The Jesse Tree

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  The rain had stopped. Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows and cast a rainbow over the wet dog. “So, Noah must be Jesus’ ancestor, right? Because there was no one else left after the flood?”

  “That’s what some people say,” muttered the carpenter.

  “So Noah must be your ancestor, too, come to that. And mine. That makes us relatives!”

  “Oh, now, wait a moment…”

  “Did people do better the second time around?” asked the boy.

  “Not so you’d notice,” grunted the carpenter, and went back to carving the waves beneath his oaken ark.

  “Was that God’s rescue plan, then?” asked the boy. “You said he had a rescue plan. Bit drastic. Wipe everybody out and start again.”

  “No, no! Well, yes, but no.” The carpenter looked confused. “In the long run, God was planning to send Jesus. That’s the rescue plan I was talking about…”

  But the boy was busy with his own thoughts. “Were there death-watch beetles on the ark, do you think?”

  “Definitely not! Perishing little pests!”

  “There must’ve been. Or they wouldn’t be here now,” said the boy.

  “Get that dog out of here and don’t bring it back! I don’t know what things are coming to! Dogs in the Lord’s house, indeed!”

  STRANGE VISITORS

  There was no dog with the boy when he came the next day. There was a little boy instead.

  “You mean there are more of you?” said the old man with a despairing sigh.

  “He was lost. I said I’d show him the way back to the caravan park.” He turned to the smaller boy. “There’s the Jesse tree I told you about. There’s the sun and moon, there’s the boat, and now he’s doing a horse.”

  “It’s not a horse. It’s a camel,” snapped the carpenter.

  “Did it get left behind by Noah? Is it wading? It’s got no legs.”

  “It’s sitting down. Resting in the desert. It stands for… I mean, it’s a symbol for Abraham.”

  “Was Abraham a camel, then?”

  The old man scowled such a scowl that both boys ought to have melted then and there. But they didn’t. “Sit down,” the boy advised his friend. “He’s going to tell us the story of Abraham now.”

  Abraham was a nomad; he did not belong anywhere. His tent was like the ark floating on the flood – one day here, another day there. When the goats and sheep had eaten all the grass in one place, Abraham and his wife, Sarah, moved on. They did not mind. God was good to them. The only regret they had was their lack of a son. Year after year they had longed for a child. Too many years. Now Sarah was too old. It seemed that, when Abraham and Sarah died, their tent and sheep and camels would pass to strangers.

  “Yes? Go on,” said the boy. “Why did you stop?”

  “I never meant to start,” said the old man gruffly, polishing his chisel on the tail of his shirt. But he went on even so.

  Then one day, three figures walked out of the low light. The heat made their shapes waver.

  Sarah was inside the tent, preparing food, but Abraham beckoned to them. “Come! Eat! Drink! Rest, strangers!”

  “You are a hospitable man, Abraham. May your son bring you great joy. Children do.”

  “We have no child,” said Abraham. “My wife, Sarah…”

  “… will have a son,” one stranger interrupted. “And that son will be the father of many sons.”

  Inside the tent, Sarah heard this and laughed to herself: a soft, bitter, inward laugh.

  “Why did Sarah laugh?” asked another of the strangers. “Doesn’t she know that with God all things are possible?”

  The tent trembled, and suddenly Sarah stood in its doorway, staring. They could not possibly have heard her laugh! How could they know a thing like that? How could they? A group of strangers…

  The visitors drank goat’s milk, broke bread with Abraham and walked on. The desert dust swallowed them up. The heat broke the setting sun into white crumbs of light. The first star of evening was rising.

  “Can you believe it?” gasped Sarah, half-laughing, her hand resting on her stomach.

  “I can,” said Abraham. “I do. I’ve told you before how God spoke to me once – years ago – and said, ‘Abraham, your descendants will be as numberless as the stars in the sky.’ I should not have needed three strangers to tell me. I should have known: God always keeps his promises.”

  “And Abraham is one of Jesus’ ancestors, right, and that’s why you’re carving his camel on the Jesse tree?”

  “Correct.”

  “So Jesus was going to be one of Abraham’s many, many, many, many countless-as-the-stars descendants, right?” said the boy.

  “Yes, yes.” The old man tossed his head irritably, as if these things were too complicated for boys to understand.

  “The brightest one.”

  “Yes, yes. The brightest one. Can a working man get no peace these days?”

  A TEST OF LOVE

  “This is my little brother. He cut himself.” The voice was all too familiar to the carpenter, who gave a glum sigh. “I took him to the First Aid station on the beach. But I thought you could cheer him up with a story. The sheep’s new.”

  “It’s a ram,” said the old man, running a rough palm over his latest carving.

  The little brother curled up on a pew to listen.

  When Sarah gave birth to a son – (oh yes, God kept his promise) – Abraham called him “Isaac”, which means “he laughed”. The child must have taken after his mother, you see. Isaac was a fine boy – not like some you see nowadays. He was helpful to his mother, did as he was told, was good with the animals, and was brave and handsome and clever. To Abraham and Sarah, he seemed even more special, because they had waited so long for him. That is what made it all the harder…

  The morning was cold, but there were beads of sweat on Abraham’s neck as he lashed a bundle of firewood to the donkey’s back. “Fetch me a big knife, Isaac, and a coil of rope. We have to go into the mountains and offer a sacrifice to God.”

  It was not unusual. In those days, people often made burnt offerings on their altars: the first sheaf of harvest, the best lamb from the flock. It was a way of thanking God for his goodness.

  “Where are you going, Abraham?” said Sarah, snatching at his arm. “Why is your face so pale?” But Abraham would not answer. The donkey seemed unwilling to move: it leaned back against the bridle.

  But at last they were on their way up the mountain paths – Isaac carrying a lighted brand, Abraham tugging the donkey along.

  “Oh! Have we forgotten the lamb for the sacrifice?” asked Isaac, hoping they would not have to turn back.

  “God will provide that,” said Abraham. His face was as empty as a broken jug. They did not talk after that.

  The highest places are the holiest. Abraham climbed up very high indeed. Then he piled up the firewood, turned awkwardly and wrapped his arms round his son. It was something between a hug and a grab. “It’s you, son! God wants you for the sacrifice!”

  No laughter now from Isaac.

  Abraham bound him with the rope, and laid him on the altar. The knife in one hand, he placed the other over his son’s face – over his eyes. His fist rose to make the blow. Quickly now, quickly. Get it over. Done. Get it done… The tears in his eyes made rainbows of everything…

  “Abraham! Abraham!” The voice came from nowhere and from everywhere. “Stop! Enough. Look.”

  A nearby thorn bush shook. An animal bleated. A ram had tangled its horns in the bush and couldn’t get free. Together father and son dragged it to the altar and offered it up to God. Its blood stained them both.

  It had been a test, you see: to prove whether there was anything – anyone – Abraham loved more than God; whether there was anything he would try to keep back from God.

  “But you’ve carved the ram – not Abraham or Isaac. People might think Jesus was descended from a sheep. You know, the one that had to die.”

  “
Don’t be ridiculous.”

  The little brother had fallen asleep along the pew, his cut hand folded across his throat. They both stood looking down at him.

  “I couldn’t,” said the boy. “Could you?”

  “Could I what?”

  “Pass the test. Kill your son.”

  Suddenly the angry carpenter was brandishing his chisel, high up over their heads, for all the world like a big knife. “I don’t have a son!”

  “Ah,” said the boy, unperturbed. “Maybe that’s why you don’t laugh much.”

  After they were gone, the old man returned, grumbling to his work. But the words kept chipping at his brain, in time with the tapping of his mallet. The sheep that had to die. Jesus: the sheep that had to die.

  STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

  “I had a dream last night.”

  The old man jumped. Could the boy not cough politely or say, “Excuse me”? Must he just suddenly be there, talking? It scattered the old man’s thoughts like birds out of a tree.

  “I dreamed I was Jack, climbing the beanstalk.”

  “I only have nightmares,” said the carpenter.

  “Was one of Jesus’ ancestors a fireman?”

  “Certainly not… why?”

  “Well, where’s that ladder going?” He came and put his small fingers on the rungs of the ladder that stood propped mysteriously among the leaves of the carved Jesse tree.

  “Don’t meddle,” said its maker.

  The little fingers climbed the ladder, rung by rung. “Tell me.”

  Everything about Jacob was smooth, from his well-washed skin to the words in his mouth. Only his wits were sharp. His mother thought the world of him. His father, Isaac, preferred Esau, though. Esau was rough and tough; as different as sacking from silk – and Esau was his firstborn son.

  Esau and Jacob were twins, born only moments apart, but in those days it mattered very much who came first into the light of day. So Esau was his father’s heir and Jacob wasn’t. When Isaac died, Esau would become head of the family and Jacob wouldn’t. That one thought chafed, like sacking against silk.

  Esau was a hunter, forever chasing deer across the plains and through the snaggling woods. Jacob preferred to stay at home. His mother liked to have him near her. Also he had plenty of time to think.

  One day, Esau came home half-dead with weariness. He flung himself down, muddy from head to foot and with twigs in his hair. “Give me something to eat, Brother. I’m done in.”

  Quiet as a woman, Jacob glided to the fire and filled a wooden bowl with stew. Its savour filled the room, rich and delicious. “You give me your birthright,” he said teasingly, “and I’ll give you the stew.”

  “Hurry up. I’m starving to death,” complained Esau.

  “It’s yours… in return for your birthright.”

  “What d’you mean, my birthright? Give me the stew, can’t you?”

  “From now on, I’m the firstborn. That’s all.”

  Esau wagged a weary hand. “Whatever you say.” After all, how could a bowl of stew make a difference to the facts? Esau had seen the light of day first. He wolfed down the stew and fell fast asleep.

  But Jacob held him to the deal. By the time Esau woke, everyone knew that he had sold his place as Isaac’s heir in return for a bowl of stew. His only comfort? He was still his father’s favourite son. His father’s blessing would surely come to him.

  “Hunt a deer and cook its meat for me,” whispered old Isaac one day, frail as a cobweb, as blind and chilly as ice. “Then I shall give you my dying blessing.”

  Now, in those days, a father’s blessing was considered as powerful as a wish granted. Away went Esau to catch his deer. In slid Jacob, subtle as a cat, his forearms covered in strips of hide, his borrowed clothes smelling of the woods. (His mother had put him up to it.)

  “Here you are, Father. It’s me, Esau. I brought you the venison you asked for.” Isaac took the bowl of tender meat from Jacob – as unsuspecting as Esau had been when he had taken the stew.

  “My boy,” the old man said, feeling the coarse, hairy hands that clasped the bowl. “Let me kiss you. My blessing is yours.” And thus, for a second time, Jacob stole from his brother.

  When Esau found out how he had been cheated, he begged Isaac to bless him too.

  “My blessing is given,” said the old man, sharing his son’s sorrow.

  Esau was so angry that Jacob had to run for his life – out into the countryside where he had never hunted, out into the woods where the deer knew the way better than he did, out under a scowling sky.

  Who knows why God forgave Jacob – the trickster, the cheat – except that God forgives most things. Who knows why God leaned out of heaven and kissed Jacob on his smooth forehead? But he did. That night, Jacob lay down to sleep, with only a rock for a pillow, and he had the strangest dream of his life.

  He dreamed he saw a bright hole in the sky above him – as if he were lying on the bottom of a frozen lake, looking up through a hole in the ice. And stretching down from the hole was a ladder – the longest ladder imaginable, and as broad as a flight of stairs. Figures of snowy brightness were climbing the ladder, their faces brushed by the hems of yet more figures climbing down from above.

  Angels.

  “Jacob,” said a voice within his dream. “Just as I promised your grandfather, Abraham, I am going to make you the father of a great people, and bring them into a land of their own.”

  Even when Jacob woke, the dream lingered behind in his eyelids, like a flash of lightning. He knew that God had spoken to him. He knew that being a part of God’s plan would cost him more than a bowl of stew or a dish of meat. He knew that God would ask more from him than tricks and a quick wit. He was filled with excitement and joy and terror and shock, all at once.

  Above all, he longed to tell his twin brother… but of course, that was out of the question. One day, one day, he would have to put things right with Esau.

  “I suppose, if your Jesse tree was tall enough, the angels could shin up and down that,” said the boy.

  “Don’t talk daft,” said the old man.

  But, funnily enough, that night, he dreamed that his Jesse tree had grown like some magic beanstalk all the way up into the sky, and that day-trippers were climbing up and down it, their mouths white with ice cream and laughter.

  THE DREAMER

  “You’ve been fighting!” exclaimed the carpenter the next day, when the boy came into the church. “Typical!”

  “My brother wanted my baseball cap. So he took it. He’s bigger than me… But I got my own back!”

  “I’ll bet you did. Tit for tat. Knock for knock. That’s all you kids understand these days…”

  “Yes, I was going to bring him here. But after he took my cap, I didn’t. So he won’t get to hear the story, will he?”

  “What story?”

  “The one about that pyjama jacket,” said the boy, pointing.

  “It’s not a pyjama jacket!” protested the carpenter hotly, in defence of his latest carving. “It’s Joseph’s coat-of-many-colours!”

  Jacob married and had twelve sons. Twelve! The eleventh – young Joseph – was a delightful boy. At least, Jacob thought so.

  Joseph was a dreamer – not a daydreamer but a nightdreamer who remembered his dreams when he woke. “Last night I dreamed we were harvesting, and your sheaves bowed down to my sheaf,” he told his eleven brothers. His brothers did not think much of his dream.

  “Last night I dreamed we were all stars in the sky and that you eleven stars all bowed down to me.” Joseph’s brothers did not want to hear this either.

  “Look what Father gave me!” said Joseph, wagging the sleeves of a glorious new coat. “Look at all the colours! Look at the cloth!”

  Joseph’s brothers did not want to look. No father ought to love one son more than all the rest – or if he does, he ought not to let it show. They hated Joseph for his coat and his dreams and his unfair share of love.

  So one day, when J
oseph brought them their lunch – way out in the hills, out of sight of home – they grabbed him, tore off the fancy coat and threw him into a pit.

  Like a crumpled rainbow the coat was laid at old Jacob’s feet. “A terrible accident, Father!” they said. “Dear little Joseph… Some wild animal… All we found was this… He must be dead.” Then the grief in Jacob’s eyes made their lies peter out to a sorry silence.

  But Joseph was not dead. Even hating him the way they did, his brothers had stopped short of murder. They had gone back to the pit, arguing about what to do with him. As they argued, a caravan of camels clanked by, bound for Egypt. “Let’s sell him for a slave!” suggested Judah. And as they watched their hated brother led away, stumbling, dirt-coloured, in the dust behind the camel train, it really seemed that Fate had taken a hand.

  Fate had.

  Suddenly, realizing what a long story he had begun, the carpenter pulled himself up short. “I haven’t got time for this! I’ve got work to do.”

  “All right. I’ll come back tomorrow for the rest. But promise…”

  “Promise? I don’t have to pro–”

  “… if my big brother comes by, don’t tell him that story. It might give him ideas.”

  FAMINE AND PLENTY

  “I suppose he came back?” said a voice the next day. “It wouldn’t be much of a story if Joseph…”

  “Much of a story? Much of a story? The Bible wasn’t written to entertain you, you know!” The chisel trembled in the leathery old hands. “And no, Joseph didn’t come back. He stayed in Egypt. He had a gift, didn’t he? God had given him a gift. Joseph understood dreams – not his own, maybe, but other people’s dreams.”