“I’m sorry, Biff.”
“Don’t be sorry for me, why would you be sorry for me?”
“I know how you feel, so I’m sorry.”
I was thrown for a second. I glanced at Joshua to see if he could give me a clue, but he was still absorbed in splattering his breakfast in the dirt.
“But it’s Joshua who you love?” I finally said.
“Does that make you feel any better?”
“Well, no.”
“Then I’m sorry.” She made as if to reach out to touch my cheek, but her mother called her before she made contact.
“Right now, Mary, in this house!”
Maggie nodded toward the barfing Messiah. “Take care of him.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“And take care of yourself.”
“I’ll be fine too, Maggie. Don’t forget I have an emergency backup wife. Besides, it’s six months. A lot can happen in six months. It’s not like we won’t see you.” I was trying to sound more hopeful than I felt.
“Take Joshua home,” she said. Then she quickly kissed me on the cheek and ran into the house.
Joshua was completely against the idea of murdering Jakan, or even praying for harm to come to him. If anything, Joshua seemed more kindly disposed toward Jakan than he had been before, going as far as to seek him out and congratulate him on his betrothal to Maggie, an act that left me feeling angry and betrayed. I confronted Joshua in the olive grove, where he had gone to pray among the twisted tree trunks.
“You coward,” I said, “you could strike him down if you wanted to.”
“As could you,” he replied.
“Yeah, but you can call the wrath of God down upon him. I’d have to sneak up behind him and brain him with a rock. There’s a difference.”
“And you would have me kill Jakan for what, your bad luck?”
“Works for me.”
“Is it so hard for you to give up what you never had?”
“I had hope, Josh. You understand hope, don’t you?” Sometimes he could be mightily dense, or so I thought. I didn’t realize how much he was hurting inside, or how much he wanted to do something.
“I think I understand hope, I’m just not sure that I am allowed to have any.”
“Oh, don’t start with that ‘Everyone gets something but me’ speech. You’ve got plenty.”
Josh wheeled on me, his eyes like fire, “Like what? What do I have?”
“Uh…” I wanted to say something about a really sexy mother, but that didn’t seem like the sort of thing he wanted to hear. “Uh, you have God.”
“So do you. So does everyone.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Not the Romans.”
“There are Roman Jews.”
“Well, you’ve got, uh—that healing-raising-the-dead thing.”
“Oh yeah, and that’s working really well.”
“Well, you’re the Messiah, what’s that? That’s something. If you told people you were the Messiah they’d have to do what you say.”
“I can’t tell them.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know how to be the Messiah.”
“Well, at least do something about Maggie.”
“He can’t,” came a voice from behind a tree. A golden glow emanated from either side of the trunk.
“Who’s there?” Joshua called.
The angel Raziel stepped out from behind the tree.
“Angel of the Lord,” I said under my breath to Josh.
“I know,” he said, in a “you seen one, you seen ’em all” way.
“He can’t do anything,” the angel repeated.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he may not know any woman.”
“I may not?” Joshua said, not sounding at all happy.
“He may not in that he should not, or that he cannot?” I asked.
The angel scratched his golden head, “I didn’t think to ask.”
“It’s kind of important,” I said.
“Well, he can’t do anything about Mary Magdalene, I know that. They told me to come and tell him that. That and that it is time for him to go.”
“Go where?”
“I didn’t think to ask.”
I suppose I should have been frightened, but I seemed to have passed right through frightened to exasperated. I stepped up to the angel and poked him in the chest. “Are you the same angel that came to us before, to announce the coming of the Savior?”
“It was the Lord’s will that I bring that joyful news.”
“I just wondered, in case all of you angels look alike or something. So, after you showed up ten years late, they sent you with another message?”
“I am here to tell the Savior that it is time for him to go.”
“But you don’t know where?”
“No.”
“And this golden stuff around you, this light, what is this?”
“The glory of the Lord.”
“You’re sure it’s not stupidity leaking out of you?”
“Biff, be nice, he is the messenger of the Lord.”
“Well, hell, Josh, he’s no help at all. If we’re going to get angels from heaven they should at least know what they are doing. Blow down walls or something, destroy cities, oh, I don’t know—get the whole message.”
“I’m sorry,” the angel said. “Would you like me to destroy a city?”
“Go find out where Josh is supposed to go. How ’bout that?”
“I can do that.”
“Then do that.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“We’ll wait.”
“Godspeed,” Joshua said.
In an instant the angel moved behind another tree trunk and the golden glow was gone from the olive grove with a warm breeze.
“You were sort of hard on him,” Joshua said.
“Josh, being nice isn’t always going to get the job done.”
“One can try.”
“Was Moses nice to Pharaoh?”
Before Joshua could answer me, the warm breeze blew into the olive grove again and the angel stepped out from behind a tree.
“To find your destiny,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“What?” Joshua said.
“You are supposed to go find your destiny.”
“That’s it?” Joshua said.
“Yes.”
“What about the ‘knowing a woman’ thing?” I asked.
“I have to go now.”
“Grab him, Josh. You hold him and I’ll hit him.”
But the angel was gone with the breeze.
“My destiny?” Joshua looked at his open, empty palms.
“We should have pounded the answer out of him,” I said.
“I don’t think that would have worked.”
“Oh, back to the nice strategy. Did Moses—”
“Moses should have said, ‘Let my people go, please.’”
“That would have made the difference?”
“It could have worked. You don’t know.”
“So what do you do about your destiny?”
“I’m going to ask the Holy of Holies when we go to the Temple for the Passover.”
And so it came to pass that in the spring all of the Jews from Galilee made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, and Joshua began the search for his destiny. The road was lined with families making their way to the holy city. Camels, carts, and donkeys were loaded high with provisions for the trip, and all along the column of pilgrims you could hear the bleating of the lambs that would be sacrificed for the feast. The road was dry that year, and a red-brown cloud of dust wound its way over the road as far as one could see in either direction.
Since we were each the eldest in our families, it fell on Joshua and me to keep track of all our younger brothers and sisters. It seemed that the easiest way to accomplish this was to tie them together, so we strung together, by height, my two brothers and Josh’s three brothers and two sisters. I tied the rope loosely around their necks so it would only choke them if they got out of line.