t. Adam is frightened, then angry.
“Stand up, Eve!” Eve rises casually, disrespect in her eyes. Physically she’s obedient, but Adam can tell she’s reserved her disobedience in a secret place he can’t get at. Suddenly Adam has a revelation. Thinking. This is thinking! Adam marvels to discover himself inside his own head. He can’t tell if it’s cramped or spacious quarters, but it’s different than the space where smelling, seeing, and touching take place. Thinking is so wonderfully private. But Adam senses intrusion. His eyes open and focus on Eve. Her head’s like his, same arms, but skinnier. She’s wider at the hips. Her chest is different, two mounds of fat with little dark bumps in the middle that, for some reason, make Adam lick his lips. But between her legs there’s a big difference. She doesn’t have the droopy thing to pee with—it’s just blank. And she doesn’t have the pouch thing under the droopy thing, either. She’s defective.
His gaze returns to Eve’s face. Her expression is soft, inviting, and he’s startled to realize she’s caught him thinking, as if it were a crime, something smutty he doesn’t see.
“Can you see my thinking?”
Eve blinks. “No.”
Eve blinks again. Suddenly her irises are reels winding him toward her. Adam tries to see the curves of her body all at once, but he can’t, and this confuses him. His thinking rushes from his head down his spine to his tailbone. His droopy thing stiffens. Eve smiles as if the sun has broken through the clouds. She sits on the ground, leans back, spreads her knees.
“Get on top of me,” she says. “I’ll show you a game. You’ll like it.”
Feeling full of himself, Adam climbs on top of Eve and blinks, as if it’s his idea.
Eve is right about the game. Adam likes it. Now, they play it a lot, when they’re not busy feasting on apples from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Or when Adam’s not busy taking inventory.
“Mine! Mine!” he shouts. “The cockatoo is mine, the cattle are mine, the chickens are mine, the crocodile is mine. All the animals are mine, all the plants and trees are mine. Eve and Dingo are mine. Everything is mine. Let’s count all the things that are mine…”
Eve rolls her eyes, looks off in the distance, then musters a patient expression.
“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty.” For some reason, Adam always stops at forty, as if he’s reached a door he can’t open. Then, he starts over with anxious determination, wobbling at the precipice of hyperventilation.
“One … two … three ….”
When Adam tumbles into his obsessive/compulsive rut, it uglifies paradise. Even the animals think so. Eve takes Adam’s hand.
“You’re a big man, Adam.”
Adam takes a breath. “Yes, I am big.”
Eve blinks. “They don’t come any bigger.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Why don’t we go watch the chimpanzees groom each other? That is, if you’d like to.”
“Yeah, we could do that, I guess.”
Eve has jollied Adam back to equanimity. Paradise is beautiful again.
Naming has made everything manageable for Adam. The amorphous organism of Eden has shattered into separate pieces, each of which he owns and rules over. And thinking! You can create entire worlds with it. Adam finds he does his most imaginative thinking after eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He especially likes imagining all the creatures in the Garden of Eden loaded onto a big boat that he captains while the rest of the world is wiped out by a flood. Everything on the boat would be mine and I wouldn’t even have to count. All mine. It’s a good feeling.
Adam wanders down to the bank beside the stream where he and Eve first manifested. He makes a place in the grass to lie down for a nap. The earth is spongy, the sun is warm against his face. He watches clouds overhead. This one looks like a bear, that one looks like a chipmunk. He’s just dozing off when he hears the screech of an owl. The warmth on his face is replaced with a cool shadow. Adam opens his eyes. Straddled over him is a creature who resembles Eve, but taller and with broader shoulders.
“I’m ba-ack!” the she-creature cackles. She eyes him with amused familiarity. It takes a moment, but then Adam remembers.
Lilith.
He has been here before. With her. Like Eve, but Lilith was bossy. Is bossy. She’s back. Lilith squats down over Adam’s thingy, which Adam finds, to his surprise, is stiff.
“I’m on top,” she says, rocking back and forth. “You didn’t like that when we were married but there’s nothing you can do about it now.”
She’s right. Adam’s arms and legs won’t move. Adam is confused.
“Of course, you can’t move. You’re asleep, idjit. This is a dream.”
“But I hit you in the head with a rock! You died!”
“You wish. You left me on the ground to die, but I woke up. I got a protective order and the judge set child support, which you haven’t paid. Like, not any.”
Children? He remembers. Shedim, Lilin, and Rauchin. Three of the nastiest little monsters imaginable. They scattered when Adam went after Lilith with the rock. Otherwise, he would have hit them with rocks, too.
“I have to pay child support?” Adam’s butt is sliding to-and-frow underneath Lilith’s weight.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Lilith is rocking faster now, and the game has reached the point where neither of them can talk.
“Yee-haw!” Lilith shouts, throwing her head back. Adam hears the screech of an owl and finds himself alone on the bank, his seed spilled on the ground. He searches for Lilith in the sky, putting his hand over his eyes to block the piercing orange rays of the setting sun.
After nearly the cycle of a moon, Eve disappears in the forest for a few days, leaving Dingo to keep Adam company. Then she returns.
“Where’d you go?” Adam asks.
Eve feels hissing between her ears. “I went to see a man about a dog.”
“A man? What man?”
“It’s just an expression,” Eve says, but Adam is hysterical.
“What man? What man? Tell me the truth!”
You can’t handle the truth. Eve blinks.
“I can’t tell you. If I do, your thingy will fall off and you’ll be like me.” She points to his thingy, then points to where she doesn’t have one. Adam’s physical frame visibly shrinks, as if his entire body were his thingy right after they’ve finished playing the game.
“Okay,” he says, looking away, pretending to see something in the forest. At first, Eve thinks too much information about lady parts has Adam flustered. Then she senses something outside the orbit of their shared experience has Adam bamboozled. He really does see something in the forest, something lurking. She looks at Dingo. Dingo, too, sees whatever Adam sees. An owl screeches. Adam gasps.
“Adam, what’s wrong?”
Adam blinks. “Nothing.”
Adam sits alone under the Tree of Life, wondering what to do. Lilith continues appearing in his dreams, always on top, talking about bringing the sheriff with her next time to collect child support. Out of your flesh, Adam, out of your flesh. When Adam wakes from these dreams, his seed expelled, Eve asks, “What was that about?”
Adam blinks. “I was dreaming of you.” Then he blinks again.
Daytime is easier for Adam to endure, but sometimes an owl materializes on a branch that was empty a moment before, and chills climb Adam’s spine. Adam tries to bury himself in work, hunting for nocturnal creatures and any creepy-crawly in the dirt that he hasn’t named. Soon there will be no more creatures to name, and then what will he do? Adam is immersed in self-pity when he hears rustling behind a briar bush. Snake slithers out and winds lazily across the ground, coming to rest near Adam’s feet.
“Why the long face?” Snake’s eyes glow red with sympathy. Adam is embarrassed, but he relates his encounters with Lilith. “She says she’ll always be on top because she rules the dream world. And I have to pay child support.”
“She must have had a good lawyer,” Snake says, and blinks, which is impossible because snakes don’t have eyelids. “Can’t imagine who that would have been.”
Adam and Snake remain still and silent for a while, unwittingly creating the archetype for what will later be known as prayer. Then Snake’s tongue flickers.
“Don’t worry, we don’t need to tell Eve about Lilith.”
Adam nods. Snake is such a friend.
“But Snake, what should I do?”
“If it were me, I’d pack up Eve and Dingo and get the heck out of Eden.”
“To where?”
Snake circles into a coil and points with his nose.
“Head East.”
“What about Lilith?”
Snake blinks, which is impossible, because snakes don’t have eyelids. “Lilith can’t reach you east of Eden.”
“How do I explain this to Eve without mentioning Lilith?”
“Easy. Just tell Eve a supernatural being warned her not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but she did it anyway, and then she gave some to you, and now the supernatural being is pissed and you, she, and Dingo have to leave.”
“But that didn’t happen. Did it?”
The corners of Snake’s mouth curl. You’ll never get anywhere if you can’t lie. Snake doesn’t speak these words, but Adam condenses them from the cloud of hissing inside his head. Something snaps behind Adam’s eyes and a whole new world opens up, a world of dangerous cold-blooded beauty laced with anxiety. Adam feels like a god.
“I love it! It makes it all Eve’s fault! And your fault, too—is it okay with you if it’s your fault?”
“Sure. I have broad shoulders.”
“Snake, you don’t have any shoulders.”
“It’s an expression—oh, never mind, just tell her the story.”
“What if she doesn’t believe me? Being as it didn’t happen.”
“Tell her she doesn’t remember because she’s just a crazy woman. You’ll be surprised how well that works.”
As soon as the Gates of Eden close behind them, Eve tells Adam she’s pregnant, Adam threatens to write a book, and Dingo hikes his leg and pees on the Gate. The true story of what happened in the Garden of Eden never finds its way into the pages of any book written by the generations of the sons of Adam. The Garden of Eden disappears in the mists of time, surviving only as a mythical place on the map of imagination. Philosophers never determine whether You’ll never get anywhere if you can’t lie is, itself, a lie or the unvarnished truth. And some say that, though, technically, God created the world, it was God’s sidekick, Snake, who set everything in motion with the blink of an eye. But that’s impossible because snakes don’t have eyelids.
(Blink).
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Pettigru Review, Fiction Southeast, Mud Season Review, Deep South Magazine, Still: The Journal, Barely South Review, and Anthology of Appalachian Writers Vol. X. He’s author of Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world, and resides in Lexington, Kentucky.
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