“Yes, he could be,” Maggie agreed.

“Do you think he is? Wrong about it, I mean?”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

“I don’t see how that’s going to stop him.”

And it didn’t. The next day we left for Jerusalem. On the way we stopped to rest along the road at a town along the Jordan River called Beth Shemesh. We were sitting there, feeling somber and helpless, watching the column of pilgrims move along the riverbank, when an old woman emerged from the column and beat her way through the reclining apostles with a walking staff.

“Out of the way, I need to talk to this fellow. Move, you oaf, you need to take a bath.” She bonked Bartholomew on the head as she passed and his doggy pals nipped at her heels. “Look out there, I’m an old woman, I need to see this Joshua of Nazareth.”

“Oh no, Mother,” John wailed.

James got up to stop her and she threatened him with the staff.

“What can I help you with, Old Mother?” Joshua asked.

“I’m the wife of Zebedee, mother of these two.” She pointed her staff to James and John. “I hear that you’re going to the kingdom soon.”

“If it be so, so be it,” said Joshua.

“Well, my late husband, Zebedee, God rest his soul, left these boys a perfectly good business, and since they’ve been following you around they’ve run it into the ground.” She turned to her sons. “Into the ground!”

Joshua put his hand on her arm, but instead of the usual calm that I saw come over people when he touched them, Mrs. Zebedee pulled away and swung her staff at him, barely missing his head. “Don’t try to bamboozle me, Mr. Smooth Talker. My boys have ruined their father’s business for you, so I want your assurance that in return they get to sit on either side of the throne in the kingdom. It’s only fair. They’re good boys.” She turned to James and John. “If your father was alive it would kill him to see what you two have done.”

“But Old Mother, it’s not up to me who will sit next to the throne.”

“Who is it up to?”

“Well, it’s up to the Lord, my father.”

“Well then go ask him.” She leaned on her staff and tapped a foot. “I’ll wait.”

“But…”

“You would deny a dying woman her last request?”

“You’re not dying.”

“You’re killing me here. Go check. Go.”

Joshua looked at us all sheepishly. We all looked away, cowards that we were. It’s not as if any of us had ever learned to deal with a Jewish mother either.

“I’ll go up on that mountain and check,” Joshua said, pointing to the highest peak in the area.

“Well go, then. You want I should be late for the Passover?”

“Right. Okay, then, I’ll go check, right now.” Josh backed away slowly, sort of sidled toward the mountain. Mount Tabor, I think it was.

Mrs. Zebedee went after her sons like she was shooing chickens out of the garden. “What are you, pillars of salt? Go with him.”

Peter laughed and she whirled around with her staff ready to brain him. Peter pretended to cough. “I’d better go along, uh, just in case they need a witness.” He scurried after Joshua and the other two.

The old woman glared at me. “What are you looking at? You think the pain of childbirth ends when they move away? What do you know? Does a broken heart know from a different neighborhood?”

They were gone all night, a very long night in which we all got to hear about John and James’ father, Zebedee, who evidently had possessed the courage of Daniel, the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Samson, the devotion of Abraham, the good looks of David, and the tackle of Goliath, God rest his soul. (Funny, James had always described his father as a wormy little guy with a lisp.) When the four came back over the hill we all leapt to our feet and ran to greet them—I would have carried them back on my shoulders if it would have shut the old woman up.

“Well?” she said.

“It was amazing,” Peter said to us all, ignoring the old woman. “We saw three thrones. Moses was on one, Elijah was on another, and the third was ready for Joshua. And a huge voice came out of the sky, saying, ‘This is my son, with whom I am well pleased.’”

“Oh yeah, he said that before,” I said.

“I heard it this time,” Joshua said, smiling.

“Just the three chairs then?” said Mrs. Zebedee. She looked at her two sons, who were cowering behind Joshua. “No place for you two, of course.” She started to stagger away from them, a hand clutched to her heart. “I suppose one can be happy for the mothers of Moses and Elijah and this Nazareth boy, then. They don’t have to know what it is to have a spike in the heart.”

Down the riverbank she limped, off toward Jerusalem.

Joshua squeezed the brothers’ shoulders. “I’ll fix it.” He ran after Mrs. Zebedee.

Maggie elbowed me and when I looked around at her there were tears in her eyes. “He’s not wrong,” she said.

“That’s it,” I said. “Well, ask his mother to talk him out of it. No one can resist her—I mean, I can’t. I mean, she’s not you, but…Look! Is that a seagull?”

Joshua’s mother and his brother James found us outside of the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, where we were waiting for Bartholomew and John, who were looking for Nathaniel and Philip to return with James and Andrew, who were off trying to find Judas and Thomas, who had been sent into the city to look for Peter and Maggie, who were looking for Thaddeus and Simon, who had been sent to look for a donkey.

“You’d think they’d have found one by now,” Mary said.

According to prophecy, Joshua was supposed to enter the city on the colt of a donkey. Of course, no one was going to find one. That was the plan. Even Joshua’s brother James had agreed to be part of the conspiracy. He’d gone ahead to wait inside the gate, just in case one of the disciples had missed the point and actually came back with a donkey.

About a thousand of Joshua’s followers from Galilee had gathered on the road to the Golden Gate. They had lined the road with palm fronds for Joshua’s entrance to the city, and they were cheering and singing hosannas all afternoon in anticipation of his triumphant entrance, but as the afternoon wore into evening, and no colt showed, the crowd gradually dispersed as everybody got hungry and went into the city to find something to eat. Only Joshua, his mother, and I were still waiting.

“I was hoping you might talk some sense into him,” I said to Mary.

“I’ve seen this coming for a long time,” Mary said. She wore her usual blue dress and shawl, and the usual light in her face seemed faded, not by age, but by grief. “Why do you think I sent for him two years ago?”

It was true, she had sent Joshua’s younger brothers Judah and Jose to the synagogue at Capernaum to bring him home, claiming he was mad, but Joshua hadn’t even gone outside to meet them.

“I wish you two wouldn’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Joshua said.

“We’re trying to get used to it,” I said. “If you don’t like it, then give up this stupid plan to sacrifice yourself.”

“What do you think we’ve been preparing for all of these years, Biff?”

“If I’d known it was this I wouldn’t have helped. You’d still be stuck in a wine amphora in India.”

He squinted to see through the gate. “Where is everyone? How hard can it be to find one simple ass?”

I looked at Joshua’s mother, and although there was pain in her eyes she smiled. “Don’t look at me,” she said. “No one on my side of the family would ever sacrifice a straight line like that.”

It was too easy, so I let it go. “They’re all at Simon’s house in Bethany, Josh. They aren’t coming back tonight.”