The Journey Begun (8 page)

She jerked her arm up and hit his knee. “Loog...a...meh!”

Jonah returned his gaze to hers but could not abide her searching eyes and he faltered.

Deborah tipped her head and looked at Miriam and Ehud. “Go...alone...Zhoneh.” Jonah saw her eyes soften, signaling they should not take the request to be alone with him for a rebuke.

Ehud’s hardened eyes glistened as Miriam took his arm. “Let’s go, Father. I’m sure it’ll be all right.” They ushered Jesse and Joshua outside and closed the door.

Jonah fidgeted, still not able to hold his mother’s stare.

“Zhoneh...tell...” She laid her head back and swallowed. “Tell...truph.”

Her son settled back on this heels, but he couldn’t speak.

“Thuh...voish?”

His eyes snapped back to hers.
How does she know these things?
There was no way to avoid the truth now.

“Yes, the voice.” His own voice was barely above a whisper.

“Wuht?...Who?...Wheng?” She held him with her eyes.

Jonah frowned and remained silent.

“Zhoneh?”

“It doesn’t matter, Mother. I’m not going anywhere.” His voice was hard, his eyes steel.

“Don...unnershtan...” A hint of fear entered her eyes, something Jonah had never seen there before and it tore at his heart.

“Tell her,”
a voice told Jonah.

“Mother, you can’t understand this! I—” He coughed. “I-I’m sup-posed to go...” He couldn’t finish. Heat flooded his forehead and scattered his thoughts. He didn’t know which would do his mother more harm—his refusal to answer or the answer itself. Was he being stubborn or merciful, rational or rationalizing? He honestly couldn’t tell. Jonah stared down at her fingers grasping his arm for the first time since her stroke. Her nails dug into his skin.

His eyes edged back to meet hers. “I’m supposed to go to Nineveh, Mother.
Nineveh!”
he hissed. “And preach repentance!” He spat the words, his muddled emotions wishing they would infuriate her as they did him.

Deborah released his arm and dropped her hand to her side. Her eyes softened. “Den...you...musht...go.”

“She doesn’t understand. You don’t have to go.”

“What?
What?
Did you hear what I said? Nineveh!
Assyria!”
Jonah stared at her in horror, his voice rising. “How can you
say
that?”

Her eyes clouded. “No...choish...
Adonai…
callsh...He...wull...haf...

mershy—”

“Mercy? For Assyria?”
the silky voice goaded.

“
No!
No mercy!” Jonah gritted his teeth. “I do have a choice and I will not answer this call.
Adonai
has no business in Assyria!” He choked on his words. “Someone else can go!”

His mother’s hand groped for his arm. “Shun...you…musht—”

“Don’t go!”

“
No!”
Jonah jerked back from her hand and shot to his feet, reeling back into the post behind him.

“What’s going on? What are you
doing?”
Sarah burst into the room when Jonah’s raised voice penetrated the door. She stood staring, her face paling. Ehud stood at her shoulder, but Miriam paused in the doorway.

“They must leave. Get them out.”

“Leave us alone!” Jonah barked at his sister-in-law.

Ignoring him, Sarah strode over to Deborah’s side and knelt. Deborah stared at the ceiling, her breath coming in short gasps.

Sarah turned on Jonah, her eyes on fire. “What have you done?”

“Get them out!”

“I said
out!”
Pain arced through Jonah’s head, and his furor took control.

“Jonah, calm down. What’s this all about?” Ehud stepped between his wife and his brother. Without warning, Jonah growled and pushed past his brother. Ehud stumbled over a chair next to the table and crashed to the floor. His hand closed around a piece of firewood.

Miriam screamed and rushed to Ehud’s side.

“Stop it!
Stop it!”
Sarah shielded her mother-in-law from the melee and swiped at Jonah with her free arm. “You’re killing her!” she hissed at him and turned back to Deborah, who now laid still.

“GET THEM OUT!”

The command expelled all reason from Jonah’s mind. “Leave me alone! Everybody
out!”
He kicked the overturned chair, which spun into the cook fire, scattering embers and ashes against the stone wall.

Ehud regained his feet and advanced on his fuming brother, brandishing the piece of firewood.
“You
get out! You’ve gone crazy, and I’m not going to let you kill Mother.
Go!”

Jonah’s breath whistled through clenched teeth. He glared at his brother, who raised the firewood. Miriam shrank back against the front wall, her hand over her mouth. Sarah ignored them as she hovered over Deborah’s still form, patting the back of the comatose woman’s hand.

“I…said...
out!”
Ehud snarled.

“Run!”

Jonah whirled, stomped to his sleeping mat, and grabbed a pouch containing his belongings. Slinging it over his shoulder he barged out the door without a backward look.

“Uncle Jonah, what—?” Jesse and Joshua stared as Jonah stalked across the yard, slammed through the gate and broke into a faltering run down the village road. They watched him disappear into the night and everything went quiet.

Lll

“Don’t stop!”

Jonah pounded down the path to the village. He didn’t stop when he burst into the town square, but bolted across the plaza toward the wadi road. He lurched over the rock threshold and stumbled down the dark gully until he reached the foot of the hill. Gasping for breath, he staggered to a halt and sagged against a boulder. The sack slipped from his grasp as he slid to the ground. He clutched his chest, certain his heart would burst at any moment. Bolts of pain arced though his body like lightning searing an angry sky. After the lightning came the rain, as tears flowed down his cheeks, streaking the dust on his face into rivulets of brackish mud. Finally the thunder, as a guttural wail split the night air like the howl of a wounded wolf. The turmoil in his mind and pain in his body cut the thunder short and gagged him. He rolled onto his side, vomited, and passed out.

Six

imon grew impatient as the supply boat slogged through the waves toward the beach. Hardly did it scrape ground beneath the surf when he hurled his bag onto Joppa’s pebbly strand. The throw stretched the scabbed gash on his back, and he grimaced at another one of countless reminders of his near-fatal mishap at sea.

The storm-battered ship stood at anchor far offshore, Joppa’s shallow harbor and strong westerly winds making a closer approach too hazardous. Anxious to get his feet onto dry land, he squeezed himself into a narrow space aboard the first shuttle returning from the
Ba’al Hayam
. The harbor crew could manage unloading what little was left of the cargo and supplies. He couldn’t get off the ship fast enough. The helmsman shook his head as he once again pondered the road that led him to a life at sea.

The eldest son of a Sidonian widow, Simon followed the path of most of his ancestors who first settled the Phoenician port city. He became a sailor. Lured by the promise of adventure—and discouraged by a depressed economy plaguing the lower class—he left his mother and six younger siblings, promising support from his meager wages whenever his ship put into Sidon. That was twelve years ago, and he’d never been back.

Unlike his ancestors, though, Simon never established an amiable relationship with the sea. He drank water to survive, not because he enjoyed it—and he traveled on it for the same reason. He favored solid ground beneath his feet to the swaying of wood upon water, so it didn’t take long for him to develop a preference for the larger long-distance haulers that handled the swells more gracefully than coastal vessels. Although he hated seeing the coastline disappear below the horizon astern on the voyages to Cyprus, Crete and beyond, he could busy himself with his helmsman’s duties until land emerged once again over the prow as they neared the next port of call.

Simon saw his share of rough weather, but this last trip was the worst. The storm they endured south of Cyprus was unusual this time of year, but the sea had yet to apologize to him for her behavior. The plan was to put in at Acco and offload a portion of their cargo, but most of it had been jettisoned during the tempest. To make matters worse, two days of buffeting by gale force winds and more rain than he’d ever seen in his life pushed the ship far off course. That forced Shem’s decision to bypass Acco for Joppa, the
Ba’al’s
home port. She limped into the harbor two days later at neap tide.

“Hoi!
What’s the hurry?” The foreman at the tiller tottered as Simon’s leap over the bow lurched the boat. Simon splashed into knee-deep water and sloshed to shore. He paused only long enough to drop to his knees and rub a handful of dry sand against his cheek, a ritual he had repeated at every landfall since his first year as a seaman. Swooping up his rucksack, he set off toward the city, still teetering in search of his land legs.

Lll

True to King Jeroboam’s words, a curtain of cold rain cut a diagonal path through Gath-hepher’s valley, as a cold front collided with the moist air stalled over its mouth. The deluge ground southward, scouring the landscape like a liquid glacier. Its leading edge formed a sheer wall of water, whose low rumble gave only a few moments’ warning of its approach.

A dry leaf littering the threshold of Gath-heper’s wadi road lifted in the bow wave of air roiling ahead of the torrent—only to be slammed against the bedrock the next moment beneath the torrent. After a moment, the leaf shuddered, then slipped from the sill and spun in the current of a gathering rill racing down the gully. Whirling in eddies as it coursed around rocks and boulders, the bit of foliage danced through ruts and gullies gouged into the road by similar flash floods of ages past. Its pace slackened as it flowed onto the byway at the valley floor. There the leaf came to rest, caught in folds of coarse cloth that enveloped a human form lying near the base of a rocky outcropping.

As the rising water penetrated his clothing, Jonah stirred and drew his knees against his chest, his eyelids flickering at the cold moisture against his skin. He lifted his head and squinted into the blackness. A muffled roar reached his ears only seconds before the onslaught of rain overtook him. He was drenched in seconds. He buried his head in his arms and rolled away from the muddy cascade, stopping against the bulging sack wedged between himself and the boulder. Grasping the parcel close, he hugged the base of the outcropping for refuge.

It was normal for storms like this to pass over after a few minutes. But this one lingered, the skies pounding the valley without mercy for over two hours. It swelled into brutal buffeting that stung the skin, then ebbed to moderate abuse with sheets of water that soaked and chilled to the bone. Jonah was never so miserable. His befuddled mind urged him to seek shelter, but the inky blackness denied him any chance to find it. So for now, he could only lie there and hope the rain pummeling his body might distract him from the agonizing memory of the previous evening’s row. Gradually, the pinging on his skin faded into dull drumming as he slipped back into unconsciousness.

Fitful dozing gave way to dead slumber, in spite of the rain and cold. Jonah had no idea how long he slept. His fancy floated him high above the clouds, drinking in the deep blue of the awakening sky. He embraced the stars in farewell as they surrendered to the yellow-orange halo on the eastern horizon just moments before the sun exploded into view and wrestled command of the heavens from his lunar consort. The stars blinking out one by one morphed in Jonah’s reemerging consciousness to the intermittent tapping of raindrops on his face. When he regained a semblance of awareness, he was relieved to discover the deluge abating to little more than a sprinkling. He reckoned the sky seemed less dark, perhaps the suggestion of delayed predawn—or maybe only a wistful remnant of his dream.

Fuzzy images of yesterday’s events slogged through his besotted mind, but he wasn’t sure how much really happened and how much he imagined. He hoped that his memory exaggerated the worst of it, but a nagging intuition told him it hadn’t. He squeezed his eyes shut against the ugly images, but they clung to his conscience and racked him with guilt. How could he ever go back after what he’d done? Ehud was right. He didn’t belong there anymore. They were better off without him.

Jonah struggled to sit up in the muck. Half erect, he cupped his head in his hands and shivered as slimy clogs of mud writhed down his wrists and into his sleeves. Wispy strands of grimy hair plastered to his face guided rivulets down his cheeks and into his beard. The effort to sit upright rewarded him with a back spasm that stabbed him like a hot needle and pushed him back down into the mud. Indecision immobilized him as he fought against the agony in his body and fear in his mind.

Where do I go from here? I can’t go home. Maybe best to just sit here…and die.

Finally, a surge of resolve, born more of self-pity than purpose, pulled Jonah to his feet, where he swayed on legs cramped from their stumbling flight down the hill. The sprinkling slackened to misting, permitting just enough light to keep to the road—or at least to avoid large obstacles. Steadying himself against the boulder, he stooped to retrieve his bag. He poured out the excess water and slung it over his shoulder. His first thought was to take the familiar turn off the wadi path toward the Jezreel Valley. Uncertainty poked him with another notion, though, and he turned his head the opposite direction toward the Sea of Chinneseret. Why not take the less familiar path? He winced at a sharp pain that stabbed his temple. Oh, yes. To the northeast lie Assyria and Nineveh. That fact alone gave sufficient reason to turn south.

Jonah staggered off toward the big valley, trudging through ankle-deep puddles. His soaked clothing and heavy rucksack chafed his skin as yesterday’s memories chafed his mind. He focused on the road before him, squinting in the gloom and feeling for treacherous footing on the road worn smooth over the centuries. He had no plan, no destination in mind. Anywhere was fine as long as it wasn’t Nineveh. His mother didn’t understand and his family wouldn’t understand, even if they knew. It was simply out of the question, end of the discussion
. I’d sooner preach in Sheol than in Assyria.