Short Story: The Negotiator
Women of the OT: Story 2. Abigail.
These stories are all true to the events as told by the Old Testament.
The Negotiator
Around 1040 BCE
You’d think that the two hundred men howling, dancing, and taking drunken naps in their steak and potatoes had spent the day battling Philistines instead of shearing sheep, but the parties in Lord Nabal’s great hall are always that rowdy.
In fact, Lord Nabal has just challenged his foreman to a contest. Who can piss the furthest over a table? First man to hit the tapestry on the far wall, wins a strip tease from Dumah, an overfed shepherd with the biggest breasts in the room.
Lord Nabal’s wife, Abigail, has a role in the feast, too. She’s to sit on display at the head table with her rosy cheeks and black curls, jeweled, trussed and almost as decorative as the suspended fruit platters—though far more pleasurable to undress—until she is dismissed. Or until her husband passes out, which is the usual order of things.
Abigail refuses to watch the contest. She might not be able to force her husband to behave with dignity, but she can, and she will, make sure her eight-year-old son, Benjamin, does not become like him. She often repeats her own proverbs to little Benjamin, including this one: a man who drinks too much is like an unguarded castle—he cannot control what goes in or comes out, and it’s only a matter of time until he falls.
For now, though, she will perform what Lord Nabal considers to be her two greatest talents: holding still and having breasts. Also, at some point in the evening, she will need to confess to her husband what she did this afternoon, which is why she has no appetite. Recounting the story will take some courage, because it will be the worst one Lord Nabal has ever heard, and she has to tell him tonight, or one of the big-mouth house staff will blurt it out first.
This afternoon, while Lord Nabal was directing the last day of shearing for some three thousand sheep, Abigail publicly shamed him in front of the most powerful man in the country. In addition to that pleasant fact, she has to tell him that her betrayal is the only reason he’s breathing air tonight instead of blood. It’s also the only reason their son Ben is sleeping in his bed right now and not in the ground.
Abby is jolted back to the party when a drunken cheer goes up. Lord Nabal’s turn at the game has arrived, and he’s so drunk he can barely stumble from the seat of honor to the competition table. He hikes up his bedizened robe, locates his manhood somewhere at the base of his ponderous abdomen, and grinning all the while, loses his balance just as he remembers how to piss.
Lord Nabal rolls onto his back and empties his belly of wine by spraying it into the air—not for the first time in his life. Not even the first time this year.
Abigail rests her delicate fingers with their many rings on the rim of a wine chalice. Perhaps now is not the best moment to tell him.
Of all the things she expected from her husband’s idiocy over the years, being thrust into the middle of a national pissing contest for the throne of Israel was not one of them. She didn’t even know Commander David’s rebel forces were in Hebron until one of her husband’s young guards named Reu, came to see her today just after lunch.
“Sorry to interrupt ma’am,” Reu said to her, “but I think…” he glanced behind him, “I’m pretty sure Lord Nabal is ‘bout to get us all killed.”
She pulled the guard into a private hall. “Tell me everything,” she commanded. “Everything, you understand?”
Reu nodded. “When we was at the shearing this morning, we seen some men come in from Commander David. ‘Bout six soldiers or so. And they was all young like me. They told Lord Nabal they was sent to ask for provisions, food and such like. Whatever could be spared. They was told to remind Lord Nabal how Commander David kept a watch out for us boys back when we was all in the wilderness. How he made sure none of our sheep was missing.”
“Is that true?” Abigail wanted to know.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And I presume that Lord Nabal refused to help David’s men?”
“No ma’am. I mean yes, ma’am. I mean not only that, ma’am, but he told them he ain’t never heard of no David. He says there’s so many rebels nowadays wantin’ for handouts, he says, that he just can’t keep track.”
Abigail didn’t even wait for Reu to finish the last sentence. “I need all the donkeys! All of them!” She grabbed her skirts and ran. She didn’t know it was possible for anyone to be so mortally stupid, not even Lord Nabal.
Everyone knows who Commander David is, and without a doubt, Lord Nabal does, too. It’s just that he’s stingy, like most rich men are, and he suffers, like most rich men do, from the delusion that he’s invincible.
Every man from Tyre to Bosra knows the tales about Commander David, so poetic, so triumphant, they almost defy belief. He was the young harpist who became King Saul’s armor bearer, then slew a Philistine giant, then took 1,000 penile foreskins as battle trophies and dumped them at the king’s feet so he could marry the king’s daughter. Eventually, David became a general and after that a near mythical hero.
David would come home from battle to parades of women pounding tambourines and singing war ballads about him. King Saul, who was already not the most stable of men, became paranoid, and once when he was under one of his spells, tried to ambush his favorite harp player. But David escaped and has been running from the king ever since.
Now, after years of hiding in enemy territory and living in caves, the musical boy has become a battle-hardened fugitive. He’s amassed his own fighting forces, and has even been anointed by the prophet Samuel as Israel’s next monarch. The country is torn between the half that supports David’s claim to the throne and the half that are still rooting for Saul.
Lord Nabal’s feigned ignorance couldn’t have been worse. Commander David’s reputation is his biggest asset and being snubbed by a wine-filled sheep’s bladder like Lord Nabal would be gravely insulting. It would be suicidal.
So, when Abigail heard what he’d done, she ran. She had the donkeys loaded with two hundred loaves of bread, two bottles of wine, five sheep—bled and dressed—five measures of parched corn, a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred fig cakes.
She loaded herself on the last donkey and followed Lord Nabal’s guards out of the city to a covert clearing near Commander David’s encampment. But before Abigail’s envoy had even descended the hill, David and a mounted detachment of his men rode down on them.
Abigail was trembling. The refined daughter of a good family, raised in wealth, adored for her beauty, attended to by damsels and cooks, had never felt fear like that in her life. She looked at the horses thundering down the opposite hill toward them, took in the size of the men, their bronze shoulder guards and breast plates, and knew she might be living the last two minutes of her life.
Her son Benjamin back home might be living the last hour of his life. It was all unnecessary and absurd. She and Ben weren’t about to die for the glory of God or the advancement of a kingdom, but for the foolish pride of a foolish man.
Abigail clambered off the donkey, hating all the cumbersome finery of her robes, and she immediately fell. She struggled to her feet and ran the final stretch toward the ravine, where she threw herself face down in an empty creek bed and waited for the commander to arrive.
David and his men drew up just short of her prone body, their horses snorting and stamping their hooves impatiently near her head.
“What is this?” demanded David. “Stand up.”
Abigail climbed to her feet and gave the first and best diplomatic speech of her life, with dirt on her face and weeds in her hair. She begged forgiveness for her husband who, she acknowledged, had barley for brains. She said the commander’s men should have been treated better. Her eyes studied the ground as she patched over the ego that her husband had wounded. “God will make an enduring dynasty for you, my lord,” she said, “because you are not fighting your own battles but His.”
David stared at her for a minute, his face hard, and then he laughed. “I would like all speeches delivered this way from now on, by beautiful women with grass in their hair.” He climbed off of his steed to get a better look. “I would’ve put my sword through your husband’s heart, and the heart of every man in his company.” He took all of Abigail in, from her crown to her sandals.
“Come this way,” David said to her, “my men haven’t eaten since dawn, and they might just crown you king when they see all that bread.”
When Abigail finally returned home, she didn’t have time to rest before the shearing feast. She hugged Benjamin, had a bath drawn, and arrived just in time to sit at the head table and do nothing. Though it did give her time to decide how to word her speech for Lord Nabal. She didn’t want him to have a heart attack, or beat her until she lost an eye, like he beat that servant girl on Passover. Though of the two options, she preferred the heart attack.
At last the party is winding down, and Abigail is pretty certain that Lord Nabal has passed out, slumped at the table next to her. With her permission, his servants carry him off to bathe and dress him for bed. She returns to her own chambers and sleeps a violent sleep.
In the long held tradition of morning-afters, Nabal wakes at noon with bad humor and bad breath to find his wife standing next to him. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it,” he growls.
”My lord,” she ventures, “there is something I need to confess.”
Nabal swings his legs over the side of the bed, and releases a clangorous belch. “Fine,” he says, “make it quick.”
Abigail doesn’t twist or sweeten the story, because Nabal despises when she uses more words than necessary. As she recounts her meeting with Commander David, Lord Nabal’s eyes widen. His mouth hangs open like Abigail is saying she invited the Philistine army for lunch. By the time she reaches the end of her story, one side of her husband’s mouth is drooping like melted wax.
Abigail frowns. “My lord?”
Her husband is frozen with that surprised expression, not sleeping, not pensive, just motionless.
Abigail steps closer. “Nabal?”
Not even a flicker of comprehension.
“Nabal!” She takes his face in her hands, “God help me.” Her shoulders drop and she sits heavily on the bed next to him. “You old fool,” she says, “you terrible, old fool. Please don’t die.”
She truly doesn’t want him to die. A husband who pisses himself when he drinks is infinitely better than no husband at all. Nothing of the world she lives in actually belongs to her. Not the herds or the servants or the houses. If Lord Nabal dies, all of it will go to his cousin, a left-handed dwarf with two wives and a twitchy temper.
Abigail calls the servants into Lord Nabal’s chambers and sends word for the priest. She hopes fervently that her husband isn’t actually on death’s threshold. Maybe he’ll live for twenty years like he is right now, unable to speak or party. That would be an arrangement she could live with.
For ten days, Abigail waits and prays, and then on the tenth morning, when she arrives in her husband’s chamber, she discovers that his breath has gone out from him and his chest is still.
Through the funeral and the days that follow, Abigail’s mind considers and reconsiders each of her options, but not one of them is viable. Her parents have both been buried. She doesn’t have any brothers, and she’s not likely to find a husband, given that she’s no longer fifteen or a virgin.
Everyone knows the stories of women who become slaves or whores after their husbands die, and the thing that scares Abigail most about those tales, is that their children always become slaves and prostitutes as well.
Abigail decides she’ll beg Lord Nabal’s cousin, the dwarf. She’ll promise him anything, if he’ll take her as a third wife. Or maybe Commander David wants another wife? He took a second wife last month in Hebron, and he’ll be forging marital alliances all the way to the throne. Although there is still the problem of not being fifteen or a virgin.
Five days after the funeral, the dwarf arrives on his pony, and Abigail can hear him arguing with the foremen in the courtyard. The dwarf has been refusing all her messages, and he’ll refuse her again. She truly doesn’t know what to do.
In search of a little peace, she pulls Benjamin by the hand toward an olive tree where they sit in the shade and share a cake made with honey. While they’re still eating, two riders approach from the south on red stallions.
“Stay here,” she tells Benjamin. Slowly the new widow walks out to meet the men, trodding her small black shadow underfoot. Abigail stops twenty yards from the horses and raises a hand over her eyes to block the sun. Even from where she stands she can see that the riders sit their horses like military men.
When the stallions canter to a stop, a bramble-bearded messenger greets her. “Peace to you, Lady Abigail.” Without niceties, he announces, “Commander David sent us with his greetings. He would like you to become his wife.”
Abigail’s hand flies to her mouth, and she sucks in a ragged breath. She’d kiss their boots if she could, and their horses faces, and their dusty hooves. She bows with her face to the ground.
It seems she will become a third wife after all. Never in her life did she imagine doing anything like what she did on shearing day—racing a donkey to the camp of a rebel commander, giving speeches, betraying her husband—and she certainly never imagined it would save her own life. Twice.
All Stories from Women of the OT
Disturbing, forgotten, or misused stories of women in the Bible
Coming soon: The Prostitute for a Day, The Spy, The Assassin
Wow- powerful! I love your counter-storytelling prose!