“I need to go now, don’t I?”
“Now.”
“Help me with the donkey. I can’t explain to the elders why I will pursue this, but God knows I’ve been patient . . .” He didn’t need to finish what passed unspoken between them.
She was less hopeful than he for a cure; the laments of women dying as they gave birth were part of the sounds of her world. If they were ever truly going to lean on the God of their fathers, well, let them lean. She hated to have Jairus go, knowing he would most likely not be there when his daughter died, but the curtain of death descended from the hand of God, not hers. Rivka wiped her mouth and nose, her hand trembling, her ordinarily firm voice shattered. “Leave, my love. Go. Just go.”
Jairus took the water skins, went around the side of the house, and slung them across Nabby, the donkey. Blinking quietly the animal stood, one hip cocked; reluctantly he roused himself for the gear-pack. Rivka disappeared again into the cave of the house and came out with a clay jar of figs and slung it across the donkey’s woven blanket. Next she put a leather pouch of flat bread in a pocket of the blanket. Then she reached up for a bridle, pulling it off a hook, and held the beast’s head in the crook of her arm as she slipped the bit into his mouth. Jairus went to take a last look into the darkened house, knelt and held his daughter’s hand and kissed her forehead, then turned to come out to take Nabby’s reins from Rivka. She held her husband tightly to her and felt his rapid breathing.
“I know Yeshua will remember you with care,” she said.
“All right, let me go now.”
He pressed his cheek to hers, moved the donkey out, and walked briskly alongside, not looking back.
Jairus knew how to run. Running was the only thing that had seemed to soothe him before Rivka had provided him another stable foundation, beyond the synagogue, from which to experience his own life. The sword of the wilderness had been his running ground when he was a boy, opening a vast expanse that could swallow his pain. At seven he had seen his father crucified under Herod’s “cleansing”; his mother had died ten days later. The elders of the synagogue had sought him, and brought him back, where he was raised by a couple in their fifties who had survived.
So Jairus had become apprenticed to the temple at an early age, and was now a teacher. He had responsibility for the roll of scriptures that the community had paid for, and it was a particularly splendid scroll with the name of God written in gold letters. He taught classes for the older youths of Capernaum, and sometimes the younger ones, taking them to sit against the cooling rock walls on mild, sun-bleached days. There was also a small apartment next to the synagogue built for pilgrims who were coming through on their way to Jerusalem, one that included the ritual bath they used for cleansing. Jairus was proud of all that the community entrusted to him.
Yet despite all his piety, despite all his praying and begging the priests, he could do nothing for Aviel. Any difficulty in life he still soothed best by walking furiously as if to escape it physically, and Rivka knew this about him.
Once, during an argument with her, he had run out of the house, jumped onto Nabby, and kicked him into running. Jairus’s legs had hung down close to the ground almost as low as his mouth was turned, and while he didn’t care how ridiculous he looked to the neighbors, he did notice that though the donkey got him away from the scene faster it didn’t provide the satisfaction of his long legs striding out his fury. During their arguments, Rivka and he could barely contain the volume of their voices, so the small community was aware that he was a man of passion and that she spoke freely of her convictions. In this jerk-and-tumble rhythm they moved forward in their growth as a couple, rounding their edges as they went.
Now, he walked-ran to seek the prophet they had recently brought in to speak at the synagogue, the prophet who, they had heard, was performing miracles. He was, by report, traveling only a few miles from the village, curing even the blind and the leprous. It didn’t matter to Jairus how his daughter could have life—no controversy around this Yeshua concerned him. There were many zealots these days who were preoccupied with corruption at the Temple and the Jews’ collaboration with Rome’s imperialism. Jairus was a devout man, and he knew at an intuitive level that the balance of his daughter’s life could only be counterweighted by the power of something miraculous. He wanted it so badly he couldn’t tell if he was completely falling on his face with trust before Adonai, or if he was merely begging for relief from a snake charmer.
Rivka watched her husband kicking up dust as he faded from view. She looked over at Yohanon, who worked with his back to his house in the lengthening sun. She did not lower her eyes as a woman could be expected to, but looked at him with pleading.
Yohanon put down his carving tool. He nodded towards her, and left his own head down in respect, as Rivka turned back into the house.
2
Eldorado Canyon, outside Boulder, Colorado, spring 2008
“Falling!”
Anna watched her fingers loosen one by one. She grimaced, but fear had no time to bloom. Peeling off the granite rock face she noticed the delicate quality of the warm air rushing past her skin. Falling was a rare and perversely delicious moment of complete letting go to space and gravity. Her body’s pull swung her out on the rope as she sailed soundlessly through the air before meeting the harness, which yanked at her waist.
Dangling in the air one hundred eighty feet off the ground, she groaned and looked around. The iron warm taste of blood dripped over her upper lip onto her tongue.
“You okay?” came a faint, disembodied shout from her partner at the other end of the rope up above an overhanging portion of rock.
Anna didn’t answer. Problem one: she was inverted and twisted. It wasn’t good. After four minutes blood flow would begin to decrease to her head, then she would pass out. The other problem was her head gash. Off her harness hung several pieces of metal called protection, used for placement in small cracks in the rock. One of these pieces had hit her in the forehead when she fell. Sweat mingled with the blood and began to tickle her nose.
She looked up and noticed the hot blue sky gathering pillows of darkening clouds. El Dorado Canyon outside of Boulder, Colorado, was famous for its late summer afternoon thunderstorms, and it looked like today would follow the pattern. A few gloppy drops began spattering.
Anna flexed her forearms, then her hands and fingers, which were bound in protective athletic tape so she could jam her hands into cracks in the rock, gain more friction, and not tear up her skin. She contemplated the possibility that the rope was jammed in a crack above her head about twenty feet up. Because her body weight was hanging on the rope, she knew she could pull on it to right herself, but she also risked dislodging the rope enough so that she would jerk down another several feet. That friction was bad: it could sever the rope. But she had to do something, and soon, because it was getting harder to raise her chest to breathe and she didn’t want to be light-headed as she attempted to climb again the portion of the rock off which she had just fallen.
She reached up for the multicolored ten-and-a-half-millimeter rope made of the stuff that went into plastic bags and car bumpers and prayed she was making the right move. Her biceps flexed and she splayed her feet out on the rock beneath her. The rope held; she got a purchase with a fairly good foothold underneath her.
Lightning cracked in the distance. Anna counted under her breath, each five seconds representing a mile between the center of the storm and her. Two miles away. There was no chance now of hearing her partner above her until after the storm stopped. She would need to be able to hear her partner confirm the short command of her “up rope!” as she climbed, but if the rope jammed farther above and her partner could not hear her, then the rope would not ascend and stay taut on her harness. Her spine curved uncomfortably as she settled into the awkward stance on the small foot ledge she had found. The bulk of the storm would