There Will Be Blood, Paul Sunday/Eli Sunday, none so different/growing up Sunday 2/2
For years they had struggled, he and his brother, like Jacob and Esau in Rebecca’s womb.
Paul was stronger, and smarter and older, but just as God had chosen Jacob, God chose Eli. “Just as God chose Jacob, God has chosen me” Eli told his brother. “God said onto Rebecca there are two nations growing inside your womb; two nations will be born onto you. One will be stronger and the elder shall serve the younger.” Paul didn’t shout or even seem angry when Eli said this; he simply picked up a rock and hit his brother in the face, opening a gash above his eye. “I never cared for the story of Jacob and Esau,” Paul said. “I always preferred Cain and Abel, after all, it’s a family name.” He dipped two fingers in the blood pouring from his brother’s forehead and drew lines on his face like Indian war paint. “If God has given you the power to cast out devil’s maybe I’ll just become one,” he said then he disappeared with the goats over the crags. It seemed like Paul had won but the next day when Eli stood at the pulpit his face was unmarked, the wounds his brother had inflicted healed completely. They’d always shared a bed in the lean too behind the cabin. For weeks he would wake in the night, Paul straddling him, asking him why, why him, why did he deserve what he had been given? He never seemed angry, just perplexed. “It’s not that I want to heal a bunch of simpletons and old ladies,” Paul whispered one night. “It’s not that I want God to speak to me. I just don’t want him to speak to you.” Then that final day, Paul had caught him alone far out in the pastures. “I’m leaving,” Paul said. “If I have to play Esau to your Jacob I’ll make damned sure you’re not the one to get my birthright. I’m going to cost everything, you’ll see.” Paul put his hands on Eli’s shoulders and pushed him to the ground and caressed his brother’s face almost tenderly. “You’re an arrogant little snake, Eli. I’d like to grind you under my heel. I’d like to see you crawl.” Yet he didn’t try to hurt Eli this time, instead he touched him, touched his lips, licked them, traced the whorls of his nipples, his ribs, the line of his stomach down to his groin. Eli let him, seemed to surrender. His legs parted, wrapping around his brother’s hips. Stones and dry brush underneath them as they rolled on the parched ground, not fighting but still struggling to come out on top. Eli on his back as they heaved against each other, his eyes were screwed shut but the sun seemed to burn through them.
“Damn you, Eli,” Paul panted when they were finished. “I won’t spend my whole life tangled up in you. I’m leaving tonight, when Ma and Pa are a bed. I’ll do what I can to break you. If it doesn’t work, I’ll leave it to someone who’s stronger. You won’t see me any more.” Since 1911, he’d seen Paul every time he looked in the mirror. He saw Paul’s shadow in his dashing young protégé when the sun seemed to burn through his eyes. His Cain, his Esau, his Devil.
Maybe they’d loved each other. In so far as either of them could understand love.