By D.S. Cook for Apostoic Venn.
Once, in a well-traveled country known for its industry and trade, a small village stood. This particular village was not perched upon a hill, or squatted beside a rushing river, but nested among a beautiful forest of apple trees. Apples were its life and pride, and its people worked year round to cultivate, prune, and finally harvest and trade. And each time harvest time came, they had the tradition of selecting one man from among them to guard the storehouse from beast and thief, protecting their joint livelihood.
On a particularly fruitful year, the lot was cast and fell to a fellow named Andrew. He was hardworking and dutiful, with a strong back and sturdy arms, but brash and impetuous. Proud to be chosen, he took up his post and slept through each night in the storehouse, stout staff near his hand.
But this evening, that pesky prankster Youth was about to play him for a fool. Two of the village lads, full of juice and having their fill of boredom in the apple orchard, snuck stealthily in through a loose panel in the barn wall. With them they carried a large, smelly, red fish. “Let us do him a trick” they whispered, laughing. “When he awakes to our work this night, he’ll believe himself a shirker of duty.” Then they strew apples all about the barn, not with commotion, but carefully, slowly, littering them here and there. And from the rafter they hung their large fish, for no other reason than to awaken Andrew with its stink. Sneaking out the way they had come, each bearing a full sack of apples, they retreated to munch and laugh over their prank.
The village was just gathering for the day’s labor when a panicked Andrew rushed into the square. “Treachery! Thieves!” he cried, as every head swivelled toward him. “Someone ransacked our stores in the night, and I heard not a rumor as I slept. Woe is me, to be so careless! They have plundered our harvest and left this in mockery.” Here he hoisted in his hand the large fish, which reeked in its ripeness. “This is how they mock, the fools. They do not think that we orchard folk know one fish from another. This is nothing else but a red herring from the fishing village to the east. Only they sell these, for miles around. It is the fisherfolk who have come as raiders to our village!”
Protests and murmur arose from the townsfolk.
“Those fisherfolk have always been strange, I care little for their manners.”
“They have long envied our sweet apples, with nothing but fish for their own bellies.”
“I saw one of them strolling around our storehouse on the last market day.”
Andrew spoke up again. “They have clearly decided to breach our peace, and take what is ours for their own. If they dared once with a small raiding party, they’ll dare again with greater numbers. We’ll have nothing left for our own bellies if they come back in force.”
Work forgotten, the villagers spoke for the remainder of the day against the fisher folk, escalating one another with tales of their odd customs and dress, their rude and discontented haggling at trade. Only Miriam, the mousy bookworm who kept the ledgers, began the work of putting apples back in their sacks. By nightfall, the anger and distrust had risen to a crescendo by repetition and rumor, and a council was called. Retaliation, they decided, was the only answer to this blatant breach of peace, and war the only surety against future raids.
The sun sank behind the horizon. The village men sharpened their pitchforks and sickles, preparing a midnight attack on the fisherfolk. The square had turned into a busy hub of angry voices and clanging steel. Over it all, a voice shouted. “Good neighbors, I beg you, STOP!”
All eyes turned to Miriam, the diligent young ledger keeper, just returned from her efforts in the storehouse. As the silence of expectation settled, she spoke again. “Forgive me,” she said somewhat timidly. “But I think we are about to burn the wrong village.” Andrew, that dutiful, stupid fellow, called out. “This is no time to pause our preparations to hear the sympathies of a soft-hearted…”
“I counted the apple sacks.” Miriam interrupted loudly. “And checked the ledgers. We miss two sacks. Two. Enough for a pair of greedy boys, not a raiding party. At least a wagon and a horse would have been needed for raiders to carry off enough to merit your war. But I walked the muddy floor with a lantern and found small prints, left by the bare feet of children. And look, I found this outside a loose board in the eastern wall.” She held up a dyed cloth. “This is our own cloth, dyed with hill madder. This fish was purchased at market and stored here.”
The clothmaker stepped forward and took it, turning in her hands. “This is my cloth.” She said.
Not finished, Miriam led them to the storehouse. “If they did not come through Andrew’s post” she said, “they can only have entered at this panel. See how it dangles, loosened. And look, there are no wagon ruts, no hoofprints, no heavy boot tracks. Just the footprints of small, bare feet, leading back toward the lumberyard.”
Foolish, but not wicked, Andrew’s knees buckled and he sat down hard on the earth, the first to understand what they had almost done. His staff dropped from the hands he now clasped to his face, as he began to shed tears. Soon, shamed sobs had spread among the other villagers as well, setting down their weapons and lowering their torches, one by one.
By the light of the now risen moon, the two boys were found. Asleep, under a saw table strewn with apple cores, bellies full and snoring. They awoke to find every adult in the village staring down at them with faces redder than the herring, not in anger now, but in deep shame. They had nearly spilled innocent blood over a smelly fish and two stolen apple sacks.
Proverbs 18:13
“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it,
it is folly and shame unto him.”
Seneca, On Anger 2.26.4
“We believe whatever we are already angry about.”
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