The Jesse Tree

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  “What was the baby called?”

  The carpenter pinched the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb. “You make me weary with your everlasting questions. Let me see now. Obed. The child’s name was Obed.”

  “And what are you going to carve for him?”

  The carpenter waved his chisel irritably. “Obed’s not important. He just grew up to be the father of Jesse and the grandfather of –”

  “At last! Jesse!” exclaimed the boy loudly, and set the church ringing. “Jesse of the Jesse tree!” The boy padded away down the church aisle. His hair was dry now. At the door he turned and called, “Obed was important, I bet! To Ruth and Boaz, I bet!”

  “I didn’t mean –” said the old man, but the church door banged, and he was alone. He went back to his work, but found himself saying (as if the boy were still there), “I didn’t mean he wasn’t important. I only meant that Obed doesn’t have a story – written down – in the Bible. That’s all I meant.” And he carved a little O above the sheaf of corn – O for Obed. It was only as big as a grain of corn or a teardrop. No one would know it was there, except him. But it made him feel better, knowing he had not left out Obed altogether.

  “SPEAK, LORD, FOR YOUR SERVANT IS LISTENING”

  “Be careful where you step! I put down my spectacles somewhere and now I can’t find them.” The carpenter was in a towering rage. His woodworking tools lay scattered at the foot of the Jesse tree: without his glasses he could not see to work. Without his glasses he could not see to find his glasses.

  The boy bounded about the church, searching the side chapels and looking under the pews. “You should have a spare pair.”

  “Do you think I’m made of money?”

  “A spare pair of eyes, I meant. What’s this you’re carving? It looks like Aladdin’s lamp.” He returned to the Jesse tree and stood rubbing it with a cuff of his sweatshirt.

  “It’s a cruse of oil,” growled the carpenter. “In the old days, a man became king only when the high priest anointed his head with holy oil.”

  “So is this a story about a king or a priest?”

  “What story? Was I telling a story?”

  “You may as well,” said the boy, making himself comfortable. “Until your glasses turn up.”

  There was once a woman who so longed for a child that she made a deal with God. “Grant me a son, Lord,” she prayed, “and I’ll give him back to you!” True to her word, when Samuel was born, his mother loved him, nursed him, enjoyed and taught him… then gave him up to be a servant in the temple at Shiloh.

  Eli, the high priest, was a very old man – older than I am – and blind, pretty near blind. He had sons who would take over from him when he died. But, in the meantime, he had Samuel to be his hands and eyes. Priest and boy lived out their days and nights in the temple, sleeping on the floor, in the big darkness. During the day, there was always noise – singing, chanting, the murmur of doves, the twitter of sparrows. At night, the silence was solid black. But it held no terror for either of them. Eli’s whole world was dark, and for Samuel there was the glimmer of the sacred lamp burning like a single, watchful eye.

  “Samuel! Samuel!”

  The boy raised himself up on one elbow. The words had awoken him. The old priest plainly needed him; perhaps he was ill. Jumping up, Samuel ran to Eli’s side. “Yes, master? Here I am.”

  “What’s the matter, child?” said Eli, bleary with sleep.

  “You called, so I came.”

  “I did not call. Go back to sleep, child.”

  Samuel went and lay down again.

  “Samuel! Samuel!” It was a gentle voice and very familiar. Samuel jumped up at once and hurried to Eli’s side. “Here I am, master.”

  “I did not call,” said the old priest, opening his blind eyes. “You are dreaming a lot tonight.”

  So Samuel went back to bed. But again the voice called to him, “Samuel! Samuel!”

  Samuel felt his way through the darkness to Eli’s side. “You did call, master. You did!”

  Then Eli understood. “Go back to bed, child, and if the voice calls again say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

  All his short life, Samuel had been trained to obey without question or quibble. He went back and laid his head down, though his eyes strained open in the darkness and his heart was jumping.

  “Samuel! Samuel!” called the voice, patiently awaiting an answer.

  Samuel knelt up on his bedroll. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!”

  And God spoke to him: out of the gentle dark, out of the glow of the sacred lamp, or out of the most distant galaxy. “I have news for Eli – bad news – and you must be the one to break it. His sons are not fit to do the work their father has done. They will not live to take his place. You are my choice, Samuel. You are the one I need.”

  When the voice fell silent, Samuel did not want to tell the good old man such crushing news. But the next morning, Eli was anxious to know: “What did God say to you, boy? What secrets did he entrust to you?”

  Samuel was afraid that his words would kill the old man then and there, but he spoke them faithfully, and Eli nodded, fixing his shineless eyes on the shineless future. Then he patted the air with a trembling hand. “God is good,” he said. “Let it come.”

  The Jesse tree stood incomplete. Its lower branches were crowded with leaves and symbols, but the upper branches were still trapped inside the slab of oak, like something ancient and only part-unearthed.

  “I see them!” cried the boy, his sharp eyes catching the glint of glass on a stone window ledge. He ran and fetched the spectacles, and the carpenter, after dabbing his eyes, crammed the glasses back onto his face.

  “Shoo now!” he growled. “I’ve wasted enough time today. I have to get on.”

  “I thought it would be Jesse today,” called the boy from the porch. “After the O you carved for Obed.”

  “O? What O? Oh, that O,” said the carpenter gruffly. “Today Samuel, tomorrow Jesse.” Then he wondered why he had said it. The boy would come back now for sure, expecting another story.

  THE SHEPHERD KING

  It was not the grief of his sons’ deaths that killed Eli. In the temple at Shiloh was kept Israel’s most precious treasure: the ark of the covenant. One day …

  “What, Noah’s ark, you mean?” the boy interrupted.

  “Ignorant child! This happened hundreds, maybe thousands of years after the flood.”

  No, the ark of the covenant was a wooden box with carved angels decorating it. (What a piece of work it must have been!) It was used to hold the Ten Commandments, God’s holy laws, and it was the holiest thing in all Israel. The mere sight of it made the Israelites feel invincible! Well, the hostile Philistines knew this, and when the ark was taken into battle, they attacked and captured it, knowing the loss would rip the very heart out of Israel. When Eli heard the news, he died of grief.

  Samuel became priest instead of Eli’s sons. As he grew older, God would often stoop down to whisper in his ear – news, commands, encouragement. It was time for Israel to have a king, said God, and Samuel was the one to anoint that king.

  The man Samuel anointed first was Saul: a great man, a great soldier. Saul was like a pillar of fire leading the Israelites through every hardship, keeping them safe from their enemies.

  But power does strange things to people. Saul began to forget that his crown had been given to him by God. He took no notice of Samuel’s advice. Things started to go wrong. Seeing their chance, Israel’s enemies closed in, like prowling wolves when a campfire goes out.

  Samuel was a prophet. Not only could he hear God’s voice, but he could see forward through time, as through a dazzle of light. Soon he could foresee a time when Saul would not be king. God even told him where to look for Saul’s replacement: among the sons of Jesse. But which of Jesse’s many sons should he choose? That was the question.

  They were all fine, strong boys, tall and muscular. They might all ma
ke good warriors in the king’s army. As Samuel met first one, then another, then a third, no lamp flickered in his soul; no voice spoke to him out of the farthest galaxies, saying, “This is the one.” “Are these all the sons you have?” he asked Jesse.

  “All but for David, my youngest. He’s out with the sheep,” said Jesse.

  David was sent for, and Samuel studied him, like a shepherd examining a newborn lamb… Yes. There it was. The face he had been waiting to see. He anointed David with holy oil – just as he might a king. “Say nothing,” he told father and son. “Not now. Not yet.”

  Times were bad: the Philistines were winning the war. David’s older brothers went to fight in the king’s army, but David was too young. He was trusted with no more than fetching and carrying. “Take your brothers these rations, David,” said Jesse. “And come straight back.”

  Long before David reached the camp of King Saul, he could hear the Philistine army jeering. Even as he handed his brothers the cheese and bread and raisins, he could hear the sneering jibes coming from across the valley: the laughter and the catcalls. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “The Philistines have issued a challenge – their champion against ours – and there’s no one to answer it.”

  “Why? Is he so terrifying?” asked David.

  “Have you seen him?” groaned a nearby soldier. “Tall as a horse!”

  “Broad as a bull!” said another.

  “Twice the size of a normal man! We don’t stand a chance…”

  Inside his tent, King Saul fumed with helpless rage. “Does no one dare fight this man-mountain? Is Israel full of cowards?”

  But it was not a matter of cowardice. If one brave soul was to fight Goliath and lose, then all Israel would be lost. And no one wanted to be responsible for that.

  “There’s a boy here, who says he will fight,” said the guard at the tent doorway.

  It was David.

  At first, Saul laughed and turned his back. But David ducked inside the tent. “Out in the fields, guarding my father’s sheep, I’ve fought off a lion before now – wolves and bears… God helped me then. How much worse can this big bully be?”

  There must have been something in the boy’s face – the same thing Samuel had seen. King Saul believed him. In fact, he began to take off his armour and hang it on David’s small frame: leather tunic, chain mail, a big brass helmet. David sagged under the weight, like a tree under snow. His legs bowed. “I can’t wear this!” he protested. And he went, as he was, to fight the giant called Goliath.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU SENT ME? A STICK TO PICK MY TEETH WITH?” roared Goliath. He cast a shadow as big as a building.

  David bent down as he crossed the stream, chose a handful of round pebbles and put them into his shepherd’s bag.

  “DO THE ISRAELITES THINK I WILL LAUGH MYSELF TO DEATH?” snorted Goliath. The noise of his armour was like a cart rattling over bumpy ground. David fitted a stone into the pouch of his sling. “COME CLOSER, BOY, AND I’LL PULL YOU LIKE A WISHBONE!” boomed Goliath. His massive feet raised clouds of dust, as if he were ablaze.

  But David did not need to go any closer. He whirled his sling – it made a high, eerie whooping – then let the pebble fly.

  “WELL? ARE YOU GOING TO FIGHT ME OR JUST ST–” The giant broke off, his mouth a black circle of surprise. He reeled, he staggered. His hand went up to his forehead. Then he fell. The ground shuddered.

  With a single gasp, the Philistines began to run. They had lost their champion; they had lost their advantage. The Israelites went after them like cats after mice.

  King Saul gazed at the shepherd boy David with admiration and joy. “From today I shall keep you by me all the time!” he declared, and hugged the boy close. Sweat from his throat trickled down onto David’s hair, just like the oil used to anoint a king.

  “King Saul should have known,” said the boy, “that David was more of a threat than Goliath.”

  The carpenter looked at him sharply. “Saul was his own worst enemy. He had a dirty temper and fits of black misery. David could play the harp; sometimes that soothed Saul’s dark moods. But sometimes Saul would still throw things and rant and curse like a madman.”

  The boy gave a lopsided sort of smile and looked firmly at the floor. “Some people are like that,” he said. “They can’t help it.”

  DANCING

  A car had parked outside the church and its radio was playing very loudly – a thump-thumping rhythm which made the water in the font ripple. The boy jumped about to the music, trying to tap his bare heels together in mid-air.

  “Confounded racket,” complained the old man. “Stop that jigging, can’t you? Remember where you are.”

  “Is that another rule? No dancing in church?”

  The carpenter made a noise like a grumpy camel. “Humph. Do you want me to go on telling you about David or not?”

  Luckily, David found a good friend in the king’s son, Jonathan. In fact, David and Jonathan became the kind of friends who start singing in the same key, who start speaking at the same moment. They were inseparable. Together, David and Jonathan and King Saul scythed down the Philistines like a field of corn. As the conquering army trooped home, women and girls came out to dance and sing in the streets. “Saul has killed thousands! David has killed tens of thousands!”

  Over and over, Saul muttered the words under his breath. They rankled. “David… tens of thousands.” Jealousy chewed on him like a dog. Suddenly the mere sight of David sitting there, plucking a gentle tune on his harp, was enough to cloud Saul’s vision with red smoke. Picking up a spear, he hurled it.

  David ducked. The spear hit the wall and stuck there, trembling. David fled.

  Jonathan went after him. “Stop! Wait! I can talk my father around! I’ve done it before, haven’t I?” The friends clung to each other, dreading the power and spite of the king. “Hide there, behind those rocks,” said Jonathan. “Tomorrow I’ll come and practise archery here. If I shoot short, it means it’s safe for you to come back. If I shoot past you…”

  It did not bear thinking about: for best friends to be parted.

  The next day Jonathan went out with his bow. His fingers fumbled the bowstring. His arrows flew, with a noise like sucking breath, way out over the rocks, over the crouching figure of David.

  David had to leave: it was no longer safe to stay. Madness, like a raven, sat on the king’s shoulder, whispering terrible thoughts into his ear. Saul now looked on David as an enemy to be hunted down and killed.

  David could have fought back: he was a good enough soldier. Once he even chanced on Saul in a cave and could have killed him then and there. But David settled for slicing the fringe off Saul’s cloak. “If I wanted to kill you, I could have done so today,” he said, half reproachful, half taunting, “but I would never lift a finger against you.”

  Saul’s heart was no more softened than a stone in a stream. He went to war with David, body and soul.

  Faced with this madness, some of Saul’s troops deserted him and went over to David’s side. The Philistines, meanwhile, rubbed their hands with glee and closed in for the kill. In a disastrous battle, Saul and three of his sons were killed. One of those sons was Jonathan.

  “Oh, Jonathan! Jonathan!” The cry that broke from David’s throat was like a bell falling from its tower to break. Thanks to the Philistines, David had become king of Israel… and he was inconsolable.

  But King David believed in God and he believed in Israel. He pulled together that unhappy, divided nation, and rode out to conquer her enemies. When the fighting was over, David determined to take the ark of the covenant (abandoned by the superstitious Philistines) to God’s holy city, Jerusalem!

  It had been carried into battle, stored in tents and private houses, traipsed through deserts and over mountains… Now David brought it on a brand new cart, escorted by a handpicked guard of thirty thousand men. And there were cymbals clashing, tambourines rattling, pipes and lyres and bells, and he danced and he dan
ced …

  What with the music pounding on the car radio outside, the boy, too, began to dance, eyes shut, both hands raised, swaying in time to the beat.

  With a clatter, the church door opened and a lady with her arms full of gladioli came in. At the sight of a barefoot boy dancing up and down the aisle, her mouth and eyes narrowed to slits. “What is that child doing, Mr Butterfield?”

  The carpenter’s mild reply shocked her even more: “Just dancing, Mrs Grimley. Like King David did in Jerusalem. Dancing before the Lord.”

  THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

  Near the cruse of oil that stood for Samuel, Mr Butterfield had carved a sling and a crown to represent King David. Close by, he carved a gateway: two pillars and a portico over the top.

  “Is that David’s palace?” asked the boy. The carpenter had grown so used to these daily visits that he no longer jumped when a shadow fell across his work and a small finger reached out to stroke the wood.

  “It is the great Temple in Jerusalem. Solomon’s Temple. You must have heard of Solomon. There were fairy tales written about him, he was so famous. Flying carpets, genies in bottles, that sort of nonsense.”

  “Can’t you do genies, then?” said the boy, as if gates were boring by comparison.

  “I’m not carving fairy stories; I’m carving Bible stories… At least I would be if people would just let me get on. Solomon’s Temple was real.” And before anyone asked him to, he was telling the story of Solomon’s Temple.