The Brother's Keeper

by Tracy Groot

  Keturah suddenly gasped. “James, look.” She pointed down the road to the village.

  He looked and saw in the distance two figures coming their way. He straightened. Two familiar figures. A donkey between them pulled a cart, the contents covered by a tarp.

  Relief gusted in a sigh. Neither walked with a limp; neither had any visible damage. No matter the trip had taken weeks longer than normal. They were home.

  “Thanks be to God,” he breathed.

  “Thanks be to God,” Keturah echoed.

  Over his shoulder James called, “Judas! Get Mother and Jorah. Joses and Simon are back.”

  Jude appeared briefly at the door, face first anxious and then awash in relief. “Thank God,” he said and disappeared to find the women.

  “James, I am so glad,” Keturah murmured as both of them waved to the travelers. They waved back, and one of them shouted a greeting.

  “It’s about time you decided on an honest day’s work,” James shouted down the slope between cupped hands.

  “We found we have no talent for pillaging and thievery,” Joses, the tallest of the brothers, called back. “We needed your leadership for that.”

  James gave a mocking laugh, loud enough for them to hear, then let his eyes enjoy the sight of them as they made their way up the slope.

  Joses was tall and rugged, with a reddish brown beard and reddish brown curls, a grin as broad as it was lopsided, and eyes as kind as his smile. Simon was shorter and built like an ironsmith. Never as quick to smile, but fast with his wit. James would have him back, caustic comments and all. The bruise on his brother’s cheek was long gone, he was glad to see. Both seemed thinner, perhaps, something Simon with his love of Mother’s nut cakes bore well.

  But the closer they came, the more clearly James could see the wear of the journey. Joses’ eyes, though bright at seeing James, had a weariness that did not belong to this time of day. Simon’s smile was faster to fade than usual, and he sent a few glances over his shoulder to the city.

  James could not keep back the thoughts that set his stomach to simmering. At the beginning of Jesus’ nonsense, customers with whom they had held a long relationship excused the silliness with grace. It was Jesus, after all. But time wore on, and with the passage of time the silliness should have gone. Now the things that had happened were enough to make the Sanhedrin at the Temple, and all the synagogues, shun Jesus and his followers. What had Joses and Simon encountered out there? How did the traders feel now, Jew and Gentile alike? Of course, no one cared much what the Gentiles thought, but in light of the Temple shunning . . .

  Jorah suddenly streaked past, shrieking joyously, her overdress billowing as the air caught her descent, arms flung overhead in that dramatic way of hers. She skipped down the slope and flung herself first at Simon, who laughed and staggered backward, catching her up in a fierce hug. She pounced on Joses next, one minute yelling, “How could you be so late!” and the next, “Oh, Joses, welcome home!”

  Leaving the donkey and supplies at the foot of the slope, the brothers and the sister formed a chain of three, Jorah in the middle, and made their way to the house.

  Judas and Mother joined James and Keturah, and Nathanael stood a respectful distance away.

  “Where’s my purple ribbon?” Jorah demanded of Simon.

  “Ho! That is all she cares about, lads, not the welfare of her favorite brother!” Simon protested, but he pulled his arm from Jorah and produced a packet from a fold in his tunic. “Do you know how embarrassing it was to trade for that, surrounded by a bunch of fussing women?”

  “Oh, you loved every minute of it,” Jorah retorted, then reached up to put a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Simon.”

  Her face crinkled with beaming joy, fists on her hips, Mother declared, “So my young rogues are back.” She opened her arms when they reached the top of the slope and took in her boys. She held them long, one arm tight about each of them. When they released one another, Mother’s upbraiding started. “Four long weeks for a two-week trip? Joses and Simon ben Joseph, what were you thinking to trouble the woman who bore you?”

  Though they chuckled and murmured at Mother’s concern, James noticed the swift glance that passed between the two. And the fact that Judas instinctively met James’ eye meant that he, too, was anxious to hear what news the trip brought. James hated the boil in his gut, hated the foreboding there.

  But for now there were bread and wine to be fetched. For now, the domestic kind of necessary talk, which included and would satisfy the women. Nathanael had to be introduced and village news brought to the table. Later, they would speak of other things.

  James did not notice when Keturah slipped away, only that when he thought to look for her, she was gone.

  5

  MOTHER WAS IMPATIENT to get going; Jorah had to be convinced.

  “I know what you are going to talk about, and I will not be left out,” Jorah announced to her brothers as Mother snipped some herbs for Annika from the pots outside the doorway.

  “Jorah, fetch the water pots,” Mother called.

  “He is my brother too,” Jorah stated, chin lifted and arms folded.

  Simon pretended to examine the new tools at his bench. Joses squatted beside the fire pit, poking the embers with a stick. Judas idled with a stone chisel. Nathanael busied himself quietly at the corner bench, but James knew by now the apprentice’s ears were as sharp as his eyes.

  Jorah waited for someone to defend her presence, but no one spoke for her. Truly, James felt a niggle of guilt when he glanced at her face. If he sat and thought about it, he could muster enough pity to let her stay. But there was no time, and this was no business for women, especially his sister. He did not know what news Simon and Joses brought, but from the way they tried hard to act natural, it could not be good. Most of all, James noticed the odd way Joses seemed to ignore looks from Simon. And Simon’s looks were anything but good.

  “Jorah, please leave,” James said.

  “I want to know what is going on,” Jorah replied evenly. James knew that tone—and knew better the set of her chin.

  “Jorah,” James warned, rising from his stool.

  Jorah’s cheeks darkened as she looked at each brother. Her eyes fell on Simon, her sometime ally, and she appealed to him.

  “Simon . . . you know I have a right to hear news of him,” she argued, and a note of pleading came into her voice. “Please, Simon. I belong here too.”

  “She is not a child,” Nathanael muttered, earning instant scowls from the brothers.

  “This is family business,” James growled at him.

  “You are not her brother,” Judas added.

  Nathanael kept his eyes properly downcast, fiddling with the strap of his sandal. James saw the quick sympathetic glance he threw toward Jorah, but he did not speak further. Smart boy. As hotheaded as Nathanael was, he could easily have argued on Jorah’s behalf, yet he would not risk being thrown out to miss the news himself.

  “Come, Jorah,” Mother called from outside. “Annika will be so relieved.”

  Jorah waited, still imploring Simon with her eyes. He would not look at her.

  “Jorah, obey your mother,” James said quietly.

  She folded her arms and pressed her lips into a white line. She waited a moment more, then all but stomped across the room to the smallyard passage and vanished behind the curtain. She reappeared with the two water jars and marched across the room to the doorway. On her way out, she slapped a kiss on the mezuzah, then said loftily over her shoulder, “We shall see who will fix your meals when Mother is gone.”

  Nathanael covered for his snort by coughing loudly.

  Judas went to the door and watched them leave. Presently he turned around. “They are gone.”

  Each brother made for his own stool. News from the land had always been taken this way, as long as James could remember, each family member fortified at his own bench. Father would always snug his stool against the wall and rest his back there. Jo
ses used to sit on his bench, not his stool, swinging his legs. Jesus would put his stool in the space between his bench and Simon’s. Strangely, that was where Nathanael was seated now, tipped back on his stool. James was getting used to the presence at the corner bench. It was good to hear tinkering from that area again.

  “Did you sell the oak benches?” Jude asked.

  James did not like the way Simon continued to look at Joses, nor the way Joses continued to avoid his gaze. Simon took his glare away and muttered to Jude, “We sold them.”

  “Fair price?” Jude said.

  As Jude and Simon discussed the sale, James rubbed his lower lip and regarded Joses.

  It was no secret that Joses was not as resentful over the doings of Jesus as the rest of them. Joses was the quickest to come to his defense. Quickest to excuse the craziness. He sat at his stool, still as stone, staring blankly at a pile of drying wood near the fire pit. James could see he was not listening to Jude and Simon. But what was in that grave blankness on Joses’ face? James pretended to fold his arms over his stomach, to cover for the fingers that dug into his gut.

  “. . . could have gotten more,” Simon was saying with a shrug, “but we—”

  “What happened, Joses?” James asked.

  The question silenced Simon. He picked up the bowl he had left half-finished and turned it over in his hands. “Yes, Joses,” he said as he inspected the bowl, “why don’t you tell them?”

  Joses raised his eyes to James. “I wanted to see for myself.”

  James looked from Joses to Simon. “See what?”

  Joses’ eyes fell back to the pile of wood. He rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands together. “Three years now,” he muttered, almost to himself. “It was time to decide my own mind about him.”

  His voice high with incredulity, James said, “Decide your own—what is to decide, Joses?”

  “Oh, you would be surprised,” Simon drawled.

  James slowly rose from his stool. “Joses, if you tell me—”

  “Sit down, James!” Joses snapped, which James did only from surprise. When Joses finished glaring at him, he again stared hard into the woodpile.

  “This is bigger than we are,” Joses said, talking to himself and his brothers at once. “That is what scares me. It is not the Romans, not the leaders of Israel. They do not matter anymore.”

  James turned his stare on Simon, who lifted his hands. “You see what these four weeks have been like?” he complained. “Half the time I did not know who he was talking to. He’s getting as crazy as Jesus himself.”

  Joses went on as if he didn’t hear. “It is bigger, I say. I don’t know how and I don’t know why. But stand back and look at it all, from the very beginning until now. There is a pattern.”

  “You see what I am saying? He is going crazy.”

  “Shut up, Simon,” Judas said. To Joses he said, “What are you saying? We all know Jesus is not like us. Set apart, Mother has told us. We have known it since birth. He is destined to be a great prophet or a great leader.” Jude narrowed his eyes. “But you are saying something else.”

  “How many great leaders do you know who raise the dead?”

  Silence froze the workroom.

  Joses could get no one to meet his gaze. He rose and began to patrol the room like a Roman, appraising each brother as he passed. “Come now . . . answer the question, anyone. By now you have heard about Lazarus.” Joses leaned close to James’ ear and whispered, “We cannot pretend that didn’t happen.” He pulled away and continued his tour, getting no one to meet his gaze except Nathanael, who could not take his eyes from him.

  He came to stand in the middle of the workroom, where the awnings did not give shade. He looked oddly alone in this workroom of men. The ascending sun picked up the red in his brown hair. It also highlighted the weariness in his visage. When last had James really looked at Joses? The thought surprised him into studying his face. Did all the brothers look like Joses these days? That weary? That dispirited?

  “We cannot ignore it any longer,” Joses said in a near whisper. “We cannot hole up here and pretend it isn’t happening.” His voice gained strength. “He is healing people. Our own brother is creating eyes for the blind. People lame from birth are walking—they are walking, James! Where in all our holy books has this happened through one man?”

  The black acid in James’ gut burgeoned, threatening to breach the perimeter of his stomach. He bit the inside of his lip to stifle a groan of pain.

  “Tell me where it is! Not Elisha, not even Elijah, accomplished in a lifetime what Jesus has done in three years.”

  James winced at the mention of the two prophets. The family had heard enough about them the last time Jesus visited Nazareth.

  “We need to do something,” Judas muttered, rubbing the scanty beard on his jawline.

  Joses barked an incredulous laugh. “Do what, Judas? What are we to ‘do’ about a brother who can smother a storm at the flick of his wrist? It is out of our hands. There is nothing left for us to do but decide if we are for him or against him.”

  James ignored that, flat ignored it, and said, “Jude’s right. He is still our blood. We are still responsible for him, no matter what he is up to. Even if he abandoned us, we cannot abandon him.”

  “He did not abandon us,” Joses protested.

  James was on his feet in a bound. “What do you call it? He’s the firstborn! When Father died, he became the patriarch. Some patriarch. He left us; he left Mother; he left the business.” James flung his arm toward the doorway. “Call him Esau. He’s as good as sold his birthright.”

  Nathanael suddenly spoke up. “So are you for him or against him?” James was not sure if the question was for him or for Joses, but it gained a stare from all of the brothers.

  “What is your name again, apprentice?” Simon scoffed at him.

  “Don’t you have some work to do?” James said.

  The amber eyes narrowed, and Nathanael slowly reached for a half-finished stool, scowling at James as he did so.

  James understood. Had not Nathanael protected the family this past long week? Had he not escorted Raziel back to Annika’s with indignation not much less than James’ own? He deserved more than dismissal, James knew . . . but the brothers did not know Nathanael the way James did. In one week, though James would not let the lad know it, Nathanael had entrenched a place in his heart as no one since . . . Well, making a new friend these days was a rare thing indeed. But with the others, Nathanael had not yet earned the right to be heard.

  “If we could get him away from his band of followers, we could talk sense into his crazy head,” James said. He tried hard to make his voice calm. Sensible. Joses was going in a direction that was anything but.

  “Didn’t we try that one other time?” Simon muttered. “We thought from the beginning that he had lost his senses. A rescue effort did not work then, and it is too late now.”

  “What do you suggest, James?” Joses asked. “Sneak up on him in the middle of the night, throw a sack over his head, and drag him away? Oh, that is good. His fishermen friends would not let us within five footsteps of him if they got a whiff of what we intended. One of them is the size of a bear and twice as mean.”

  “I hear one of them is a tax collector,” Nathanael offered. At the ensuing vicious glares, he quickly muttered, “I’m working, I’m working.”

  “We still need to do something,” Jude said. “If we are lucky, we can slip him away to someplace in the country, and maybe all this fervor will die down. We will care for him until he regains his senses. Maybe stick him with the Essenes at Qumran.”

  James looked at Jude sideways; wasn’t that his own idea?

  Joses shook his head. “I still say it is bigger than that. It even runs in the family. Look at our cousin John.”

  “Exactly!” James declared and spread his arms wide, looking at the sky as though he had finally been understood. “And look where his nonsense got him! Excellent point, Jo
ses.”

  Joses turned away from him and went again to the fire pit. He peered long into the slumbering embers. At length, he murmured, “‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make way for the coming of the Lord.’”

  James felt a chill rise on his shoulders and flush down his arms.

  “We all know who John meant,” Joses said, quiet and low.

  God of Israel, how he wanted to press his hands to his ears. But here it was, the restlessness of three long years now come to a crest. His own voice tinny and hollow, James heard himself say, “Well, then, Joses . . . tell us what to do. Tell us what to believe. Tell us how to believe.”

  “Yes. Tell us, Joses,” Simon said with a smirk.

  “Shut up, Simon,” Jude said.

  “I am only saying, step back and look at the whole. Look at it from the beginning.” Joses pulled his gaze from the fire pit, his tone becoming urgent. “We need to investigate this. Investigate our own brother just as the ones from Temple investigate him. We need to speak with Mother and hear things from her own lips. We need to talk with the people who have witnessed the things he has done. We need to hear exactly what he is saying. We must get all of the facts and think logically and soberly. Then we must make our judgment, brothers.”

  “He dragged me all over the countryside with this nonsense!” Simon erupted, slamming his fist on his bench. Tools jumped, and one fell to the ground. “Thank God I am finally home! You two talk to him. He will not listen to me.”

  “Where did you go?” Judas asked, surprised.

  “It would take less time to tell where we did not go,” Simon said bitterly. “We spent only two days in Gaza, didn’t we, Joses? From there we went east and north. Jerusalem. Bethany. Jericho. Ephraim. Oh, and while we were in Bethany, could we stop to see our own kin? Devorah’s house was probably within a stadium, but no. No time. And on our way north, would he take the road closest to the Jordan? No. We went through Samaria.”

  “Samaria?” James demanded.