by Ron Marasco
The worker handed Barley off to Micah’s father, who grabbed Barley’s scruff.
“Idiots!” the father said to the workers. “You missed this one!”
The worker holding the closed sack pointed at Barley and said, “That one’s the runt, my lord. The rat-catcher will have no use for him.”
“That’s true,” the father said. “Hand me another sack and go find me a large rock. We’ll drown him.”
All the while, Barley hung from his scruff, caught in the father’s vise grip. When Micah’s father turned to see what was keeping the worker with the sack, Barley’s vantage point shifted, and his eyes came to rest on his mother.
She was on the ground, with the other worker pressing his knee down on her to keep her still, her snout tied shut by a piece of leather and her eyes wide with terror. And then the men shared a laugh that men sometimes do when they’re being mean.
In that moment, Barley matured a lifetime.
Barley watched as the large worker wrapped his massive arm around his mother’s body, collaring her tightly and lifting her off the ground as she struggled to get free. Then, with his other arm, the man whipped the sack he was holding till the opening parted, and in one wrenching motion the man folded Barley’s mother—hind legs first—into the open sack, leaving only her head peeking out through the opening.
She lifted her eyes and looked over at Barley.
He stared back at her and began to cry, making thin, whistle-like whimpers.
Barley saw his mother’s face and could hear what she was now telling him with her eyes.
“We have to say good-bye now.”
As Barley looked at her, her eyes said many things. They said love and sadness and hope, and all the things a mother could tell her son with a final glance. But they also said one more thing.
They said, “I want you to live.”
Barley was determined to obey his mother.
The instinct rose up from deep inside of him and coursed throughout his tiny body, and before he even knew what he had done . . .
Chomp!
Barley had swiveled his head, lowered it onto one of the father’s long fingers, and bit. The sudden pain made the man open his grip. The second he did, Barley squirmed out of his fingers and dove for the ground.
As he did, the worker reached down to grab the airborne pup but fumbled the large rock he was holding. The rock dropped squarely onto the sandaled toe of Micah’s father just as Barley hit the ground and ran.
“Ahhhh! My foot—you idiot!”
Micah’s father yelped and hopped around in pain ridiculously. Barley tried to speed away, moving his little legs as fast as they would carry him. But he could not outrun Micah’s father, whose long strides were each equal to twenty of Barley’s. Barley realized that running alone was not going to save him. So he looked inside himself for yet another instinct that might allow him to save himself.
Barley bolted in one direction until the father reached that way. Then Barley would halt and, quick as a blink, run in the opposite direction. Then the father would reach that way and, using the same trick, Barley would dart in the opposite direction, each time slipping through the frustrated man’s grasp.
All this racing and darting only made the father angrier and more determined. But just as the raging man was redoubling his efforts to grab the scrambling pup, Barley saw a tiny opening under a perimeter of high swaying reeds. Fast as he could, he fled toward that opening and used his head and paws to push his way into the safety of spiky foliage.
As Barley burrowed his way through the tufts of leaves, his soft fur picked up all manner of spurs and nettles and seeds and buds and leaves and dirt. Barley squirmed forward as fast as he could, farther and farther into the thick foliage. Then he looked up and saw a sight that thrilled him.
Ahead, where sunlight was coming through an opening in the brush, Barley could see a long field of grass with mountains behind it. Barley ran with all his strength toward the field, knowing if he could get there, he would be free.
But then, midstride, Barley’s eyes and ears both told him, “Stop!”
And he skidded in the grass, coming to a stop at the top of a steep embankment with a stream flowing down below, where Barley could hear the fast-moving whoosh of deep, dangerous water. The stream stood between Barley and freedom.
Barley quickly resolved to turn around and head back to the high grass that had previously sheltered him. But as he turned and prepared to hurl himself headlong into the brush—whap! He suddenly hit something hard, running into it full speed, and the impact sent an aching thud through his entire body.
It was the gigantic leg and sandaled foot of the large worker.
Dazed, Barley looked up to see a massive hand coming toward him. Soon he was hoisted into the air and turned around until he could see Micah’s father running toward him, wildly shaking the empty sack. The man’s face was twisted with rage, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes black—a nightmare charging straight at Barley.
The father opened the sack and made short work of dropping Barley into it. He did not even bother with weighing it down, as the other worker was still several yards back, running with a rock. The father simply wanted to be done with the whole aggravating episode.
As his tiny body crumpled down into the deep bottom of the sack, Barley began to cry. Lumped in a small ball, Barley looked back up at the man’s face with the sun’s rays behind him, beaming down on his thick black hair, making his face look like a dark cloud with eyes.
Then, in one sudden second, Barley was in total darkness. He could hear and feel the man tying the top of the sack as quickly and tightly as possible.
And as soon as the man was done, Barley could feel his body flip against the side of the sack as it made a high, dizzying arc through the air, landing with a splash. Barley could feel a floor of terrible cold beneath him that made him shiver in the blackness. And the cold and the dark made the silence inside the bag feel to Barley like he was alone in the universe. All Barley could hear was the sound of his own soft panting and the rushing of the water outside.
Until—very faint at first—Barley heard another sound.
A whisper.
Quiet at first, then more audible, and soon filling the sack.
He began to recognize the sound.
A voice.
A voice saying, sweetly, over and over: “I’m here . . . I’m here . . . I’m here . . .”
CHAPTER 3
I’m here!”
“I’m here, Barley. Wake up, boy.”
Adah’s voice was singsong tender but also strong.
“I’m here, little one. It’s just one of your bad dreams.”
Adah knew Barley’s bad dreams often came if he dozed back off after the tail-wagging happy ones.
“I’m here, pet. Adah’s here.” And she was.
This was not the first time Barley had had a bad dream. In fact, it was a fairly regular occurrence. And each time it happened, Adah would always stop whatever chore she was doing and go to Barley to reassure him, to let him know all was well, that she and Duv were there, by his side, and he had nothing to fear. Barley opened his eyes with a start and looked around blinkingly to reorient himself. It took him a moment to realize that it had been over seven years since the awful day he had dreamed of. And soon his little body eased into the understanding that he was here, safe, with the aroma of dinner filling Adah and Duv’s snug home where he lived with two people who loved him and had saved him from his nightmares.
Duv and Adah’s dinner was almost ready, so that meant it was time for Adah to reach up to the small shelf above the hearth and take down the wooden bowl that Duv had carved for Barley when they first brought him into their home.
It was always the same meal, and it was Barley’s favorite—a few spoonfuls of grain swimming in milk, along with chopped-up pieces of chicken gristle, and the whole thing topped off with a dollop of honey. Barley liked it so much that, some days, he’d wish for sundown to come quicker
so he could get to eat it sooner. Adah set his brimming food bowl down on the hearth in front of the fire, and while she set the table for her and Duv’s dinner, Barley ate his.
This had been the routine each night of his life since they brought him home. And Barley now ate contentedly from the wooden bowl into which Duv had carved his name.
Barley.
Adah and Duv had discovered what his name should be even before they knew he was to come home with them and be theirs.
It happened one afternoon about seven years ago . . .
Adah and Duv were out looking for the kind of wood Duv used to make his figurines. The place he had the best luck finding it was close to one of the large streams on the far side of town. It was a long walk to get there but worth it, because as Duv always said, “The tree already has the sculpture inside—all I do is find it.” So the choice of wood was important.
On this particular afternoon, he and Adah had just found a terrific piece of wood—one of the best in weeks—when they heard an odd sound.
Duv followed the sound through the trees and reeds and riverbank grass as Adah kept pace with him every hurried step of the way. They looked down from the bank, and in a second, they knew where the sound was coming from. They saw a large waterlogged sack that had gotten caught in some low branches of a tree on the bank.
At this point, Barley had been inside the sodden sack for a number of hours and even more miles along the powerful stream’s path through Judea. He had shivered the entire long journey from the icy stream water that had gradually soaked through the bottom few inches of the thick sack. But the sack had stayed afloat. Micah’s father had been so fed up with chasing him that he dumped him in the sack with no rock and tied the top of it so quickly and with such temper that he had knotted the sack that was still full of air. Barley had peered around the sack, thinking of his mother, wanting her there with him so he wouldn’t be alone in the wet dark, moving for miles at a dizzying speed—until it had all stopped, just a short time ago, with a very light bump.
And then stillness.
Barley moved his eyes around, wondering if the sudden stillness meant he was now dead. The frigid water had soaked him through, and he was shaking down to his tiny bones. He had no idea where he was.
Now all he could do was cry.
But even that didn’t work well for him. The cold and sadness had stopped up his throat till he couldn’t even do a very good job of crying. He was shivering so much that almost no sound came out of his weepy, scrunched face: just a few thin, airy, high-pitched puffs of sadness.
But it had been enough for Adah and Duv to hear him.
Duv took the longest, strongest branch he could find on the bank, reaching it down to try to fish the sack out of the water.
“I’ve almost got it.”
“Hurry, Duv! Listen to the poor thing!”
“I’m trying, dear, I’m trying.”
Adah said heart-wrenchingly, “Oh, Duv! Please!”
“I’ve almost . . . almost . . . Ah! Got it!”
With a jolt, Barley could feel the sack start to ride again. This time only a few feet.
Duv used the long branch he broke off to reach out and pull the rapidly deflating sack to the embankment of the stream. Then he brought the sack, hanging now like a sad flag, over to the sunny grass and gingerly laid it down on the ground. Duv tried to open the sack, but the knot was too tight, so Duv took his knife and carefully slit it.
Into Barley’s dark world came a bright flash of light.
He looked up and found himself staring into the lively faces of Adah and Duv, smiling in amazement at what they had just discovered.
Barley was wildly pawing Duv’s strong arm as Duv gently pulled him out of the sack. Immediately he handed the squirming handful to Adah. Duv knew that what this wee fellow was most in need of, at the moment, was a woman’s touch. And sure enough, Adah drew the pup right to her full, warm chest and held him there tenderly until Barley reached up his minuscule snout and licked her softly wrinkled face. After he had calmed a bit, Adah lightly brushed him off and lovingly picked off all the burrs and debris from his sodden off-white fur. As she flicked a last wet kernel off her finger, she said, “Barley. Bits of barley all over the poor little thing.”
Then, after a pause, she exclaimed, “Barley! That’s his name!”
To which Duv said, “Adah, dear—we shouldn’t give him a name unless we intend to keep him.”
But from the moment they had looked into his eyes and seen the pup so thankful to meet them, they knew that Barley would stay with them. Married over thirty years, childless, a comfortable but sometimes too-quiet house—of course he would stay.
Adah put her head down next to Barley’s and felt him press his tiny wet head onto her cheek. “Do you want to come home with us?” she asked, her lips now touching Barley’s head. Then Duv, in a singsong voice as he reached out his hand to pet him lightly, “We would certainly like you to come home with us . . . Barley!”
Now that Barley had finished his dinner, Duv and Adah sat down at the table to begin theirs.
They began, as they always did, by sitting at the small table near the center of the room, lighting a small candle, and saying their evening prayer. Barley watched as Adah and Duv bowed their heads and held each other’s hands across the table and murmured their words of thanks. He could tell—the way dogs sometimes can—that something different was happening at those sweetly solemn moments when he heard his two masters change the tone of their voices and focus intently in a way that made the importance of it all register clearly with Barley.
For years the evening prayer had been said only by Duv, as the man of the household. Every night it would be a little different, depending on whatever good bits of the day the couple was thankful for, or whatever troubles they or the folks they knew were undergoing and for which they prayed for help and better days. Though not a man of many words, Duv would speak with earnestness, thoughtfully and slowly as he tried to put his thoughts into more formal words than usual. The way he did this always made Adah smile, because Duv would do his best to pray by saying words like, “Dear God, we thanketh thou . . . because thou giveth plenty of firewood . . . to keep us from the cold at night . . .”
But that was back before they heard about the Teacher—the Teacher from Galilee whom many people in Judea had been talking about of late.
Ever since then, instead of Duv’s usual prayer, they would bow their heads as always, but then both their voices joined together to say words. They were the exact same words every night, and their voices reciting in unison made a musical sound Barley liked. And some of the words they said would make his ears perk up. Like when they said the part about. “Give us today our daily bread . . .”
Bread!
Barley heard that word, because bread was often the sound Adah made right before she’d stop cooking dinner to toss him a small chunk of old bread, gone crunchy over time. A favorite treat.
Another word Barley would react to was forgive. Adah and Duv said it like it was a special word. It was a word in the prayer they repeated: “. . . and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Duv always squeezed Adah’s hand at the very moment the word was uttered during the prayer, and a glow seemed to spread beyond the dinner table, all the way across the room, to touch Barley.
It had been that way with this word ever since the first time Barley heard it pass from Duv’s lips.
One year ago.
Duv had been out in the garden and had spoken to one of their neighbors, a very nice widow from across the road named Yael—a small lady with soft white hair and a pretty face who was Adah’s good friend. That morning Yael had been telling Duv all the things that were being said by the Teacher from Galilee.
When she spoke about him, Yael did so with a hushed voice, because some people disliked what the Teacher had been saying and thought he should be stopped. But she must have thought it was safe to talk about the Teacher in
front of Barley, because Barley was lounging on the sunny window ledge as Duv and Yael sat chatting down below him in Duv’s little garden.
That afternoon Barley was out with Duv, watching him tend to the plants in the garden, and Barley noticed that, time and again, Duv would stop his work and get lost in thought. And sometimes reach over and pet Barley, even longer and softer than usual.
Near sundown of that same day, Barley and Adah were walking back to the house from the small nearby patch of woods where they went to gather kindling. When they returned home, Duv was sitting in his chair waiting for them. He had something on his mind. He was excited in a way that was not normal for Duv.
“I spoke to Yael today.”
“What?” Adah said, concerned for her friend. “Is she all right?”
“Oh yes, fine, Adah-la.”
Adah-la was what Duv called his wife whenever he was feeling enthusiastic.
“She told me about a word. Just one word. So simple. But it could change people. Change them, Adah-la. Like a miracle! That’s the Teacher’s idea. Forgiveness. That’s the word! To forgive . . . wonderful, no?”
Adah listened intently but didn’t seem to understand her husband.
“The word was such a blessing to me today, Adah-la. You can’t imagine what I did . . .”
“What did you do?”
Duv told her about something that happened earlier that day between him and the man who lived across the street, next to Yael’s house. This man was not a good person. His name was Hazor, and no one on their street trusted him. He was known for being polite to neighbors while talking to them and then being nasty about them behind their backs.
Adah was not fond of this man, and when she spoke of him—which was rare—she got a look on her face that was different than when Barley heard her talk about anyone else. This was understandable because, for one thing, Hazor was also given to petty thievery. He never stole anything that could get him into much trouble with the Roman soldiers who patrolled Judea, just small, everyday things that he could lay his sticky hands on when someone wasn’t looking. He’d pluck a piece of fruit from a tree in a neighbor’s garden as he passed, for example. And, if caught, he’d say the fruit had fallen in his path. Often he would walk across the street to Adah and Duv’s front yard to talk to Duv as Duv worked. Hazor would say, “Duv, my friend, it’s been so long since I’ve said hello!” Afterward they’d notice that their pile of wood by the front door was short a log. Adah used to say, “A hello from Hazor means good-bye to some firewood!”