Hard-Boiled Noah(r)

Or, "Film Noah(r)", though there's no cinema involved -- as such.

I finished proofreading an issue of Dime Detective Magazine for RadioArchives.com, and was feeling slightly more passionate about the whole hard-boiled detective genre than I typically am. For some reason -- maybe it was the sleep deficit, maybe it was the recording of Harlem Nocturne playing on constant loop -- I got it into my head to depict Noah (yeah, the guy from the Bible) as a noirish private eye.

Here's the thing, it's also Father's Day this coming weekend. The bulk of my congregation have no kids at home, any more. Noah seems like a good fit for that crowd -- the flawed father of adult kids, still being spiritual leader, still striving to do what's right in a mix of real difficulty and soul-crushing boredom. The more I think about it, the more it helps explain the vineyard incident later on.

Maybe this might work! I said to myself.

Here's a taste, for those of you who are curious -- and, considering that you're reading my blog, you probably are:

*****

It’s hard to say what was getting me down the most. Maybe it was the fact that it was raining – still. It had been coming down steadily for fifteen out of fifteen days and nights with no end in sight, and a fellow gets to wondering if maybe it’s his own tears falling out there.


Then again, maybe it was all the noise. This city – the greatest city in the world – is a jungle; a zoo that never sleeps. And sleep is the one thing a man wants to do most on a day like this, but there’s never a moment’s peace, because half the beasts in this forest want to devour the other half, and neither side will shut up about it. They all seem to want to make it my problem.

On the other hand, what’s really getting to me is the lack of paying jobs. Oh, there’s plenty of work, if you don’t mind cases of runaway kids and missing nest eggs. It seems like that’s all I get any more, in my tiny office in the top floor of the Ark Building. That, and the endless honey-do lists from my wife. The name’s Noah. I’m married, with three grown sons with wives and honey-do lists of their own now. So maybe it’s just as well that I’m not chasing after jewel thieves and blackmailers any more. That’s a young man’s game – and young I ain’t.

Of course, none of those compares to the Big Job. On a slow day at the office, The Almighty Himself – The Creator, The Big Cheese of the Universe – came to me with a job. “I want YOU to save the world,” he said. It don’t GET any bigger than that!