Fifth Gospel:The Odyssey of a Time Traveler in First-Century Palestine
Page 25
“But the scientists and the technicians at the L-2 Facility …”
“Are sworn to secrecy. And even if they weren’t, none except Dr. Jankor would dare jeopardize his career by telling such a fantastic yarn. No one would believe it. No one would believe Dr. Jankor either, of course, and that’s never stopped him from discussing projects before, but he’s holed up in the New Jersey Pine Barrens working on a new project—an ion propulsion drive for spacecraft. As far as he’s concerned, this project is past history.”
“But my notes …”
“I told you, there’s no way that they can be authenticated. Even if there were, you brought us back nothing new, Lightfoot. The major events and the teachings of Jesus that you recount, well, it’s all been told before.”
“In the other four Gospels,” I said woodenly, experiencing a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. For a time, we both stared moodily into the flickering campfire. “Well, there’s nothing to stop me from telling the whole story,” I said with a flare of defiance.
“There are two things. First, you knowingly and willingly signed that oath when I first met you back in Nellis Air Force Base. It swears you to secrecy until such time as the project is officially declassified by the President of the United States. Second, if you tell this story, you’ll wind up in a rubber room. You know it and I know it.”
“What about Cindy being healed?”
“What about it?” Clarence shrugged. “They don’t see any connection.”
I nodded resignedly. “Well, I guess that’s about it then. I can’t talk about the trip. But there’s nothing to keep me from spreading the Good News.”
“That’s about it,” Clarence affirmed, rising to his feet and shrugging back into the straps of his backpack.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
“Back home. I’ve got a lot of things to attend to if I’m going to start teaching this coming semester.”
“You’re resigning from the Secret Service?”
“Yes, I am. What are you going to do? After the Old Man calmed down, he told me you could have your choice—an Honorable Discharge or a promotion to Major.”
“A discharge sounds good. Thank him for me.”
“Sure. By the way,” he said, carefully extracting a piece of folded fabric from his jacket pocket, “I thought you might want this. I cut it from your first century tunic.” He handed it to me. “Your left sleeve. Is that stain what I think it is?”
I could only stare at the spot and nod. Finally, I found my voice. “That’s right, blood. It’s where I wiped the blade of my knife after cutting through her carotid artery. It’s the blood of Jairus’ daughter.”
The moon was full and incredibly large and bright. A couple of my pals, the coyotes, began to howl at it, in that low, crooning kind of howl, the one they seldom use, the one that does funny things to the hairs on the back of your neck.
Epilogue
More than twenty years have passed since that night in the desert. Clarence returned to College Park, where he has been teaching history at the University of Maryland ever since. All of his students say that he has the ability to really make history come alive. They don’t know the half of it. He has a thousand anecdotes about the great and the near great from his days with Ike, both in the Army and in the Secret Service, but he’ll never tell them. Because Clarence David Jones is that kind of man. Neither will they ever hear (at least from him) the story of a curious experiment that took place in the L-2 Facility at Oak Ridge in the summer of 1959.
Cindy is happily married. She is a beautiful woman with a loving husband, two sons, and a daughter. They live in Alaska, where he is a pipeline engineer.
1st Lt. Clarence Jones, Jr. U.S.A.F., was shot down over North Vietnam on his 24th birthday. To this day, he remains unaccounted for.
The twins went their separate ways. Mark became a statistician and now lives in Chicago, where he works for a major insurance company. Ann got married just recently, and she and her husband run a dairy farm in Wisconsin.
And then there’s my erstwhile companion, Bartholomew. Did he continue to follow Jesus? Clarence did some research and told me that Eusebius, the early fourth century historian and bishop of Caesarea, records that an Alexandrian traveler in India discovered a “Gospel of Matthew,” written in Hebrew and left behind by “Bartholomew, one of the apostles.” According to tradition, Bartholomew was flayed alive in Armenia. It is said that his last words were that there are worse things than death; that he would rather die than betray what he believed in. My friend, I salute you across twenty centuries. Rest in Peace, Bartholomew the Bold, for you went on the biggest adventure of them all.
After being honorably discharged and drifting for about a year, I became a police officer. When I was discharged, I knew I wanted to follow Christ, and, at the time, I thought that meant becoming a minister or a missionary or something like that. It took me a while to realize that each of us has his or her own unique way in which we can best serve our God. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, as long as you use the talents that God gave you, and resolve to do the very best you can. So, after much thought and reading and soul-searching, I returned to the way of the warrior, for those are the talents which He gave me. I have used those talents for twenty years now to protect the lives and property of the men and women in my community.
That community is Pacific Grove, California, located on Monterey Bay, just about a hundred miles south of San Francisco. And the breathtaking beauty of the peninsula and the gentle waves that ceaselessly wash up against its shores are matched only by the beauty and gentle spirit of the girl I met here and married eighteen years ago. Irene is of Polish extraction, and Poles are far more practical and sensible people than either the Chiricahua Apaches or the Irish, if not as spontaneous or quixotic. So we balance each other out, as I’ve found man and wife are meant to do.
Among her many other accomplishments, my wife also does excellent needlepoint. So there are a number of beautifully stitched things in our home. But my favorite hangs framed in my den. It is a course and dirty piece of white woolen fabric with a large bloodstain in its center. Around the borders, Irene has sewn the words, “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
You couldn’t get me to part with it for a million dollars.
Every Christmas, we all gather at Clarence’s home in Maryland. Irene and I, Cindy and her family, Mark, Ann, and until he was shot down, Clarence Junior. It’s a very special time for all of us, but especially for Clarence and me. And for Cindy, because even though Clarence and I never told his kids about the project, the look in her eyes when she finishes reading the Christmas story aloud from the book of Luke, is unmistakable. She knows.
But then, she knew the Truth all along.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Roskey’s published articles have appeared in Military History, Parameters, Military Technical Journal, Soldier of Fortune, Gung-Ho, and other publications. His novel Muffled Shots received accolades from such nationally known military writers as W. E. B. Griffin and J. C. Pollock. During Roskey’s active duty with the US Army, he served as a translator and analyst with both US Army Intelligence and the National Security Agency. Roskey currently lives in Arizona.
Table of Contents
FIFTH GOSPEL:
Fifth Gospel
Contents
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Epilogue
ABOUT THE AUTHOR