The Truth About Adam and Eve

Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

The Truth About Adam and Eve

May 23, 2008

By Cormac MacConnell

SOMETHING serious, thought Father Ahern, as he saw big Straight Dillon coming up to the door of the parochial house under his wide-brimmed hat.

It had to be something serious to bring Straight down from Clontycoora, near the top of the mountain, on a Wednesday morning. It was not even pension day, he thought, as he heard Meg the housekeeper greeting Straight at the front door.

“Hello Greg, come in, come in. Isn’t it the great morning we have? Sit down there for yourself and I’ll see if he’s free.”

The father gestured to Meg with his hand when she stuck her head around the door to announce the caller, and asked her to bring in another cup for Straight.

He came diffidently enough through the door a second later, his hat in his hands. He nearly filled the doorway to the top, Father Ahern thought as the shook hands, well down his eighties but still as straight as a die and a fine figure of a man to boot.

They called him Straight, not just because of the erect carriage but also because he was honest in his farming dealings to the last penny. Leave it to the mountainy men, thought the priest, as he poured out a cup of tea for the visitor, to catch the substance of a man in one word.

He knew wryly that he was called Father Fast because of the speed with which he delivered his Sunday Mass.

They made small talk about the weather and the parish and they smoked a cigarette each, and then Straight came directly to the point.

“Father, there’s been something troubling me since before Christmas and I want to ask you about it.”

“Go ahead Greg.”

“Father, I was taught at school and here in the chapel too that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman on Earth, that Adam was here first in fact, and then God took one of his ribs and made Eve for company for him.”

“Yes Greg, I was taught that too.”

“And they had two sons, Cain and Abel?”

“Yes they had.”

“And some rumpus got up and Cain killed Abel?”

“Yes,” replied Father Ahern, and he was thinking already that this was serious stuff alright.

“Well”, said Straight, “what’s troubling me now Father, and troubling me since Christmas, is, if that story is right and straight, where the blazes did the rest of us come from? Here’s Cain all by himself, no woman in the world but his mother!

“There has to be something wrong somewhere, worse again even if he had sisters we were not told about. The story is not straight at all.”

And he twirled the hat at high speed.

“Oh My God,” thought Father Ahern, “I’m in trouble.”

And he took a deep breath and his cup clinked loudly against the saucer as he drained it.

And Straight was watching him with eyes as sharp as those of a hawk over Clontycoora, the hat not moving at all now. And the clock ticked loudly over the mantelpiece.

And then Father Fast said gently that way back then, when people did not know anything about reading or writing, all sorts of profound mysteries and philosophies and evolutions were boiled down into simple folk stories by wise men and passed on through the generations by word of mouth.

It was the way it had to be done to spread the message. And later still, when the written word came into being, they still held on to the old folk tales because they were judged to be the best way of getting the message across.

“So it’s a lie that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman?” asked Straight.

“You could put it that way. They were an allegorical couple.”

“So Cain and Abel maybe never existed?”

The priest nodded. “They were representatives of the next generation.”

“And all that business about Satan coming into the Garden of Eden and tempting them with the apple and all that never happened?”

“It represented the arrival of temptation and mankind’s fall from a state of grace,” said the priest.

“They were not straight with us,” said Straight Dillon, standing up abruptly and quite angrily. ”They should have told us the truth, certainly in my lifetime when people could read and write.

“It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is Father. And I’m taking my leave of you now in case I have to listen to any more lies.”

And he slammed his hat atop his head and let himself out the front door unaided and was gone.

Straight Dillon has not darkened the door of the chapel since. Father Fast prays for him every evening in the chapel.

It, ironically, is named in honor of Adam and Eve.

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