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  Nor was I surprised to find that the compartment was stuffed full of bodies and body parts, like a veritable meat locker … filled with arms and legs and heads and torsos … or that when I turned away to retch again I saw the golem itself at the end of the crane’s long jib—just crouched there in a kind of lotus position, as if he—it—were meditating. As if it—he—were waiting for me.

  I can see you, Josef, I thought as the American flag crackled at the back of the crane and the great jib swung languidly in the wind … Can you see me?

  And then I began moving forward, slowly, tentatively—the rails of the jib like ice beneath my grip.

  You can, can’t you? I thought, and knew that it was so. Tell me, Josef. Why is it you think I was spared—why I’ve been spared all these years— when your other creators were turned into little more than pillars of salt? Have you ever thought about that?

  Lightning flashed in the distance and turned everything white—turned the golem white—so that its monstrous features fell into stark relief; so that its cone-shaped head shown like a knife.

  We are bound together, after all—don’t pretend I don’t know that. Even as I know you can hear me—just as plain as though I were speaking. And I ask you again—have you thought about it? Because I have.

  Thunder rumbled as I drew to within twenty feet of him and paused, wondering just how I would go about it, how I would remove the shem. At last I said, “You were created not by God but by a man and the sages before him—now you must return to your dust. Do you understand that? It is not now, nor has it ever been—nor will it ever be—your earth to walk. It is time to go, Josef. It is long past time.”

  He—it—whatever—just looked at me, its slanted gray eyes inert, uninhabited—lifeless—and yet, not. And it occurred to me that creation was itself a kind of blasphemy; a fracturing of some perfect, unfathomable thing into something separate and purely reducible—something alone, something apart. That it was, in a sense, a cruelty. And if that were the case—wasn’t it at least possible that the golem—

  But then it was moving—suddenly, impossibly, and I was stumbling back along the gangway, and before I could do much of anything it had leapt upon me and begun gnashing its teeth—at which instant I jammed my fist into its mouth and groped for the shem, and whereupon finding it, yanked it free.

  At that it had simply collapsed, its full weight pinning me to the gangway, and its body had broken apart like so much old masonry as its arms and legs snapped in two and its head rolled back from its shoulders—to promptly shatter against the steel mesh floor.

  That’s when the rains came, washing away the clay and drenching my hair and clothes, which were a beggar’s clothes, until finally I rolled upon the gangway and peered down at our encampment—which was visible only because of Billy the Skid’s battery-powered light—and realized, abruptly, that I still gripped the shem. The Holy Shem.

  The Secret Name of God.

  I didn’t move, didn’t breath, for what seemed a long time. In the end, I merely turned my fist and opened it—letting the slip of parchment fall. Watching as it fluttered into the void.

  And then I slept.

  At length I dreamed, of Benton and summer and freshly-cut grass ... and the first time I’d had matzo; as well as of Aaron and his parents and my parents too, whom I hadn’t seen or dreamed of in years.

  And when at last I awakened I did so not to the gray ceiling of my tent but a swirl of seagulls and the entire sky.

  The End

 

 

  Wayne Kyle Spitzer, Golem

 

 

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