The Brother's Keeper

by Tracy Groot

  Joab believed it. He believed it because he had been there for some of Jesus’ talks when he and Avi—

  Joab squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. No, no, he would not think on Avi. He had to save Nathanael. He had to do it for this family. He had to, for Jorah. Jorah loved Nathanael; it was plain to see in her anxious ministrations over the past several days. Joab would give her back her Nathanael, and then he would go home to Hebron. To his father and his mother, to his brother and his little sister, Marya. He would go back to the dye works and never leave again.

  “Can I help you, lad?”

  Joab jumped. An elderly woman stood in the doorway. He glanced at her face, saw great yellowed teeth, and looked down at the bundle. “Please . . . I have come to see Nathanael.”

  “Are you his family?”

  “No. I have something for him.”

  “Nathanael is very ill. I’m afraid he—” The woman’s teeth disappeared as she pulled her lip over them. “Child, not even the doctor believes he will live.”

  “Then I must see him now!” Alarmed, Joab quickly unwrapped the box, heedless of any passing eyes. “This belonged to Jesus. . . . Maybe it has powers; maybe it can help him!”

  Her eyes were kind and full of pity. There was doubt too, but she nodded, and stepped aside. “But you must be quiet, lad. Jorah rests now, for the first time in a long time.”

  She took him through a passageway to a room in the back. She opened the door and stepped aside for Joab to pass. There upon a bed in the room lay Nathanael.

  He was wearing the tefillin Simon had made for him. The hand wound with it lay on his stomach. The other hand rested on the leather packet.

  A weary old man rose beside him. He glanced at Joab, then looked past him to the woman. The woman murmured something, and the old man came away from the bed.

  Hurriedly, Joab unwrapped the box.

  “Nathanael,” he whispered. He held the box close to the waxen white face. He would have thought him dead already, but for the lips that twitched. There had to be time for a miracle! Frantically, Joab worked the lid off the box, and with the lid he scooped air out of the box toward the still form. “Nathanael, breathe this; it will help you.” He held the box up and blew air from it onto Nathanael’s face.

  “Son,” the old man said behind him.

  “This will help him! Please, Nathanael, wake up! Please . . .”

  “He is dying.”

  “He can’t!”

  Nathanael’s eyes dragged open. He saw Joab, and he tried to speak. Joab dropped close to his lips.

  “You are the one,” the lips whispered. “You have to tell her.”

  The eyelids were greasy and lavender-hued, the face white save for the bruises. And Joab knew, as he gazed upon the peace there, that the boy would die. His hands holding the box dropped to the bed, and he realized he still held it. In fury, he threw it from him and slumped into the chair beside the bed. A tearing began in his middle.

  “Tell her, no stones. Caesarea.”

  Joab stayed where he had slumped until he realized that Nathanael wasn’t talking about Jorah at all. He leaned close to Nathanael. “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “My mother. Go for me. Tell her what Jesus said.” The eyelids eased shut. The lips still twitched.

  Joab gazed at them, then looked in desperation at the old man and his wife. “I don’t understand! What does he speak of?”

  The woman looked at her husband. “Jorah told me his mother is a prostitute. Surely he speaks of that day in the Temple.”

  “No stones,” Nathanael whispered, thin and incredulous.

  Tears spilled down Joab’s cheeks. How different things would have been if Nathanael had been his friend instead of Avi.

  The old man put his arm around Joab and gently led him from the bed. “Come, lad. I will tell you of what he speaks.”

  He led the boy from the room. Abishag pressed her head covering to her tears and blew as quietly as she could into it. She noticed the silver box and its lid on the floor. She picked them up and gazed sadly on them a moment. Then she fitted the lid onto the box, took the cloth and wrapped it and, cradling the box, settled into the chair beside the bed.

  His fingers tightened convulsively on the leather packet strapped to the back of his hand.

  Mother, such impossible words. I wish I could tell you them myself, just to see your face.

  “Rivkah!” his grandmother shrieked. “You are nothing but a whore! My grandson will not live in such an unholy atmosphere. I will have the priests come take him away.”

  “The priests? Ho, send Zakkai. He knows the way to my home.”

  Where are your accusers, Mother? Is there no one to condemn you?

  “You disgust me. Filthy whore.”

  “Come back when you’re not drunk.”

  It isn’t so hard to believe, when you know someone like Annika. You would like her, Mother. She likes you already.

  Slowly, the fingers clenched about the leather packet began to ease.

  No stones . . . no accusers. Not for you. Not for me.

  Nathanael smiled. He had known it all along. God was wearing his tefillin, and in his tefillin were these words: I shall love Nathanael, and Rivkah, and James . . . with all my heart . . . with all my soul . . . with all my strength.

  It only took a little imagination, and a fellow who wouldn’t throw stones.

  Mother? I’m so sorry.

  “Hear, O Israel . . .”

  His fingers slipped from the packet.

  I love you, Mother. I love you I love you I

  “Jorah.”

  Her name came through her sleep-thickened ears, but she was so, so tired. If she slept, she could not cry. If she slept, it wasn’t real. Please, let me sleep.

  “It will be hard for you. But I am with you. I am with you! Do not be afraid.”

  She stirred, wanting to wake, fearing it.

  “I am with you always . . .”

  The gentle shaking continued. She moaned softly.

  “Jorah?”

  Abi. It was Abi. Jorah dragged open her eyes. “Abi?”

  “Child . . . sweet child.” A sound like a muted shofar blast. “The doctor did what he could, bless him. He tried his best. . . .”

  “No.” No!

  “He died with the Shema on his lips, bless him. He died a good Jew. His mother will be proud, sweet child. Carry her the news. Tell her. He died a good Jew.”

  23

  THE SUN WAS CLOSE to the horizon. Golden light gave the world a brief golden cast. Joses ambled back to Bethany, kicking stones here and there, marveling that he could look upon a hillside bedecked in colors like a celebration and see it beautiful.

  “It is too big for me, Lord God,” he murmured, and sent a stone skittering to the side of the road. He was your man. At least I thought he was. I thought I believed.

  The seedling died in the desert the moment his brother did.

  Joses raised bleak eyes to Bethany ahead. And what will you do now, with one who could have prevented it? Punish me, if you will, for allowing the death of your prophet, because the world has not seen such a man.

  He thought he had known grief when Father died. This grief was different. It was not right. Father’s death was reasonable, if sorrowful. Father was old. He was ready. But this . . . he could tear out his hair for the rage and the pain. For the helplessness. The injustice.

  A sound like a small squeak caught his ear. He looked to see a grubby little shepherd boy, not much bigger than Ben, watching Joses as he passed. The child was wide-eyed. Joses looked away. Even little ones recognized a brother of Jesus. What the family had already endured was nothing compared to what they would endure.

  The little boy watched them slowly amble down the road for Bethany. The shorter one looked at him with such sadness in his face. But the other one . . . he gave him such a nice smile.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was the first conscious thought James put together when the
roaring in his ears ceased.

  The woman before him honked into a wadded cloth, murmured something James could not understand, and left. He stood in the doorway, hand on the door. He did not move for he had no place to go.

  “James? What is it?” Judas was behind him.

  “Nathanael is dead.” There was a long silence. Then, “I will go tell Simon.”

  It was all wrong. Everything. Nothing was the way it should have been. Nathanael was not supposed to die. He was to live, marry Jorah. He was to—

  And what of the other? What of the one who calmed a storm? Who threw no stones?

  Boulder after boulder of unreasonable grief. James laughed out loud. Unreasonable! The perfect word. He slammed the door and turned into the workroom. Utterly unreasonable. He walked about; then he came to lean against a wall. He looked at the beams in the ceiling of the workroom.

  “They say you have risen,” he said to the beams. He lifted his arms and let them fall. “Congratulations. I don’t believe it. You hear me?” Rage bloomed, and he punched his fist at the ceiling. “I don’t believe it! And I don’t care! You couldn’t stay long enough to heal Nathanael? I believed that much. You couldn’t stay long enough for me to look into your eyes? It was all I wanted! All I needed, and I would have believed in you to the end!”

  New rumors had come earlier in the day. That Jesus had appeared to his friend Mary Magdalene, and some of the other women among his followers. To a fellow named Cleopas, and even to some of his disciples.

  “If you are alive, then hear me, Son of God,” he spat. “You appear to others, but not your own family? You care more about others than . . . but of course! ‘Who are my brothers . . . ?’”

  Unreasonable. Such a perfect word. He sagged down the wall to the floor and laughed himself to tears.

  Simon sat on the back porch of Devorah’s home. Was there nothing but madness to hold the family together? Jude had given him the news and walked away with those strange murmurs on his breath. Autumn trees without fruit. Doubly dead, uprooted. I can see it plain as my hand. Then he heard laughter within the home, heard it diminish to ragged weeping.

  Madness and sorrow, both without measure. Were these the things to hold a family together? Simon rubbed his hands together, looking into the back portico of the home behind Devorah’s. Potted plants, a few chairs, and a table set with fruit.

  So the scrappy apprentice was gone. And Joses with his new madness, that he could have prevented the death of Jesus. An hour ago he had stumbled in from wherever he had gone, blurting that it was his fault all along, that he had seen Judas Ish-Kerioth trade his inheritance for pottage. Joses seemed dully surprised when the brothers did not rise as one to crucify Joses himself. Did a plot matter now? Joses wasn’t thinking right, but who could make him see it? Jesus was gone. Nathanael was gone. What did it all matter?

  Scarred ones know. Trust the one with the scars.

  The words lifted as a wave through him, separate from his own thoughts. Simon stilled his hands. Then madness took him too. No one immune. No one left to keep things together. Joses with his guilt, Jude with his babblings, James—but he had changed early on—and Jorah, infected with this new hatred, and now bereft of the one person who could make her happy. Oddly, all Simon wanted to do was pay another visit to a man named Kardus. Perhaps because the madness had left him.

  Simon gazed at the potted plants on the porch. “What is that like, Kardus? To have the madness leave? What is it like to have a smooth sea inside?”

  He would like to sit quietly with this man Kardus, sip some good wine, and sit on that seashore. Talk about things. Talk with someone sane. The potted plants blurred before him, and he began to rub his hands again.

  24

  JORAH WISHED HE COULD have been buried on the ridge, in the shade of Father’s olive tree.

  Abi had helped prepare his body, wrapping the napkin about his beautiful face and freshly washed hair, wrapping the linen bands about his arms and legs. Jorah should have wrapped the bands about the tefillin, burying them with him, but she could not bear it. She needed something to take away with her, something that had meant as much to him as the tefillin.

  He had not taken them off since Simon had given them to him days, eons ago. Impressions from the straps left ridges in his skin. She had traced her fingers through the ridges on his arm, to the ridges on his hand, to the square left by the leather packet. Impossible words, he had called them.

  It wasn’t until she heard a quick intake of breath from Abi that she looked to see Nathanael’s legs. Scars, like a ladder, from midthigh to his hip. It was only a glance. Abi moved quickly to band the scars with the linen.

  Nathanael’s funeral bier was carried aloft by the four brothers and not followed by a gaggle of mourners. Simon would not allow it. A few women had assumed their services would be needed when they learned of the death of the young man at the doctor’s house, but Simon drove them away. We will mourn, he had told them. We are the ones who knew him. Jorah followed the bier, Keturah by her side. Abi and her husband came last. Eight people made up the funeral procession for Nathanael ben Rivkah of Caesarea Maritima.

  In the common graveyard outside of Bethany, they lowered Nathanael’s white-shrouded body into the trench dug into the earth.

  She loved him the day he made James laugh.

  The faces of the brothers were as stone, as hard as the ones they piled upon the mound. Simon intoned prayers.

  She loved him the day he dunked James in the dye pot.

  Jorah placed a posy of wildflowers on the rabble of stones. The posy came apart when she did, so she tucked the flowers back together, setting a stone on the stems, and stood back, hands clasped.

  She loved him the day an olive tree amazed him.

  The flowers fluttered in the warm breeze, and Abi put an arm about her to lead her away. Joab lived, who could have prevented it. Jesus died, who could have prevented it. Life was nothing less than profane.

  The next morning, they left for Galilee.

  Joses would return later to Nazareth with Abigail and their children, along with Tobias and Sarah, Therin and Keturah. He would find Mother, whom they had not yet seen, in Jerusalem and bring her back to Nazareth.

  How James had wanted to go to her . . . but he felt much the same as Joses, bereft and betrayed, and that at the very end. “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.” Did Jesus not trust his own family to care for her? Or was it that—and James felt the shards of guilt—Jesus did not see any of the brothers from his tormented heights, and so did his best for her? Yes, he loved his mother at the end. If his own foolishness had put him on that cross, if his own foolishness had broken his mother’s heart, at least he tried to make sure, with what breath remained, that she was cared for. It was a small and bitter comfort.

  James, Simon, Judas, and Jorah all wanted to leave as soon as possible.

  Gathered at Bethany’s foregate to say good-bye were Joses and Abigail, Devorah and Matthias, and Keturah. Simon fussed with the donkey harness while James made room in the cart for the provisions Devorah and the doctor’s wife brought. Devorah had given them a sack of unleavened bread, the woman named Abi a sack of unleavened cakes. James had already rolled up the bedrolls, which had been spread in the cart. He had thrown away his own . . . it was stained with Nathanael’s blood. When he had pushed the other bedrolls into a corner, he found something strange. Tucked in the corner was a little pile of coins, the coins that had been in the money box.

  James stashed the sacks of food, tucking and securing them more than he needed to. It was hard to say good-bye to Joses. He hardly remembered speaking to Devorah since being in Bethany, but there his sister stood, her face so beautiful in her sorrow. He glanced at Keturah, who stood apart in her lavender tunic, her face pale and still.

  Matthias stood with his arm about Devorah. The fact that he maintained that calm of his was reason enough for them to leave. Truly, there was no reason to stay. It would be pure relief to be away fr
om the prying eyes, from the whispers. From the constant stream who offered meaningless words, from those who continually demonstrated great flourishes of wailing and grief for Jesus of Nazareth, people James did not know, people he did not care about.

  Keturah came to stand beside him. “Simon says you are going through Samaria.”

  James pretended to check the cinches on the canvas. He nodded as he fussed with a knot.

  She stood in silence, then said softly, “Be careful, James. Godspeed.” She turned to leave. James raised his head.

  “Keturah.”

  She stopped and looked over her shoulder.

  “It seems we have an opening in the shop. We could use a—” But his breath caught. The wave of sorrow could have dropped him where he stood.

  She smiled sadly. The breeze caught her head covering, and she pulled it down to look at him. “I happen to know someone who may be available. She is particularly good with detail work.”

  “Perhaps she learned from the best.” Wave after wave.

  “That she did, James.” Her lips pressed together for a moment, and those beautiful eyes glittered with tears. So many things to make a woman beautiful . . . why did grief have to be one? Her gaze flickered to the road ahead of them. “Keep an eye on those hillsides.” She turned and walked away.

  Joses came beside him, gazing down the road. “I will see you in a few days. Godspeed.”

  James nodded. Now was not the time to tell him that nobody thought for an instant he was in any way responsible for Jesus’ death. The events were like a great Roman machine, an inexorable march toward an inevitable conclusion. All prophets seemed to come to this. Even the ones with good news.

  “Find Mother,” James murmured. “Take care of her.”