by Ron Marasco
Barley instinctively backed away. As he did, the two men fought in a way that made their bodies and squealing voices seem like a single, ridiculous animal. As their violent and awkward wrestling continued, the stocky fellow Barley had noticed sitting by the fire, the one known as Hog, began to laugh loudly at the sight.
The strong-looking man with the interesting nose stood straight up. He took a few quick, robust strides over to where the two men were scuffling. As he approached, Barley could see by the confident glare in this tall man’s eyes that he was going to take charge of things. And sure enough, the man grabbed the attacker’s collar and with one nimble but forceful motion, wrenched the stunned man off the old fellow and launched the bully into the air—so fast and so far that the would-be attacker toppled back onto his humiliated backside.
Barley was impressed. He stood in the shadows, watching as the old man’s protector finished dispatching the young rogue.
“Make trouble again and I’ll shove you into the fire,” the strong man said through gritted teeth. Then he pointed at the still-laughing Hog and said, “And I’ll let that fat man over there eat your sneaky little carcass for supper!”
The young man stood up nervously and, after taking one look at the fight-hardened body and ferocious expression of the man who’d just flattened him, ran away as fast and as far as he could.
Once the troublemaker was gone, the strong man turned to the ghostly-eyed fellow, who was clutching whatever the other man had tried to get from his tightly clenched hands.
“You are not hurt, old man. Don’t fear. He won’t trouble you again.”
The old man mumbled words that no one could understand, pulled what he was protecting in his hands tightly to his chest, and finally said one tentative word.
“B-b-bread.”
“No fears, old sir. I won’t let anyone take your bread. It’s good that you know to hold it tight.”
And the old man said it again.
“Bread . . .”
Then he showed the man who had saved him what he was clutching so tightly and trying to protect.
It was a stone.
CHAPTER 6
Samid.
That’s what the strong man was called.
Barley watched as Samid picked up the stick he was using to roast a very sorry-looking chunk of meat. Samid gave it a sniff and returned it to the fire to finish cooking. As the fatty meat roasted, the smell was carried on the wind to Barley’s snout. But since a dog’s instinct is to focus on potential danger first and food next, Barley was focused first and foremost on observing this group of humans to see if they were dangerous or approachable.
“Hey, Samid.” The stout guy laughed at the taller in a way that told Barley this was the name of the man he liked. “Why did you bother that guy?”
“He stole,” Samid said bluntly.
“So. I stole that,” Hog chuckled, pointing to the sizzling meat his friend was roasting. “I stole it from Cracked Amos—I told you.”
“I don’t like Cracked Amos,” Samid said. “I like that old guy.”
“Then why didn’t you beat the guy who stole half to death, like you usually do?” Hog laughed his nasty laugh. “I could use the entertainment.”
“Because there’s a lady present,” Samid said.
“Prisca is no lady,” Hog sniggered as he nudged the woman. “This tarty baggage?”
“Shut your rude face.” Samid was serious.
“Samid’s gone soft,” Hog sneered.
“You’ll see how soft I am when I break your face for you!”
“You can’t hit me,” Hog jeered. “There’s a lady present.”
“But the lady can hit you,” Prisca said as she gave Hog the back of her hand, knocking him off the rock so that his wine splattered all over the ground. Samid and Prisca roared with laughter, and Hog screamed a stream of words that included “wench,” “hellcat,” “fool,” “plague,” and “dung.”
Barley had seen and heard enough to know these were very different creatures from Adah and Duv. Their voices were not soft and kind. These people spoke harshly, laughed gruffly, and touched each other in a way that Barley didn’t know was playing or fighting. This scared Barley—but there was also something intriguing about their ways.
“This meat smells rancid,” Hog grumbled.
“We’re fortunate to have it,” Prisca said.
“The fortunate don’t live in this pit,” Samid said, taking the stick out of the dying fire. He laid the meat on a large rock and began to divide it up, tearing pieces off as its musky juices dripped over the small, severed chunks.
Barley stood there smelling the meat. The hunger he had been ignoring suddenly felt bottomless. But as starved as he was, Barley was still too scared to move near the food or the fire. Though he imagined how nice it would be to take a big bite out of the juicy meat, he had already seen what had happened to the fellow who tried to steal from the old man.
Instead, Barley lay on his belly, his paws in front of him, staring longingly at the food. He resolved to remain still, sitting there, watching quietly.
What Barley did not know was that the distressing events of the day—the panic, the sadness, the running, the hunger, the cold, the loneliness, the memories of his mother, the loss of Adah and Duv—were rising up inside him and, without realizing it, he was too exhausted to hold it all back.
Without even meaning to, Barley had begun to cry.
The soft whimpers came out of Barley involuntarily, high-pitched and plaintive. And then a loud sound escaped from his salivating mouth and, in one full note, rang through the air.
Barley had accidentally barked at the meat.
The heads of the three people at the fire turned with a quick twist toward the sound, and Barley saw three sets of surprised eyes staring at him. His thin legs quivered with fear.
And then something wonderful happened.
The lips of the strong man named Samid parted, and Barley noticed two things. First, some of the man’s teeth were broken. But the second thing Barley noticed was that he didn’t care what sort of teeth the man had, because the fact was, this man—who had been surprised by the presence of Barley—was now smiling.
“Well, well, well,” Samid said cheerily, his flattened nose widening out into a fully grinning face. “What have we here?”
“It’s a dog,” offered Hog.
“Thank you, idiot. I know that.”
Then Prisca spoke up. “Samid, he could be dangerous—wild or vicious.”
But Samid said with a grin as he peered over at Barley, “That little thing? No.”
Then the squat man piped in with, “Throw a rock at it, Samid!”
“Shut your nasty mouth! No one’s throwing anything at him. I think it’s a him.”
Prisca laughed and said, “Looks hungry. And most hims usually do.”
Samid took the stick with the roasting meat out of the fire. He tore off a juicy hunk and lifted it toward his mouth.
Barley thought it was hard enough to watch him roast it, but watching this man eat it would be unbearable.
But instead of putting it in his mouth, Samid blew on it a few times.
Then he did something that amazed Barley. He reached out his hand that was holding the meat right in the direction of Barley. He gazed into Barley’s eyes, smiling with his broken teeth, and said enticingly, “Come here . . . boy.”
Barley was hungrier than he had ever been in his life, and the meat he was gazing at dripped warm and luscious. Barley was also pleased because the man had called him “boy.” Even though his name was Barley, on his evening walks with Duv—the evening walk Barley never got to go on tonight—Duv would call him “Barley boy.”
Barley began to walk tentatively toward the meat, inching forward slowly as Samid reassured him.
“Here, boy . . . Here you go . . . Come here . . . This is for you.”
Barley finally got close enough for Samid to hold the meat right in front of his face. Barley opened hi
s mouth slightly, closed his teeth down around the soft meat, took it slowly from the man’s hand, and, lying down on his belly and using his paws to hold and maneuver it, had his first food in many hours. As Barley gnawed, the man petted the top of Barley’s head with a hand that felt almost as rough as tree bark, but that moved with gentleness up and down Barley’s small head.
Hog poured some wine from his jug into the palm of his hand and held it out toward Barley, laughing.
“Here, dog. Wash it down with some wine—”
Moving so fast and roughly it scared Barley, Samid swatted Hog’s hand away, splashing the wine into the fire, and grabbed the stocky little man by the throat.
“Don’t you dare give wine to my dog, you fool!”
“Your dog?”
And then Samid smiled as Barley went back to eating, and he went back to petting, and Hog sipped what wine was left in his clay cup.
Though happily occupied eating, Barley did wonder at how this man could go so quickly from kind to angry and then back to nice again.
But he liked this man.
“Watch him. I’ll be right back.”
And Samid got up and walked away. Barley hoped the man would come back, because the two people he was left with seemed meaner. The lady less so, but the squat man who tried to give Barley the wine was someone Adah would have called a “no-good one.”
“Samid,” Hog yelled laughingly into the dark, “find some more wine, or I’m going to roast your dog!”
From far off, Barley heard Samid yell back, “I’ll roast you with an apple in your mouth, like the pig you are!”
Hog went back to sipping the last of his wine as the lady came over and began to pet Barley in a way that made him like her a little more. Unlike Samid, her teeth were intact and pretty. She had green eyes and dark eyebrows and a voice that was a bit husky and sad-sounding. Barley liked the way she softly tickled him under his chin with one hand and reached down and scratched the front of his belly with her long nails.
After a few moments of this, he rolled over onto his back, content to be comforted. He was only there for a few moments when he flipped over and back up onto his legs, because the man he liked had returned. Barley looked up into the strong face and the dark brown of his red-rimmed eyes.
Then, before he ever saw it coming, a rope!
It flew by Barley’s snout and down around his neck, encircling his throat with a loop made from a knot tied by Samid.
Barley’s whole body cramped with terror, and chattering shakes of panic instantly overtook his small body.
Samid laughed.
“What? Afraid of a little rope?”
And he laughed again.
“No, boy—it’s good. It won’t hurt you. See?”
Samid petted Barley with a few reassuring strokes, then gently pushed up the slipknot he’d made in the rope till it was close to Barley’s neck but not around it too tight.
“See, boy? This won’t hurt. It’ll just keep you with me. This place can be dangerous.”
And he reassured his now-leashed dog with calm laughs and affectionate strokes until Barley’s shakes lessened. And soon he was no longer scared at all. Barley had eaten. He was near a fire. A lady was petting him, and a kind and brave man was calling him “boy.” For the first time in many hours, Barley wagged his tail—lazily, contentedly, at peace.
Hog saw that Prisca was holding a piece of the meat and snarled, “If you’re not eating that, give it here.”
“I’m saving it,” she said, and wrapped it gently in a piece of rag.
“It won’t taste any better later.”
“I’m going to bring it to Boaz the flute player.”
“Why?” Hog protested gruffly. “He plays in the city for coins and never shares with us beggars.”
Samid kicked Hog’s leg hard, making him bray a loud “Ouch!”
“Don’t call me a beggar,” Samid said, his eyes aimed threateningly. Hog could tell Samid was serious, so he lowered his head contritely.
“Call me a thug, call me dirt, but if you call me a beggar again, I’ll kill you.” Then Samid turned to Prisca. “Prisca, Hog’s right. Why bring food to Boaz who never shares with anyone?”
“He shares music. And he plays beautifully.”
Samid stared at her.
“All right,” she said after a silence. “Because I have begun to believe that we should treat others as we want to have people treat us. That’s what the Teacher says.”
For a moment, no one talked, as Barley’s eyes darted between all three of them, wondering what they were discussing and sensing it was important.
Then Prisca crouched on the ground till she was face-to-face with Barley. She looked into Barley’s eyes, the way people sometimes do. She whispered half to herself, half to Barley, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Then she tousled Barley’s scruffy head.
“You understand, I bet—even if they don’t. Don’t you, boy?”
Barley liked the soft look in Prisca’s eyes and the gentle tone of her voice, so he wagged his tail.
Samid looked down at her petting his dog, a glow from the fire falling across her pretty face, the little dog returning her soft gaze. Then Prisca stood up and, without another word, began walking toward Boaz’s hovel while Samid and Hog watched her.
Samid was quiet. But Hog, of course, spoke right up.
“She’s been like this lately, repeating what she’s heard from that teacher from Galilee everyone in the city’s been talking about. I think he’s dangerous. What do you think?” he asked Samid, who was still staring after Prisca as she disappeared into the darkness.
“I think you should mind your own matters.”
After walking alongside Samid for about a hundred paces, Barley came to a small tent pitched beneath the shade of a thin tree, where at the moment a piece of Samid’s underclothes hung drying. This was a place that could never be called a home. The small hovel-like tent consisted of various strips of cloth and pieces of old lambskin, all tied together with odd bits of knotted rope. Two sticks, about five feet apart from each other, held one side of this ragged enclosure, and the other side was fixed to the ground with rocks and stick-spikes that kept the structure from being blown to tatters by the desert wind. Under this narrow shelter there was only enough room for Samid and his meager possessions, which included a few pieces of frayed clothing, two jugs, a large stick he used for protection, and a few other shoddy items.
When they arrived at this small shelter, Samid tied the rope onto the small tree next to it and crawled into his tent.
Barley tried to follow him, but the rope wouldn’t reach. When Samid saw him trying to get into the tent, he gave Barley a shove and shouted angrily, “No! Stay out!”
Barley crouched and lowered his head contritely.
Barley had seen this same flash of sudden anger earlier when Samid had attacked Hog. Barley’s instincts told him that he should continue to be wary, tread lightly, and stay alert. This man was not Duv. And this camp, crawling with rough-edged souls, was not Adah’s warm hearth.
Barley lay out flat, his belly on the ground. The night air was cold, and the pebble-strewn ground felt rough on Barley’s belly. But he didn’t dare move. He just looked up at Samid with an exhausted and mournful glance.
Samid stretched out on the ground. He reached for his heavy cloak and drew it up over his thin, hardened body. Then Samid put an old sack filled with leaves under his head and turned away.
Barley curled himself up into a ball, trying to stay warm.
Though life was very different at the end of this long day than it had been when the day began, Barley was grateful for what he had. He had food and a new master. He was cold, but he was alive.
As Barley lay beside Samid’s tent waiting for sleep to come, he thought about his mother and her care for him during those first blurry weeks of his life. He thought about Adah and Duv and the years of warm nights by their fireside, the walks and the games
of fetch, Adah’s kitchen with its lovely aromas, and Duv’s impish-eyed birds.
Barley tried to push his body down into the dirt and pretend that the cold earth was the curve of his mother’s belly or the warm floor of Adah and Duv’s kitchen. He hoped he would fall asleep quickly and have good dreams. He breathed a few comforting, slow breaths and began to nod off.
Then Barley heard movement close by.
It was Samid. He had emerged from his tent and untied the rope from the tree.
Barley looked up at him.
“Well . . . come in.”
Barley hesitated.
“It’s all right, boy. Come on.”
Barley got up slowly and walked tentatively into the tent. Once inside, Samid got back under his cloak and laid his head down on the pillow with his face toward Barley.
After a few seconds, Barley went over to a small pile of clothes on the floor. He gave the clothes a quick sniff and then walked right into the middle of the heap. Samid watched as Barley turned around three times, walked in a tight circle, and finally plopped his little body down in the middle of the clothes with a comfortable thud. Samid could see Barley’s ears and a bit of his tiny black nose sticking up from his small mound of ragged clothes. Samid grinned his broken-toothed grin, and the two of them fell asleep.
CHAPTER 7
It was almost completely good. That was how the next day unfolded for Barley. Almost completely happy. The sun had come up, the sky was cloudless, and a mildly cool wind blew away some of the smoke and stench that had hung over the camp all night. In such cheerful weather, even the crooked-looking characters of this place, who were so scary at nighttime, appeared to Barley in the daylight to be only interesting, as opposed to frightening.
Maybe this place could become a home that he would eventually come to enjoy.
Throughout the day, he followed Samid around the camp and met many new people. Some people’s faces brightened as soon as they saw Barley coming their way, led proudly by Samid. Those people would smile broadly, showing teeth worse even than Samid’s. Some of them seemed a little frightened of Barley—a reaction he had never gotten from people before. But most of the people who were scared of him looked to Barley like they might be afraid of everything. Like the one man sitting crouched under a threadbare blanket, peering out vacantly and clutching a carved wooden flute in his gnarled hands.