by Ron Marasco
Barley tried to follow the Kind Man farther along the road, but there were too many soldiers walking directly behind the Kind Man as he carried the heavy wood up to the crest of the hill. So Barley turned around and began to walk back through the crowd, burrowing his way through the forest of legs, back to the rocky cliffside where he could climb above the crowd-choked street and then descend to a place farther ahead along the Kind Man’s ghastly procession.
Barley descended to the low point of the hill, a spot about a hundred yards ahead of where the Kind Man was walking. Barley watched the Kind Man stagger toward him, moving even slower than he had just minutes before.
Barley looked around at the crowd as he waited for the Kind Man to reach the spot where he stood. At this distance from the spectacle, the people now surrounding Barley were more subdued than the ravenous spectators in the street who pushed for the best view they could get of the suffering man. Many of the people Barley was now standing among seemed appalled at what was being done to the Kind Man. They shook their heads and clasped their hands up to their mouths as they witnessed his horrific plight.
Barley noticed one old woman staring up the street at the Kind Man and crying.
As Barley looked around, he noticed a man with dark skin standing up against a building, away from the crowd. This man’s body was lean and strong, and his manner seemed quiet and gentle. Barley saw that the man’s forehead was furrowed with sadness as he watched the Kind Man’s slow, painful journey along the road.
Some members of the crowd on the fringes of the event seemed as though they were visitors to the city, people who had stumbled upon the scene and were stunned and rattled by the barbaric ritual they saw. Barley noticed two men talking to each other who wore tunics shaped in a way that was new to Barley. They spoke to each other in quiet, sorrowful tones and seemed to be deeply troubled by the events unfolding before them.
An awful gasp erupted suddenly from the crowd around Barley.
Barley turned just in time to see the Kind Man succumbing to the momentum of the steep, downward slope of the road, which caused the top-heavy wood to carry him forward too fast for his legs to keep up.
Once again the Kind Man plummeted down onto the street.
Barley’s eyes fell on a group of men in the crowd down below grinning and nudging each other excitedly at the sight of the Kind Man sprawled on the ground. Then Barley’s alert eyes moved to the soldier who had beaten the Kind Man the last time he had fallen.
Again, the soldier, whip in hand, strode quickly toward the Kind Man, who was facedown but trying weakly to lift his head off the road.
Barley turned his head away.
Barley looked around at the crowd, many of whom were shoving their way in to get closer to the violent scene, gawking with a curiosity bordering on delight. Barley then turned and looked up at those people nearer to him, the few gentler souls being undone by the sight of the Kind Man’s suffering. His eyes returned to the dark-skinned man who was so distressed by what he saw that he pressed the back of his head to the wall and closed his eyes. Though he was a man of rock-hard muscle, he looked as though he were trying not to weep.
Barley turned his eyes back to the Kind Man and saw that the soldier was unfurling his whip and drawing it back as far as his thick arm could stretch.
But before the soldier could once again bring his whip down onto the back of the Kind Man, he was halted by another soldier whose uniform and manner bespoke a higher rank.
Then a group of soldiers, including the soldier with the whip, gathered to confer. They seemed suddenly concerned and spoke in muted voices, until one soldier blurted out loudly, “If he dies here, before we have displayed him on Golgotha as the Prefect ordered, it will be all our necks!”
The crowd had begun to rumble impatiently, and the soldiers looked at each other nervously. They knew they had to get things moving again.
The crowd began to raise its discontent into a storm of yelling but was suddenly quieted by the booming, authoritative voice of a soldier who seized the crowd’s attention with one loud word.
“You!”
The soldier lifted his armored forearm and pointed the index finger of his leather-gloved hand and said it again.
“You!”
“Me?” asked the dark-skinned man.
The large, strong-looking man was an easy target for the soldier’s searching eye.
“Me?” the man asked again.
“Yes, you, stranger.”
The soldier summoned him with an emphatic wave.
The man seemed uneasy but walked over to the soldier and listened attentively as he was given orders. Then Barley saw the man walk over to the Kind Man where he lay in the street, trying his best to hoist his wilting body back onto his feet.
The stranger offered the Kind Man his thick forearm to hold on to as he tried to pull himself up from the ground. Slowly, the Kind Man reached up his trembling hand and clutched tightly to his arm. Then Barley saw the powerful stranger hoist the full weight of the Kind Man up with ease. Barley noticed that the Kind Man kept hold of the stranger’s arm with the hand he used to hoist himself up and placed his other hand on the stranger’s same arm, patting it gently three times.
Once the stranger was sure the Kind Man was steady on his feet, he went over to the piece of wood, lifted it with a slight grunt, and laid it across his own right shoulder. Then the stranger flexed his left arm up so the Kind Man could lean on his forearm. In this way, the two men continued to walk through the clamoring crowd.
CHAPTER 14
The mob of citizens had been steadily increasing, and as it did, Barley noticed that the mood of the crowd grew more hostile. The scattered clusters of people who had watched with compassion in their eyes for the Kind Man were now being shouted over and pushed back by men and women who seemed very angry with the Kind Man. Many in the crowd cried out with indignation that the man they’d come to watch was not carrying his own burden but was instead being assisted by a dark-skinned stranger. Some people shouted out in anger at the stranger as well.
Barley watched as the procession approached. The Kind Man was moving slowly, just behind the stranger, and progressing haltingly, coming closer to where Barley was now standing at the curb.
Barley watched a few more of the Kind Man’s labored paces, and then the Kind Man finally passed right in front of Barley. Barley stood still. He was now beginning to understand that the Kind Man was being led to a terrible place and was moving toward it, more and more broken with each step. Barley could see that the Kind Man’s eyes stared forward in a daze and that he was unable to raise his feet beyond a shuffle. All Barley could do was watch and follow him.
Once the Kind Man and the stranger had moved farther along the road, Barley turned to see how large the crowd following the procession was. He saw a parade of citizens snaking up through the city as far as the eye could see, pushing forward as the gloom of this sunless afternoon settled over the city.
Barley allowed the stream of humanity to carry him forward, stepping cautiously so as to dodge the shoving and stomping of the increasingly uncivil crowd. Desperately trying to keep pace with the Kind Man, Barley squirmed, darted, pivoted, using all of his agility to move forward alongside him.
Anytime Barley sensed even a momentary break in the crowd’s incessant pushing, he would look through the legs of the crowd at the Kind Man as he staggered along the road. Everything the Kind Man had endured was now draining the beautiful light from his eyes. Sometimes Barley would let his gaze linger too long on the Kind Man and come within an inch of being crushed by some tramping citizen.
The mob of citizens waiting in the distance near the city gate was even louder and more uncivilized than those now pushing in from the other direction. A large group of rowdy young men entered the already out-of-hand crowd, hollering with glee as they elbowed their way to leer and cheer at the spectacle. Barley was now in the middle of all these converging hordes.
Barley could see the soldie
rs beginning to move the stranger away from the Kind Man so he would have to carry the crossbar alone up to the hill of Golgotha. At the sight of this exchange of the wooden crossbeam from the stranger’s shoulder onto the bloody back of the condemned, a huge shout went up from the crowd. Many of the men began to shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Suddenly the crowd was moving less and shouting more, their collective roar aimed at the Kind Man. Barley looked up as the noise of the crowd rose around him, filling his acute ears until they rang and stung. And soon the shouting became even louder, building to a full-throated rhythm that pulsated in unison.
“Cru-ci-fy him!”
“Cru-ci-fy him!”
“Cru-ci-fy him!”
Barley stood amid the throng, still watching. He saw that the stranger had been forced to step away from the Kind Man, the soldiers backing him off the road and back into the crowd. As they did, Barley saw that the stranger never took his eyes off the Kind Man.
And though weighed down once again by the heavy wood, the Kind Man lifted his head and gazed across the road, looking into the stranger’s eyes with a gentle look of thankfulness for the man’s help.
Barley kept his eyes on the stranger as he stood amid the crowd, watching the Kind Man struggle on his own with the heavy crossbeam. After a moment, the stranger averted his eyes and sat down by the roadside, his head bowed and his hands covering his eyes. As the procession continued on, the stranger remained where he was. Then Barley noticed the old lady he’d seen earlier with tears on her wrinkled face. She went over and stood by the stranger. Barley saw her touch the back of her wizened hand to the man’s face, stroking his cheek. At this gesture from one kind stranger to another, the man looked up at her. Tears flowed down his cheeks and he wept softly.
The roaring chant of the crowd grew stronger. Barley looked up at a man standing next to him and saw that he had his young son, a boy about three years old, sitting on his shoulders. The father began to chant with the rest of the crowd, “Cru-ci-fy him!” Soon the little boy began to pat his father’s head to the beat of the chant and to shout along with the masses.
The procession moved along a narrower stretch of road. The dense and unruly crush of citizens swarmed the street, and Barley froze with panic as the enveloping crowd pushed in all around him. Fearing the mob had begun to get too close to the condemned, the soldiers began using lances and whips to hold the advancing people back. Within seconds they had cleared a perimeter around the condemned, though a tidal wave of yelling men still encroached on the space.
Into this newly formed clearing around the Kind Man came a sight that few in this rabid crowd ever could have expected. Barley watched as a small group of women, moving together as one, pushed their way forward.
When people saw what this cluster of women dared to do, the noise of the throng died down for a few moments. The street became fraught with a different kind of tension as many in the crowd gasped at the defiance these women showed in pushing past the soldiers to draw nearer to the Kind Man.
Barley saw how small of frame these women seemed compared to the giant soldiers they had defied to stand where they now stood.
Most of the women were the age of young mothers, and indeed, many had their children with them. Some were holding infants in their arms, others held the hands of toddlers, and a few mothers had older children of seven or eight years, whose small heads they pressed into their waists to shield their impressionable eyes from the ugly scene around them.
It was clear to Barley that these women had something they wished to say to the Kind Man.
But they did not speak.
They could not.
Seeing the Kind Man before them now—so hurt and so weak, yet still radiating a compassion that each of these mothers hoped their children would grow up to feel—words fell short. The only way these brave women of Jerusalem could speak to the Kind Man was with the honest eloquence of tears.
The crowd at large was rebelling vehemently against this show of sentiment. Groups of young men suddenly formed an angry pack. They began to yell hateful words at the weeping women in wild and guttural tones as they elbowed and muscled their way toward them. But two of the soldiers lifted their lances across the chests of this angry mob and strained to hold the young men back.
Barley could see that the Kind Man had been speaking to the women.
He saw the Kind Man look down at the women’s children with a look of great compassion. Then, his body wobbling under the weight of the cross, the Kind Man turned around to face the crowd.
At this gesture, the crowd roared and raged themselves into a frenzy.
The group of young men behind Barley pressed against the soldiers’ lances to try to get close enough to the condemned man to strike him or spit on him. A few of them pushed with such force that one of the soldier’s lances gave way just long enough to allow the young men to launch powerful darts of spit into the air toward the condemned.
Barley looked back toward the Kind Man and saw the immense sorrow in his eyes as he turned away from the crowd. The Kind Man looked back into the faces of the bereaved women with his gentle eyes and drew a breath to try to speak.
Barley stepped forward.
The Kind Man’s eyes moved from the weeping women and sadly scanned the faces of all their children. With profound emotion thickening his voice, he said, “If people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Then Barley watched the Kind Man turn from the women to look up at the rest of the crowd. Barley could see him blinking back pain, straining his bleary eyes to take in the faces of the people, absorbing for a last moment the shapes and sizes and sounds of the citizens before turning to trudge the last of his way through the city.
Soon the procession reached the gate through which the condemned were led to the infamous place of death, the hill of Golgotha. Clustered now around that gate was a group of people clearly not from the city. These were poor people, wastrels coming from the path that led to Golgotha, and foreigners. But Barley could see these people loved the Kind Man, because as soon as they laid eyes on him, a wail of emotion overtook them as the soldiers forcefully stopped them from pushing toward the condemned, just as other soldiers were still keeping back the crush of screaming young men with their makeshift barricade of lances.
The road was now clear for the procession to pass through the gate to Golgotha, and Barley had pressed himself up against a curb several feet from the screaming men. It was a spot he intended to remain in to stay safe from the volatile convergence of people surrounding the gate.
But then he heard someone screaming, over and over, in a voice Barley recognized.
“Save him! Please!”
He looked up and saw Prisca in the middle of the crowd just outside the gate, her face soaked with tears, her arms reaching out to the Kind Man. Barley barked as loud as he could to let her know he was there, but the noise of the crowd was too great for his message to reach her. Prisca did not take her eyes from the Kind Man as he passed in front of her. Barley leapt from the safety of the curb he was crouched against and ran toward Prisca just as he heard her call out, in a voice filled with a life of emotion, one word.
“Jesus . . . !”
It was the last thing Barley heard before the crowd of angry men broke through the soldiers’ lances, trampling forward, overwhelming him, till everything in Barley’s world went dark.
CHAPTER 15
When Barley opened his eyes, his little body was pressed up against the heavy curb of the street.
The world around him was quiet.
Barley slowly lifted himself from the road, rising onto all fours. He stood reorienting himself for a few seconds, then gave his head a quick, ear-flapping shake.
Barley looked into the distance, toward Golgotha.
Golgotha was not a high hill but rather a gray and craggy outcropping of rock with no vegetation or life growing from it. The way up was steep, and the only path was rocky and u
neven. The hill was situated so that when approached from its far side by people walking toward the city, new arrivals to Jerusalem were routinely greeted with the silhouettes of crucifixes visible against the sky. These crosses were a totem of the severity of Roman justice and a warning to all visitors who might dare to transgress it.
Barley could see that the tail end of the procession was now wending its way up the sheer path to the flattened hilltop.
Barley proceeded with haste along the road leading to the hill where the Kind Man had been led.
He arrived quickly at the hillside, and when he had climbed halfway up the side of Golgotha, Barley heard another sound.
It was not the sound of human voices.
This noise reverberated off the stony face of Golgotha.
It was the dull crack of iron being struck.
It was hammering.
Barley could hear the loud, leaden thud as he arrived at the small knoll encircling the crest of Golgotha.
Atop the knoll, Barley found himself dangerously close to the line of soldiers keeping stern watch on the clearing below, their backs to Barley. The crown of the hill sloped down to a flat area at the center of the hilltop. All that Barley could see at first was a sea of billowing red capes fluttering off the soldiers’ backs as they stood in front of him in the gusting wind. The wind began to blow so fiercely that Barley dug his paws into the dirt to keep from losing his balance and squinted his eyes as the gritty gray dust of Golgotha blew into his face from the clearing below.
After a few moments, the wind died down into silence, and the soldiers’ capes fell slack so they no longer obscured Barley’s view. Little by little, the murky dust whipped up by the wind began to settle.
What Barley saw then was a sight he never could have imagined.
There before him was the Kind Man, hanging several feet in the air, his arms stretched wide, his hands nailed to the crossbeam he’d been forced to carry through the street, his feet nailed to the upright post that was anchored in the ground. The Kind Man’s body hung limply, and his breathing was labored. Next to the Kind Man was a foreign-looking man who had been nailed to another cross. This man winced angrily, in great agony. On the other side of the Kind Man was another cross with a man nailed to it.