The plane moved.
The cedar was old. Joseph Jr. had pulled it from the back shelf because the new boards had a knot pattern Yeshua did not like. The old boards cut better.
Yeshua was twenty-six. The shop still smelled like his father. The plane still fit his palm the way Joseph had shaped it.
Across the room, Joseph Jr. worked at his own bench. Nineteen now. The boy who had once hidden carved animals under his mat made cabinets the Sepphoris foreman paid full price for.
Outside, Ruth was sweeping. Eleven years old, and offended by anyone who walked across the part she had finished.
More than seven years had passed since the night on the ridge.
He had married no one. He had worked, taught the younger children, learned to trust the hands reaching for the tools beside his own.
James and Esta had married in November. Miriam had married Jacob, the stone mason’s son, in the same season. There were new households now, new arrangements to be made. Martha was talking about her own wedding. Simon worked stone. Jude fished and brought home his share.
Yeshua had spoken with James about what would happen when he left. They had spoken again. Eventually James had begun answering questions before Yeshua could ask them.
He let him.
That afternoon he went into the house.
His mother was at the loom.
She did not look up when he sat across from her. The shuttle moved twice. Three times. She had been making something from wool too good for the everyday clothes.
“I’m going to the lake,” he said. “Tiberias first. Then the other towns.”
The shuttle stopped.
“When?”
“Sunday.”
She nodded once.
He had imagined this conversation so often that the quiet seemed wrong. He had been ready to tell her what James could manage, what Joseph Jr. earned, what he himself would keep sending home.
She knew all of it. They had spent years preparing.
“And after the lake?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She set the shuttle down. Her hands lay flat on the frame.
“I told you I would stop choosing your road.”
“I know.”
“Then go.”
He did not move.
“Mama.”
She picked up the shuttle. It took her two tries to find the thread.
He stayed until the loom was moving again.
Ruth stood in the courtyard with the broom.
“You are going somewhere.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I can’t tell you yet.”
She looked down at the strip of ground she had swept.
“Bring me a shell,” she said. “A real one. From far.”
“When I reach the sea, I’ll look.”
“You came back before. From Egypt.”
He had told her that story. Now she was giving it back to him as an instruction.
“I’ll come back,” he said.
She nodded and went on sweeping.
Joseph Jr. was at the bench.
“James told me,” he said.
Yeshua stood beside him.
“Who keeps the shop?”
“You.”
His brother looked down. “All right.”
Yeshua put a hand on his shoulder.
“You have been ready for a year.”
Joseph Jr. reached for their father’s plane. He turned it in his palm, his thumb following the place years of work had worn smooth.
“I know.”
Yeshua almost laughed.
Then his brother looked up, and he could not.
Late that afternoon he climbed the ridge.
At the turn where the path left the village he stopped at the low stone wall and rested his hand where Joseph’s had rested.
He did not stay long at the top.
In his pocket the gold ring with the amber stone lay against his leg. He had carried it since he was fifteen. He did not take it out.
When he came down, Ruth was waiting at the gate. He went inside.
Rain fell on Sunday morning.
He took his leave without a gathering. A few things to carry. The road wet under his sandals. Behind him the door closed, and he heard the household beginning its day.
He kept walking.
At Capernaum, Zebedee laid a length of timber between two trestles and asked him how he would build a better boat.
Yeshua ran his hand along it.
The old boatbuilder had known Joseph. He listened when Yeshua spoke. When he disagreed, he brought another piece of wood and made him show the difference.
A little more than a year passed in that shop.
They steamed boards and bent them. They watched fishermen take the new boats out and waited on the shore for them to return. A fisherman from across the harbor named Simon argued against every change Yeshua made to the forward ribs, then asked to take the first hull out. Each month Yeshua sent money home. In the autumn he went back for Martha’s wedding.
Zebedee’s sons became his friends. James held the clamps. Joram kept the yard tallies. Their mother, Salome, set a bowl for him at the family table. John asked questions after supper and stayed when the others went to bed. Sometimes, working beside their father, Yeshua reached for a tool at the same moment the older man passed it to him.
He had forgotten work could feel like that.
The following spring he went to Jerusalem.
Before leaving, he asked John to keep sending money to Nazareth from the wages Zebedee held for him. John promised he would.
At Passover, amid the noise of the city, a man stopped him after hearing him speak Greek.
“Would you say that again? My son thinks he understood you.”
The boy beside him was trying not to look annoyed. Twelve, perhaps. Linen travel clothes, dusty at the hem.
Yeshua repeated the sentence more slowly.
The boy answered in Greek. His father listened, then looked back at Yeshua.
“My name is Asok. This is Vidar.”
They were travelers from India. They needed an interpreter, and someone who could teach the son along the way.
“Where are you going?” Yeshua asked.
“Rome. Alexandria first. And the places between.”
Vidar had stopped pretending not to listen.
Yeshua told Asok about his family.
“I cannot leave them to find money they may not have.”
“Then I will pay a year in advance. You can leave it with someone you trust.”
The offer lay between them.
“I will need to make the arrangements.”
Asok waited.
“Yes,” Yeshua said.
He put the money into John’s hands. He told Zebedee where he was going and asked him to keep the journey private.
His family knew he had left Capernaum. They did not know the route that lay ahead.
On the road toward the coast, Vidar walked beside him for a time.
“My father says you are to teach me.”
“That is the arrangement.”
“What if I ask something you don’t know?”
“Then we shall have something to find out.”
Vidar considered this.
By the time they reached the harbor, he had begun.
