Deal Me In 2021 – Week 52
‘But wait, O Moses!’ the lizard squeaked after him. ‘You have left your rod behind.’
‘Oh, Joshua will pick it up,’ he called back and strode on.
Many Biblical stories leave me wondering about more details, about the thoughts going through a character’s mind. Zora Neale Hurston’s story “The Fire and the Cloud” does just that at the point in time when Moses has led his people to the Promised Land but doesn’t get to go in.
Moses converses with a lizard as he looks at Canaan telling it how tired he is – giving it the impression that he is finished without technically saying that. Yes, Hurston relies on her readers to at least be familiar with the fact that Moses’ story has an ending and that ending occurs for Moses – not necessarily for the people he had been leading.
The talking lizard gives the story a fable style (as with several other of Hurston’s stories) but it’s the exhaustion and sadness of Moses that comes through as Hurston fills in some possible details to the Biblical story.
This story is included in Zora Neale Hurston’s collection Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick. I read it for Week 52 of my Deal Me In 2021 short story project. Check out my Deal Me In list here. Deal Me In is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.
Mirror with Clouds 