by Tracy Groot
James could not stop laughing. He sat down hard on his stool and laughed himself to aching. The curtain flap twitched aside, and Jorah’s wondering face appeared.
Avi was slinking away.
“Avi!” Nathanael reproached, arms wide. “Brother! I said I could get you an audience.” His face lit in sudden inspiration. “We could practice on your friend! Find out exactly how long it takes him to bleed to death. What is your name? Joab? Come here, Joab.” He traced a few practice swoops in the air.
Joab ducked out the door with Avi close behind him. Keturah ran to the doorway, where she stopped and yelled, “My coppers, you thieves!” Over her shoulder she flashed a smile at Nathanael and James, then flew out the door, shouting, “Stop, you thieving cheats!”
James went to the doorway and watched the three race down the path. He laughed again delightedly and yelled, “Look at them run!”
Mother joined Jorah at the curtain, smiling a mystified smile at her boy. “What was that all about?” she said.
Jorah folded her arms and looked at Nathanael, who, with a pleased grin on his face, twirled the adze between both forefingers. James came away from the doorway, shaking his head at Nathanael and chuckling.
“Too bad Judas missed that,” James said.
“I don’t know who you are,” Jorah said to Nathanael, “but I have not heard my brother laugh in forever. For that you will join us for the midmeal.”
Grinning, Nathanael looked from the adze to Jorah, and his grin promptly faltered. James caught the look, and his own smile finally came down. He knew well the look. Probably how he appeared the first time he saw Keturah.
Jorah swept an up-and-down look at Nathanael, then whirled away.
Mother nodded at the young man. “You must be the lad Annika told us about.”
Nathanael straightened and ducked his head respectfully. “Yes, I am.”
Mother folded her arms and, with her eyes twinkling, said, “How do you like living with Annika?”
Nathanael darted a look at James. “I—she—”
“Annika is a wonderful woman, I am sure you have discovered,” Mother said.
“That she is,” Nathanael replied, not meeting her eyes.
“Do join us for the meal,” Mother urged. She glanced at James. “I want to know what made my son laugh.” She disappeared behind the curtain.
Visibly relieved, Nathanael resumed his slouch at the workbench.
James went to the passage and held the curtain aside to watch Mother’s retreat. Then he let the curtain fall back and turned to Nathanael. “Now, what do you really think of Annika?”
Nathanael snorted. “Sounds like you know her.”
James straddled a stool at his bench and picked up the crooked piece of olivewood. “All my life. She is more of an aunt than a family friend. She is a grandmother to every child in Nazareth; they all adore her. The opinions of the adults are different.”
Nathanael hesitated, then said quietly, “I have never met anyone like her.”
James raised his eyes from the wood. He watched the lad look around the shop.
“My uncle never kept his place so neat.” Nathanael shook his head. He jerked a thumb at Jude’s bench. “The amount of tools you have . . . I have never seen so many, let alone so many sizes.”
James pried off a piece of bark from the olivewood. “Tools are a hobby for Judas. We have a decent set for every bench. ‘He who does not teach his son a trade brings him up to be a robber.’ My father used to say that.”
“My father is a drunk.”
James pursed his lips, nodding. He broke off more bark. “Anything else?”
Nathanael folded his arms. “My mother is a whore.”
James shifted his jaw, then offered, “My brother walks on water.”
“Anything else?”
James studied him long before he could answer. He liked what he saw in those strange bright eyes, liked the defiant tilt in the chin. He liked this boy, and he already feared for him.
“Yes, I am afraid there is something else,” James said, resting the olive piece on his lap. “Work for me, and you will regret it. You will be scorned and ridiculed, sometimes refused trade in the marketplace. Some cowards will throw things at you when you pass. They will spread rumors about you and shun you in the synagogue. Some will cross to the other side of the street when they see you coming, people you have known all your life. People who used to be friends.
“Your chances of a decent marriage will be ruined, unless you choose to marry one of the—seekers. You will have more interruptions to your work in one day than you will have visits to the brush. You will deal with fanatics and with fools. And if you are used to being liked, forget about it. Forget all about it, because you will be hated.” He broke off to smile grimly. “Work for me, Nathanael, and your life will be misery.”
A gleam came into Nathanael’s eye, and with it a slow grin. “I have not had such an offer in a long time.”
“I hope you refuse it. I like you.”
Nathanael stretched his legs out and folded his arms. “Let me see . . . they won’t have much chance to shun me in the synagogue since I am a bad Jew and do not go. If they throw things at me, well, I can hit a gecko at fifty paces—I will keep a rock or two handy. Being scorned and such . . .” He lifted his hands and shoulders. “My mother is a whore. I have been scorned since birth. So I hate to disappoint you, but I accept your offer.”
James smiled. “You will live to regret it.”
“From what you tell me, I can only hope so.” He looked about the shop. “Where do you want me?”
James hesitated. All of the other apprentices had worked at Father’s bench, or alongside Judas and James. The corner bench had been vacant for three years.
He had hoped . . .
Jorah called them from the courtyard to the midday meal.
Nathanael looked at James, who waved him on. “I will join you in a moment.”
Nathanael set the gouge adze down on the corner bench and went to the passage. The curtain flap swished behind him.
James lingered to look at the tools hanging above the corner bench.
Sounds and smells drifted into the workshop from the almost-spring day outside: the bray of neighbor Eli’s cantankerous donkey, some children shouting to one another, the fragrance of rain and of wet grasses and of early spring wildflowers. From the courtyard he heard Jorah laugh, heard the soft clatter of a lid on a cook pot.
He remembered the way it used to be. On a day like today it might be his turn to check the barley crop on their terraced strip of land. Or he might have gone to Capernaum with Jude. He might have been on the way home from the late-winter trip to Gaza, back when Jesus and James did much of the trading.
He had not taken a journey since the last one with Jesus, three and a half years ago. James could not even remember the last time he had walked their own land, one terrace up from Eli’s. Simon had taken over the planting and weeding, and in the late spring and summer, the watering. And Jude went on the trips alone, or with Joses. James stayed here, under the sky within these four walls.
“Somebody has to stay,” he whispered to himself.
“James, are you coming?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, I’m coming.”
He tossed the crooked olive piece back into the carving box, set the box on the floor, and shoved it into the corner. He set his mallet on the pegs, then went to the corner bench, where he replaced the gouge adze on the empty peg just so, then adjusted it. He stepped back to look, because he would not see it this way again. Then he saw the tiny, tilted boat on the corner of the shelf.
On sudden furious impulse, he lunged for the toy. He ran out the doorway, stumbling as he went. He reared back and whipped the little boat as far as he could. It sailed long in the air, then bounced and skittered down the slope.
Experience history like never before with more great fiction from
Tracy Groot
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