Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

Chapter 1

You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don’t. Trust me, I was there. I know.

The first time I saw the man who would save the world he was sitting near the central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth. Just the tail end and the hind legs were visible on the outside; the head and forelegs were halfway down the hatch. He was six, like me, and his beard had not come in fully, so he didn’t look much like the pictures you’ve seen of him. His eyes were like dark honey, and they smiled at me out of a mop of blue-black curls that framed his face. There was a light older than Moses in those eyes.

“Unclean! Unclean!” I screamed, pointing at the boy, so my mother would see that I knew the Law, but she ignored me, as did all the other mothers who were filling their jars at the well.

The boy took the lizard from his mouth and handed it to his younger brother, who sat beside him in the sand. The younger boy played with the lizard for a while, teasing it until it reared its little head as if to bite, then he picked up a rock and mashed the creature’s head. Bewildered, he pushed the dead lizard around in the sand, and once assured that it wasn’t going anywhere on its own, he picked it up and handed it back to his older brother.

Into his mouth went the lizard, and before I could accuse, out it came again, squirming and alive and ready to bite once again. He handed it back to his younger brother, who smote it mightily with the rock, starting or ending the whole process again.

I watched the lizard die three more times before I said, “I want to do that too.”

The Savior removed the lizard from his mouth and said, “Which part?”

By the way, his name was Joshua. Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is Joshua. Christ is not a last name. It’s the Greek for messiah, a Hebrew word meaning anointed. I have no idea what the “H” in Jesus H. Christ stood for. It’s one of the things I should have asked him.

Me? I am Levi who is called Biff. No middle initial.

Joshua was my best friend.

The angel says I’m supposed to just sit down and write my story, forget about what I’ve seen in this world, but how am I to do that? In the last three days I have seen more people, more images, more wonders, than in all my thirty-three years of living, and the angel asks me to ignore them. Yes, I have been given the gift of tongues, so I see nothing without knowing the word for it, but what good does that do? Did it help in Jerusalem to know that it was a Mercedes that terrified me and sent me diving into a Dumpster? Moreover, after Raziel pulled me out and ripped my fingernails back as I struggled to stay hidden, did it help to know that it was a Boeing 747 that made me cower in a ball trying to rock away my own tears and shut out the noise and fire? Am I a little child, afraid of its own shadow, or did I spend twenty-seven years at the side of the Son of God?

On the hill where he pulled me from the dust, the angel said, “You will see many strange things. Do not be afraid. You have a holy mission and I will protect you.”

Smug bastard. Had I known what he would do to me I would have hit him again. Even now he lies on the bed across the room, watching pictures move on a screen, eating the sticky sweet called Snickers, while I scratch out my tale on this soft-as-silk paper that reads Hyatt Regency, St. Louis at the top. Words, words, words, a million million words circle in my head like hawks, waiting to dive onto the page to rend and tear the only two words I want to write.

Why me?

There were fifteen of us—well, fourteen after I hung Judas—so why me? Joshua always told me not to be afraid, for he would always be with me. Where are you, my friend? Why have you forsaken me? You wouldn’t be afraid here. The towers and machines and the shine and stink of this world would not daunt you. Come now, I’ll order a pizza from room service. You would like pizza. The servant who brings it is named Jesus. And he’s not even a Jew. You always liked irony. Come, Joshua, the angel says you are yet with us, you can hold him down while I pound him, then we will rejoice in pizza.

Raziel has been looking at my writing and is insisting that I stop whining and get on with the story. Easy for him to say, he didn’t just spend the last two thousand years buried in the dirt. Nevertheless, he won’t let me order pizza until I finish a section, so here goes…

I was born in Galilee, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Herod the Great. My father, Alphaeus, was a stonemason and my mother, Naomi, was plagued by demons, or at least that’s what I told everyone. Joshua seemed to think she was just difficult. My proper name, Levi, comes from the brother of Moses, the progenitor of the tribe of priests; my nickname, Biff, comes from our slang word for a smack upside the head, something that my mother said I required at least daily from an early age.

I grew up under Roman rule, although I didn’t see many Romans until I was ten. The Romans mostly stayed in the fortress city of Sepphoris, an hour’s walk north of Nazareth. That’s where Joshua and I saw a Roman soldier murdered, but I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, assume that the soldier is safe and sound and happy wearing a broom on his head.

Most of the people of Nazareth were farmers, growing grapes and olives on the rocky hills outside of town and barley and wheat in the valleys below. There were also herders of goats and sheep whose families lived in town while the men and older boys tended the flocks in the highlands. Our houses were all made of stone, and ours had a stone floor, although many had floors of hard-packed dirt.

I was the oldest of three sons, so even at the age of six I was being prepared to learn my father’s trade. My mother taught my spoken lessons, the Law and stories from the Torah in Hebrew, and my father took me to the synagogue to hear the elders read the Bible. Aramaic was my first language, but by the time I was ten I could speak and read Hebrew as well as most of the men.

My ability to learn Hebrew and the Torah was spurred on by my friendship with Joshua, for while the other boys would be playing a round of tease the sheep or kick the Canaanite, Joshua and I played at being rabbis, and he insisted that we stick to the authentic Hebrew for our ceremonies. It was more fun than it sounds, or at least it was until my mother caught us trying to circumcise my little brother Shem with a sharp rock. What a fit she threw. And my argument that Shem needed to renew his covenant with the Lord didn’t seem to convince her. She beat me to stripes with an olive switch and forbade me to play with Joshua for a month. Did I mention she was besought with demons?

Overall, I think it was good for little Shem. He was the only kid I ever knew who could pee around corners. You can make a pretty good living as a beggar with that kind of talent. And he never even thanked me.

Brothers.

Children see magic because they look for it.

When I first met Joshua, I didn’t know he was the Savior, and neither did he, for that matter. What I knew was that he wasn’t afraid. Amid a race of conquered warriors, a people who tried to find pride while cowering before God and Rome, he shone like a bloom in the desert. But maybe only I saw it, because I was looking for it. To everyone else he seemed like just another child: the same needs and the same chance to die before he was grown.

When I told my mother of Joshua’s trick with the lizard she checked me for fever and sent me to my sleeping mat with only a bowl of broth for supper.

“I’ve heard stories about that boy’s mother,” she said to my father. “She claims to have spoken to an angel of the Lord. She told Esther that she had borne the Son of God.”

“And what did you say to Esther?”

“That she should be careful that the Pharisees not hear her ravings or we’d be picking stones for her punishment.”

“Then you should not speak of it again. I know her husband, he is a righteous man.”

“Cursed with an insane girl for a wife.”

“Poor thing,” my father said, tearing away a hunk of bread. His hands were as hard as horn, as square as hammers, and as gray as a leper’s from the limestone he worked with. An embrace from him left scratches on my back that sometimes wept blood, yet my brothers and I fought to be the first in his arms when he returned from work each evening. The same injuries inflicted in anger would have sent us crying to our mother’s skirts. I fell asleep each night feeling his hand on my back like a shield.

Fathers.

Do you want to mash some lizards?” I asked Joshua when I saw him again. He was drawing in the dirt with a stick, ignoring me. I put my foot on his drawing. “Did you know that your mother is mad?”

“My father does that to her,” he said sadly, without looking up.

I sat down next to him. “Sometimes my mother makes yipping noises in the night like the wild dogs.”

“Is she mad?” Joshua asked.

“She seems fine in the morning. She sings while she makes breakfast.”

Joshua nodded, satisfied, I guess, that madness could pass. “We used to live in Egypt,” he said.

“No, you didn’t, that’s too far. Farther than the temple, even.” The Temple in Jerusalem was the farthest place I had been as a child. Every spring my family took the five-day walk to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. It seemed to take forever.

“We lived here, then we lived in Egypt, now we live here again,” Joshua said. “It was a long way.”

“You lie, it takes forty years to get to Egypt.”

“Not anymore, it’s closer now.”

“It says in the Torah. My abba read it to me. ‘The Israelites traveled in the desert for forty years.’”

“The Israelites were lost.”

“For forty years?” I laughed. “The Israelites must be stupid.”

“We are the Israelites.”

“We are?”

“Yes.”

“I have to go find my mother,” I said.

“When you come back, let’s play Moses and Pharaoh.”

The angel has confided in me that he is going to ask the Lord if he can become Spider-Man. He watches the television constantly, even when I sleep, and he has become obsessed with the story of the hero who fights demons from the rooftops. The angel says that evil looms larger now than it did in my time, and that calls for greater heroes. The children need heroes, he says. I think he just wants to swing from buildings in tight red jammies.

What hero could touch these children anyway, with their machines and medicine and distances made invisible? (Raziel: not here a week and he would trade the Sword of God to be a web slinger.) In my time, our heroes were few, but they were real—some of us could even trace our kinship to them. Joshua always played the heroes—David, Joshua, Moses—while I played the evil ones: Pharaoh, Ahab, and Nebuchadnezzar. If I had a shekel for every time I was slain as a Philistine, well, I’d not be riding a camel through the eye of a needle anytime soon, I’ll tell you that. As I think back, I see that Joshua was practicing for what he would become.

“Let my people go,” said Joshua, as Moses.

“Okay.”

“You can’t just say, ‘Okay.’”

“I can’t?”

“No, the Lord has hardened your heart against my demands.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“I don’t know, he just did. Now, let my people go.”

“Nope.” I crossed my arms and turned away like someone whose heart is hardened.

“Behold as I turn this stick into a snake. Now, let my people go!”

“Okay.”

“You can’t just say ‘okay’!”

“Why? That was a pretty good trick with the stick.”

“But that’s not how it goes.”

“Okay. No way, Moses, your people have to stay.”

Joshua waved his staff in my face. “Behold, I will plague you with frogs. They will fill your house and your bedchamber and get on your stuff.”

“So?”

“So that’s bad. Let my people go, Pharaoh.”

“I sorta like frogs.”

“Dead frogs,” Moses threatened. “Piles of steaming, stinking dead frogs.”

“Oh, in that case, you’d better take your people and go. I have some sphinxes and stuff to build anyway.”

“Dammit, Biff, that’s not how it goes! I have more plagues for you.”

“I want to be Moses.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I have the stick.”

“Oh.”

And so it went. I’m not sure I took to playing the villains as easily as Joshua took to being the heroes. Sometimes we recruited our little brothers to play the more loathsome parts. Joshua’s little brothers Judah and James played whole populations, like the Sodomites outside of Lot’s door.

“Send out those two angels so that we can know them.”

“I won’t do that,” I said, playing Lot (a good guy only because Joshua wanted to play the angels), “but I have two daughters who don’t know anyone, you can meet them.”

“Okay,” said Judah.

I threw open the door and led my imaginary daughters outside so they could know the Sodomites…

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“THAT’S NOT HOW IT GOES!” Joshua shouted. “You’re supposed to try to break the door down, then I will smite you blind.”

“Then you destroy our city?” James said.

“Yes.”

“We’d rather meet Lot’s daughters.”

“Let my people go,” said Judah, who was only four and often got his stories confused. He particularly liked the Exodus because he and James got to throw jars of water on me as I led my soldiers across the Red Sea after Moses.

“That’s it,” Joshua said. “Judah, you’re Lot’s wife. Go stand over there.”

Sometimes Judah had to play Lot’s wife no matter what story we were doing. “I don’t want to be Lot’s wife.”

“Be quiet, pillars of salt can’t talk.”

“I don’t want to be a girl.”

Our brothers always played the female parts. I had no sisters to torment, and Joshua’s only sister at the time, Elizabeth, was still a baby. That was before we met the Magdalene. The Magdalene changed everything.

After I overheard my parents talking about Joshua’s mother’s madness, I often watched her, looking for signs, but she seemed to go about her duties like all the other mothers, tending to the little ones, working in the garden, fetching water, and preparing food. There was no sign of going about on all fours or foaming at the mouth as I had expected. She was younger than many of the mothers, and much younger than her husband, Joseph, who was an old man by the standards of our time. Joshua said that Joseph wasn’t his real father, but he wouldn’t say who his father was. When the subject came up, and Mary was in earshot, she would call to Josh, then put her finger to her lips to signal silence.

“Now is not the time, Joshua. Biff would not understand.”

Just hearing her say my name made my heart leap. Early on I developed a little-boy love for Joshua’s mother that sent me into fantasies of marriage and family and future.

“Your father is old, huh, Josh?”

“Not too old.”

“When he dies, will your mother marry his brother?”

“My father has no brothers. Why?”

“No reason. What would you think if your father was shorter than you?”

“He isn’t.”

“But when your father dies, your mother could marry someone shorter than you, and he would be your father. You would have to do what he says.”

“My father will never die. He is eternal.”

“So you say. But I think that when I’m a man, and your father dies, I will take your mother as my wife.”

Joshua made a face now as if he had bitten into an unripe fig. “Don’t say that, Biff.”

“I don’t mind that she’s mad. I like her blue cloak. And her smile. I’ll be a good father, I’ll teach you how to be a stonemason, and I’ll only beat you when you are a snot.”

“I would rather play with lepers than listen to this.” Joshua began to walk away.

“Wait. Be nice to your father, Joshua bar Biff”—my own father used my full name like this when he was trying to make a point—“Is it not the word of Moses that you must honor me?”

Little Joshua spun on his heel. “My name is not Joshua bar Biff, and it is not Joshua bar Joseph either. It’s Joshua bar Jehovah!”

I looked around, hoping that no one had heard him. I didn’t want my only son (I planned to sell Judah and James into slavery) to be stoned to death for uttering the name of God in vain. “Don’t say that again, Josh. I won’t marry your mother.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“She will make an excellent concubine.”

Don’t let anyone tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone. In those early days, before he had become who he would be, Joshua smote me in the nose more than once. That was the first time.

Mary would stay my one true love until I saw the Magdalene.

If the people of Nazareth thought Joshua’s mother was mad, there was little said of it out of respect for her husband, Joseph. He was wise in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and there were few wives in Nazareth who didn’t serve supper in one of his smooth olive-wood bowls. He was fair, strong, and wise. People said that he had once been an Essene, one of the dour, ascetic Jews who kept to themselves and never married or cut their hair, but he did not congregate with them, and unlike them, he still had the ability to smile.

In those early years, I saw him very little, as he was always in Sepphoris, building structures for the Romans and the Greeks and the landed Jews of that city, but every year, as the Feast of Firsts approached, Joseph would stop his work in the fortress city and stay home carving bowls and spoons to give to the Temple. During the Feast of Firsts, it was the tradition to give first lambs, first grain, and first fruits to the priests of the Temple. Even first sons born during the year were dedicated to the Temple, either by promising them for labor when they were older, or by a gift of money. Craftsmen like my father and Joseph could give things that they made, and in some years my father fashioned mortars and pestles or grinding stones for the tribute, while in others he gave tithes of coin. Some people made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this feast, but since it fell only seven weeks after Passover, many families could not afford to make the pilgrimage, and the gifts went to our simple village synagogue.

During the weeks leading up to the feast, Joseph sat outside of his house in the shade of an awning he had made, worrying the gnarled olive wood with adze and chisel, while Joshua and I played at his feet. He wore the single-piece tunic that we all wore, a rectangle of fabric with neck hole in the middle, belted with a sash so that the sleeves fell to the elbows and the hem fell to the knees.

“Perhaps this year I should give the Temple my first son, eh, Joshua? Wouldn’t you like to clean the altar after the sacrifices?” He grinned to himself without looking up from his work. “I owe them a first son, you know. We were in Egypt at the Firsts Feast when you were born.”

The idea of coming in contact with blood clearly terrified Joshua, as it would any Jewish boy. “Give them James, Abba, he is your first son.”

Joseph shot a glance my way, to see if I had reacted. I had, but it was because I was considering my own status as a first son, hoping that my father wasn’t thinking along the same lines. “James is a second son. The priests don’t want second sons. It will have to be you.”

Joshua looked at me before he answered, then back at his father. Then he smiled. “But Abba, if you should die, who will take care of Mother if I am at the Temple?”

“Someone will look after her,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

“I will not die for a long time.” Joseph tugged at his gray beard. “My beard goes white, but there’s a lot of life in me yet.”

“Don’t be so sure, Abba,” Joshua said.

Joseph dropped the bowl he was working on and stared into his hands. “Run along and play, you two,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

Joshua stood and walked away. I wanted to throw my arms around the old man, for I had never seen a grown man afraid before and it frightened me too. “Can I help?” I said, pointing to the half-finished bowl that lay in Joseph’s lap.

“You go with Joshua. He needs a friend to teach him to be human. Then I can teach him to be a man.”

Chapter 2

The angel wants me to convey more of Joshua’s grace. Grace? I’m trying to write about a six-year-old, for Christ’s sakes, how much grace could he have? It’s not like Joshua walked around professing that he was the Son of God every day of the week. He was a pretty normal kid, for the most part. There was the trick he did with the lizards, and once we found a dead meadowlark and he brought it back to life, and there was the time, when we were eight, when he healed his brother Judah’s fractured skull after a game of “stone the adulteress” got out of hand. (Judah could never get the knack of being an adulteress. He’d stand there stiff as Lot’s wife. You can’t do that. An adulteress has to be wily and nimble-footed.) The miracles Joshua performed were small and quiet, as miracles tend to be, once you get used to them. But trouble came from the miracles that happened around him, without his volition, as it were. Bread and serpents come to mind.

It was a few days before the Passover feast, and many of the families of Nazareth were not making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem that year. There had been little rain through our winter season, so it was going to be a hard year. Many farmers could not afford the time away from their fields to travel to and from the holy city. My father and Joshua’s were both working in Sepphoris, and the Romans wouldn’t give them time off work beyond the actual feast days. My mother had been making the unleavened bread when I came in from playing in the square.

She held a dozen sheets of the flatbread before her and she looked as if she was going to dash it to the floor any second. “Biff, where is your friend Joshua?” My little brothers grinned at me from behind her skirts.

“At home, I suppose. I just left him.”

“What have you boys been doing?”

“Nothing.” I tried to remember if I had done anything that should make her this angry, but nothing came to mind. It was a rare day and I’d made no trouble. Both my little brothers were unscathed as far as I knew.

“What have you done to cause this?” She held out a sheet of the flatbread, and there, in crispy brown relief on the golden crust, was the image of my friend Joshua’s face. She snatched up another sheet of bread, and there, again, was my friend Josh. Graven images—big sin. Josh was smiling. Mother frowned on smiling. “Well? Do I need to go to Joshua’s house and ask his poor, insane mother?”

“I did this. I put Joshua’s face on the bread.” I just hoped that she didn’t ask me how I had done it.

“Your father will punish you when he comes home this evening. Now go, get out of here.”

I could hear my little brother’s giggling as I slunk out the door, but once outside, things worsened. Women were coming away from their baking stones, and each held a sheet of unleavened bread, and each was muttering some variation of “Hey, there’s a kid on my bread.”

I ran to Joshua’s house and stormed in without knocking. Joshua and his brothers were at the table eating. Mary was nursing Joshua’s newest little sister, Miriam.

“You are in big trouble,” I whispered in Josh’s ear with enough force to blow out an eardrum.

Joshua held up the flatbread he was eating and grinned, just like the face on his bread. “It’s a miracle.”

“Tastes good too,” said James, crunching a corner off of his brother’s head.

“It’s all over town, Joshua. Not just your house. Everyone’s bread has your face on it.”

“He is truly the Son of God,” Mary said with a beatific smile.

“Oh, jeez, Mother,” James said.

“Yeah, jeez Mom,” said Judah.

“His mug is all over the Passover feast. We have to do something.” They didn’t seem to get the gravity of the situation. I was already in trouble, and my mother didn’t even suspect anything supernatural. “We have to cut your hair.”

“What?”

“We cannot cut his hair,” Mary said. She had always let Joshua wear his hair long, like an Essene, saying that he was a Nazarite like Samson. It was just another reason why many of the townspeople thought her mad. The rest of us wore our hair cut short, like the Greeks who had ruled our country since the time of Alexander, and the Romans after them.

“If we cut his hair he looks like the rest of us. We can say it’s someone else on the bread.”

“Moses,” Mary said. “Young Moses.”

“Yes!”

“I’ll get a knife.”

“James, Judah, come with me,” I said. “We have to tell the town that the face of Moses has come to visit us for the Passover feast.”

Mary pulled Miriam from her breast, bent, and kissed me on the forehead. “You are a good friend, Biff.”

I almost melted in my sandals, but I caught Joshua frowning at me. “It’s not the truth,” he said.

“It will keep the Pharisees from judging you.”

“I’m not afraid of them,” said the nine-year-old. “I didn’t do this to the bread.”

“Then why take the blame and the punishment for it?”

“I don’t know, seems like I should, doesn’t it?”

“Sit still so your mother can cut your hair.” I dashed out the door, Judah and James on my heels, the three of us bleating like spring lambs.

“Behold! Moses has put his face on the bread for Passover! Behold!”

Miracles. She kissed me. Holy Moses on a matzo! She kissed me.

The miracle of the serpent? It was an omen, in a way, although I can only say that because of what happened between Joshua and the Pharisees later on. At the time, Joshua thought it was the fulfillment of a prophecy, or that’s how we tried to sell it to his mother and father.

It was late summer and we were playing in a wheat field outside of town when Joshua found the nest of vipers.

“A nest of vipers,” Joshua shouted. The wheat was so tall I couldn’t see where he was calling from.

“A pox on your family,” I replied.

“No, there’s a nest of vipers over here. Really.”

“Oh, I thought you were taunting me. Sorry, a pox off of your family.”

“Come, see.”

I crashed through the wheat to find Joshua standing by a pile of stones a farmer had used to mark the boundary of his field. I screamed and backpedaled so quickly that I lost my balance and fell. A knot of snakes writhed at Joshua’s feet, skating over his sandals and wrapping themselves around his ankles. “Joshua, get away from there.”

“They won’t hurt me. It says so in Isaiah.”

“Just in case they haven’t read the Prophets…”

Joshua stepped aside, sending the snakes scattering, and there, behind him, was the biggest cobra I had ever seen. It reared up until it was taller than my friend, spreading a hood like a cloak.

“Run, Joshua.”

He smiled. “I’m going to call her Sarah, after Abraham’s wife. These are her children.”

“No kidding? Say good-bye now, Josh.”

“I want to show Mother. She loves prophecy.” With that, he was off toward the village, the giant serpent following him like a shadow. The baby snakes stayed in the nest and I backed slowly away before running after my friend.

I once brought a frog home, hoping to keep him as a pet. Not a large frog, a one-handed frog, quiet and well mannered. My mother made me release him, then cleanse myself in the immersion pool (the mikveh) at the synagogue. Still she wouldn’t let me in the house until after sunset because I was unclean. Joshua led a fourteen-foot-long cobra into his house and his mother squealed with joy. My mother never squealed.

Mary slung the baby to her hip, kneeled in front of her son, and quoted Isaiah: “‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den.’”

James, Judah, and Elizabeth cowered in the corner, too frightened to cry. I stood outside the doorway watching.

The snake swayed behind Joshua as if preparing to strike. “Her name is Sarah.”

“They were cobras, not asps,” I said. “A whole pile of cobras.”

“Can we keep her?” Joshua asked. “I’ll catch rats for her, and make a bed for her next to Elizabeth’s.”

“Definitely not asps. I’d know an asp if I saw one. Probably not a cockatrice either. I’d say a cobra.” (Actually, I didn’t know an asp from a hole in the ground.)

“Shush, Biff,” Mary said. My heart broke with the harshness in my love’s voice.

Just then Joseph rounded the corner and went through the door before I could catch him. No worry, he was back outside in an instant. “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!”

I checked to see if Joseph’s heart had failed, having quickly decided that once Mary and I were married the snake would have to go, or at least sleep outside, but the burly carpenter seemed only shaken, and a little dusty from his backward dive through the door.

“Not an asp, right?” I asked. “Asps are made small to fit the breasts of Egyptian queens, right?”

Joseph ignored me. “Back away slowly, son. I’ll get a knife from my workshop.”

“She won’t hurt us,” Joshua said. “Her name is Sarah. She’s from Isaiah.”

“It is in the prophecy, Joseph,” Mary said.

I could see Joseph searching his memory for the passage. Although only a layman, he knew his scripture as well as anyone. “I don’t remember the part about Sarah.”

“I don’t think it’s prophecy,” I offered. “It says asps, and that is definitely not an asp. I’d say she’s going to bite Joshua’s ass off if you don’t grab her, Joseph.” (A guy has to try.)

“Can I keep her?” Joshua asked.

Joseph had regained his composure by now. Evidently, once you accept that your wife slept with God, extraordinary events seem sort of commonplace.

“Take her back where you found her, Joshua, the prophecy has been fulfilled now.”

“But I want to keep her.”

“No, Joshua.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

I suspected that Joseph had heard that before. “Just so,” he said, “please take Sarah back where you found her.”

Joshua stormed out of the house, his snake following close behind. Joseph and I gave them a wide berth. “Try not to let anyone see you,” Joseph said. “They won’t understand.”

He was right, of course. On our way out of the village we ran into a gang of older boys, led by Jakan, the son of Iban the Pharisee. They did not understand.

There were perhaps a dozen Pharisees in Nazareth: learned men, working-class teachers, who spent much of their time at the synagogue debating the Law. They were often hired as judges and scribes, and this gave them great influence over the people of the village. So much influence, in fact, that the Romans often used them as mouthpieces to our people. With influence comes power, with power, abuse. Jakan was only the son of a Pharisee. He was only two years older than Joshua and me, but he was well on his way to mastering cruelty. If there is a single joy in having everyone you have ever known two thousand years dead, it is that Jakan is one of them. May his fat crackle in the fires of hell for eternity!

Joshua taught us that we should not hate—a lesson that I was never able to master, along with geometry. Blame Jakan for the former, Euclid for the latter.

Joshua ran behind the houses and shops of the village, the snake behind him by ten steps, and me behind her ten steps more. As he rounded the corner by the smith’s shop, Joshua ran into Jakan, knocking him to the ground.

“You idiot!” Jakan shouted, rising and dusting himself off. His three friends laughed and he spun on them like an angry tiger. “This one needs to have his face washed in dung. Hold him.”

The boys turned their focus on Joshua, two grabbing his arms while the third punched him in the stomach. Jakan turned to look for a pile to rub Joshua’s face in. Sarah slithered around the corner and reared up behind Joshua, spreading her glorious hood wide above our heads.

“Hey,” I called as I rounded the corner. “You guys think this is an asp?” My fear of the snake had changed into a sort of wary affection. She seemed to be smiling. I know I was. Sarah swayed from side to side like a wheat stalk in the wind. The boys dropped Joshua’s arms and ran to Jakan, who had turned and slowly backed away.

“Joshua was talking about asps,” I continued, “but I’d have to say that this here is a cobra.”

Joshua was bent over, still trying to catch his breath, but he looked back at me and grinned.

“Of course, I’m not the son of a Pharisee, but—”

“He’s in league with the serpent!” Jakan screamed. “He consorts with demons!”

“Demons!” the other boys shouted, trying to crowd behind their fat friend.

“I will tell my father of this and you’ll be stoned.”

A voice from behind Jakan said, “What is all this shouting?” And a sweet voice it was.

She came out of the house by the smith’s shop. Her skin shone like copper and she had the light blue eyes of the northern desert people. Wisps of reddish-brown hair showed at the edges of her purple shawl. She couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, but there was something very old in her eyes. I stopped breathing when I saw her.

Jakan puffed up like a toad. “Stay back. These two are consorting with a demon. I will tell the elders and they will be judged.”

She spit at his feet. I had never seen a girl spit before. It was charming. “It looks like a cobra to me.”

“See there, I told you.”

She walked up to Sarah as if she were approaching a fig tree looking for fruit, not a hint of fear, only interest. “You think this is a demon?” she said, without looking back at Jakan. “Won’t you be embarrassed when the elders find that you mistook a common snake of the field for a demon?”

“It is a demon.”

The girl reached her hand up, and the snake made as if to strike, then lowered its head until its forked tongue was brushing the girl’s fingers. “This is definitely a cobra, little boy. And these two were probably leading it back to the fields where it would help the farmers by eating rats.”

“Yep, that’s what we were doing,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Joshua said.

The girl turned to Jakan and his friends. “A demon?”

Jakan stomped like an angry donkey. “You are in league with them.”

“Don’t be silly, my family has only just arrived from Magdala, I’ve never seen these two before, but it’s obvious what they were doing. We do it all the time in Magdala. But then, this is a backwater village.”

“We do it here too,” Jakan said. “I was—well—these two make trouble.”

“Trouble,” his friends said.

“Why don’t we let them get on with what they were doing.”

Jakan, his eyes bouncing from the girl to the snake to the girl again, began to lead his friends away. “I will deal with you two another time.”

As soon as they were around the corner, the girl jumped back from the snake and ran toward the door of her house.

“Wait,” Joshua called.

“I have to go.”

“What is your name?”

“I’m Mary of Magdala, daughter of Isaac,” she said. “Call me Maggie.”

“Come with us, Maggie.”

“I can’t, I have to go.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve peed myself.”

She disappeared through the door.

Miracles.

Once we were back in the wheat field Sarah headed for her den. We watched from a distance as she slid down the hole.

“Josh. How did you do that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Is this kind of thing going to keep happening?”

“Probably.”

“We are going to get into a lot of trouble, aren’t we?”

“What am I, a prophet?”

“I asked you first.”

Joshua stared into the sky like a man in a trance. “Did you see her? She’s afraid of nothing.”

“She’s a giant snake, what’s to be afraid of?”

Joshua frowned. “Don’t pretend to be simple, Biff. We were saved by a serpent and a girl, I don’t know what to think about that.”

“Why think about it at all? It just happened.”

“Nothing happens but by God’s will,” Joshua said. “It doesn’t fit with the testament of Moses.”

“Maybe it’s a new testament,” I said.

“You aren’t pretending, are you?” Joshua said. “You really are simple.”

“I think she likes you better than she likes me,” I said.

“The snake?”

“Right, I’m the simple one.”

I don’t know if now, having lived and died the life of a man, I can write about little-boy love, but remembering it now, it seems the cleanest pain I’ve known. Love without desire, or conditions, or limits—a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture that purity in a bottle? Perhaps they couldn’t. Perhaps it is lost to us when we become sexual creatures, and no magic can bring it back. Perhaps I only remember it because I spent so long trying to understand the love that Joshua felt for everyone.

In the East they taught us that all suffering comes from desire, and that rough beast would stalk me through my life, but on that afternoon, and for a time after, I touched grace. At night I would lie awake, listening to my brothers’ breathing against the silence of the house, and in my mind’s eye I could see her eyes like blue fire in the dark. Exquisite torture. I wonder now if Joshua didn’t make her whole life like that. Maggie, she was the strongest of us all.

After the miracle of the serpent, Joshua and I made up excuses to pass by the smith’s shop where we might run into Maggie. Every morning we would rise early and go to Joseph, volunteering to run to the smith for some nails or the repair of a tool. Poor Joseph took this as enthusiasm for carpentry.

“Would you boys like to come to Sepphoris with me tomorrow?” Joseph asked us one day when we were badgering him about fetching nails. “Biff, would your father let you start learning the work of a carpenter?”

I was mortified. At ten a boy was expected to start learning his father’s trade, but that was a year away—forever when you’re nine. “I–I am still thinking about what I will do when I grow up,” I said. My own father had made a similar offer to Joshua the day before.

“So you won’t become a stonecutter?”

“I was thinking about becoming the village idiot, if my father will allow it.”

“He has a God-given talent,” Joshua said.

“I’ve been talking to Bartholomew the idiot,” I said. “He’s going to teach me to fling my own dung and run headlong into walls.”

Joseph scowled at me. “Perhaps you two are yet too young. Next year.”

“Yes,” Joshua said, “next year. May we go now, Joseph? Biff is meeting Bartholomew for his lesson.”

Joseph nodded and we were off before he inflicted more kindness upon us. We actually had befriended Bartholomew, the village idiot. He was foul and drooled a lot, but he was large, and offered some protection against Jakan and his bullies. Bart also spent most of his time begging near the town square, where the women came to fetch water from the well. From time to time we caught a glimpse of Maggie as she passed, a water jar balanced on her head.

“You know, we are going to have to start working soon,” Joshua said. “I won’t see you, once I’m working with my father.”

“Joshua, look around you, do you see any trees?”

“No.”

“And the trees we do have, olive trees—twisted, gnarly, knotty things, right?”

“Right.”

“But you’re going to be a carpenter like your father?”

“There’s a chance of it.”

“One word, Josh: rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“Look around. Rocks as far as the eye can see. Galilee is nothing but rocks, dirt, and more rocks. Be a stonemason like me and my father. We can build cities for the Romans.”

“Actually, I was thinking about saving mankind.”

“Forget that nonsense, Josh. Rocks, I tell you.”

Chapter 3

The angel will tell me nothing of what happened to my friends, of the twelve, of Maggie. All he’ll say is that they are dead and that I have to write my own version of the story. Oh, he’ll tell me useless angel stories—of how Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis, or how Raphael snuck out of heaven to visit Satan and returned with something called a cell phone. (Evidently everyone has them in hell now.) He watches the television and when they show an earthquake or a tornado he’ll say, “I destroyed a city with one of those once. Mine was better.” I am awash in useless angel prattle, but about my own time I know nothing but what I saw. And when the television makes mention of Joshua, calling him by his Greek name, Raziel changes the channel before I can learn anything.

He never sleeps. He just watches me, watches the television, and eats. He never leaves the room.

Today, while searching for extra towels, I opened one of the drawers and there, beneath a plastic bag meant for laundry, I found a book: Holy Bible, it said on the cover. Thank the Lord I did not take the book from the drawer, but opened it with my back to the angel. There are chapters there that were in no Bible I know. I saw the names of Matthew and John, I saw Romans and Galatians—this is a book of my time.

“What are you doing?” the angel asked.

I covered the Bible and closed the drawer. “Looking for towels. I need to bathe.”

“You bathed yesterday.”

“Cleanliness is important to my people.”

“I know that. What, you think I don’t know that?”

“You’re not exactly the brightest halo in the bunch.”

“Then bathe. And stand away from the television.”

“Why don’t you go get me some towels?”

“I’ll call down to the desk.”

And he did. If I am to get a look at that book, I must get the angel to leave the room.

It came to pass that in the village of Japhia, the sister village of Nazareth, that Esther, the mother of one of the priests of the Temple, died of bad air. The Levite priests, or Sadducees, were rich from the tributes we paid to the Temple, and mourners were hired from all the surrounding villages. The families of Nazareth made the journey to the next hill for the funeral, and for the first time, Joshua and I were able to spend time with Maggie as we walked along the road.

“So,” she said without looking at us, “have you two been playing with any snakes lately?”

“We’ve been waiting for the lion to lay down with the lamb,” Joshua said. “That’s the next part of the prophecy.”

“What prophecy?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Snakes are for boys. We are almost men. We will begin work after the Feast of Tabernacles. In Sepphoris.” I was trying to sound worldly. Maggie seemed unimpressed.

“And you will learn to be a carpenter?” she asked Joshua.

“I will do the work of my father, eventually, yes.”

“And you?” she asked me.

“I’m thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off.”

“His father is a stonemason,” Joshua said. “We may both learn that skill.” At my urging, my father had offered to take Joshua on as an apprentice if Joseph approved.

“Or a shepherd,” I added quickly. “Being a shepherd seems easy. I went with Kaliel last week to tend his flock. The Law says that two must go with the flock to keep an abomination from happening. I can spot an abomination from fifty paces.”

Maggie smiled. “And did you prevent any abominations?”

“Oh yes, I kept all of the abominations at bay while Kaliel played with his favorite sheep behind the bushes.”

“Biff,” Joshua said gravely, “that was the abomination you were supposed to prevent.”

“It was?”

“Yes.”

“Whoops. Oh well, I think I would make an excellent mourner. Do you know the words to any dirges, Maggie? I’m going to need to learn some dirges.”

“I think that when I grow up,” Maggie announced, “I shall go back to Magdala and become a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee.”

I laughed, “Don’t be silly, you are a girl. You can’t be a fisherman.”

“Yes I can.”

“No, you can’t. You have to marry and have sons. Are you betrothed, by the way?”

Joshua said: “Come with me, Maggie, and I will make you a fisher of men.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Maggie asked.

I grabbed Joshua by the back of his robe and began to drag him away. “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s mad. He gets it from his mother. Lovely woman, but a loony. Come now, Josh, let’s sing a dirge.”

I began improvising what I thought was a good funeral song.

“La-la-la. Oh, we are really, really sad that your mom is dead. Too bad you’re a Sadducee and don’t believe in an afterlife and your mom is just going to be worm food, la-la. Makes you think that you might want to reconsider, huh? Fa-la-la-la-la-la-wacka-wacka.” (It sounded great in Aramaic. Really.)

“You two are silly.”

“Gotta go. Mourning to do. See you.”

“A fisher of women?” Josh said.

“Fa-la-la-la, don’t feel bad—she was old and had no teeth left, la-la-la. Come on, people, you know the words!”

Later, I said, “Josh, you can’t keep saying creepy things like that. ‘Fisher of men,’ you want the Pharisees to stone you? Is that what you want?”

“I’m only doing my father’s work. Besides, Maggie is our friend, she wouldn’t say anything.”

“You’re going to scare her away.”

“No I won’t. She’s going to be with us, Biff.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“I don’t even know if I’m allowed to marry at all, Biff. Look.”

We were topping the hill into Japhia, and we could see the crowd of mourners gathering around the village. Joshua was pointing to a red crest that stood out above the crowd—the helmet crest of a Roman centurion. The centurion was talking to the Levite priest, who was arrayed in white and gold, his white beard reaching past his belt. As we moved into the village we could see twenty or thirty other soldiers watching the crowd.

“Why are they here?”

“They don’t like it when we gather,” Joshua said, pausing to study the centurion commander. “They are here to see that we don’t revolt.”

“Why is the priest talking to him?”

“The Sadducee wants to assure the Roman of his influence over us. It wouldn’t do to have a massacre on the day of his mother’s funeral.”

“So he’s watching out for us.”

“He’s watching out for himself. Only for himself.”

“You shouldn’t say that about a priest of the Temple, Joshua.” It was the first time I ever heard Joshua speak against the Sadducees, and it frightened me.

“Today, I think this priest will learn who the Temple belongs to.”

“I hate it when you talk like that, Josh. Maybe we should go home.”

“Do you remember the dead meadowlark we found?”

“I have a really bad feeling about this.”

Joshua grinned at me. I could see gold flecks shining in his eyes. “Sing your dirge, Biff. I think Maggie was impressed by your singing.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Nope.”

There was a crowd of five hundred outside the tomb. In the front, the men had draped striped shawls over their heads and rocked as they prayed. The women were separated to the back, and except for the wailing of the hired mourners, it was as if they didn’t exist. I tried to catch a glimpse of Maggie, but couldn’t see her through the crowd. When I turned again, Joshua had wormed his way to the front of the men, where the Sadducee stood beside the corpse of his dead mother, reading from a scroll of the Torah.

The women had wrapped the corpse in linen and anointed it with fragrant oils. I could smell sandalwood and jasmine amid the acrid sweat of the mourners as I made my way to the front and stood by Joshua. He looked past the priest and was staring at the corpse, his eyes narrowed in concentration. He was trembling as if taken by a chill wind.

The priest finished his reading and began to sing, joined by the voices of hired singers who had made the journey all the way from the Temple in Jerusalem.

“It’s good to be rich, huh?” I whispered to Joshua, elbowing him in the ribs. He ignored me and balled up his fists at his sides. A vein stood out on his forehead as he burned his gaze on the corpse.

And she moved.

Just a twitch at first. The jerk of her hand under the linen shroud. I think I was the only one who noticed. “No, Joshua, don’t,” I said.

I looked for the Romans, who were gathered in groups of five at different points around the perimeter of the crowd looking bored, their hands resting on the hafts of their short swords.

The corpse twitched again and raised her arm. There was a gasp in the crowd and a boy screamed. The men started backing away and the women pushed forward to see what was happening. Joshua fell to his knees and pressed his fists to his temples. The priest sang on.

The corpse sat up.

The singers stopped and finally the priest turned to look behind him at his dead mother, who had swung her legs off of the slab and looked as if she was trying to stand. The priest stumbled back into the crowd, clawing at the air before his eyes as if it some vapor was causing this horrible vision.

Joshua was rocking on his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks. The corpse stood, and still covered by the shroud, turned as if she was looking around. I could see that several of the Romans had drawn their swords. I looked around and found the commanding centurion standing on the back of a wagon, giving signals to his men to stay calm. When I looked back I realized that Joshua and I had been deserted by the mourners and we stood out in the empty space.

“Stop it, now, Josh,” I whispered in his ear, but he continued to rock and concentrate on the corpse, who took her first step.

The crowd seemed to be transfixed by the walking corpse, but we were too isolated, too alone now with the dead, and I knew it would only be seconds before they noticed Joshua rocking in the dirt. I threw my arm around his throat and dragged him back away from the corpse and into a group of men who were wailing as they backed away.

“Is he all right?” I heard at my ear, and turned to see Maggie standing beside me.

“Help me get him away.”

Maggie took one of Joshua’s arms and I took the other as we dragged him away. His body was as stiff as a walking staff, and he kept his gaze trained on the corpse.

The dead woman was walking toward her son, the priest, who was backing away, brandishing the scroll like a sword, his eyes as big as saucers.

Finally the woman fell in the dirt, twitched, then lay still. Joshua went limp in our arms.

“Let’s get him out of here,” I said to Maggie. She nodded and helped me drag him behind the wagon where the centurion was directing his troops.

“Is he dead?” the centurion asked.

Joshua was blinking as if he’d just been awakened from a deep sleep. “We’re never sure, sir,” I said.

The centurion threw his head back and laughed. His scale armor rattled with the tossing of his shoulders. He was older than the other soldiers, gray-haired, but obviously lean and strong, and totally unconcerned with the histrionics of the crowd. “Good answer, boy. What is your name?”

“Biff, sir. Levi bar Alphaeus, who is called Biff, sir. Of Nazareth.”

“Well, Biff, I am Gaius Justus Gallicus, under-commander of Sepphoris, and I think that you Jews should make sure your dead are dead before you bury them.”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“You, girl. You are a pretty little thing. What is your name?”

I could see that Maggie was shaken by the attention of the Roman. “I am Mary of Magdala, sir.” She wiped at Joshua’s brow with the edge of her shawl as she spoke.

“You will break someone’s heart someday, eh, little one?”

Maggie didn’t answer. But I must have shown some reaction to the question, because Justus laughed again. “Or perhaps she already has, eh, Biff?”

“It is our way, sir. That’s why we Jews bury our women when they are still alive. It cuts down on the heartbreak.”

The Roman took off his helmet, ran his hand over his short hair, and flung sweat at me. “Go on, you two, get your friend into the shade. It’s too hot out here for a sick boy. Go on.”

Maggie and I helped Joshua to his feet and began to lead him away, but when we had gone only a few steps, Joshua stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the Roman. “Will you slay my people if we follow our God?” he shouted.

I cuffed him on the back of the head. “Joshua, are you insane?”

Justus narrowed his gaze at Joshua and the smile went out of his eyes. “Whatever they tell you, boy, Rome has only two rules: pay your taxes and don’t rebel. Follow those and you’ll stay alive.”

Maggie yanked Joshua around and smiled back at the Roman. “Thank you, sir, we’ll get him out of the sun.” Then she turned back to Joshua. “Is there something you two would like to tell me?”

“It’s not me,” I said. “It’s him.”

The next day we met the angel for the first time. Mary and Joseph said that Joshua had left the house at dawn and they hadn’t seen him since. I wandered around the village most of the morning, looking for Joshua and hoping to run into Maggie. The square was alive with talk of the walking dead woman, but neither of my friends was to be found. At noon my mother recruited me to watch my little brothers while she went to work with the other women in the vineyard. She returned at dusk, smelling of sweat and sweet wine, her feet purple from walking in the winepress. Cut loose, I ran all over the hilltop, checking in our favorite places to play, and finally found Joshua on his knees in an olive grove, rocking back and forth as he prayed. He was soaked in sweat and I was afraid he might have a fever. Strange, I never felt that sort of concern for my own brothers, but from the beginning, Joshua filled me with divinely inspired worry.

I watched, and waited, and when he stopped his rocking and sat back to rest, I faked a cough to let him know I was coming.

“Maybe you should stick with lizards for a while longer.”

“I failed. I have disappointed my father.”

“Did he tell you that, or do you just know it?”

He thought for a moment, made as if to brush his hair away from his face, then remembered that he no longer wore his hair long and dropped his hands in his lap. “I ask for guidance, but I get no answer. I can feel that I am supposed to do things, but I don’t know what. And I don’t know how.”

“I don’t know, I think the priest was surprised. I certainly was. Maggie was. People will be talking about it for months.”

“But I wanted the woman to live again. To walk among us. To tell of the miracle.”

“Well, it is written, two out of three ain’t bad.”

“Where is that written?”

“Dalmatians 9:7, I think—doesn’t matter, no one else could have done what you did.”

Joshua nodded. “What are people saying?”

“They think that it was something the women used to prepare the corpse. They are still going through purification for two more days, so no one can ask them.”

“So they don’t know that it was me?”

“I hope not. Joshua, don’t you understand that you can’t do that sort of thing in front of people? They aren’t ready for it.”

“But most of them want it. They talk about the Messiah coming to deliver us all the time. Don’t I have to show them that he has come?”

What do you say to that? He was right, since I could remember there was always talk of the coming of the Messiah, of the coming of the kingdom of God, of the liberation of our people from the Romans—the hills were full of different factions of Zealots who skirmished with the Romans in hope that they could bring about the change. We were the chosen of God, blessed and punished like no other on earth. When the Jews spoke, God listened, now it was God’s turn to speak. Evidently, my best friend was supposed to be the mouthpiece. But at that moment, I just didn’t believe it. Despite what I’d seen, Joshua was my pal, not the Messiah.

I said, “I’m pretty sure the Messiah is supposed to have a beard.”

“So, it’s not time yet, is that what you’re saying?”

“Right, Josh, I’m going to know when you don’t. God sent a messenger to me and he said, ‘By the way, tell Joshua to wait until he can shave before he leads my people out of bondage.’”

“It could happen.”

“Don’t ask me, ask God.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing. He’s not answering.”

It had been getting darker by the minute in the olive grove, and I could barely see the shine in Josh’s eyes, but suddenly the area around us was lit up like daylight. We looked up to see the dreaded Raziel descending on us from above the treetops. Of course I didn’t know he was the dreaded Raziel at the time, I was just terrified. The angel shone like a star above us, his features so perfect that even my beloved Maggie’s beauty paled by comparison. Joshua hid his face and huddled against the trunk of an olive tree. I guess he was more easily surprised by the supernatural than I was. I just stood there staring with my mouth open, drooling like the village idiot.

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all men. For on this day, in the city of David, is born a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” Then he hovered for a second, waiting for his message to sink in.

Joshua uncovered his face and risked a glance at the angel.

“Well?” the angel said.

It took me a second to digest the meaning of the words, and I waited for Joshua to say something, but he had turned his face skyward and seemed to be basking in the light, a silly smile locked on his face.

Finally I pointed a thumb at Josh and said, “He was born in the city of David.”

“Really?” said the angel.

“Yep.”

“His mother’s name is Mary?”

“Yep.”

“She a virgin?”

“He has four brothers and sisters now, but at one time, yes.”

The angel looked around nervously, as if he might expect a multitude of the heavenly host to show up at some point. “How old are you, kid?”

Joshua just stared, smiling.

“He’s ten.”

The angel cleared his throat and fidgeted a bit, dropping a few feet toward the ground as he did so. “I’m in a lot of trouble. I stopped to chat with Michael on the way here, he had a deck of cards. I knew some time had passed, but…” To Joshua he said, “Kid, were you born in a stable? Wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger?”

Joshua said nothing.

“That’s the way his mom tells it,” I said.

“Is he retarded?”

“I think you’re his first angel. He’s impressed, I think.”

“What about you?”

“I’m in trouble because I’m going to be an hour late for dinner.”

“I see what you mean. I’d better get back and check on this. If you see some shepherds watching over their flocks by night would you tell them—uh, tell them—that at some point, probably, oh—ten years or so ago, that a Savior was born? Could you do that?”

“Sure.”

“Okey-dokey. Glory to God in the highest. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.”

“Right back at you.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

And as quickly as he had come, the angel was gone in a shooting star and the olive grove went dark again. I could just make out Joshua’s face as he turned to look at me.

“There you go,” I said. “Next question?”

I suppose that every boy wonders what he will be when he grows up. I suppose that many watch their peers accomplish great things and wonder, “Could I have done that?” For me, to know at ten that my best friend was the Messiah, while I would live and die a stonecutter, seemed too much of a curse for a ten-year-old to bear. The morning after we met the angel, I went to the square and sat with Bartholomew the village idiot, hoping that Maggie would come to the well. If I had to be a stonecutter, at least I might have the love of an enchanting woman. In those days, we started training for our life’s work at ten, then received the prayer shawl and phylacteries at thirteen, signifying our entry into manhood. Soon after we were expected to be betrothed, and by fourteen, married and starting a family. So you see, I was not too young to consider Maggie as a wife (and I might always have the fallback position of marrying Joshua’s mother when Joseph died).

The women would come and go, fetching water, washing clothes, and as the sun rose high and the square cleared, Bartholomew sat in the shade of a tattered date palm and picked his nose. Maggie never appeared. Funny how easy heartbreak can come. I’ve always had a talent for it.

“Why you cry?” said Bartholomew. He was bigger than any man in the village, his hair and beard were wild and tangled, and the yellow dust that covered him from head to toe gave him the appearance of an incredibly stupid lion. His tunic was ragged and he wore no sandals. The only thing he owned was a wooden bowl that he ate from and licked clean. He lived off of the charity of the village, and by gleaning the grain fields (there was always some grain left in the fields for the poor—it was dictated by the Law). I never knew how old he was. He spent his days in the square, playing with the village dogs, giggling to himself, and scratching his crotch. When the women passed he would stick out his tongue and say, “Bleh.” My mother said he had the mind of a child. As usual, she was wrong.

He put his big paw on my shoulder and rubbed, leaving a dusty circle of affection on my shirt. “Why you cry?” he asked again.

“I’m just sad. You wouldn’t understand.”

Bartholomew looked around, and when he saw that we were alone in the square except for his dog pals, he said, “You think too much. Thinking will bring you nothing but suffering. Be simple.”

“What?” It was the most coherent thing I’d ever heard him say.

“Do you ever see me cry? I have nothing, so I am slave to nothing. I have nothing to do, so nothing makes me its slave.”

“What do you know?” I snapped. “You live in the dirt. You are unclean! You do nothing. I have to begin working next week, and work for a lifetime until I die with a broken back. The girl I want is in love with my best friend, and he’s the Messiah. I’m nothing, and you, you—you’re an idiot.”

“No, I’m not, I’m a Greek. A Cynic.”

I turned and really looked at him. His eyes, normally as dull as mud, shone like black jewels in the dusty desert of his face. “What’s a Cynic?”

“A philosopher. I am a student of Diogenes. You know Diogenes?”

“No, but how much could he have taught you? Your only friends are dogs.”

“Diogenes went about Athens with a lamp in broad daylight, holding it in people’s faces, saying he was looking for an honest man.”

“So, he was like the prophet of the idiots?”

“No, no, no.” Bart picked up a small terrier and was gesturing with him to make his point. The dog seemed to enjoy it. “They were all fooled by their culture. Diogenes taught that all affectations of modern life were false, that a man must live simply, outdoors, carry nothing, make no art, no poetry, no religion…”

“Like a dog,” I said.

“Yes!” Bart described a flourish in the air with the rat dog. “Exactly!” The little dog made as if to upchuck from the motion. Bart put him down and he wobbled away.

A life without worry: right then it sounded wonderful. I mean, I didn’t want to live in the dirt and have other people think me mad, like Bartholomew, but a dog’s life really didn’t sound bad. The idiot had been hiding a deep wisdom all these years.

“I’m trying to learn to lick my own balls,” Bart said.

Maybe not. “I have to go find Joshua.”

“You know he is the Messiah, don’t you?”

“Wait a minute, you’re not a Jew—I thought you didn’t believe in any religion.”

“The dogs told me he was the Messiah. I believe them. Tell Joshua I believe them.”

“The dogs told you?”

“They’re Jewish dogs.”

“Right, let me know how the ball licking works out.”

“Shalom.”

Who would have thought that Joshua would find his first apostle among the dirt and dogs of Nazareth. Bleh.

I found Joshua at the synagogue, listening to the Pharisees lecture on the Law. I stepped through the group of boys sitting on the floor and whispered to him.

“Bartholomew says that he knows you are the Messiah.”

“The idiot? Did you ask him how long he’s known?”

“He says the village dogs told him.”

“I never thought to ask the dogs.”

“He says that we should live simply, like dogs, carry nothing, no affectations—whatever that means.”

“Bartholomew said that? Sounds like an Essene. He’s much smarter than he looks.”

“He’s trying to learn to lick his own balls.”

“I’m sure there’s something in the Law that forbids that. I’ll ask the rabbi.”

“I’m not sure you want to bring that up to the Pharisee.”

“Did you tell your father about the angel?”

“No.”

“Good. I’ve spoken to Joseph, he’s going to let me learn to be a stonecutter with you. I don’t want your father to change his mind about teaching me. I think the angel would frighten him.” Joshua looked at me for the first time, turning from the Pharisee, who droned on in Hebrew. “Have you been crying?”

“Me? No, Bart’s stench made my eyes water.”

Joshua put his hand on my forehead and all the sadness and trepidation seemed to drain out of me in an instant. He smiled. “Better?”

“I’m jealous of you and Maggie.”

“That can’t be good for your neck.”

“What?”

“Trying to lick your own balls. It’s got to be hard on your neck.”

“Did you hear me? I’m jealous of you and Maggie.”

“I’m still learning, Biff. There are things I don’t understand yet. The Lord said, ‘I am a jealous God.’ So jealousy should be a good thing.”

“But it makes me feel so bad.”

“You see the puzzle, then? Jealousy makes you feel bad, but God is jealous, so it must be good, yet when a dog licks its balls it seems to enjoy it, but it must be bad under the Law.”

Suddenly Joshua was yanked to his feet by the ear. The Pharisee glared at him. “Is the Law of Moses too boring for you, Joshua bar Joseph?”

“I have a question, Rabbi,” Joshua said.

“Oh, jeez.” I hid my head in my arms.

Chapter 4

Yet another reason that I loathe the heavenly scum with whom I share this room: today I found that I had offended our intrepid room service waiter, Jesus. How was I to know? When he brought our pizza for dinner, I gave him one of the American silver coins that we received from the airport sweet shop called Cinnabon. He scoffed at me—scoffed—then, thinking better of it, he said, “Señor, I know you are foreign, so you do not know, but this is a very insulting tip. Better you just sign the room service slip so I get the fee that is added automatically. I tell you this because you have been very kind, and I know you do not mean to offend, but another of the waiters would spit in your food if you should offer him this.”

I glared at the angel, who, as usual, was lying on the bed watching television, and for the first time I realized that he did not understand Jesus’ language. He did not possess the gift of tongues he had bestowed on me. He spoke Aramaic to me, and he seemed to know Hebrew and enough English to understand television, but of Spanish he understood not a word. I apologized to Jesus and sent him on his way with a promise that I would make it up to him, then I wheeled on the angel.

“You fool, these coins, these dimes, are nearly worthless in this country.”

“What do you mean, they look like the silver dinars we dug up in Jerusalem, they are worth a fortune.”

He was right, in a way. After he called me up from the dead I led him to a cemetery in the valley of Ben Hiddon, and there, hidden behind a stone where Judas had put it two thousand years ago, was the blood money—thirty silver dinars. But for a little tarnish, they looked just as they did on the day I had taken them, and they were almost identical to the coin this country calls the dime (except for the image of Tiberius on the dinars, and some other Caesar on the dime). We had taken the dinars to an antiquities dealer in the old city (which looked nearly the same as it did when I’d last walked there, except that the Temple was gone and in its place two great mosques). The merchant gave us twenty thousand dollars in American money for them. It was this money that we had traveled on, and deposited at the hotel desk for our expenses. The angel told me the dimes must have the same worth as the dinars, and I, like a fool, believed him.

“You should have told me,” I said to the angel. “If I could leave this room I would know myself.”

“You have work to do,” the angel said. Then he leapt to his feet and shouted at the television, “The wrath of the Lord shall fall upon ye, Stephanos!”

“What in the hell are you shouting at?”

The angel wagged a finger at the screen, “He has exchanged Catherine’s baby for its evil twin, which he fathered with her sister while she was in a coma, yet Catherine does not realize his evil deed, as he has had his face changed to impersonate the bank manager who is foreclosing on Catherine’s husband’s business. If I was not trapped here I would personally drag the fiend straight to hell.”

For days now the angel had been watching serial dramas on television, alternately shouting at the screen or bursting into tears. He had stopped reading over my shoulder, so I had just tried to ignore him, but now I realized what was going on.

“It’s not real, Raziel.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s drama, like the Greeks used to do. They are actors in a play.”

“No, no one could pretend to such evil.”

“That’s not all. Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus? Not real. Characters in a play.”

“You lying dog!”

“If you’d ever leave the room and look at how real people talk you’d know that, you yellow-haired cretin. But no, you stay here perched on my shoulder like a trained bird. I am dead two thousand years and even I know better.” (I still need to get a look at that book in the dresser. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could goad the angel into giving me five minutes privacy.)

“You know nothing,” said Raziel. “I have destroyed whole cities in my time.”

“Sort of makes me wonder if you destroyed the right ones. That’d be embarrassing, huh?”

Then an advertisement came on the screen for a magazine that promised to “fill in all the blanks” and give the real inside story to all of soap operas: Soap Opera Digest. I watched the angel’s eyes widen. He grabbed the phone and rang the front desk.

“What are you doing?”

“I need that book.”

“Have them send up Jesus,” I said. “He’ll help you get it.”

On our first day of work, Joshua and I were up before dawn. We met near the well and filled the waterskins our fathers had given us, then ate our breakfasts, flatbread and cheese, as we walked together to Sepphoris. The road, although packed dirt most of the way, was smooth and easy to walk. (If Rome saw to anything in its territories, it was the lifelines of its army.) As we walked we watched the rock-strewn hills turn pink under the rising sun, and I saw Joshua shudder as if a chill wind had danced up his spine.

“The glory of God is in everything we see,” he said. “We must never forget that.”

“I just stepped in camel dung. Tomorrow let’s leave after it’s light out.”

“I just realized it, that is why the old woman wouldn’t live again. I forgot that it wasn’t my power that made her arise, it was the Lord’s. I brought her back for the wrong reason, out of arrogance, so she died a second time.”

“It squished over the side of my sandal. Well, that’s going to smell all day.”

“But perhaps it was because I did not touch her. When I’ve brought other creatures back to life, I’ve always touched them.”

“Is there something in the Law about taking your camel off the road to do his business? There should be. If not the Law of Moses, then the Romans should have one. I mean, they won’t hesitate to crucify a Jew who rebels, there should be some punishment for messing up their roads. Don’t you think? I’m not saying crucifixion, but a good smiting in the mouth or something.”

“But how could I have touched the corpse when it is forbidden by the Law? The mourners would have stopped me.”

“Can we stop for a second so I can scrape off my sandal? Help me find a stick. That pile was as big as my head.”

“You’re not listening to me, Biff.”

“I am listening. Look, Joshua, I don’t think the Law applies to you. I mean, you’re the Messiah, God is supposed to tell you what he wants, isn’t he?”

“I ask, but I receive no answer.”

“Look, you’re doing fine. Maybe that woman didn’t live again because she was stubborn. Old people are that way. You have to throw water on my grandfather to get him up from his nap. Try a young dead person next time.”

“What if I am not really the Messiah?”

“You mean you’re not sure? The angel didn’t give it away? You think that God might be playing a joke on you? I don’t think so. I don’t know the Torah as well as you, Joshua, but I don’t remember God having a sense of humor.”

Finally, a grin. “He gave me you as a best friend, didn’t he?”

“Help me find a stick.”

“Do you think I’ll make a good stonemason?”

“Just don’t be better at it than I am. That’s all I ask.”

“You stink.”

“What have I been saying?”

“You really think Maggie likes me?”

“Are you going to be like this every morning? Because if you are, you can walk to work alone.”

The gates of Sepphoris were like a funnel of humanity. Farmers poured out into their fields and groves, craftsmen and builders crowded in, while merchants hawked their wares and beggars moaned at the roadside. Joshua and I stopped outside the gates to marvel and were nearly run down by a man leading a string of donkeys laden with baskets of stone.

It wasn’t that we had never seen a city before. Jerusalem was fifty times larger than Sepphoris, and we had been there many times for feast days, but Jerusalem was a Jewish city—it was the Jewish city. Sepphoris was the Roman fortress city of Galilee, and as soon as we saw the statue of Venus at the gates we knew that this was something different.

I elbowed Joshua in the ribs. “Graven image.” I had never seen the human form depicted before.

“Sinful,” Joshua said.

“She’s naked.”

“Don’t look.”

“She’s completely naked.”

“It is forbidden. We should go away from here, find your father.” He caught me by my sleeve and dragged me through the gates into the city.

“How can they allow that?” I asked. “You’d think that our people would tear it down.”

“They did, a band of Zealots. Joseph told me. The Romans caught them and crucified them by this road.”

“You never told me that.”

“Joseph told me not to speak of it.”

“You could see her breasts.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“How can I not think about it? I’ve never seen a breast without a baby attached to it. They’re more—more friendly in pairs like that.”

“Which way to where we are supposed to work?”

“My father said to come to the western corner of the city and we would see where the work was being done.”

“Then come along.” He was still dragging me, his head down, stomping along like an angry mule.

“Do you think Maggie’s breasts will look like that?”

My father had been commissioned to build a house for a wealthy Greek on the western side of the city. When Joshua and I arrived my father was already there, directing the slaves who were hoisting a cut stone into place on the wall. I suppose I expected something different. I suppose I was surprised that anyone, even a slave, would do as my father instructed. The slaves were Nubians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, criminals, debtors, spoils of war, accidents of birth; they were wiry, filthy men, many wearing nothing more than sandals and a loincloth. In another life they might have commanded an army or lived in a palace, but now they sweated in the morning chill, moving stones heavy enough to break a donkey.

“Are these your slaves?” Joshua asked my father.

“Am I a rich man, Joshua? No, these slaves belong to the Romans. The Greek who is building this house has hired them for the construction.”

“Why do they do as you ask? There are so many of them. You are only one man.”

My father hung his head. “I hope that you never see what the lead tips of a Roman whip do to a man’s body. All of these men have, and even seeing it has broken their spirit as men. I pray for them every night.”

“I hate the Romans,” I said.

“Do you, little one, do you?” A man’s voice from behind.

“Hail, Centurion,” my father said, his eyes going wide.

Joshua and I turned to see Justus Gallicus, the centurion from the funeral at Japhia, standing among the slaves. “Alphaeus, it seems you are raising a litter of Zealots.”

My father put his hands on my and Joshua’s shoulders. “This is my son, Levi, and his friend Joshua. They begin their apprenticeship today. Just boys,” he said, by way of apology.

Justus approached, looked quickly at me, then stared at Joshua for a long time. “I know you, boy. I’ve seen you before.”

“The funeral at Japhia,” I said quickly. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the wasp-waisted short sword that hung from the centurion’s belt.

“No,” the Roman seemed to be searching his memory. “Not Japhia. I’ve seen this face in a picture.”

“That can’t be,” my father said. “We are forbidden by our faith from depicting the human form.”

Justus glared at him. “I am not a stranger to your people’s primitive beliefs, Alphaeus. Still, this boy is familiar.”

Joshua stared up at the centurion with a completely blank expression.

“You feel for these slaves, boy? You would free them if you could?”

Joshua nodded. “I would. A man’s spirit should be his own to give to God.”

“You know, there was a slave about eighty years ago who talked like you. He raised an army of slaves against Rome, beat back two of our armies, took over all the territories south of Rome. It’s a story every Roman soldier must learn.”

“Why, what happened?” I asked.

“We crucified him,” Justus said. “By the side of the road, and his body was eaten by ravens. The lesson we all learn is that nothing can stand against Rome. A lesson you need to learn, boy, along with your stonecutting.”

Just then another Roman soldier approached, a legionnaire, not wearing the cape or the helmet crest of the centurion. He said something to Justus in Latin, then looked at Joshua and paused. In rough Aramaic he said, “Hey, didn’t I see that kid on some bread once?”

“Wasn’t him,” I said.

“Really? Sure looks like him.”

“Nope, that was another kid on the bread.”

“It was me,” said Joshua.

I backhanded him across the forehead, knocking him to the ground. “No it wasn’t. He’s insane. Sorry.”

The soldier shook his head and hurried off after Justus.

I offered a hand to help Joshua up. “You’re going to have to learn to lie.”

“I am? But I feel like I’m here to tell the truth.”

“Yeah, sure, but not now.”

I don’t exactly know what I expected it would be like working as a stonemason, but I know that in less than a week Joshua was having second thoughts about not becoming a carpenter. Cutting great stones with small iron chisels was very hard work. Who knew?

“Look around, do you see any trees?” Joshua mocked. “Rocks, Josh, rocks.”

“It’s only hard because we don’t know what we’re doing. It will get easier.”

Joshua looked at my father, who was stripped to the waist, chiseling away on a stone the size of a donkey, while a dozen slaves waited to hoist it into place. He was covered with gray dust and streams of sweat drew dark lines between cords of muscle straining in his back and arms. “Alphaeus,” Joshua called, “does the work get easier once you know what you are doing?”

“Your lungs grow thick with stone dust and your eyes bleary from the sun and fragments thrown up by the chisel. You pour your lifeblood out into works of stone for Romans who will take your money in taxes to feed soldiers who will nail your people to crosses for wanting to be free. Your back breaks, your bones creak, your wife screeches at you, and your children torment you with open, begging mouths, like greedy baby birds in the nest. You go to bed every night so tired and beaten that you pray to the Lord to send the angel of death to take you in your sleep so you don’t have to face another morning. It also has its downside.”

“Thanks,” Joshua said. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

“I for one, am excited,” I said. “I’m ready to cut some stone. Stand back, Josh, my chisel is on fire. Life is stretched out before us like a great bazaar, and I can’t wait to taste the sweets to be found there.”

Josh tilted his head like a bewildered dog. “I didn’t get that from your father’s answer.”

“It’s sarcasm, Josh.”

“Sarcasm?”

“It’s from the Greek, sarkasmos. To bite the lips. It means that you aren’t really saying what you mean, but people will get your point. I invented it, Bartholomew named it.”

“Well, if the village idiot named it, I’m sure it’s a good thing.”

“There you go, you got it.”

“Got what?”

“Sarcasm.”

“No, I meant it.”

“Sure you did.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“Irony, I think.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“So you’re being ironic now, right?”

“No, I really don’t know.”

“Maybe you should ask the idiot.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

“What?”

“Sarcasm.”

“Biff, are you sure you weren’t sent here by the Devil to vex me?”

“Could be. How am I doing so far? You feel vexed?”

“Yep. And my hands hurt from holding the chisel and mallet.” He struck the chisel with his wooden mallet and sprayed us both with stone fragments.

“Maybe God sent me to talk you into being a stonemason so you would hurry up and go be the Messiah.”

He struck the chisel again, then spit and sputtered through the fragments that flew. “I don’t know how to be the Messiah.”

“So what, a week ago we didn’t know how to be stonemasons and look at us now. It gets easier once you know what you’re doing.”

“Are you being ironic again?”

“God, I hope not.”

It was two months before we actually saw the Greek who had commissioned my father to build the house. He was a short, soft-looking little man, who wore a robe that was as white as any worn by the Levite priests, with a border of interlocking rectangles woven around the hem in gold. He arrived in a pair of chariots, followed on foot by two body slaves and a half-dozen bodyguards who looked like Phoenicians. I say a pair of chariots because he rode with a driver in the lead chariot, but behind them they pulled a second chariot in which stood the ten-foot-tall marble statue of a naked man. The Greek climbed down from his chariot and went directly to my father. Joshua and I were mixing a batch of mortar at the time and we paused to watch.

“Graven image,” Joshua said.

“Saw it,” I said. “As graven images go, I like Venus over by the gate better.”

“That statue is not Jewish,” Joshua said.

“Definitely not Jewish,” I said. The statue’s manhood, although abundant, was not circumcised.

“Alphaeus,” the Greek said, “why haven’t you set the floor of the gymnasium yet? I’ve brought this statue to display in the gymnasium, and there’s just a hole in the ground instead of a gymnasium.”

“I told you, this ground is not suitable for building. I can’t build on sand. I’ve had the slaves dig down in the sand until they hit bedrock. Now it has to be back-filled in with stone, then pounded.”

“But I want to place my statue,” the Greek whined. “It’s come all the way from Athens.”

“Would you rather your house fall down around your precious statue?”

“Don’t talk to me that way, Jew, I am paying you well to build this house.”

“And I am building this house well, which means not on the sand. So store your statue and let me do my work.”

“Well, unload it. You, slaves, help unload my statue.” The Greek was talking to Joshua and me. “All of you, help unload my statue.” He pointed to the slaves who had been pretending to work since the Greek arrived, but who weren’t sure that it was in their best interest to look like a part of a project about which the master seemed displeased. They all looked up with a surprised “Who, me?” expression on their faces, which I noticed was the same in any language.

The slaves moved to the chariot and began untying the ropes that held the statue in place. The Greek looked to us. “Are you deaf, slaves? Help them!” He stormed back to his chariot and grabbed a whip out of the driver’s hand.

“Those are not slaves,” my father said. “Those are my apprentices.”

The Greek wheeled on him. “And I should care about that? Move, boys! Now!”

“No,” Joshua said.

I thought the Greek would explode. He raised the whip as if to strike. “What did you say?”

“He said, no.” I stepped up to Joshua’s side.

“My people believe that graven images, statues, are sinful,” my father said, his voice on the edge of panic. “The boys are only being true to our God.”

“Well, that is a statue of Apollo, a real god, so they will help unload it, as will you, or I’ll find another mason to build my house.”

“No,” Joshua repeated. “We will not.”

“Right, you leprous jar of camel snot,” I said.

Joshua looked at me, sort of disgusted. “Jeez, Biff.”

“Too much?”

The Greek screeched and started to swing the whip. The last thing I saw as I covered my face was my father diving toward the Greek. I would take a lash for Joshua, but I didn’t want to lose an eye. I braced for the sting that never came. There was a thump, then a twanging sound, and when I uncovered my face, the Greek was lying on his back in the dirt, his white robe covered with dust, his face red with rage. The whip was extended out behind him, and on its tip stood the armored hobnail boot of Gaius Justus Gallicus, the centurion. The Greek rolled in the dirt, ready to vent his ire on whoever had stayed his hand, but when he saw who it was, he went limp and pretended to cough.

One of the Greek’s bodyguards started to step forward. Justus pointed a finger at the guard. “Will you stand down, or would you rather feel the foot of the Roman Empire on your neck?”

The guard stepped back into line with his companions.

The Roman was grinning like a mule eating an apple, not in the least concerned with allowing the Greek to save face. “So, Castor, am I to gather that you need to conscript more Roman slaves to help build your house? Or is it true what I hear about you Greeks, that whipping young boys is an entertainment for you, not a disciplinary action?”

The Greek spit out a mouthful of dust as he climbed to his feet. “The slaves I have will be sufficient for the task, won’t they, Alphaeus?” He turned to my father, his eyes pleading.

My father seemed to be caught between two evils, and unable to decide which was the lesser of them. “Probably,” he said, finally.

“Well, good, then,” Justus said. “I will expect a bonus payment for the extra work they are doing. Carry on.”

Justus walked through the construction site, acting as if every eye was not on him, or not caring, and paused as he passed Joshua and me.

“Leprous jar of camel snot?” he said under his breath.

“Old Hebrew blessing?” I ventured.

“You two should be in the hills with the other Hebrew rebels.” The Roman laughed, tousled our hair, then walked away.

The sunset was turning the hillsides pink as we walked home to Nazareth that evening. In addition to being almost exhausted from the work, Joshua seemed vexed by the events of the day.

“Did you know that—about not being able to build on sand?” he asked.

“Of course, my father’s been talking about it for a long time. You can build on sand, but what you build will fall down.”

Joshua nodded thoughtfully. “What about soil? Dirt? Is it okay to build on that?”

“Rock is best, but I suppose hard dirt is good.”

“I need to remember that.”

We seldom saw Maggie in those days after we began working with my father. I found myself looking forward to the Sabbath, when we would go to the synagogue and I would mill around outside, among the women, while the men were inside listening to the reading of the Torah or the arguments of the Pharisees. It was one of the few times I could talk to Maggie without Joshua around, for though he resented the Pharisees even then, he knew he could learn from them, so he spent the Sabbath listening to their teachings. I still wonder if this time I stole with Maggie somehow represented a disloyalty to Joshua, but later, when I asked him about it, he said, “God is willing to forgive you the sin that you carry for being a child of man, but you must forgive yourself for having once been a child.”

“I suppose that’s right.”

“Of course it’s right, I’m the Son of God, you dolt. Besides, Maggie always wanted to talk about me anyway, didn’t she?”

“Not always,” I lied.

On the Sabbath before the murder, I found Maggie outside the synagogue, sitting by herself under a date palm tree. I shuffled up to her to talk, but kept looking at my feet. I knew that if I looked into her eyes I would forget what I was talking about, so I only looked at her in brief takes, the way a man will glance up at the sun on a sweltering day to confirm the source of the heat.

“Where’s Joshua?” were the first words out of her mouth, of course.

“Studying with the men.”

She seemed disappointed for a moment, but then brightened. “How is your work?”

“Hard, I like playing better.”

“What is Sepphoris like? Is it like Jerusalem?”

“No, it’s smaller. But there are a lot of Romans there.” She’d seen Romans. I needed something to impress her. “And there are graven images—statues of people.”

Maggie covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Statues, really? I would love to see them.”

“Then come with us, we are leaving tomorrow very early, before anyone is awake.”

“I couldn’t. Where would I tell my mother I was going?”

“Tell her that you are going to Sepphoris with the Messiah and his pal.”

Her eyes went wide and I looked away quickly, before I was caught in their spell. “You shouldn’t talk that way, Biff.”

“I saw the angel.”

“You said yourself that we shouldn’t say it.”

“I was only joking. Tell your mother that I told you about a beehive that I found and that you want to go find some honey while the bees are still groggy from the morning cold. It’s a full moon tonight, so you’ll be able to see. She just might believe you.”

“She might, but she’ll know I was lying when I don’t bring home any honey.”

“Tell her it was a hornets’ nest. She thinks Josh and I are stupid anyway, doesn’t she?”

“She thinks that Joshua is touched in the head, but you, yes, she thinks you’re stupid.”

“You see, my plan is working. For it is written that ‘if the wise man always appears stupid, his failures do not disappoint, and his success gives pleasant surprise.’”

Maggie smacked me on the leg. “That is not written.”

“Sure it is, Imbeciles three, verse seven.”

“There is no book of Imbeciles.”

“Drudges five-four?”

“You’re making that up.”

“Come with us, you can be back to Nazareth before it’s time to fetch the morning water.”

“Why so early? What are you two up to?”

“We’re going to circumcise Apollo.”

She didn’t say anything, she just looked at me, as if she would see “Liar” written across my forehead in fire.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “It was Joshua’s.”

“I’ll go then,” she said.

Chapter 5

Well, it worked, I finally got the angel to leave the room. It went like this:

Raziel called down to the front desk and asked him to send Jesus up. A few minutes later our Latin pal stood at attention at the foot of the angel’s bed.

Raziel said, “Tell him I need a Soap Opera Digest.”

In Spanish, I said, “Good afternoon, Jesus. How are you today?”

“I am well, sir, and you?”

“As good as can be expected, considering this man is holding me prisoner.”

“Tell him to hurry,” said Raziel.

“He doesn’t understand Spanish?” Jesus asked.

“Not a word of it, but don’t start speaking Hebrew or I’m sunk.”

“Are you really a prisoner? I wondered why you two never left the room. Should I call the police?”

“No, that won’t be necessary, but please shake your head and look apologetic.”

“What is taking so long?” Raziel said. “Give him the money and tell him to go.”

“He said he is not allowed to buy publications for you, but he can direct you to a place where you can purchase them yourself.”

“That’s ridiculous, he’s a servant, isn’t he? He will do as I ask.”

“Oh my, Jesus, he has asked if you would like to feel the power of his manly nakedness.”

“Is he crazy? I have a wife and two children.”

“Sadly, yes. Please show him that you are offended by his offer by spitting on him and storming out of the room.”

“I don’t know, sir, spitting on a guest…”

I handed him a handful of the bills that he’d taught me were appropriate gratuities. “Please, it will be good for him.”

“Very well, Mister Biff.” He produced an impressive loogie and launched it at the front of the angel’s robe, where it splatted and ran.

Raziel leapt to his feet.

“Well done, Jesus, now curse.”

“You fuckstick!”

“In Spanish.”

“Sorry, I was showing off my English. I know many swear words.”

“Well done. Spanish please.”

“Pendejo!”

“Splendid, now storm out.”

Jesus turned on his heel and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

“He spit on me?” Raziel said, still not believing it. “An angel of the Lord, and he spit on me.”

“Yes, you offended him.”

“He called me a fuckstick. I heard him.”

“In his culture, it is an affront to ask another man to buy a Soap Opera Digest for you. We’ll be lucky if he ever brings us a pizza again.”

“But I want a Soap Opera Digest.”

“He said you can buy one just down the street, I will be happy to go get one for you.”

“Not so fast, Apostle, none of your tricks. I’ll get it myself, you stay here.”

“You’ll need money.” I handed him some bills.

“If you leave the room I will find you in an instant, you know that?”

“Absolutely.”

“You cannot hide from me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Hurry now.”

He sort of shuffled sideways toward the door. “Don’t try to lock me out, I’m taking a key with me. Not that I need it or anything, being an angel of the Lord.”

“Not to mention a fuckstick.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Go, go, go.” I shooed him through the door. “Godspeed, Raziel.”

“Work on your Gospel while I’m gone.”

“Right.” I slammed the door in his face and threw the safety lock. Raziel has now watched hundreds of hours of American television, you’d think he would have noticed that people wear shoes when they go outside.

The book is exactly as I suspected, a Bible, but written in a flowery version of this English I’ve been writing in. The translation of the Torah and the prophets from the Hebrew is muddled sometimes, but the first part seems to be our Bible. This language is amazing—so many words. In my time we had very few words, perhaps a hundred that we used all the time, and thirty of them were synonyms for guilt. In this language you can curse for an hour and never use the same word twice. Flocks and schools and herds of words, that’s why I’m supposed to use this language to tell Joshua’s story.

I’ve hidden the book in the bathroom, so I can sneak in and read it while the angel is in the room. I didn’t have time to actually read much of the part of the book they call the New Testament, but it’s obvious that it is the story of Joshua’s life. Or parts of it, anyway.

I’ll study it later, but now I should go on with the real story.

I suppose I should have considered the exact nature of what we were doing before I invited Maggie to join us. I mean, there is some difference between the circumcision of an eight-day-old baby boy, which she had seen before, and the same operation on the ten-foot statue of a Greek god.

“My goodness, that is, uh, impressive,” Maggie said, staring up at the marble member.

“Graven image,” Joshua said under his breath. Even in the moonlight I could tell he was blushing.

“Let’s do it.” I pulled a small iron chisel from my pouch. Joshua was wrapping the head of his mallet with leather to deaden its sound. Sepphoris slept around us, the silence broken only by the occasional bleat of a sheep. The evening cook fires had long since gone to coals, the dust cloud that stirred through the city during the day had settled, and the night air was clean and still. From time to time I would catch a sweet whiff of sandalwood coming from Maggie and I would lose my train of thought. Funny the things you remember.

We found a bucket and turned it upside down for Joshua to stand on while he worked. He set the tip of my chisel on Apollo’s foreskin and ventured a light tap with the mallet. A tiny fragment of marble flaked away.

“Give it a good whack,” I said.

“I can’t, it will make too much noise.”

“No, it won’t, the leather will cover it.”

“But I might take the whole end of it off.”

“He can spare it,” Maggie said, and we both turned to her with our mouths hanging open. “Probably,” she added quickly. “I’m only guessing. What do I know, I’m just a girl. Do you guys smell something?”

We smelled the Roman before we heard him, heard him before we saw him. The Romans covered themselves with olive oil before they bathed, so if the wind was right or if it was an especially hot day you could smell a Roman coming at thirty paces. Between the olive oil they bathed with and the garlic and dried paste of anchovies they ate with their barley, when the legions marched into battle it must have smelled like an invasion of pizza people. If they’d had pizzas back then, which they didn’t.

Joshua took a quick swipe with the mallet and the chisel slipped, neatly severing Apollo’s unit, which fell to the dirt with a dull thud.

“Whoops,” said the Savior.

“Shhhhhhhh,” I shushed.

We heard the hobnails of the Roman’s boots scraping on stone. Joshua jumped down from the bucket and looked frantically for a place to hide. The walls of the Greek’s bathhouse were almost completed around the statue, so really, except for the entrance where the Roman was coming, there was no place to run.

“Hey, what are you doing there?”

We stood as still as the statue. I could see that it was the legionnaire that had been with Justus our first day in Sepphoris.

“Sir, it’s us, Biff and Joshua. Remember? The kid from the bread?”

The soldier moved closer, his hand on the haft of his half-drawn short sword. When he saw Joshua he relaxed a bit. “What are you doing here so early? No one is to be about at this hour.”

Suddenly, the soldier was yanked backward off of his feet and a dark figure fell on him, thrusting a blade into his chest over and over. Maggie screamed and the figure turned to us. I started to run.

“Stop,” the murderer hissed.

I froze. Maggie threw her arms around me and hid her face in my shirt as I trembled. A gurgling sound came from the soldier, but he lay still. Joshua made to step toward the murderer and I threw an arm across his chest to stop him.

“That was wrong,” Joshua said, almost in tears. “You are wrong to kill that man.”

The murderer held his bloody blade up by his face and grinned at us. “Is it not written that Moses became a prophet only after killing an Egyptian slave driver? No master but God!”

“Sicarii,” I said.

“Yes boy, Sicarii. Only when the Romans are dead will the Messiah come to set us free. I serve God by killing this tyrant.”

“You serve evil,” Joshua said. “The Messiah didn’t call for the blood of this Roman.”

The assassin raised his blade and came at Joshua. Maggie and I leapt back, but Joshua stood his ground. The assassin grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him close. “What do you know of it, boy?”

We could clearly see the murderer’s face in the moonlight. Maggie gasped, “Jeremiah.”

His eyes went wide, with fear or recognition, I don’t know which. He released Joshua and made as if to grab Maggie. I pulled her away.

“Mary?” The anger had left his voice. “Little Mary?”

Maggie said nothing, but I could feel her shoulders heave as she began to sob.

“Tell no one of this,” the murderer said, now talking as if he were in a trance. He backed away and stood beside the dead soldier. “No master but God,” he said, then he turned and ran into the night.

Joshua put his hand on Maggie’s head and she immediately stopped crying.

“Jeremiah is my father’s brother,” she said.

Before I go on you should know about the Sicarii, and to know about them, you have to know about the Herods. So here you go.

About the time that Joshua and I were meeting for the first time, King Herod the Great died after ruling Israel (under the Romans) for over forty years. It was, in fact, the death of Herod that prompted Joseph to bring his family back to Nazareth from Egypt, but that’s another story. Now you need to know about Herod.

Herod wasn’t called “the Great” because he was a beloved ruler. Herod the Great, was, in fact, a fat, paranoid, pox-ridden tyrant who murdered thousands of Jews, including his own wife and many of his sons. Herod was called “the Great” because he built things. Amazing things: fortresses, palaces, theaters, harbors—a whole city, Caesarea, modeled on the Roman ideal of what a city should be. The one thing he did for the Jewish people, who hated him, was to rebuild the Temple of Solomon on Mount Moriah, the center of our faith. When H. the G. died, Rome divided his kingdom among three of his sons, Archelaus, Herod Philip, and Herod Antipas. It was Antipas who ultimately passed sentence on John the Baptist and gave Joshua over to Pilate. Antipas, you sniveling fuckstick (if only we’d had the word back then). It was Antipas whose toady pandering to the Romans caused bands of Jewish rebels to rise up in the hills by the hundreds. The Romans called all of these rebels Zealots, as if they were all united in method as well as cause, but, in fact, they were as fragmented as Jews of the villages. One of the bands that rose in Galilee called themselves the Sicarii. They showed their disapproval of Roman rule by the assassination of Roman soldiers and officials. Although certainly not the largest group of Zealots by number, they were the most conspicuous by their actions. No one knew where they came from, and no one knew where they went to after they killed, but every time they struck, the Romans did their best to make our lives hell to get us to give the killers up. And when the Romans caught a Zealot, they didn’t just crucify the leader of the band, they crucified the whole band, their families, and anyone suspected of helping them. More than once we saw the road out of Sepphoris lined with crosses and corpses. My people.

We ran through the sleeping city, stopping only after we had passed through the Venus Gate, where we fell in a heap on the ground, gasping.

“We have to take Maggie home and get back here for work,” Joshua said.

“You can stay here,” Maggie said. “I can go by myself.”

“No, we have to go.” Joshua held his arms out to his sides and we saw the bloody handprints the killer had left on his shirt. “I have to clean this before someone sees it.”

“Can’t you just make it go away?” Maggie asked. “It’s just a stain. I’d think the Messiah could get a stain out.”

“Be nice,” I said. “He’s not that good at Messiah stuff yet. It was your uncle, after all…”

Maggie jumped to her feet. “You were the one who wanted to do this stupid thing…”

“Stop!” Joshua said, holding his hand up as if he were sprinkling us with silence. “If Maggie hadn’t been with us, we might be dead now. We may still not be safe when the Sicarii realize that three witnesses live.”

An hour later Maggie was home safe and Joshua emerged from the ritual bath outside the synagogue, his clothes soaked and rivulets running out of his hair. (Many of us had these mikvehs outside of our homes—and there were hundreds outside the Temple in Jerusalem—stone pits with steps leading down both sides into the water so one might walk in over one’s head on one side, then out on the other after the ritual cleansing was done. According to the Law, any contact with blood called for a cleansing. Joshua thought it would be a good opportunity to scrub the stain out of his shirt as well.)

“Cold.” Joshua was shivering and hopping from foot to foot as if on hot coals. “Very cold.”

(There was a small stone hut built over the baths so they never got the direct light of the sun, consequently they never warmed up. Evaporation in the dry Galilee air chilled the water even more.)

“Maybe you should come to my house. My mother will have a breakfast fire going by now, you can warm yourself.”

He wrung out the tail of his shirt and water cascaded down his legs. “And how would I explain this?”

“Uh, you sinned, had an emergency cleansing to do.”

“Sinned? At dawn? What sin could I have done before dawn?”

“Sin of Onan?” I said.

Joshua’s eyes went wide. “Have you committed the sin of Onan?”

“No, but I’m looking forward to it.”

“I can’t tell your mother that I’ve committed the sin of Onan. I haven’t.”

“You could if you’re fast.”

“I’ll suffer the cold,” Joshua said.

The good old sin of Onan. That brings back memories.

The sin of Onan. Spilling the old seed on the ground. Cuffing the camel. Dusting the donkey. Flogging the Pharisee. Onanism, a sin that requires hundreds of hours of practice to get right, or at least that’s what I told myself. God slew Onan for spilling his seed on the ground (Onan’s seed, not God’s. God’s seed turned out to be my best pal. Imagine the trouble you’d be in if you actually spilled God’s seed. Try explaining that). According to the Law, if you had any contact with “nocturnal emissions” (which are not what come out of your tailpipe at night—we didn’t have cars then), you had to purify yourself by baptism and you weren’t allowed to be around people until the next day. Around the age of thirteen I spent a lot of time in and out of our mikveh, but I fudged on the solitary part of penance. I mean, it’s not like that was going to help the problem.

Many a morning I was still dripping and shivering from the bath when I met Joshua to go to work.

“Spilled your seed upon the ground again?” he’d ask.

“Yep.”

“You’re unclean, you know?”

“Yeah, I’m getting all wrinkly from purifying myself.”

“You could stop.”

“I tried. I think I’m being vexed by a demon.”

“I could try to heal you.”

“No way, Josh, I’m having enough trouble with laying on of my own hands.”

“You don’t want me to cast out your demon?”

“I thought I’d try to exhaust him first.”

“I could tell the scribes and they would have you stoned.” (Always trying to be helpful, Josh was.)

“That would probably work, but it is written that ‘when the oil of the lamp is used up, the wanker shall light his own way to salvation.’”

“That is not written.”

“It is too. In, uh, Isaiah.”

“Is not.”

“You need to study your Prophets, Josh. How are you going to be the Messiah if you don’t know your Prophets?”

Joshua hung his head. “You are right, of course.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll have time to learn the Prophets. Let’s cut through the square and see if there are any girls gathering water.”

Of course it was Maggie I was looking for. It was always Maggie.

By the time we got back to Sepphoris the sun was well up, but the stream of merchants and farmers that normally poured through the Venus Gate was not there. Roman soldiers were stopping and searching everyone who was trying to leave the city, sending them back the way they came. A group of men and women were waiting outside the gate to go in, my father and some of his helpers among them.

“Levi!” my father called. He ran to us and herded us to the side of the road.

“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to look innocent.

“A Roman soldier was murdered last night. There will be no work today, now you both go home and stay there. Tell your mothers to keep the children in today. If the Romans don’t find the killer there’ll be soldiers in Nazareth before noon.”

“Where is Joseph?” Joshua asked.

My father put his arm around Joshua’s shoulder. “He’s been arrested. He must have come to work very early. They found him at first light, near the body of the dead soldier. I only know what has been shouted from inside the gate, the Romans aren’t letting anyone in or out of the city. Joshua, tell your mother not to worry. Joseph is a good man, the Lord will protect him. Besides, if the Romans thought he was the killer he would have been tried already.”

Joshua backed away from my father in stiff, stumbling steps. He stared straight ahead, but obviously saw nothing.

“Take him home, Biff. I’ll be along as soon as I can. I’m going to try to find out what they’ve done with Joseph.”

I nodded and led Joshua away by the shoulders.

When we were a few steps down the road, he said, “Joseph came looking for me. He was working on the other side of the city. The only reason he was near the Greek’s house is that he was looking for me.”

“We’ll tell the centurion we saw who killed the soldier. He’ll believe us.”

“And if he believes us, believes it was Sicarii, what will happen to Maggie and her family?”

I didn’t know what to say. Joshua was right and my father was wrong, Joseph was not fine. The Romans would be questioning him right now, maybe torturing him to find out who his accomplices were. That he didn’t know anything would not save him. And a testimony from his son not only wouldn’t save him, but would send more people to the cross to join him. Jewish blood was going to be spilled one way or the other over this.

Joshua shook off my hands and ran off the road into an olive grove. I started to follow, but he suddenly spun on me and the fury of his gaze stopped me in midstride.

“Wait,” he said. “I need to talk to my father.”

I waited by the road for nearly an hour. When Joshua walked out of the olive grove he looked as if a shadow had fallen permanently on his face.

“I am lost,” he said.

I pointed over my shoulder. “Nazareth that way, Sepphoris the other way. You’re in the middle. Feel better?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No help from your father, then?” I always felt strange asking about Joshua’s prayers. You had to see him pray, especially in those days, before we had traveled. There was a lot of strain and trembling, like someone trying to force a fever to break by sheer will. There was no peace in it.

“I am alone,” Joshua said.

I punched him in the arm, hard. “Then you didn’t feel that.”

“Ouch. What’d you do that for?”

“Sorry, no one around to answer you. You’re soooooooo alone.”

“I am alone!”

I wound up for a full-body-powered roundhouse punch. “Then you won’t mind if I smite the bejeezus out of you.”

He threw up his hands and jumped back. “No, don’t.”

“So you’re not alone?”

“I guess not.”

“Good, then wait here. I’m going to go talk to your father myself.” I tramped off into the olive grove.

“You don’t have to go in there to talk to him. He is everywhere.”

“Yeah, right, like you know. If he’s everywhere then how are you alone?”

“Good point.”

I left Joshua standing by the road and went off to pray.

And thus did I pray:

“Heavenly Father, God of my father and my father’s father, God of Abraham and Isaac, God of Moses, who did lead our people out of Egypt, God of David and Solomon—well, you know who you are. Heavenly Father, far be it from me to question your judgment, being as you are all powerful and the God of Moses and all of the above, but what exactly are you trying to do to this poor kid? I mean, he’s your son, right? He’s the Messiah, right? Are you pulling one of those Abraham faith-test things on him? In case you didn’t notice, he’s in quite a pickle here, having witnessed a murder and his stepfather under arrest by the Romans, and in all likelihood, a lot of our people, who you have mentioned on more than one occasion are your favorites and the chosen (and of which I am one, by the way) are going to be tortured and killed unless we—I mean he—does something. So, what I’m saying here is, could you, much as you did with Samson when he was backed into a corner weaponless against the Philistines, throw the kid a bone here?

“With all due respect. Your friend, Biff. Amen.”

I was never very good at prayer. Storytelling, I’m fine with. I, in fact, am the originator of a universal story that I know has survived to this time because I have heard it on TV.

It begins: “Two Jews go into a bar…”

Those two Jews? Me and Josh. No kidding.

Anyway, I’m not good at prayer, but before you think I was a little rough on God, there’s another thing you need to know about my people. Our relationship with God was different from other people and their Gods. Sure there was fear and sacrifice and all, but essentially, we didn’t go to him, he came to us. He told us we were the chosen, he told us he would help us to multiply to the ends of the earth, he told us he would give us a land of milk and honey. We didn’t go to him. We didn’t ask. And since he came to us, we figure we can hold him responsible for what he does and what happens to us. For it is written that “he who can walk away, controls the deal.” And if there’s anything you learn from reading the Bible, it’s that my people walked away a lot. You couldn’t turn around that we weren’t off in Babylon worshiping false gods, building false altars, or sleeping with unsuitable women. (Although the latter may be more of a guy thing than a Jewish thing.) And God pretty much didn’t mind throwing us into slavery or simply massacring us when we did that. We have that kind of relationship with God. We’re family.

So I’m not a prayer-master, so to speak, but that particular prayer couldn’t have been that bad, because God answered. Well, he left me a message, anyway.

As I emerged from the olive grove, Joshua held out his hand and said, “God left a message.”

“It’s a lizard,” I said. It was. Joshua was holding a small lizard in his outstretched hand.

“Yes, that’s the message, don’t you see?”

How was I to know what was going on? Joshua had never lied to me, never. So if he said that this lizard was a message from God, who was I to dispute him? I fell to my knees and bowed my head under Josh’s outstretched hand. “Lord have mercy on me, I was expecting a burning bush or something. Sorry. Really.” Then to Josh, I said, “I’m not so sure you should take that seriously, Josh. Reptiles don’t tend to have a great record for getting the message right. Like for instance, oh, let’s see, that Adam and Eve thing.”

“It’s not that kind of message, Biff. My father hasn’t spoken in words, but this message is as clear as if his voice had come down from the heavens.”

“I knew that.” I stood up. “And the message is?”

“In my mind. When you had been gone only a few minutes this lizard ran up my leg and perched on my hand. I realized that it was my father giving me the solution to our problem.”

“And the message is?”

“You remember when we were little, the game we used to play with the lizards?”

“Sure I do. But the message is?”

“You remember how I was able to bring them back to life.”

“A great trick, Josh. But getting back to the message…”

“Don’t you see? If the soldier isn’t dead, then there was no murder. If there was no murder, then there is no reason for the Romans to harm Joseph. So all we have to do is see that the soldier is not dead. Simple.”

“Of course, simple.” I studied the lizard for a minute, looking at it from a number of different angles. It was brownish green and seemed quite content to sit there on Joshua’s palm. “Ask him what we’re supposed to do now.”

Chapter 6

When we got back to Nazareth we expected to find Joshua’s mother hysterical with worry, but on the contrary, she had gathered Joshua’s brothers and sisters outside of their house, lined them up, and was washing their faces and hands as if preparing them for the Sabbath meal.

“Joshua, help me get the little ones ready, we are all going to Sepphoris.”

Joshua was shocked. “We are?”

“The whole village is going to ask the Romans to release Joseph.”

James was the only one of the children who seemed to understand what had happened to their father. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. I put my arm around his shoulders. “He’ll be fine,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “Your father is strong, they’ll have to torture him for days before he gives up the ghost.” I smiled encouragingly.

James broke out of my embrace and ran into the house crying. Mary turned and glared at me. “Shouldn’t you be with your family, Biff?”

Oh my breaking heart, my bruised ego. Even though Mary had taken position as my emergency backup wife, I was crestfallen at her disapproval. And to my credit, not once during that time of trouble did I wish harm to come to Joseph. Not once. After all, I was still too young to take a wife, and some creepy elder would swoop Mary up before I had a chance to rescue her if Joseph died before I was fourteen.

“Why don’t you go get Maggie,” Joshua suggested, taking only a second from his mission of scrubbing the skin off his brother Judah’s face. “Her family will want to go with us.”

“Sure,” I said, and I scampered off to the blacksmith’s shop in search of approval from my primary wife-to-be.

When I arrived, Maggie was sitting outside of her father’s shop with her brothers and sisters. She looked as frightened as she had when we first witnessed the murder. I wanted to throw my arms around her to comfort her.

“We have a plan,” I said. “I mean, Joshua has a plan. Are you going to Sepphoris with everyone else?”

“The whole family,” she said. “My father has made nails for Joseph, they’re friends.” She tossed her head, pointing toward the open shed that housed her father’s forge. Two men were working over the forge. “Go ahead, Biff. You and Joshua go on ahead. We’ll be along later.” She started waving me away and mouthing words silently to me, which I didn’t pick up.

“What are you saying? What? What?”

“And who is your friend, Maggie?” A man’s voice, coming from near the forge. I looked over and suddenly realized what Maggie had been trying to tell me.

“Uncle Jeremiah, this is Levi bar Alphaeus. We call him Biff. He has to go now.”

I started backing away from the killer. “Yes, I have to go.” I looked at Maggie, not knowing what to do. “I’ll—we—I have to—”

“We’ll see you in Sepphoris,” Maggie said.

“Right,” I said, then I turned and dashed away, feeling more like a coward than I ever have in my life.

When we got back to Sepphoris there was a large gathering of Jews, perhaps two hundred, outside of the city walls, most I recognized as being from Nazareth. No mob mentality here, more a fearful gathering. More than half of those gathered were women and children. In the middle of the crowd, a contingent of a dozen Roman soldiers pushed back the onlookers while two slaves dug a grave. Like my own people, the Romans did not dally with their dead. Unless there was a battle ongoing, Roman soldiers were often put in the ground before the corpse was cool.

Joshua and I spotted Maggie standing between her father and her murderous uncle at the edge of the crowd. Joshua took off toward her. I followed, but before I got close, Joshua had taken Maggie’s hand and dragged her into the midst of the crowd. I could see Jeremiah trying to follow them. I dove into the mass and crawled under people’s feet until I came upon a pair of hobnail boots which indicated the lower end of a Roman soldier. The other end, equally Roman, was scowling at me. I stood up.

“Semper fido,” I said in my best Latin, followed by my most charming smile.

The soldier scowled further. Suddenly there was a smell of flowers in my nose and sweet, warm lips brushed my ear. “I think you just said ‘always dog,’” Maggie whispered.

“That would be why he’s looking so unpleasant then?” I said out the side of my charming smile.

In my other ear another familiar, if not so sweet whisper, “Sing, Biff. Remember the plan,” Joshua said.

“Right.” And so I let loose with one of my famous dirges. “La-la-la. Hey Roman guy, too bad about your getting stabbed. La-la-la. It’s probably not a message from God or nothing. La-la-la. Telling you that maybe you should have gone home, la, la, la. Instead of oppressing the chosen people who God hisownself has said that he likes better than you. Fa, la, la, la.”

The soldier didn’t speak Aramaic, so the lyrics didn’t move him as I had hoped. But I think the hypnotic toe-tappiness of the melody was starting to get him. I plunged into my second verse.

“La-la-la, didn’t we tell you that you shouldn’t eat pork, la-la. Although looking at wounds in your chest, a dietary change might not have made that big a difference. Boom shaka-laka-laka-laka, boom shaka-laka-lak. Come on, you know the words!”

“Enough!”

The soldier was yanked aside and Gaius Justus Gallicus stood before us, flanked by two of his officers. Behind him, stretched out on the ground, was the body of the dead soldier.

“Well done, Biff,” Joshua whispered.

“We’re offering our services as professional mourners,” I said with a grin, which the centurion was eager not to return.

“That soldier doesn’t need mourners, he has avengers.”

A voice from the crowd. “See here, Centurion, release Joseph of Nazareth. He is no murderer.”

Justus turned and the crowd parted, leaving a path between him and the man who had spoken up. It was Iban the Pharisee, standing with several other Pharisees from Nazareth.

“Would you take his place?” Justus asked.

The Pharisee backed away, his resolve melting quickly under the threat.

“Well?” Justus stepped forward and the crowd parted around him. “You speak for your people, Pharisee. Tell them to give me a killer. Or would you rather I crucify Jews until I get the right one?”

Iban was flustered now, and began jabbering a mishmash of verses from the Torah. I looked around and saw Maggie’s uncle Jeremiah standing only a few paces behind me. When I caught his eye he slipped his hand under his shirt—to the haft of a knife, I had no doubt.

“Joseph didn’t kill that soldier!” Joshua shouted.

Justus turned to him and the Pharisees took the opportunity to scramble to the back of the crowd. “I know that,” Justus said.

“You do?”

“Of course, boy. No carpenter killed that soldier.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

Justus motioned to one of his legionnaires and the soldier came forward carrying a small basket. The centurion nodded and the soldier upended the basket. The stone effigy of Apollo’s severed penis thudded to the ground in front of us.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Because it was a stonecutter,” Justus said.

“My, that is impressive,” Maggie said.

I noticed that Joshua was edging toward the body of the soldier. I needed to distract Justus. “Aha,” I said, “someone beat the soldier to death with a stone willie. Obviously the work of a Greek or a Samaritan—no Jew would touch such a thing.”

“They wouldn’t?” Maggie asked.

“Jeez, Maggie.”

“I think you have something to tell me, boy,” Justus said.

Joshua had laid hands on the dead soldier.

I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I wondered where Jeremiah was now. Was he behind me, ready to silence me with a knife, or had he made his escape? Either way, I couldn’t say a word. The Sicarii did not work alone. If I gave up Jeremiah I’d be dead by a Sicarii dagger before the Sabbath.

“He can’t tell you, Centurion, even if he knew,” said Joshua, who had moved back to Maggie’s side. “For it is written in our holy books that no Jew shall rat out another Jew, regardless of what a weasel one or the other shall be.”

“Is that written?” Maggie whispered.

“Is now,” Joshua whispered back.

“Did you just call me a weasel?” I asked.

“Behold!” A woman at the front of the crowd was pointing to the dead soldier. Another screamed. The corpse was moving.

Justus turned toward the commotion and I took the opportunity to look around for Jeremiah. He was still there behind me, only a few people back, but he was staring gape-jawed at the dead soldier, who was currently standing up and dusting off his tunic.

Joshua was concentrating intently on the soldier, but there was none of the sweating or trembling that we had seen at the funeral in Japhia.

To his credit, Justus, although he seemed frightened at first, stood his ground as the corpse ambled stiff-legged toward him. The other soldiers were backing away, along with all of the Jews except Maggie, Joshua, and me.

“I need to report an attack, sir,” the once-dead soldier said, performing a very jerky Roman salute.

“You’re—you’re dead,” Justus said.

“Am not.”

“You have knife wounds all over your chest.”

The soldier looked down, touched the wounds gingerly, then looked back to his commander. “Seems I have been nicked, sir.”

“Nicked? Nicked? You’ve been stabbed half a dozen times. You’re dead as dirt.”

“I don’t think so, sir. Look, I’m not even bleeding.”

“That’s because you’ve bled out, son. You’re dead.”

The soldier began to stagger now, started to fall, and caught himself. “I am feeling a little woozy. I was attacked last night sir, near where they are building that Greek’s house. There, he was there.” He pointed to me.

“And him too.” He pointed to Joshua.

“And the little girl.”

“These boys attacked you?”

I could hear scuffling behind me.

“No, not them, that man over there.” The soldier pointed to Jeremiah, who looked around like a trapped animal. Everyone was so intent on watching the miracle of the talking corpse that they had frozen in place. The killer couldn’t push his way through the crowd to get away.

“Arrest him!” Justus commanded, but his soldiers were equally stunned by the resurrection of their cohort.

“Now that I think of it,” the dead soldier said, “I do remember being stabbed.”

No outlet from the crowd, Jeremiah turned toward his accuser and drew a blade from under his shirt. This seemed to snap the other soldiers out of their trance, and they began advancing on the killer from different angles, swords drawn.

At the sight of the blade, everyone had moved away from the killer, leaving him isolated with no path open but toward us.

“No master but God!” he shouted, then three quick steps and he leapt toward us, his knife raised. I dove on top of Maggie and Joshua, hoping to shield them, but even as I waited for the sharp pain between my shoulder blades, I heard the killer scream, then a grunt, then a protracted moan that ran out of air with a pathetic squeal.

I rolled over to see Gaius Justus Gallicus with his short sword sunk to the hilt in the solar plexus of Jeremiah. The killer had dropped his knife and was standing there looking at the Roman’s sword hand, looking somewhat offended by it. He sank to his knees. Justus yanked his sword free, then wiped the blade on Jeremiah’s shirt before stepping back and letting the killer fall forward.

“That was him,” the dead soldier said. “Bastard kilt me.” He fell forward next to his killer and lay still.

“Much better than last time, Josh,” I said.

“Yes, much better,” Maggie said. “Walking and talking. You had him going.”

“I felt good, confident, but it was a team effort,” Joshua said. “I couldn’t have done it without everyone giving it their all, including God.”

I felt something sharp against my cheek. With the tip of his sword, Justus guided my gaze to Apollo’s stone penis, which lay in the dirt next to the two corpses. “And do you want to explain how that happened?”

“The pox?” I ventured.

“The pox can do that,” Maggie said. “Can rot it right off.”

“How do you know that?” Joshua asked her.

“Just guessing. I’m sure glad that’s all over.”

Justus let his sword fall to his side with a sigh. “Go home. All of you. By order of Gaius Justus Gallicus, under-commander of the Sixth Legion, commander of the Third and Fourth Centuries, under authority of Emperor Tiberius and the Roman Empire, you are all commanded to go home and perpetrate no weird shit until I have gotten well drunk and had several days to sleep it off.”

“So you’re going to release Joseph?” Maggie asked.

“He’s at the barracks. Go get him and take him home.”

“Amen,” said Joshua.

“Semper fido,” I added in Latin.

Joshua’s little brother Judah, who was seven by then, ran around the Roman barracks screaming “Let my people go! Let my people go!” until he was hoarse. (Judah had decided early on that he was going to be Moses when he grew up, only this time Moses would get to enter the promised land—on a pony.) As it turned out, Joseph had been waiting for us at the Venus Gate. He looked a little confused, but otherwise unharmed.

“They say that a dead man spoke,” Joseph said.

Mary was ecstatic. “Yes, and walked. He pointed out his murderer, then he died again.”

“Sorry,” Joshua said, “I tried to make him live on, but he only lasted a minute.”

Joseph frowned. “Did everyone see what you did, Joshua?”

“They didn’t know it was my doing, but they saw it.”

“I distracted everyone with one of my excellent dirges,” I said.

“You can’t risk yourself like that,” Joseph said to Joshua. “It’s not the time yet.”

“If not to save my father, when?”

“I’m not your father.” Joseph smiled.

“Yes you are.” Joshua hung his head.

“But I’m not the boss of you.” Joseph’s smile widened to a grin.

“No, I guess not,” Joshua said.

“You needn’t have worried, Joseph,” I said. “If the Romans had killed you I would have taken good care of Mary and the children.”

Maggie punched me in the arm.

“Good to know,” Joseph said.

On the road to Nazareth, I got to walk with Maggie a few paces behind Joseph and his family. Maggie’s family was so distraught over what had happened to Jeremiah that they didn’t even notice she wasn’t with them.

“He’s much stronger than he was the last time,” Maggie said.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be a mess tomorrow: ‘Oh, what did I do wrong. Oh, my faith wasn’t strong enough. Oh, I am not worthy of my task.’ He’ll be impossible to be around for a week or so. We’ll be lucky if he stops praying long enough to eat.”

“You shouldn’t make fun of him. He’s trying very hard.”

“Easy for you to say, you won’t have to hang out with the village idiot until Josh gets over this.”

“But aren’t you touched by who he is? What he is?”

“What good would that do me? If I was basking in the light of his holiness all of the time, how would I take care of him? Who would do all of his lying and cheating for him? Even Josh can’t think about what he is all of the time, Maggie.”

“I think about him all of the time. I pray for him all of the time.”

“Really? Do you ever pray for me?”

“I mentioned you in my prayers, once.”

“You did? How?”

“I asked God to help you not to be such a doofus, so you could watch over Joshua.”

“You meant doofus in an attractive way, right?”

“Of course.”

Chapter 7

And the angel said, “What prophet has this written? For in this book is foretold all the events which shall come to pass in the next week in the land of Days of Our Lives and All My Children.”

And I said to the angel, “You fabulously feebleminded bundle of feathers, there’s no prophet involved. They know what is going to happen because they write it all down in advance for the actors to perform.”

“So it is written, so it shall be done,” said the angel.

I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed next to Raziel. His gaze never wavered from his Soap Opera Digest. I pushed the magazine down so the angel had to look me in the face.

“Raziel, do you remember the time before mankind, the time when there were only the heavenly host and the Lord?”

“Yes, those were the best of times. Except for the war, of course. But other than that, yes, wonderful times.”

“And you angels were as strong and beautiful as divine imagination, your voices sang praise for the Lord and his glory to the ends of the universe, and yet the Lord saw fit to create us, mankind, weak, twisted, and profane, right?”

“That’s when it all started to go downhill, if you ask me,” Raziel said.

“Well, do you know why the Lord decided to create us?”

“No. Ours is not to question the Will.”

“Because you are all dumbfucks, that’s why. You’re as mindless as the machinery of the stars. Angels are just pretty insects. Days of Our Lives is a show, Raziel, a play. It’s not real, get it?”

“No.”

And he didn’t. I’ve learned that there’s a tradition in this time of telling funny stories about the stupidity of people with yellow hair. Guess where that started.

I think that we all expected everything to go back to normal after the killer was found, but it seemed that the Romans were much more concerned with the extermination of the Sicarii then they were with a single resurrection. To be fair, I have to say that resurrections weren’t that uncommon in those days. As I mentioned, we Jews were quick to get our dead into the ground, and with speed, there’s bound to be errors. Occasionally some poor soul would fall unconscious during a fever and wake to find himself being wrapped in linen and prepared for the grave. But funerals were a nice way to get the family together, and there was always a fine meal afterward, so no one really complained, except perhaps those people who didn’t wake before they were buried, and if they complained—well, I’m sure God heard them. (It paid to be a light sleeper, in my time.) So, impressed as they might have been with the walking dead, the next day the Romans began to round up suspected conspirators. The men in Maggie’s family were hauled off to Sepphoris at dawn.

No miracles would come to bring about the release of the prisoners, but neither were there any crucifixions announced in the days that followed. After two weeks had passed with no word of the fate or condition of the men, Maggie, her mother, her aunts, and her sisters went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and appealed to the Pharisees for help.

The next day, the Pharisees from Nazareth, Japhia, and Sepphoris appeared at the Roman garrison to appeal to Justus for the release of the prisoners. I don’t know what they said, or what sort of leverage they could possibly have used to move the Romans, but the following day, just after dawn, the men of Maggie’s family staggered back into our village, beaten, starving, and covered with filth, but very much alive.

There was no feast, no celebration for the return of the prisoners—we Jews walked softly for a few months to allow the Romans to settle down. Maggie seemed distant in the weeks that followed, and Josh and I never saw the smile that could make the breath catch in our throats. She seemed to be avoiding us, rushing out of the square whenever we saw her there, or on the Sabbath, staying so close to the women of her family that we couldn’t talk to her. Finally, after a month had passed, with absolutely no regard for custom or common courtesy, Joshua insisted that we skip work and dragged me by the sleeve to Maggie’s house. She was kneeling on the ground outside the door, grinding some barley with a millstone. We could see her mother moving around in the house and hear the sound of her father and older brother Simon (who was called Lazarus) working the forge next door. Maggie seemed to be lost in the rhythm of grinding the grain, so she didn’t see us approach. Joshua put his hand on her shoulder, and without looking up, she smiled.

“You are supposed to be building a house in Sepphoris,” she said.

“We thought it more important to visit a sick friend.”

“And who would that be?”

“Who do you think?”

“I’m not sick. In fact, I’ve been healed by the touch of the Messiah.”

“I think not,” said Joshua.

She finally looked up at him and her smile evaporated. “I can’t be friends with you two anymore,” she said. “Things have changed.”

“What, because your uncle was a Sicarii?” I said. “Don’t be silly.”

“No, because my mother made a bargain to get Iban to convince the other Pharisees to go to Sepphoris and plead for the men’s lives.”

“What kind of bargain?” Joshua asked.

“I am betrothed.” She looked at the millstone again and a tear dripped into the powdered grain.

We were both stunned. Josh took his hand from her shoulder and stepped back, then looked at me as if there was something I could do. I felt as if I would start crying at any second myself. I managed to choke out, “Who to?”

“To Jakan,” Maggie said with a sob.

“Iban’s son? The creep? The bully?”

Maggie nodded. Joshua covered his mouth and ran a few steps away, then threw up. I was tempted to join him, but instead I crouched in front of Maggie.

“How long before you’re married?”

“I’m to be married a month after the Passover feast. Mother made him wait six months.”

“Six months! Six months! That’s forever, Maggie. Why, Jakan could be killed in a thousand heinous ways in six months, and that’s just the ones I can think of right now. Why, someone could turn him in to the Romans for being a rebel. I’m not saying who, but someone might. It could happen.”

“I’m sorry, Biff.”

“Don’t be sorry for me, why would you be sorry for me?”

“I know how you feel, so I’m sorry.”

I was thrown for a second. I glanced at Joshua to see if he could give me a clue, but he was still absorbed in splattering his breakfast in the dirt.

“But it’s Joshua who you love?” I finally said.

“Does that make you feel any better?”

“Well, no.”

“Then I’m sorry.” She made as if to reach out to touch my cheek, but her mother called her before she made contact.

“Right now, Mary, in this house!”

Maggie nodded toward the barfing Messiah. “Take care of him.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“And take care of yourself.”

“I’ll be fine too, Maggie. Don’t forget I have an emergency backup wife. Besides, it’s six months. A lot can happen in six months. It’s not like we won’t see you.” I was trying to sound more hopeful than I felt.

“Take Joshua home,” she said. Then she quickly kissed me on the cheek and ran into the house.

Joshua was completely against the idea of murdering Jakan, or even praying for harm to come to him. If anything, Joshua seemed more kindly disposed toward Jakan than he had been before, going as far as to seek him out and congratulate him on his betrothal to Maggie, an act that left me feeling angry and betrayed. I confronted Joshua in the olive grove, where he had gone to pray among the twisted tree trunks.

“You coward,” I said, “you could strike him down if you wanted to.”

“As could you,” he replied.

“Yeah, but you can call the wrath of God down upon him. I’d have to sneak up behind him and brain him with a rock. There’s a difference.”

“And you would have me kill Jakan for what, your bad luck?”

“Works for me.”

“Is it so hard for you to give up what you never had?”

“I had hope, Josh. You understand hope, don’t you?” Sometimes he could be mightily dense, or so I thought. I didn’t realize how much he was hurting inside, or how much he wanted to do something.

“I think I understand hope, I’m just not sure that I am allowed to have any.”

“Oh, don’t start with that ‘Everyone gets something but me’ speech. You’ve got plenty.”

Josh wheeled on me, his eyes like fire, “Like what? What do I have?”

“Uh…” I wanted to say something about a really sexy mother, but that didn’t seem like the sort of thing he wanted to hear. “Uh, you have God.”

“So do you. So does everyone.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Not the Romans.”

“There are Roman Jews.”

“Well, you’ve got, uh—that healing-raising-the-dead thing.”

“Oh yeah, and that’s working really well.”

“Well, you’re the Messiah, what’s that? That’s something. If you told people you were the Messiah they’d have to do what you say.”

“I can’t tell them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how to be the Messiah.”

“Well, at least do something about Maggie.”

“He can’t,” came a voice from behind a tree. A golden glow emanated from either side of the trunk.

“Who’s there?” Joshua called.

The angel Raziel stepped out from behind the tree.

“Angel of the Lord,” I said under my breath to Josh.

“I know,” he said, in a “you seen one, you seen ’em all” way.

“He can’t do anything,” the angel repeated.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because he may not know any woman.”

“I may not?” Joshua said, not sounding at all happy.

“He may not in that he should not, or that he cannot?” I asked.

The angel scratched his golden head, “I didn’t think to ask.”

“It’s kind of important,” I said.

“Well, he can’t do anything about Mary Magdalene, I know that. They told me to come and tell him that. That and that it is time for him to go.”

“Go where?”

“I didn’t think to ask.”

I suppose I should have been frightened, but I seemed to have passed right through frightened to exasperated. I stepped up to the angel and poked him in the chest. “Are you the same angel that came to us before, to announce the coming of the Savior?”

“It was the Lord’s will that I bring that joyful news.”

“I just wondered, in case all of you angels look alike or something. So, after you showed up ten years late, they sent you with another message?”

“I am here to tell the Savior that it is time for him to go.”

“But you don’t know where?”

“No.”

“And this golden stuff around you, this light, what is this?”

“The glory of the Lord.”

“You’re sure it’s not stupidity leaking out of you?”

“Biff, be nice, he is the messenger of the Lord.”

“Well, hell, Josh, he’s no help at all. If we’re going to get angels from heaven they should at least know what they are doing. Blow down walls or something, destroy cities, oh, I don’t know—get the whole message.”

“I’m sorry,” the angel said. “Would you like me to destroy a city?”

“Go find out where Josh is supposed to go. How ’bout that?”

“I can do that.”

“Then do that.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“We’ll wait.”

“Godspeed,” Joshua said.

In an instant the angel moved behind another tree trunk and the golden glow was gone from the olive grove with a warm breeze.

“You were sort of hard on him,” Joshua said.

“Josh, being nice isn’t always going to get the job done.”

“One can try.”

“Was Moses nice to Pharaoh?”

Before Joshua could answer me, the warm breeze blew into the olive grove again and the angel stepped out from behind a tree.

“To find your destiny,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“What?” Joshua said.

“You are supposed to go find your destiny.”

“That’s it?” Joshua said.

“Yes.”

“What about the ‘knowing a woman’ thing?” I asked.

“I have to go now.”

“Grab him, Josh. You hold him and I’ll hit him.”

But the angel was gone with the breeze.

“My destiny?” Joshua looked at his open, empty palms.

“We should have pounded the answer out of him,” I said.

“I don’t think that would have worked.”

“Oh, back to the nice strategy. Did Moses—”

“Moses should have said, ‘Let my people go, please.’”

“That would have made the difference?”

“It could have worked. You don’t know.”

“So what do you do about your destiny?”

“I’m going to ask the Holy of Holies when we go to the Temple for the Passover.”

And so it came to pass that in the spring all of the Jews from Galilee made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, and Joshua began the search for his destiny. The road was lined with families making their way to the holy city. Camels, carts, and donkeys were loaded high with provisions for the trip, and all along the column of pilgrims you could hear the bleating of the lambs that would be sacrificed for the feast. The road was dry that year, and a red-brown cloud of dust wound its way over the road as far as one could see in either direction.

Since we were each the eldest in our families, it fell on Joshua and me to keep track of all our younger brothers and sisters. It seemed that the easiest way to accomplish this was to tie them together, so we strung together, by height, my two brothers and Josh’s three brothers and two sisters. I tied the rope loosely around their necks so it would only choke them if they got out of line.

“I can untie this,” said James.

“Me too,” said my brother Shem.

“But you won’t. This is the part of the Passover where you reenact Moses leading you out of the Promised Land, you have to stay with the little ones.”

“You’re not Moses,” said Shem.

“No—no, I’m not Moses. Smart of you to notice.” I tied the end of the rope to a nearby wagon that was loaded high with jars of wine. “This wagon is Moses,” I said. “Follow it.”

“That wagon isn’t—”

“It’s symbolic, shut the hell up and follow Moses.”

Thus freed of our responsibilities, Joshua and I went looking for Maggie and her family. We knew that Maggie and her clan had left after us, so we fought backward through the pilgrims, braving donkey bites and camel spit until we spotted her royal blue shawl on the hill behind us, perhaps a half-mile back. We had resolved to just sit by the side of the road to wait until she reached us, rather than battle the crowd, when suddenly the column of pilgrims started to leave the road altogether, moving to the sides in a great wave. When we saw the red crest of a centurion’s helmet come over the top of the hill we understood. Our people were making way for the Roman army. (There would be nearly a million Jews in Jerusalem for Passover—a million Jews celebrating their liberation from oppression, a very dangerous mix from the Roman point of view. The Roman governor would come from Caesarea with his full legion of six thousand men, and each of the other barracks in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee would send a century or two of soldiers to the holy city.)

We used the opportunity to dash back to Maggie, arriving there at the same time as the Roman army. The centurion that led the cavalry kicked at me as he passed, his hobnail boot missing my head by a hair’s breadth. I suppose I should be glad he wasn’t a standard-bearer or I might have been conked with a Roman eagle.

“How long do I have to wait before you drive them from the land and restore the kingdom to our people, Joshua?” Maggie stood there with her hands on her hips, trying to look stern, but her blue eyes betrayed that she was about to burst into laughter.

“Uh, shalom to you too, Maggie,” Joshua said.

“How about you, Biff, have you learned to be an idiot yet, or are you behind in your studies?” Those laughing eyes, even as the Romans passed by only an arm’s length away. God, I miss her.

“I’m learning,” I said.

Maggie put down the jar she’d been carrying and threw her arms out to embrace us. It had been months since we’d seen her other than passing in the square. She smelled of lemons and cinnamon that day.

We walked with Maggie and her family for a couple of hours, talking and joking and avoiding the subject that we were all thinking about until Maggie finally said, “Are you two coming to my wedding?”

Joshua and I looked at each other as if our tongues had suddenly been struck from our mouths. I saw that Josh was having no luck finding words, and Maggie seemed to be getting angry.

“Well?”

“Uh, Maggie, it’s not that we’re not overjoyed with your good fortune, but…”

She took the opportunity to backhand me across the mouth. The jar she carried on her head didn’t even waver. Amazing grace that girl had.

“Ouch.”

“Good fortune? Are you mad? My husband’s a toad. I’m sick at the thought of him. I was just hoping you two would come to help me through the ceremony.”

“I think my lip is bleeding.”

Joshua looked at me and his eyes went wide. “Uh-oh.” He cocked his head, as if listening to the wind.

“What, uh-oh?” Then I heard the commotion coming from ahead. There was a crowd gathered at a small bridge—a lot of shouting and waving. Since the Romans had long since passed, I assumed someone had fallen in the river.

“Uh-oh,” Josh said again, and he began running toward the bridge.

“Sorry.” I shrugged at Maggie, then followed Josh.

At the river’s edge (no more than a creek, really) we saw a boy about our age, with wild hair and wilder eyes, standing waist-deep in the water. He was holding something under the water and shouting at the top of his lungs.

“You must repent and atone, atone and repent! Your sins have made you unclean. I cleanse you of the evil that you carry like your wallet.”

“That’s my cousin, John,” Joshua said.

Trailing out of the water on either side of John stood our brothers and sisters, still tied together, but the missing link in the string of siblings was my brother Shem, who had been replaced by a lot of thrashing and bubbling muddy water in front of John. Onlookers were cheering on the Baptist, who was having a little trouble keeping Shem under water.

“I think he’s drowning Shem.”

“Baptizing,” Joshua said.

“My mother will be happy that Shem’s sins have been cleansed, but I have to think we’re going to be in a lot of trouble if he drowns in the process.”

“Good point,” Josh said. He stepped into the water. “John! Stop that!”

John looked at him and seemed a little perplexed. “Cousin Joshua?”

“Yes. John, let him up.”

“He has sinned,” John said, as if that said it all.

“I’ll take care of his sins.”

“You think you’re the one, don’t you? Well, you’re not. My birth was announced by an angel as well. It was prophesied that I would lead. You’re not the one.”

“We should talk about this in another place. Let him up, John. He’s cleansed.”

John let my brother pop out of the water and I ran down and dragged him and all the other kids out of the river.

“Wait, the others haven’t been cleansed. They are filthy with sin.”

Joshua stepped between his brother James, who would have been the next one dunked, and the Baptist. “You won’t tell Mother about this, will you?”

Halfway between terrified and furious, James was tearing at the knots, trying to untie the rope from around his neck. He clearly wanted revenge on his big brother, but at the same time he didn’t want to give up his brother’s protection from John.

“If we let John baptize you long enough, you won’t be able to tell your mother, will you, James?” Me, just trying to help out.

“I won’t tell,” James said. He looked back at John, who was still staring as if he’d dash out and grab someone to cleanse any second. “He’s our cousin?”

“Yes,” Joshua said. “The son of our mother’s cousin Elizabeth.”

“When did you meet him before?”

“I haven’t.”

“Then how did you know him.”

“I just did.”

“He’s a loony,” said James. “You’re both loonies.”

“Yes, a family trait. Maybe when you get older you can be a loony too. You won’t tell Mother.”

“No.”

“Good,” Joshua said. “You and Biff get the kids moving, will you?”

I nodded, shooting a glance back to John. “James is right, Josh. He is a loony.”

“I heard that, sinner!” John shouted. “Perhaps you need to be cleansed.”

John and his parents shared supper with us that evening. I was surprised that John’s parents were older than Joseph—older than my grandparents even. Joshua told me that John’s birth had been a miracle, announced by the angel. Elizabeth, John’s mother, talked about it all through supper, as if it had happened yesterday instead of thirteen years ago. When the old woman paused to take a breath, Joshua’s mother started in about the divine announcement of her own son’s birth. Occasionally my mother, feeling the need to exhibit some maternal pride that she didn’t really feel, would chime in as well.

“You know, Biff wasn’t announced by an angel, but locusts ate our garden and Alphaeus had gas for a month around the time he would have been conceived. I think it might have been a sign. That certainly didn’t happen with my other boys.”

Ah, Mother. Did I mention that she was besought with a demon?

After supper, Joshua and I built our own fire, away from the others, hoping that Maggie would seek us out, but it turned out that only John joined us.

“You are not the anointed one,” John said to Joshua. “Gabriel came to my father. Your angel didn’t even have a name.”

“We shouldn’t be talking about these things,” Joshua said.

“The angel told my father that his son would prepare the way for the Lord. That’s me.”

“Fine, I want nothing more than for you to be the Messiah, John.”

“Really?” John asked. “But your mother seems so, so…”

“Josh can raise the dead,” I said.

John shifted his insane gaze to me, and I scooted away from him in case he tried to hit me. “He cannot,” John said.

“Yep, I’ve seen it twice.”

“Don’t, Biff,” Josh said.

“You’re lying. Bearing false witness is a sin,” John said. The Baptist started to look more panicked than angry.

“I’m not very good at it,” Joshua said.

John’s eyes went wide, now with amazement instead of madness. “You have done this? You have raised the dead?”

“And healed the sick,” I said.

John grabbed me by the front of my tunic and pulled me close, staring into my eyes as if he was looking into my head. “You aren’t lying, are you?” He looked at Joshua. “He’s not lying, is he?”

Joshua shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

John released me, let out a long sigh, then sat back in the dirt. The firelight caught tears sparkling in his eyes as he stared at nothing. “I am so relieved. I didn’t know what I would do. I don’t know how to be the Messiah.”

“Neither do I,” said Joshua.

“Well, I hope you really can raise the dead,” John said, “because this will kill my mother.”

We walked with John for the next three days, through Samaria, into Judea, and finally into the holy city. Fortunately, there weren’t many rivers or streams along the way, so we were able to keep his baptisms to a minimum. His heart was in the right place, he really did want to cleanse our people of their sins, it was just that no one would believe that God would give that responsibility to a thirteen-year-old. To keep John happy, Josh and I let him baptize our little brothers and sisters at every body of water we passed, at least until Josh’s little sister Miriam developed the sniffles and Joshua had to perform an emergency healing on her.

“You really can heal,” John exclaimed.

“Well, the sniffles are easy,” Joshua said. “A little mucus is nothing against the power of the Lord.”

“Would—would you mind?” John said, lifting up his tunic and showing his bare privates, which were covered with sores and greenish scales.

“Cover, please cover!” I yelled. “Drop the shirt and step away!”

“That’s disgusting,” Joshua said.

“Am I unclean? I’ve been afraid to ask my father, and I can’t go to a Pharisee, not with my father being a priest. I think it’s from standing in the water all of the time. Can you heal me?”

(I have to say here that I believe that this was the first time Joshua’s little sister Miriam ever saw a man’s privates. She was only six at the time, but the experience so frightened her that she never married. The last time anyone heard from her, she had cut her hair short, put on men’s clothes, and moved to the Greek island of Lesbos. But that was later.)

“Have at it, Josh,” I said. “Lay your hands upon the affliction and heal it.”

Joshua shot me a dirty look, then looked back to his cousin John, with nothing but compassion in his eyes. “My mother has some salve you can put on it,” he said. “Let’s see if that works first.”

“I’ve tried salve,” John said.

“I was afraid you had,” said Joshua.

“Have you tried rubbing it with olive oil?” I asked. “It probably won’t cure you, but it might take your mind off of it.”

“Biff, please. John is afflicted.”

“Sorry.”

Joshua said, “Come here, John.”

“Oh, jeez, Joshua,” I said. “You’re not going to touch it, are you? He’s unclean. Let him live with the lepers.”

Joshua put his hands on John’s head and the Baptist’s eyes rolled back in his head. I thought he would fall, and he did waver, but remained standing.

“Father, you have sent this one to prepare the way. Let him go forth with his body as clean as his spirit.”

Joshua released his cousin and stepped back. John opened his eyes and smiled. “I am healed!” he yelled. “I am healed.”

John began to raise his shirt and I caught his arm. “We’ll take your word for it.”

The Baptist fell to his knees, then prostrated himself before Joshua, shoving his face against Josh’s feet. “You are truly the Messiah. I’m sorry I ever doubted you. I shall declare your holiness throughout the land.”

“Uh, maybe someday, but not now,” Joshua said.

John looked up from where he had been grasping Josh’s ankles. “Not now?”

“We’re trying to keep it a secret,” I said.

Josh patted his cousin’s head. “Yes, it would be best not to tell anyone about the healing, John.”

“But why?”

“We have to find out a couple of things before Joshua starts being the Messiah,” I said.

“Like what?” John seemed as if he would start crying again.

“Well, like where Joshua left his destiny and whether or not he’s allowed to, uh, have an abomination with a woman.”

“It’s not an abomination if it’s with a woman,” Josh added.

“It’s not?”

“Nope. Sheep, goats, pretty much any animal—it’s an abomination. But with a woman, it’s something totally different.”

“What about a woman and a goat, what’s that?” asked John.

“That’s five shekels in Damascus,” I said. “Six if you want to help.”

Joshua punched me in the shoulder.

“Sorry, old joke.” I grinned. “Couldn’t resist.”

John closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, as if he might squeeze some understanding out of his mind if he applied enough pressure. “So you don’t want anyone to know that you have the power to heal because you don’t know if you can lie with a woman?”

“Well, that and I have no idea how to go about being the Messiah,” Josh said.

“Yeah, and that,” I said.

“You should ask Hillel,” John said. “My father says he’s the wisest of all of the priests.”

“I’m going to ask the Holy of Holies,” Joshua said. (The Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant—the box containing the tablets handed down from God to Moses. No one I knew had ever seen it, as it was housed in the inner room at the Temple.)

“But it’s forbidden. Only a priest may enter the chamber of the Ark.”

“Yes, that’s going to be a problem,” I said.

The city was like a huge cup that had been filled to its brim with pilgrims, then spilled into a seething pool of humanity around it. When we arrived men were already lined up as far as the Damascus gate, waiting with their lambs to get to the Temple. A greasy black smoke was on the wind, coming from the Temple, where as many as ten thousand priests would be slaughtering the lambs and burning the blood and fatty parts on the altar. Cooking fires were burning all around the city as women prepared the lambs. A haze hung in the air, the steam and funk of a million people and as many animals. Stale breath and sweat and the smell of piss rose in the heat of the day, mixing with the bleating of lambs, the bellowing of camels, the crying of children, the ululations of women, and the low buzz of too many voices, until the air was thick with sounds and smells and God and history. Here Abraham received the word of God that his people would be the Chosen, here were the Hebrews delivered out of Egypt, here Solomon built the first Temple, here walked the prophets and the kings of the Hebrews, and here resided the Ark of the Covenant. Jerusalem. Here did I, the Christ, and John the Baptist come to find out the will of God and, if we were lucky, spot some really delicious girls. (What, you thought it was all religion and philosophy?)

Our families made camp outside the northern wall of the city, below the battlements of Antonia, the fortress Herod had built in tribute to his benefactor, Marc Antony. Two cohorts of Roman soldiers, some twelve hundred strong, watched the Temple courtyard from the fortress walls. The women fed and washed the children while Joshua and I carried lambs with our fathers to the Temple.

There was something unsettling about carrying an animal to its death. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen the sacrifices before, nor even eaten the Passover lamb, but this was the first time I’d actually participated. I could feel the animal’s breathing on my neck as I carried it slung over my shoulders, and amid all the noise and the smells and the movement around the Temple, there was, for a moment, silence, just the breath and heartbeat of the lamb. I guess I fell behind the others, because my father turned and said something to me, but I couldn’t hear the words.

We went through the gates and into the outer courtyard of the Temple where merchants sold birds for the sacrifice and moneychangers traded shekels for a hundred different coins from around the world. As we passed through the enormous courtyard, where thousands of men stood with lambs on their shoulders waiting to get into the inner temple, to the altar, to the slaughter, I could see no man’s face. I saw only the faces of the lambs, some calm and oblivious, others with their eyes rolled back, bleating in terror, still others seeming to be stunned. I swung the lamb from my own shoulders and cradled it in my arms like a child as I backed out toward the gate. I know my father and Joseph must have come after me, but I couldn’t see their faces, just emptiness where their eyes should have been, just the eyes of the lambs they carried. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t get out of the Temple fast enough. I didn’t know where I was going, but I wasn’t going inside to the altar. I turned to run, but a hand caught my shirt and pulled me back. I spun around and looked into Joshua’s eyes.

“It’s God’s will,” he said. He laid his hands on my head and I was able to breathe again. “It’s all right, Biff. God’s will.” He smiled.

Joshua had put the lamb he’d been carrying on the ground, but it didn’t run away. I suppose I should have known right then.

I didn’t eat any of the lamb for that Passover feast. In fact, I’ve never eaten lamb since that day.

Chapter 8

I’ve managed to sneak into the bathroom long enough to read a few chapters of this New Testament that they’ve added to the Bible. This Matthew fellow, who is obviously not the Matthew that we knew, seems to have left out quite a little bit. Like everything from the time Joshua was born to the time he was thirty!!! No wonder the angel brought me back to write this book. This Matthew fellow hasn’t mentioned me yet, but I’m still in the early chapters. I have to ration myself to keep the angel from getting suspicious. Today he confronted me when I came out of the bathroom.

“You are spending a lot of time in there. You don’t need to spend so much time in there.”

“I told you, cleanliness is very important to my people.”

“You weren’t bathing. I would have heard the water running.”

I decided that I needed to go on the offensive if I was going to keep the angel from finding the Bible. I ran across the room, leapt onto his bed, and fastened my hands around his throat—choking him as I chanted: “I haven’t been laid in two thousand years. I haven’t been laid in two thousand years. I haven’t been laid in two thousand years.” It felt good, there was a rhythm to it, I sort of squoze his throat a bit with every syllable.

I paused for a moment in choking the heavenly host to backhand him across his alabaster cheek. It was a mistake. He caught my hand. Then grabbed me by the hair with his other hand and calmly climbed to his feet, lifting me into the air by my hair.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” I said.

“So, you have not been laid in two thousand years? What does that mean?”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” I replied.

The angel set me on my feet, but kept his grasp on my hair. “So?”

“It means that I haven’t had a woman in two millennia, aren’t you picking up any of the vocabulary from the television?”

He glanced at the TV, which, of course, was on. “I don’t have your gift of tongues. What does that have to do with choking me?”

“I was choking you because you, once again, are as dense as dirt. I haven’t had sex in two thousand years. Men have needs. What the hell do you think I’m doing in the bathroom all of that time?”

“Oh,” the angel said, releasing my hair. “So you are…You have been…There is a…”

“Get me a woman and maybe I won’t spend so much time in the bathroom, if you get my meaning.” Brilliant misdirection, I thought.

“A woman? No, I cannot do that. Not yet.”

“Yet? Does that mean…”

“Oh look,” the angel said, turning from me as if I was no more than vapor, “General Hospital is starting.”

And with that, my secret Bible was safe. What did he mean by “yet”?

At least this Matthew mentions the Magi. One sentence, but that’s one more than I’ve gotten in his Gospel so far.

Our second day in Jerusalem we went to see the great Rabbi Hillel. (Rabbi means teacher in Hebrew—you knew that, right?) Hillel looked to be a hundred years old, his beard and hair were long and white, and his eyes were clouded over, his irises milk white. His skin was leathery-brown from sitting in the sun and his nose was long and hooked, giving him the aspect of a great, blind eagle. He held class all morning in the outer courtyard of the Temple. We sat quietly, listening to him recite from the Torah and interpret the verses, taking questions and engaging in arguments with the Pharisees, who tried to infuse the Law into every minute detail of life.

Toward the end of Hillel’s morning lectures, Jakan, the camel-sucking husband-to-be of my beloved Maggie, asked Hillel if it would be a sin to eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath.

“What are you, stupid? The Lord doesn’t give a damn what a chicken does on the Sabbath, you nimrod! It’s a chicken. If a Jew lays an egg on the Sabbath, that’s probably a sin, come see me then. Otherwise don’t waste my friggin’ time with that nonsense. Now go away, I’m hungry and I need a nap. All of you, scram.”

Joshua looked at me and grinned. “He’s not what I expected,” he whispered.

“Knows a nimrod when he sees—uh—hears one, though,” I said. (Nimrod was an ancient king who died of suffocation after he wondered aloud in front of his guards what it would be like to have your own head stuck up your ass.)

A boy younger than us helped the old man to his feet and began to lead him away toward the Temple gate. I ran up and took the priest’s other arm.

“Rabbi, my friend has come from far away to talk to you. Can you help him?”

The old man stopped. “Where is your friend?”

“Right here.”

“Then why isn’t he talking for himself? Where do you come from, kid?”

“Nazareth,” Joshua said, “but I was born in Bethlehem. I am Joshua bar Joseph.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve talked to your mother.”

“You have?”

“Sure, almost every time she and your father come to Jerusalem for a feast she tries to see me. She thinks you’re the Messiah.”

Joshua swallowed hard. “Am I?”

Hillel snorted. “Do you want to be the Messiah?”

Joshua looked at me as if I might have the answer. I shrugged. “I don’t know,” Josh finally said. “I thought I was just supposed to do it.”

“Do you think you’re the Messiah?”

“I’m not sure I should say.”

“That’s smart,” Hillel said. “You shouldn’t say. You can think you’re the Messiah all that you want, just don’t tell anyone.”

“But if I don’t tell them, they won’t know.”

“Exactly. You can think you’re a palm tree if you want, just don’t tell anyone. You can think you’re a flock of seagulls, just don’t tell anyone. You get my meaning? Now I have to go eat. I’m old and I’m hungry and I want to go eat now, so just in case I die before supper I won’t go hungry.”

“But he really is the Messiah,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Hillel said, grabbing my shoulder, then feeling for my head so he could scream into my ear. “What do you know? You’re an ignorant kid. How old are you? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“Thirteen.”

“How could you, at thirteen, know anything? I’m eighty-four and I don’t know shit.”

“But you’re wise,” I said.

“I’m wise enough to know that I don’t know shit. Now go away.”

“Should I ask the Holy of Holies?” Joshua said.

Hillel swung at the air, as if to slap Joshua, but missed by a foot. “It’s a box. I saw it when I could still see, and I can tell you that it’s a box. And you know what else, if there were tablets in it, they aren’t there now. So if you want to talk to a box, and probably be executed for trying to get into the chamber where it’s kept, you go right ahead.”

The breath seemed to be knocked out of Joshua’s body and I thought he would faint on the spot. How could the greatest teacher in all of Israel speak of the Ark of the Covenant in such a way? How could a man who obviously knew every word of the Torah, and all the teachings written since, how could he claim not to know anything?

Hillel seemed to sense Joshua’s distress. “Look, kid, your mother says that some very wise men came to Bethlehem to see you when you were born. They obviously knew something that no one else knew. Why don’t you go see them? Ask them about being the Messiah.”

“So you aren’t going to tell him how to be the Messiah?” I asked.

Again Hillel reached out for Joshua, but this time without any anger. He found Joshua’s cheek, and stroked it with his palsied hand. “I don’t believe there will be a Messiah, and at this point, I’m not sure it would make a difference to me. Our people have spent more time in slavery or under the heels of foreign kings than we have spent free, so who is to say that it is God’s will that we be free at all? Who is to say that God concerns himself with us in any way, beyond allowing us to be? I don’t think that he does. So know this, little one. Whether you are the Messiah, or you become a rabbi, or even if you are nothing more than a farmer, here is the sum of all I can teach you, and all that I know: treat others as you would like to be treated. Can you remember that?”

Joshua nodded and the old man smiled. “Go find your wise men, Joshua bar Joseph.”

What we did was stay in the Temple while Joshua grilled every priest, guard, even Pharisee about the Magi who had come to Jerusalem thirteen years before. Evidently it wasn’t as big an event for others as it was for Josh’s family, because no one had any idea what he was talking about.

By the time he’d been at it for a couple of hours he was literally screaming into the faces of a group of Pharisees. “Three of them. Magicians. They came because they saw a star over Bethlehem. They were carrying gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Come on, you’re all old. You’re supposed to be wise. Think!”

Needless to say, they weren’t pleased. “Who is this boy who would question our knowledge? He knows nothing of the Torah and the prophets and yet berates us for not remembering three insignificant travelers.”

It was the wrong thing to say to Joshua. No one had studied the Torah harder. No one knew scripture better. “Ask me any question, Pharisee,” Joshua said. “Ask anything.”

In retrospect, after having grown up, somewhat, and having lived, died, and been resurrected from the dust, I realize that there may be nothing more obnoxious than a teenager who knows everything. Certainly, it is a symptom of the age that they think they know everything, but now I have some sympathy for those poor men who challenged Joshua that day at the Temple. Of course, at the time, I shouted, “Smite the sons-a-bitches, Josh.”

He was there for days. Joshua wouldn’t even leave to eat, and I went out into the city to bring him back food. First the Pharisees, but later even some of the priests came to quiz Joshua, to try to throw him some question about some obscure Hebrew king or general. They made him recite the lineages from all the books of the Bible, yet he did not waver. Myself, I left him there to argue while I wandered through the holy city looking for Maggie, then, when I couldn’t find her, for girls in general. I slept at the camp of my parents, assuming all the time that Joshua was returning each night to his own family, but I was wrong. When the Passover feast was over and we were packing up to leave, Mary, Joshua’s mother, came to me in a panic.

“Biff. Have you seen Joshua?”

The poor woman was distraught. I wanted to comfort her so I held my arms out to give her a comforting embrace. “Poor Mary, calm down. Joshua is fine. Come, let me give you a comforting embrace.”

“Biff!” I thought she might slap me.

“He’s at the Temple. Jeez, a guy tries to be compassionate and what does he get?”

She had already taken off. I caught up to her as she was dragging Joshua out of the Temple by the arm. “You worried us half to death.”

“You should have known you would find me in my father’s house,” Joshua said.

“Don’t you pull that ‘my father’ stuff on me, Joshua bar Joseph. The commandment says honor thy father and thy mother. I’m not feeling honored right now, young man. You could have sent a message, you could have stopped by the camp.”

Joshua looked at me, his eyes pleading for me to help him out.

“I tried to comfort her, Josh, but she wouldn’t have it.”

Later I found the two of them on the road to Nazareth and Joshua motioned for me to walk with them.

“Mother thinks we may be able to find at least one of the Magi, and if we find that one, he may know where the others are.”

Mary nodded, “The one named Balthasar, the black one, he said he came from a village north of Antioch. He was the only one of the three that spoke any Hebrew.”

I didn’t feel confident. Although I’d never seen a map, “north of Antioch” sounded like a large, unspecific, and scary place. “Is there more?”

“Yes, the other two had come from the East by the Silk Road. Their names were Melchior and Gaspar.”

“So it’s off to Antioch,” Joshua said. He seemed completely satisfied with the information his mother had given him, as if all he needed were the three Magi’s names and he’d as much as found them.

I said, “You’re going to go to Antioch assuming that someone there will remember a man who may have lived north of there thirteen years ago?”

“A magician,” Mary said. “A rich, Ethiopian magician. How many can there be?”

“Well, there might not be any, did you think of that? He might have died. He might have moved to another city.”

“In that case, I will be in Antioch,” Joshua said. “From there I can travel the Silk Road until I find the other two.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re not going alone.”

“Of course.”

“But Josh, you’re helpless out in the world. You only know Nazareth, where people are stupid and poor. No offense, Mary. You’ll be like—uh—like a lamb among wolves. You need me along to watch out for you.”

“And what do you know that I don’t? Your Latin is horrible, your Greek is barely passable, and your Hebrew is atrocious.”

“Yeah. If a stranger comes up to you on the road to Antioch and asks you how much money you are carrying, what do you tell him?”

“That will depend on how much I am carrying.”

“No it won’t. You haven’t enough for a crust of bread. You are a poor beggar.”

“But that’s not true.”

“Exactly.”

Mary put her arm around her son’s shoulders. “He has a point, Joshua.”

Joshua wrinkled his brow as if he had to think about it, but I could tell that he was relieved that I wanted to go along. “When do you want to leave?”

“When did Maggie say she was getting married?”

“In a month.”

“Before then. I don’t want to be here when it happens.”

“Me either,” Joshua said.

And so we spent the next few weeks preparing for our journey. My father thought I was crazy, but my mother seemed happy to have the extra space in the house and pleased that the family wouldn’t have to put up a bride price to marry me off right away.

“So you’ll be gone how long?” Mother asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not a terribly long journey to Antioch, but I don’t know how long we’ll be there. Then we’ll be traveling the Silk Road. I’m guessing that that’s a long journey. I’ve never seen any silk growing around here.”

“Well, take a wool tunic in case it gets cold.”

And that was all I heard from my mother. Not “Why are you going?” Not “Who are you looking for?” Just “Take a wool tunic.” Jeez. My father was more supportive.

“I can give you a little money to travel with, or we could buy you a donkey.”

“I think the money would be better. A donkey couldn’t carry both of us.”

“And who are these fellows you’re looking for?”

“Magicians, I think.”

“And you want to talk to magicians because…?”

“Because Josh wants to know how to be the Messiah.”

“Oh, right. And you believe that Joshua is the Messiah?”

“Yes, but more important than that, he’s my friend. I can’t let him go alone.”

“And what if he’s not the Messiah? What if you find these magicians and they tell you that Joshua is not what you think he is, that he’s just a normal boy?”

“Well, he’ll really need me to be there, then, won’t he?”

My father laughed. “Yes, I guess he will. You come back, Levi, and bring your friend the Messiah with you. Now we’ll have to set three empty places at the table on Passover. One for Elijah, one for my lost son, and one for his pal the Messiah.”

“Well, don’t seat Joshua next to Elijah. If those guys start talking religion we’ll never have any peace.”

It came down to only four days before Maggie’s wedding before Joshua and I accepted that one of us would have to tell her we were leaving. After nearly a whole day of arguing, it fell upon me to go to her. I saw Joshua face down fears in himself that would have broken other men, but taking bad news to Maggie was one he couldn’t overcome. I took the task on myself and tried to leave Joshua with his dignity.

“You wuss!”

“How can I tell her that it’s too painful to watch her marry that toad?”

“First, you’re insulting toads everywhere, and second, what makes you think it’s any easier for me?”

“You’re tougher than I am.”

“Oh, don’t try that. You can’t just roll over and expect me to not notice that I’m being manipulated. She’s going to cry. I hate it when she cries.”

“I know,” Josh said. “It hurts me too. Too much.” Then he put his hand on my head and I suddenly felt better, stronger.

“Don’t try your Son of God mumbo jumbo on me, you’re still a wuss.”

“If it be so, so be it. So it shall be written.”

Well, it is now, Josh. It’s written now. (It’s strange, the word “wuss” is the same in my ancient Aramaic tongue as it is in this language. Like the word waited for me these two thousand years so I could write it down here. Strange.)

Maggie was washing clothes in the square with a bunch of other women. I caught her attention by jumping on the shoulders of my friend Bartholomew, who was gleefully exposing himself for the viewing pleasure of the Nazarene wives. With a subtle toss of my head I signaled to Maggie to meet me behind a nearby stand of date palms.

“Behind those trees?” Maggie shouted.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“You bringing the idiot?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” she said, and she handed her washing to one of her younger sisters and scampered to the trees.

I was surprised to see her smiling so close to the time of her wedding. She hugged me and I could feel the heat rise in my face, either from shame or love, like there was a difference.

“Well, you’re in a good mood,” I said.

“Why not? I’m using them all up before the wedding. Speaking of which, what are you two bringing me for a present? It had better be good if it’s going to make up for who I have to marry.”

She was joyful and there was music and laughter in her voice, pure Maggie, but I had to turn away.

“Hey, I was only joking,” she said. “You guys don’t need to bring me anything.”

“We’re leaving, Maggie. We won’t be there.”

She grabbed my shoulder and forced me to face her. “You’re leaving? You and Joshua? You’re going away?”

“Yes, before your wedding. We’re going to Antioch, and from there far into the East along the Silk Road.”

She said nothing. Tears welled up in her eyes and I could feel them rising in mine as well. This time she turned away.

“We should have told you before, I know, but really we only decided at Passover. Joshua is going to find the Magi who came to his birth, and I’m going with him because I have to.”

She wheeled on me. “You have to? You have to? You don’t have to. You can stay and be my friend and come to my wedding and sneak down to talk to me here or in the vineyard and we can laugh and tease and no matter how horrible it is being married to Jakan, I’ll have that. I’ll at least have that!”

I felt as if I’d be sick to my stomach any second. I wanted to tell her that I’d stay, that I’d wait, that if there was the slightest chance that her life wasn’t going to be a desert in the arms of her creep husband that I could hold hope. I wanted to do whatever I could to take away even a little bit of her pain, even up to letting Joshua go by himself, but in thinking that, I realized that Joshua must have been feeling the same thing, so all I said was “I’m sorry.”

“And what about Joshua, wasn’t he even going to say good-bye?”

“He wanted to, but he couldn’t. Neither of us can, I mean, we didn’t want to have to watch you marry Jakan.”

“Cowards. You two deserve each other. You can hide behind each other like Greek boys. Just go. Get away from me.”

I tried to think of something to say, but my mind was a soup of confusion so I hung my head and walked away. I was almost out of the square when Maggie caught up to me. I heard her footsteps and turned.

“Tell him to meet me behind the synagogue, Biff. The night before my wedding, an hour after sunset.”

“I’m not sure, Maggie, he—”

“Tell him,” she said. She ran back to the well without looking back.

So I told Joshua, and on the night before Maggie’s wedding, the night before we were to leave on our journey, Joshua packed some bread and cheese and a skin of wine and told me to meet him by the date palms in the square where we would share supper together.

“You have to go,” Joshua said.

“I’m going. In the morning, when you do. What, you think I’d back out now?”

“No, tonight. You have to go to Maggie. I can’t go.”

“What? I mean, why?” Sure I’d been heartbroken when Maggie had asked to see Joshua and not me, but I’d come to terms with it. Well, as well as one ever comes to terms with an ongoing heartbreak.

“You have to take my place, Biff. There’s almost no moon tonight, and we are about the same size. Just don’t say much and she’ll think it’s me. Maybe not as smart as normal, but she can put that down to worry over the upcoming journey.”

“I’d love to see Maggie, but she wants to see you, why can’t you go?”

“You really don’t know?”

“Not really.”

“Then just take my word for it. You’ll see. Will you do this for me, Biff? Will you take my place, pretend to be me?”

“That would be lying. You never lie.”

“Now you’re getting righteous on me? I won’t be lying. You will be.”

“Oh. In that case, I’ll go.”

But there wasn’t even time to deceive. It was so dark that night that I had to make my way slowly through the village by starlight alone, and as I rounded the corner to the back of our small synagogue I was hit with a wave of sandalwood and lemon and girl sweat, of warm skin, a wet mouth over mine, arms around my back and legs around my waist. I fell backward on the ground and there was in my head a bright light, and the rest of the world existed in the senses of touch and smell and God. There, on the ground behind the synagogue, Maggie and I indulged desires we had carried for years, mine for her, and hers for Joshua. That neither of us knew what we were doing made no difference. It was pure and it happened and it was marvelous. And when we finished we lay there holding each other, half dressed, breathless, and sweating, and Maggie said, “I love you, Joshua.”

“I love you, Maggie,” I said. And ever so slightly she loosened her embrace.

“I couldn’t marry Jakan without—I couldn’t let you go without—without letting you know.”

“He knows, Maggie.”

Then she really pulled away.

“Biff?”

“Uh-oh.” I thought she might scream, that she might leap up and run away, that she might do any one of a hundred things to take me from heaven to hell, but after only a second she nuzzled close to me again.

“Thank you for being here,” she said.

We left at dawn, and our fathers walked with us as far as the gates of Sepphoris. When we parted at the gates my father gave me a hammer and chisel to carry with me in my satchel. “With that you can make enough for a meal anywhere you go,” my father said. Joseph gave Joshua a wooden bowl. “Out of that you can eat the meal that Biff earns.” He grinned at me.

By the gates of Sepphoris I kissed my father for the last time. By the gates of Sepphoris we left our fathers behind and went out into the world to find three wise men.

“Come back, Joshua, and make us free,” Joseph shouted to our backs.

“Go with God,” my own father said.

“I am, I am,” I shouted. “He’s right here.”

Joshua said nothing until the sun was high in the sky and we stopped to share a drink of water. “Well?” Joshua said. “Did she know it was you?”

“Yes. Not at first, but before we parted. She knew.”

“Was she angry at me?”

“No.”

“Was she angry at you?”

I smiled. “No.”

“You dog!” he said.

“You really should ask that angel what he meant about you not knowing a woman, Joshua. It’s really important.”

“You know now why I couldn’t go.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“I’ll miss her,” Joshua said.

“You have no idea,” I said.

“Every detail. I want to know every detail.”

“But you aren’t supposed to know.”

“That’s not what the angel meant. Tell me.”

“Not now. Not while I can still smell her on my arms.”

Joshua kicked at the dirt. “Am I angry with you, or happy for you, or jealous of you? I don’t know? Tell me!”

“Josh, right now, for the first time I can remember, I’m happier being your friend than I would be being you. Can I have that?”

Now, thinking about that night with Maggie behind the synagogue, where we stayed together until it was nearly dawn, where we made love again and again and fell asleep naked on top of our clothes—now, when I think of that, I want to run away from here, this room, this angel and his task, find a lake, dive down, and hide from the eye of God in the dark muck on the bottom.

Strange.