The Brother's Keeper

by Tracy Groot

  “‘The water in Samaria is dirtier than pig slop,’” Nathanael quoted.

  “One more word out of you . . .” Judas warned, pointing the end of his mallet at him.

  “Ho, that is not all, lads,” Simon continued. He crossed the room, put his arms about himself, and leaned his shoulder against the stone wall, glaring at Joses, who squatted at the pit. “By this time we were running low on supplies. We had not sold the benches yet, and we had very little food and no money to put up at an inn, so we had to inquire for homes to stay. The first time we inquired, we made the mistake of identifying ourselves. Didn’t we, Joses?”

  A flush appeared on Joses’ cheeks. “I make no pretense that the situation is bad. You blame me, Simon, but it seems I am the only one looking for answers.”

  “Oh, we got an answer that time, did we not? The man threw at us what he had handy—a bucket full of fish guts.”

  “Will you let him talk?” James said between his teeth. He kept his clenched fists fast at his side. He had promised himself he would never strike Simon again.

  “I wanted to know what the people were saying,” Joses said, rubbing his eyes, his voice weary. “The people, just the am ha-aretz. Not the leaders, not the ones trying to stir up another revolt. If I heard one more opinion from a scholar, or a scribe, or an Essene, or a Zealot—especially a Zealot—I would tear out my beard. Or tear out theirs.”

  James kept his surprise hidden. Joses too? Not gentle Joses.

  Joses waited a moment before he continued, studying the embers. When he spoke, it was as if to himself. “It occurred to me on the road to Gaza that Jesus never really went to the leaders . . . he went to the people. I wanted to listen to them; I wanted to see if I could find some of the people whose stories we have heard right in this room. I wanted to look in their eyes. I wanted to hear it from their own lips.”

  “That makes sense.” Nathanael nodded.

  “And what did these people have to say?” Judas asked.

  “Make a good collection of stories someday.” Simon snorted. “I wish I had had my writing materials with me.”

  Joses turned to look Simon up and down. James watched carefully; it was Joses who now expected something out of Simon, and Simon, incredibly, who caught a meaning from Joses’ face and looked away.

  “Simon, why don’t you tell them about the fellow from Decapolis?”

  The sour smirk on Simon’s face gradually lessened. He looked down at his feet. One foot toed at some stone chips not cleared away from a newly made roof roller. He scraped the gravelly chips into a pile.

  “Gone four weeks, and this place is a mess,” he muttered. “And that with a new apprentice.”

  “From Gadarene in Kursi,” Joses prompted quietly.

  Odd, odd, odd, the look on Simon’s face. James realized he was holding his breath. Simon did not act this way. Nobody cowed Simon. Nobody.

  Simon shrugged and chuckled—a nervous chuckle—and said, “All the other stories could have been fabricated.” His grin came down. “This one . . . I still do not know what to make of it.”

  Jude squinted at him. “Gadarene. Is this the one about the demon-possessed man?”

  “Where the demons went into the pigs?” James added.

  “I thought there were two of them,” Nathanael put in. “Men, I mean.” At James’ look, he added, “Not two pigs. I didn’t mean two pigs. This stool is almost finished, by the way.”

  “We only spoke to one man, right, Simon?” Joses said.

  “Yes,” Simon said absently, eyes on the stone chips.

  “Joses?” came a thin call from outside. “Joses!”

  “Abigail,” Joses breathed, his weary face suddenly livened. He hurried to the doorway, quickly brushed a kiss on the mezuzah, and ran outside.

  The rest of them followed Joses outside and watched the big man catch up his wife in a fierce hug. Two children danced around them—Benjamin, his head only reaching Joses’ waist, and sunny little Hepsibah, three years old. Shrieking delight, the children jumped and plucked at Joses’ tunic until finally Benjamin grabbed hold of his belt and scaled Joses’ back. He wrapped his arms around Joses’ neck and lay against his father’s broad back, his short legs dangling.

  Hepsi hooked her hands on Joses’ belt and swung from it. Joses, laughing, released his wife and, putting his arms out, turned in a circle to the joy of the children.

  “What is this?” he exclaimed. “Two little monkeys instead of my children? Where have my children gone? Benjamin!” he pretended to call to the hills between cupped hands. “Hepsibah! Where are you?”

  “I am here, Abba, I am here,” Hepsi piped, releasing his belt to tug on his sleeve.

  “What? Where?” Joses looked all around, then down. “Oh, there you are!” He knelt to scoop her up.

  James folded his arms and leaned against the doorway. It did not take long for Abigail, once she knew Joses was all right, to chide her husband about his long absence. With both children hanging from his neck, one in the back and one in the front, Joses pleaded with his hands while Abigail planted her own firmly on her hips. They started for their home, talking as they went.

  Joses would be back in the early afternoon, after the midday meal. Sabbath began at sundown; there were the preparations, so he knew Joses would not tarry. James turned to look at Simon, who stood apart, watching Joses and Abigail leave. Soon he would learn of the news that had bested Simon. And Simon would learn of the visitor to the workshop this morning.

  He watched the family head for the back ridge, which would take them to the path through the terraced strips of land. Poor Joses. Raziel from Kerioth might be the one to make him pluck his beard.

  Joses’ words were enough to make James pluck his own. That which James had ignored, that which had lurked since the beginning, was given form and could never be taken back. There is nothing left for us to do but decide if we are for him or against him.

  6

  WHAT WOULD HIS FRIENDS in Caesarea say if they saw him? He could hear Theudas and Zadok ben Zakkai now.

  You may look like Nathanael, but our Nathanael would not bow his head before a meal. Our Nathanael would not think twice about uttering a curse word. And, heaven help us, our Nathanael would not kiss a mezuzah.

  That last, of course, had been done when no one was looking. James was on a visit to the brush; Jorah and her mother were in the courtyard. Nathanael had been hauling a block of stone into the workroom, and suddenly he had paused at the rectangular metal ornament fixed onto the right-hand side of the doorpost, and even more suddenly put a kiss on it. The action had put instant fire in his cheeks, and he had glanced about quickly to be sure no one had seen him.

  It was not the only thing Nathanael had surprised himself with these days. If he were not careful, he would end up religious. We are Jews of the land, he and his friends would fiercely declare, the am ha-aretz. Who needed all the baubles and bluffery that belonged to the religious?

  But here was something different; he knew it the first day he came. It was not just this home, and it was not Nazareth . . . it was Annika. He had met her nearly two weeks ago, when he passed her in the street. Not that Annika herself drew his interest, but rather that she was talking to a beggar. That brought the second look. Nobody talked to beggars. You flipped a beggar a copper pruta, if the beggar were lucky that day. You stepped around beggars; you ignored them. You did not talk to them. Or talk with them. Annika had been sitting on her ample haunches, listening to the legless pauper speak. He would have taken her for a beggar herself, but for the fact that she was swathed in a fine weave of linen.

  He knew fabric. His mother’s “visitors” often gave her gifts of finely woven cotton from Egypt, sometimes silken lengths from the East. Nathanael, lad, look at this color . . . have you ever seen a finer indigo? Nathanael, look at this cloth . . . doesn’t it feel like milkweed down? He had been with his mother on countless trips to trade for fabric, her face always veiled in frothy layers of multicolored scarves.


  What if his mother could see him now?

  He would sooner eat a stone roof roller, chip by chip, than admit to one of his friends that living with religious people was not so bad. In fact, despite the multitudinous precepts these poor people had to remember, Nathanael found the experience rather . . . nice. In a quaint, amusing sort of way, of course.

  A mezuzah set in every passageway. Prayers before and after meals. Blessings said before the prayers. Wash your hands. (But they are not dirty.) Wash them anyway. Do not drink that water; it was standing uncovered. (But I am thirsty.) It is forbidden. Torah reading, Nathanael. (Didn’t we do that already?) Twice, Nathanael. Twice daily. Prayers, Nathanael. (But we just . . .) Three times, lad. (He did not point out to them, as a testament to his longsuffering, that the Shema recited in the morning and the evening actually made the prayer number five times a day. For some reason they did not count that.) The obligations seemed to come just when he was at a crucial point in a project. At one time—not so long ago—the whole crazy situation would have sent him hollering into the hills . . . but at least these people were genuine, like old Thomas and Sarah back home, and that made it tolerable. He had a soft spot for genuine people, religious or not.

  There were other things. Meals on time, as scheduled as the rise of the sun. Breakfast at Annika’s, a light midmeal at James’—try as he might, he could not call the place “Mary’s” as Annika did—and another meal when he arrived at twilight at Annika’s. And the portions! Annika cooked for him as though he were three, and was offended if he did not eat in kind. He had learned to eat less at the midmeal to be extra hungry in the evening.

  His missed his mother, to be sure. And Caesarea Maritima was a much bigger city than Nazareth, more to see, more to do. They had a gymnasium in Caesarea, and an amphitheater. And, of course, they had Herod the Great’s famous harbor, as magnificent as the Piraeus in Athens. The Jewish enclave was smaller in Caesarea; there were more Greeks, more culture. What was in Nazareth? Dirty sheep. Superstitious, backward farmers. Not much to draw a person here.

  “More figs, Nathanael?” Jorah asked, offering a plate piled with dried fruit. He took a few and nodded to her, planning to whisk them into a fold in his tunic when she was not looking. She might not understand about Annika’s meals. Sometimes it went that way with women; you had to insult one to please another.

  He glanced about the enclosed courtyard while Simon droned on to James and Judas and the women about his journey. Nathanael gave a languid yawn and a stretch, and hoped Simon noticed his lack of interest. He did not like Simon. The man was a whiner, with no imagination.

  Nathanael had planned to regale James and Jorah, and now Judas, with another tale from Caesarea, as he had every midmeal this past week. He had been thinking on what to tell early this morning, before the ordeal with Raziel. It was almost pathetic the way they had eagerly paid Nathanael attention for his stories. What tale he could not remember he made up, and the misadventures of his friends became his own. Anything to distract these people from what loomed beneath. He could always tell a story better than Zadok ben Zakkai anyway.

  But this Simon had them plod through every step of the boring journey to Gaza, through every tiny insult suffered from people with as little imagination as Simon himself. James’ somber face would have been bright if it were Nathanael they gave attention to. He gusted a sigh, which he hoped Mary interpreted as a happy-stomach sigh and Simon a bored, brainless one.

  Who cared that Simon and Joses were refused a trade in Gaza because Jesus had insulted a Temple leader? This family had better grow a skin as thick as the calluses on Judas’ hands if they planned on surviving ritual humiliation. Was he not the son of a harlot? They didn’t hear him whining about it. And after a while, it was not humiliation at all. It was life; you dealt with it. Sure, it stings at first, once you realize what the fools are saying. Blisters come before calluses. But you learn to be smarter than the fools who cast the insults, faster with your wit and quicker with your hands—it wasn’t only a gecko Nathanael could hit with a rock at fifty paces.

  He caught a glance from Jorah, and quickly looked away. Jorah he had not expected. She was different from most of the girls he knew. She had a sense of humor, and so far did not appear to be ridiculous. She could also make a man look twice with or without a fine weave of linen. Somehow Jorah managed to confuse his purpose here. With her, it was easy to imagine that he really was just a driftabout apprentice, fresh to Nazareth and looking for work, a man who had seen a bit of the world and would indulge them with a story or two.

  He had not expected any of them.

  Luckily for him, he had a friend who knew the carpenter’s trade. The bit about his uncle was not true; he did not have an uncle. But he had spent enough time with his friend to gain a fact or two about working with stone and wood. He had enough handy memories to bluff his way into this shop.

  His friends knew many things about him, but they did not know all. And this he could never have explained. How, one day when lounging about with his companions on the harbor in Caesarea, he had heard a voice his friends did not. They thought his newly pale face was from a stomach rebelling at too much wine the night before; they had chuckled as he staggered from the group, waving off the laughter that followed.

  This he did not tell them, how the voice that day said, Seek James, how nothing he could do would make the compulsion leave, and how sometimes at night he would rise in a sweat to stand on a hill and gaze somewhere east. How one day he finally packed a few things and left, determined to seek until he found.

  No, Jorah he did not expect. Neither kind Mary, who gave the religious as good a name as Thomas and Sarah—nor Annika, whose severe appearance cloaked a heart filled with a fierce, two-fisted goodness. Judas he had known barely a day and liked him already, and Simon he had known less than half a day and did not. Nathanael figured Joses to be the smartest one in the lot—the most sensible one, anyway, asking questions and using his imagination to muddle through a hard family crisis—but James . . . James, though he had known him a week, knew him better than the rest and liked him best of all—James he could not figure out.

  He looked at him now, seated next to Simon, scooping spiced barley with his bread from the bowl on the tripod table. His face dark, James chewed thoughtfully as he listened to Simon describe yet another snubbing. Nathanael threw a glare at Simon—why couldn’t they talk about something else?—and resumed his study of James.

  Though he had to be thirty years old, he supposed the girls would still think James handsome. Truth to tell, probably not as handsome as Nathanael himself. But he did have a brilliant smile, at the rare times he showed it, freshening up his whole face. And the dark-brown eyes, usually muddy with anxiety, sometimes glittered with an amusement Nathanael suspected was formerly common.

  He would doubt his right hand sooner than he would doubt the compulsion to come here. He never doubted the compulsion. But the reason, yes, that he questioned.

  He had only lived with Annika a few days before he confided his real reason for being in Nazareth. Something about Annika made him trust her. Something made him believe she wouldn’t think he was crazy, and she didn’t. After airily informing him that she never had believed his story of searching for a long-lost brother, Annika herself came up with the idea for apprenticeship. Nathanael had thought that the reason for Seek James would become plain as soon as he met the one whose name the voice had spoken. But nothing extraordinary happened the moment he met James. That didn’t come until a Zealot named Avi walked through the door.

  He couldn’t keep a smile back as he remembered the way James had laughed like a child at the sudden departure of Avi and his friend. His smile came down. What James did not know, what James could not see, was the flush of indignation that had risen like a sudden storm and had carried him to Avi with the gouge adze. Placid as a rock on the outside, huge with fury on the inside, Nathanael had played his part as though born for it. That fissure of power he had fel
t within gave sudden shape to his reason to seek James.

  Seek James surely had meant for him first to find and then to protect. What else could it mean? What else did the son of a whore have to offer, except muscle for expulsion and humor to lighten the load?

  He never asked questions about the oldest brother, upon whom it all seemed to pivot. There would be time for that later. Now was the time to obey the compulsion without question. James and the others thought the situation was bad. Nathanael glanced toward the curtained passage to the workroom and beyond; they had no idea.

  Joses had said it was bigger, and so it was. He was the only one who seemed to sense it. Who cared if a few people came to insult them and be bothersome, or if others came to marvel and collect tokens? Tossing out those pests was the easy part. But what of the black clouds, which Nathanael thought he could see if he turned around fast enough? What of that?

  “And then he gave me the haughtiest look and turned his back on me,” Simon sniveled like a mewling babe.

  Any other time, a person who irritated him like this spineless whelp would have gotten a fist in the face. Any other time, he would have called rude things to Jorah if he had seen her in the market with his companions. He shook his head ruefully. Simon’s face remained intact, a marvel in itself, and God help the one who was rude to Jorah. He was a commissioned man, sent like a prophet of old. He did not have time for petty things like a whiner or a pretty face. He allowed himself a very small smile. Yes, his friends would be astonished to see him now.

  “I want to hear about the fellow from Decapolis,” Judas said to Simon. Nathanael smirked; if he himself caught the subtle taunt in those words, then surely Simon did too.

  Simon shifted position on the low couch. He leaned to poke at the fruit on the tray and chose a fig. He shrugged. “What is there to say? You have already heard about it. The fellow stuck to the same story.”

  “Oh no,” James said, folding his arms and fixing Simon with a determined grin. “Tell us, or we’ll get Joses to.”