The Eyewitnesses
A Short Story about how hard it is to live up to big brothers.
This short story was written as part of
’s Flash Fiction contest from the prompt, “Write a story—in ANY genre—giving the limelight to a character who is normally in the background.” Hope you enjoy!
“Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
I’d been hearing that for as long as I could remember.
Then, three years ago, my brother left home.
He left my mother, my brothers, my sisters, and me . . . and he never came back.
Did I resent him for it?
I mean, sure. Who wouldn’t?
They say he had a promising future. He was the ‘golden child’; poised to take on the family business after Abba1 passed. Average looking to be sure, but magnetising and charismatic. He always had a flock of women following him wherever he went. You can imagine how scandalous that looked.
Of course, I didn’t understand it then; what was really going on.
We’d been under foreign occupation since my grandmother was a baby. But when you have a big brother, you always feel safe. No matter what happened, you knew there was always someone there who would know what to do. That was my brother.
And then came our cousin.
He and my brother were born six months apart, so they were always that bit closer than the rest of us. You’d catch them having these hushed conversations that our parents didn’t want us overhearing.
Of course, I would eavesdrop.
Yochanan was . . . eccentric. Big plans. Big dreams, and he was always trying to get my brother involved. He spoke in large, vocal brushstrokes. Words so vivid they were almost tangible. Even if all he was doing was going to aunt Elisheva’s vineyard to pick grapes, the way he talked about it made you ready to bear arms and die for the cause.
But my brother?
Yochanan would talk and my brother would listen. Patiently. Quietly. He never . . . committed to anything. You never knew what he was really thinking. He would just . . . smile.
It was during the fifteenth year of the emperor’s reign. Yochanan was arrested for ‘treason.’ All he’d done was say out loud what all of us were thinking, that the puppet-king’s marriage was scandalous. Trust me, for Yochanan, that was mild.
My brother was busy working as a stone mason for the big amphitheatre job up north. The first we knew something was wrong was when Abner, the foreman, came looking for him. The day had started ordinarily enough. My brother arrived early, laid out his tools and began to work. When one of Yohanan’s followers arrived to deliver the news, apparently, he dropped his chisel, stood, and walked away saying something about how it was “time.”
Abner’s fists were huge, so when he came knocking the whole house shook.
“Is he here?” he’d said.
Yehud and I exchanged looks. My emah2, Yohana and Chana pretended they couldn’t hear a thing and were still kneading bread at the back of the house.
The more Abner talked, the more Emah had this look in her eyes. She started to shuffle about, fiddling with the hem of her sleeves. When he left, she begged me not to get involved. That there were things about my brother I wouldn’t understand. Yet.
Of course, she knew. She never told us. We wouldn’t have believed her if she did. She didn’t like talking about those early days. There was a stigma, you know?
She was betrothed to Abba, vanished for three months to help aunt Elisheva with her pregnancy, then came back with her own? They wed shortly after, but the timing never added up. The people still talked.
To my shame, yes, I believed the talk; even more so when my brother disappeared. I guess . . . I was trying to understand why he would abandon Emah. Abandon the responsibilities of a son to a widowed mother. I thought about those times when he’d talk about his ‘father’, and I just put two and two together. He wasn’t talking about our father. Not the man who had raised him, fed him, clothed him. Not the beloved husband of his mother.
For awhile, I considered he might actually try and break Yochanan out, but he didn’t even do that. We heard nothing for weeks. Then word started reaching us from Capernaum.
A man in the local assembly had collapsed, convulsing, and foaming at the mouth. The visiting teacher approached him, said “Be silent, and come out of him!” and whatever spirit was in him left. Next thing you know, I’m hearing that a local fisherman’s mother-in-law was severely ill. This same teacher came to her home, lifted her from her bed and she was made well. By evening, the whole city had gathered at the door with their sick friends and relatives. All we knew was that this teacher had come from Nazareth. It was a longshot, but the only weird thing to come out of Nazareth was my brother.
Was he a teacher? I mean, he’d taught us all how to shape wood and there was that one time he got left in the Temple with the scribes when we were kids, but . . . a teacher teacher?
Yoseph, Shimon and Yehud wanted to see for themselves. By the time we arrived, my brother was gone.
Tracking his movements became near impossible, so we had to follow the rumours. The uproars. The disturbances. We didn’t have to wait long. Things got so bad, the uproar reached our house. The local leaders started showing up at our door. Representatives from the high council in the capital.
“Do you know what your brother is saying? What he is calling himself? Who he is claiming to be? Calling himself the ‘Son of Man’ and the Lord of Shabbat?”
For me, this was the last straw. You could go around being a would-be teacher and draw crowds with magic tricks, but you couldn’t just mess with the sacred traditions. Not when they painted a target on the backs of all of your kinsmen! I wanted revolution as much as the next man but we had to be realistic. A wandering teacher from Nazareth stood little chance against an empire that had swallowed the world whole.
He was out of his mind, and so we had to stop him. I had to stop him.
He’d made somewhat of a home-base in Capernaum where some of his ‘disciples’ lived. So, we made a point to go and bring him back to Nazareth the next time he was there. Me, Yoseph, Shimon, Yehud, Yohanna, Chana . . . even Emah.
He wasn’t hard to find. We just followed the crowds. It got to the point where we couldn’t even reach the house. Yehud spotted one of his disciples, Philip, in the rabble. We asked him to deliver a message to my brother. And you know what? He wouldn’t even see us. Do you know what he said?
He said, “Who are my mother and my brothers? My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of HaShem and do it.”
***
The last time I saw him . . . before . . .
He turned up in Nazareth. Him and his disciples. He came into the local assembly on Shabbat and began to teach. And the things he said . . . that the “Spirit of Adonai was upon him.” That he had “come to proclaim good news to the poor, set the captives free from their oppressors and give sight to the blind . . .” but nothing about helping Emah. Yochanan was still imprisoned. And he didn’t even read the rest of the text about the judgment awaiting our oppressors, yet he had the gall to say, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
When the people, understandably, became confused he said that no prophet was acceptable in his hometown. That in the days of old, Eliyahu could have gone to the widows and lepers of our kinsmen but instead went to the people of our oppressors.
The locals dragged him out of the town and tried to throw him off a cliff. He escaped but . . . I didn’t see him again. Not when he was arrested. Not even when he was executed.
But he came to see me afterwards. Me. The one who had doubted him the most. The one who had grown to despise and spit upon the very ground he walked on. And when he came, I fell to that same ground . . . and I kissed his feet. Right where the nails had been driven through his ankles. And he lifted me up by my arms. He pulled me close . . . and he held me.
“My dear achaya3,” he said.
And everything within me broke. Everything spilled out like a vomit of words, regret and shame.
I tell you, Saul, the first thing I said when I composed myself. The first thing that came to mind . . .
“How on Earth am I going to live up to this? You were a tough act to follow before, but now?”
He just listened quietly and smiled that same smile, patted me on the shoulder and said, “Yacob . . .I have complete faith in you.”
Father
Mother
Little brother
Very brave, very penetrating!
Wow. I like it especially the subtle name difference. Remind me of The Chosen.
I read somewhere that Jesus was probably more likely a stone mason after Joseph’s death.
I wrote story about Jesus going to work with his dad for the first time and Mary worrying about parenting. My very well meaning, Catholic mother-in-law did not appreciate the mention of Jesus brothers and sisters in my fiction. She explained that Catholic tradition hold that Mary was ever-virginal. Did you catch any flack for that?