No Lasting Burial by Stant Litore

him.
    Bar
Nahemyah never looked away from anyone.
    It
was he who had driven away Bar Cheleph and the other young men who had knocked
Koach to the ground, that one hot morning. Often Bar Nahemyah would pace the
unkept streets of Kfar Nahum, his eyes fierce, the lines of his body taut like
a ship running before the storm. Years ago, some had left Kfar Nahum, fleeing
to other towns along the shore, but any who encountered Bar Nahemyah as they
slipped from their houses stopped, looked down, and quietly went back within
their doors and unpacked. There was a fury in Bar Nahemyah’s face that none
could ignore. While he, he , remained in Kfar
Nahum, who else would dare abandon it?
    “I
want to,” Bar Nahemyah said at last. “I want to come with you. My heart demands
it. But my head hears the screaming of our People in your smooth words.”
    “Maybe
it is the Romans you hear screaming.” Barabba’s face darkened with anger, but
his voice was steady.
    “Maybe.”
    “Go
with him!” Bar Cheleph cried out. His face bore that same fear that Koach felt.
As he always did, Bar Cheleph was lashing out before he could be hurt. “And
others with you! We’ll have fewer fish. And fewer mouths.”
    “Be
quiet, son,” Zebadyah said.
    Bar
Nahemyah was staring coldly at the corpse’s head, where it lay defiling the
earth near the priest’s feet. “I trust my own hands and anything I hold in
them,” he said. “I do not trust you, Barabba. I’ve fought my fight. I am done.”
    “Go,
stranger.” Shimon bar Yonah lifted his head and faced the horseman, his voice
bitter, his shoulders hunched as with remembered pain.
“We are men who grieve, and this is all that is left of our home. We will not
leave it for you or anyone else.”
    “Pray
the Romans don’t take it from you,” Barabba snapped.
    “We
have little left for them,” Shimon said. “If they want it, let them try. But
you, leave us be, as you’ve been asked.”
    Koach
stared at Shimon in wonder, never having heard his taciturn brother speak so
many words at once.
    Barabba
wheeled his horse about in a cold fury. “Why are the rest of you silent?” he
cried. “Rise up! I call you, rise up! What is wrong with you? Maybe you are all
half-Roman or Roman-lovers.” Suddenly he caught sight of Koach, where he’d
shrunk back against his mother’s side. “There! That boy! What is wrong with his
arm? Why haven’t you cast him out? What kind of Hebrews are you?” His voice
rose in a shout. “He is probably a Roman’s child! A rape child!—”
    “He
is not !” Rahel shrieked, and her small hand thrust Koach behind her.
    “The
Outlaw is right!” Bar Cheleph cried. “God does not bless us or feed us. We are
starving! We have let such a boy live!”
    “Starving!”
someone else shrieked. “We’re starving!”
    “Stone
the boy!” He recognized Mordecai’s voice.
    “Stone
the boy!” others shouted. “Stone the boy!”
    It
was as though all the griefs and terrors of fourteen years had been poured into
a wineskin and sealed, and the wineskin had held them contained and out of
sight. But over the years, the skin had grown brittle, and now Barabba with his
words and his hurling of severed heads to their feet had dashed the skin
against the earth, and everything this town had refused to look at was gushing
out. It was gushing out ugly and sharp as vinegar. These angry faces no longer
seemed those of men and women whom Koach knew. They stared at him with dead
eyes and opening mouths, like the mouths of the dead.
    Several
stooped to lift stones from the side of the street.
    Koach
took a step back, blanching, but the stones did not fly. Not yet. Shimon stood
between Koach and the crowd, his body tensed. Some of them wavered. Bar
Nahemyah and Benayahu—the town’s nagar , the woodworker and repairer of
boats whose house stood by theirs—took their stand by Yonah’s son. Zebadyah
looked on in horror.
    Rahel
gripped Koach’s good arm, her face rigid with fear. “If