The 13 th tribe

[36]

Jagger and Tyler had walked for five minutes and still hadn’t reached the burning bush. Tyler had suggested they take the “scenic route,” which was anything but. They traversed a tight tunnel between two buildings, with a ceiling created by structures built on top of them and spanning the narrow alley. Jagger knew of three such tunnels in the monastery, and he wasn’t sure there weren’t others. None was a straight shot from end to end; they all zigged one way, then zagged the other, making them eerily cavelike. The erratic placement and angles of the buildings, the dead ends, stairs, levels, and bridges from one rooftop to another all conspired to turn the complex into a labyrinth on par with the trickiest mouse maze. It was a nine-year-old boy’s dream and a security specialist’s nightmare.

They made loop-de-loops along the walls and ceiling with the flashlight beams till they emerged from the tunnel at the base of a narrow flight of stone stairs. Tyler started up, pulling Jagger with him. At the top they walked along a terrace to a rooftop, lighted by an amber bulb and sporting a single wooden chair. Jagger stopped in the light.

“Hold on,” he said. “I have something for you.” He dug into his breast pocket and pulled out the coin he’d found in the cave with the teen’s belongings.

Tyler took it from him and held it up to the light, turning it to examine both sides. “Wow.”

“I showed it to Dr. Hoffmann,” Jagger said. “It’s not Egyptian. He thought maybe a tourist dropped it, and it would be okay for us to keep it.” He didn’t mention the “tourist” it may have belonged to. “Ollie called it a ‘Charon’s obol.’ People put it in the mouth of a loved one they were burying. That way the dead person would have money to pay the ferryman who brought souls across the river that separated the living from the dead.”

“This was in some dead guy’s mouth?” Tyler said. “ Cool.” He stretched out the word, like a fascinated gasp. He looked at both sides again, then unsnapped the lid of his utility case and dropped it in. He smiled at Jagger. “Thanks.”

Tyler gripped Jagger’s hand again, and they started down a gradual slope of wide steps that arced around a curved wall. When they descended the last step, they were standing behind the basilica, where they’d attended services that morning and Jagger had prayed for the first time in sixteen months. Across the walkway, an eight-foot-tall round wall of rough stones and sloppy mortar protruded from another chapel and acted like a giant planter. Sprouting from the top was an enormous bush, billowing up six feet and cascading down like a fountain. It hung over the walkway, within touching distance of daytime tourists who’d stripped the leaves off the last foot of its stems. Its official name was Rubus sanctus — Holy Bramble. The monks believed this was the actual burning bush through which God had spoken to Moses, still alive and flourishing. Centuries past, a chapel had been built around it, but lack of sunlight had distressed the bush, so it was moved a dozen feet to its current location.

Jagger started toward it, but Tyler held him back.

“Wait,” the boy said. He sat on the bottom step, put his flashlight into the utility case, and tugged off a sneaker. “It’s holy ground. God told Moses to take off his sandals.” He stripped away his sock and started on the other sneaker.

“We’re not Mo-” Jagger began, then sighed and sat beside Tyler to unlace his boots. Before the first one was off, Tyler was barefoot and standing, scrunching his toes on the stone ground.

“Do you think God was really in that bush?” he said, eyeing the scraggly bramble.

“ In the bush or was the bush, I don’t know,” Jagger said. “But yes, I believe the story.”

“Why do so many people come here? You know, to see it and go up the mountain too?”

“Like you said, it’s holy.”

“When they see the mountain and the bush, they’re so… so.. ”

“Amazed?”

“No… kind of like the way you look at Mom.”

“In love?”

Tyler thought about it, nodding slowly, but not quite sure.

Jagger understood what Tyler was grasping for. Some visitors had the look of This is it? That’s all? I came all this way, spent all this money, hiked and sweated in the sun-for what, a bush, a mountain? But Tyler was thinking of the others, the ones who seemed in awe of being here, so near the bush and mountain. They seemed at peace. They prayed. They had a glow about them, as people say of pregnant women. They didn’t see a brambly shrub, a rock; they saw God.

He said, “I think it’s a mixture of a lot of things: love, respect, awe, reverence…”

“Because God was here, because he touched it?”

“That’s part of it,” Jagger said, working on his second boot.

Tyler turned to face him. “But isn’t God everywhere? Hasn’t he touched everything? That’s what you and Mom say.”

Jagger squinted up at him. “That’s true too.”

Tyler thought a moment. “Then isn’t everything holy?”

“In a way… I guess.” He wasn’t sure now was the time to launch into a theological discussion about original sin and free will.

Tyler made a firm face, coming to some conclusion.

“What?” Jagger said.

“If people love what’s holy, and people are holy, then they should be nicer to each other.”

Jagger’s heart ached for Tyler’s idealism: the beauty and simplicity of it. “I wish that was the way it worked, Ty.”

“Well, I say there’s something wrong when people treat a bush better than they treat each other.”

Jagger stretched out to grab Tyler’s hand. “And I say you’re right. You’re a smart kid, you know it?”

He was smart, but more important, he had a big heart for people. At his school in Virginia, he had stuck up for kids being bullied, but also had a way of sympathizing even with the bullies (“Maybe something’s wrong at home”) that Jagger himself had difficulty comprehending.

Jagger felt pride for his son well up in his chest. And he thought about how Tyler’s praying that morning had led to his own prayer and to this conversation. He wondered if he’d find his way back into the fold of the faithful not through his physical presence in a holy place but through his family, the two people who’d stuck by him when even he couldn’t stand himself.