I threw the door open at Joshua’s old house without even knocking, nearly coldcocking Joshua’s brother Judah in the process. “Josh, you’ve got to bring the kingdom soon or I’m going to have to kill my mother.”

“She still plagued by demons?” asked Judah, who looked exactly as he had when he was four, except for the beard and the receding hairline, but he was as wide-eyed and goofy of smile as he had ever been.

“No, I was just being hopeful when I used to say that.”

“Will you join us for supper?” said Mary. Thank God she had aged: gone a little thicker around the hips and waist, developed some lines at the corner of her eyes and mouth. Now she was just the second or third most beautiful creature on earth.

“Love to,” I said.

James must have been home with his wife and children, as I guessed were the other sisters and brothers, except for Miriam, and I’d already been apprised of her whereabouts. At the table it was only Mary, Joshua, Judah, his pretty wife, Ruth, and two little redheaded girls that looked like their mother.

I expressed my condolences for the family’s loss, and Joshua filled me in on the timing of events. About the time that I spotted Mary’s portrait on the temple wall in Nicobar, Joseph had taken ill with some disease of the water. He started peeing blood, and in a week he was bedridden. He lingered only a week longer before he died. He’d been buried for two months now. I looked at Joshua as Mary related this part of the story and he shook his head, meaning, too long in the grave, there’s nothing I can do. Mary had known nothing about a message calling us home.

“Even if you two had only been in Damascus you’d have been lucky to get here in time. He went so fast.” She was strong, had recovered somewhat from the loss, but Joshua appeared to still be in shock.

“You have to go find Joshua’s cousin John,” Mary said. “He’s been preaching about the coming of the kingdom, of preparing the way for the Messiah.”

“We’ve heard,” I said.

“I’ll stay here with you, Mother,” Joshua said. “James is right, I have responsibilities. I’ve shirked them too long.”

Mary touched her son’s face and looked in his eyes. “You will leave in the morning and you will find John the Baptist in Judea and you will do what God has ordained you do since he placed you in my womb. Your responsibilities are not to a bitter brother or an old woman.”

Joshua looked at me. “Can you leave in the morning? I know it’s soon after being gone so long.”

“Actually, I thought I’d stay, Josh. Your mother needs someone to look after her, and she’s still a relatively attractive woman. I mean, a guy could do worse.”

Judah aspirated an olive pit and began coughing furiously until Joshua pounded him on the back and the pit shot across the room, leaving Judah gasping and staring at me through watery red eyes.

I put my hand on Joshua and Judah’s shoulders. “I think I can learn to love you both as sons.” I looked at the pretty but shy Ruth, who was tending the little girls. “And you, Ruth, I hope that you can learn to love me as a slightly older, but incredibly attractive close uncle. And you, Mary—”

“Will you go with Joshua to Judea, Biff?” Mary interrupted.

“Sure, first thing in the morning.”

Joshua and Judah were still staring at me as if they’d both been smacked in the face with a large fish. “What?” I said. “How long have you guys known me? Jeez. Grow a sense of humor.”

“Our father died,” said Joshua.

“Yeah, but not today,” I said. “I’ll meet you here in the morning.”

The next morning, as we rode through the square, we passed Bartholomew, the village idiot, who looked no worse or less filthy for the years gone by, and who seemed to have come to some sort of understanding with his doggy friends. Instead of jumping all over him as they always had, now they sat quietly before him in a group, as if listening to a sermon.

“Where have you been?” Bart called to us.

“In the East.”

“Why did you go there?”

“We were looking for the Divine Spark,” Joshua said. “But we didn’t know that when we left.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Judea, to find John the Baptist.”

“He should be easier to find than the Spark. Can I come?”

“Sure,” I said. “Bring your things.”

“I don’t have any things.”

“Then bring your stench.”

“That will follow on its own,” Bartholomew said.

And thus we became three.

I’ve finally finished reading these stories by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These guys make the whole thing seem like an accident, like five thousand people just showed up on a hill one morning. If that was the case, getting them all there was the miracle, let alone feeding them. We busted our asses to organize sermons like that, and sometimes we even had to put Joshua in a boat and float him offshore while he preached, just to keep him from getting mobbed. That boy was a security nightmare.

And that’s not all, there were two sides to Joshua, his preaching side and his private side. The guy who stood there railing at the Pharisees was not the same guy who would sit around poking Untouchables in the arm because it cracked him up. He planned the sermons, he calculated the parables, although he may have been the only one in our group that understood any of them.

What I’m saying is that these guys, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they got some of it right, the big stuff, but they missed a lot (like thirty years, for instance). I’ll try to fill it in, which is why, I guess, the angel brought me back from the dead.

And speaking of the angel, I’m about convinced that he’s gone psycho. (No, psycho isn’t a word I had back in my time, but enough television and I’ll have a whole new vocabulary. It applies. I believe, for instance, that “psycho” was the perfect term for John the Baptist. More about him later.) Raziel took me to a place where you wash clothes today. A Laundromat. We were there all day. He wanted to make sure I knew how to wash clothes. I may not be the sharpest arrow in the quiver, but it’s laundry, for Christ’s sake. He quizzed me for an hour about sorting whites and colors. I may never get this story told if the angel keeps deciding to teach me life lessons. Tomorrow, miniature golf. I can only guess that Raziel is trying to prepare me to be an international spy.

Bartholomew and his stench rode one camel while Joshua and I shared the other. We rode south to Jerusalem, then east over the Mount of Olives into Bethany, where we saw a yellow-haired man sitting under a fig tree. I had never seen a yellow-haired person in Israel, other than the angel. I pointed him out to Joshua and we watched the blond man long enough to convince ourselves that he wasn’t one of the heavenly host in disguise. Actually, we pretended to watch him. We were watching each other.

Bartholomew said, “Is there something wrong? You two seem nervous.”

“It’s just that blond kid,” I said, trying to look in the courtyards of the large houses as we passed.

“Maggie lives here with her husband,” Joshua said, looking at me, relieving no tension whatsoever.

“I knew that,” said Bart. “He’s a member of the Sanhedrin. High up, they say.”

The Sanhedrin was a council of priests and Pharisees who made most of the decisions for the Jewish community, as far as the Romans would allow them, anyway. Aside from the Herods and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, they were the most powerful men in Israel.

“I was really hoping Jakan would die young.”

“They have no children,” Joshua said. What Josh was saying was that it was strange that Jakan hadn’t divorced Maggie for being barren.

“My brother told me,” I said.

“We can’t go see her.”

“I know,” I said, although I wasn’t sure why not.