46. All will be well in the vineyard

Yashar found the coast road before daybreak. The sky finally brightened at Aczib, the crests of the eastern hills bent in hue from iron gray to pale rose. When the wagon reached Sullam Tsor, Juttah simply appeared, bounding through the underbrush, alongside, then leaping into the wagon, panting, bright-eyed and without a scratch.

“God is just,” Yashar sobbed, hugging his animal’s neck.

As if to reward his praise, or ease Yashar’s pain, God delivered a better surprise along the flats beside the coast road north of Tyre. Past the big river ford that began the final stretch toward home, Yashar came upon a staggering man leaning heavily upon a staff.

“Is it you?” Yashar cried out, pulling the wagon to a stop and jumping down.

Bidkar stood trembling with fever, propped upon the shaft of a broken spear. He wore no armor, had no weapons or shawl and an awful, black, encrusted slot had replaced his right eye.

“I’ll see Sara before I die,” he said, and he answered Yashar’s every question with those words.

When Yashar lifted Bidkar into the wagon, Juttah jumped in back and snuggled against him for warmth. “We are at most nine miles from your home,” Yashar said. “Do you hear me?”

Bidkar’s good eye fluttered shut.

Yashar shook him, “What did you just say?” he shouted. “Repeat it, say it again.” But the captain seemed to have stopped breathing. “You cannot settle for this,” Yashar screamed in his face. “It is nothing to whimper goodbye. Be a man of duty and fight on as you’ve preached to me.”

When Bidkar failed to react, Yashar shook him again. “You are not my father,” he bellowed. “You are not Elijah or Naboth. We have made plans. You’ve come too far and promised too much to turn your back on me now.”

Nothing.

Sometimes rudeness is more effective than encouragement. When Juttah barked loudly immediately at Bidkar’s ear, the captain’s surviving eye popped open as if he had been smacked in the face.

“Say it,” Yashar said.

“I’ll see Sara,” Bidkar said faintly, “before I die.”

“Yes, praise God!” Yashar shouted. “That serves us well enough for now.”

*

Yashar drove as fast as he dared. Well above Tyre, not far from the turnoff to the vineyard, the captain suddenly stood in the careening wagon, his only eye open wide, and he pointed east over the mountains toward Mount Hermon.

“Because of these imposing hills,” Bidkar trumpeted, “you, Yashar, and your loved ones and all your family shall be safe.”

“Yes, and you with us, Captain,” Yashar said, “now please, you are half dead, lie back down.”

“In the days of Pekah, King of Israel, will another army come.”

“Who is Pekah?” Yashar asked. “Sit, sir, you are delirious.”

“And though that army will utterly destroy Iyon and all Israel will be carried away in shame, your sons and their sons, and their sons too shall thrive!”

“Yes, Captain,” Yashar said, “all will be well in our vineyard.”

Bidkar collapsed back onto the floorboards just as Yashar turned the wagon onto Nurit’s rising, lovely lane. “Please, God,” Yashar prayed, “allow us to reach the vineyard, and Sara, before our captain dies.”

*

Stubborn Sara had insisted on carrying water from the well every morning while Yashar was away. Her last several paces to the house were the most difficult, uphill. Nurit’s boys met her standing there every morning, offering help, but Sara always refused their assistance.

They spilled too much.

She carried two full buckets and, under that burden, could not help but grunt loud and low, like a man. One morning while deeply into such grunting, Sara heard Nurit squeal for joy. Sara looked up and saw leaves spin up by a sudden whirlwind. Then, quite clearly, though sunlight flared behind him, Sara saw sweet Yashar standing straight and tall atop the crest.

Adella ran like a young girl out from the cottage to greet her son. Nurit, her boys, Eli and Yitzchak joined them and they danced.

“Come up here, Sara,” Yashar called down. “Come quickly, now.”

Sara held her spot, unhurried, content to observe their reunion.

*

Some people like surprises, others fear them. Sara supposed that their preferences hinged on faith. A second man, a surprise Sara had lacked the faith to hope for, also appeared that morning, poised between her and the low lying sun, Bidkar, bent at the waist and propped up by a stick.

Sara dropped her buckets, lifted her skirts and, as spilled water coursed down the hillside, ran up, singing thanks to God, into his arms.

“Sara is a proven healer,” Yashar repeated so often at Bidkar’s ear as they carried him toward the house that Sara scolded him…

“It is in God’s hands, son. Say no more.”

*

It happened that, on the heels of unceasing prayer and Sara’s constant attention, Bidkar’s fever broke within days. He began to gain weight, after some time, and was able to walk again on his own that following spring.

He and Sara married soon after and moved into a new cottage with a porch and awning that Yashar and his sons built for them near the fence line.

On clear mornings, from her deck, Sara could see the sea.

Eventually the captain grew strong enough to ride again. He bought a horse at Akko after learning that the garrison, following a violent purge, had turned loyal to Jehu. All the young soldiers at Akko envied the captain’s missing eye. King Jehu himself, when he learned that Bidkar had survived, bid him to rejoin him in Israel.

Bidkar refused, having bound himself to Sara all his remaining days.

*

One morning, when all those whom Yashar loved at last seemed well, Yashar stumbled out of the house before first light, overcome by something. He made his way to the olive grove, fell to his knees and began to cry. Little Juttah sniffed him out at sunrise and sat beside him. Eli appeared soon after, took his father’s hand and led him a short distance up the slope, close to the main house beneath a tree. Yitzchak showed up next, then Nurit and her boys, then Adella, Sara and the captain. No one spoke, but rather sat idly in the shade, leaving the vineyard unattended, as if their behavior were normal.

Adella claimed to understand her son’s tears. “Yashar lost his father, Elijah, Naboth and then a good friend in Zach,” she said. “He thought he had lost Bidkar too. God returned the captain to us in the palm of his merciful hand.” She pointed at Juttah. “Even this one had vanished,” she added, “yet my strong son never wavered.”

“Yashar loved Nurit silently, without hope,” Sara added, “but he gained her love through his boldness and honesty.”

“He lost a vineyard,” Bidkar said, “but planted another.”

“No wonder Daddy’s crying,” Yitzchak sighed.

They left Yashar then and went about their work—even Juttah trotted off—having mentioned all Yashar’s losses save his most desperate. He remained beneath the tree and cried for hours more for poor Israel, God’s chosen, for their failures and their temporarily forfeited land. Even after rejoining his family at work later that day, Yashar was unable to shed his grief until the captain approached him among the vine rows, put a gentle hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

“Though Israel and yes, even Judah, shall be scattered to the ends of the earth,” he said, “they shall both, someday, be reunited by God’s marvelous hand, chastened and sprinkled clean. A remnant will return, Yashar, to the land God promised them.”

“How did you know my pain, sir?” Yashar asked.

“We are of like mind, son,” Bidkar said.

“And what makes you so certain, Captain, of its eventual cure?”

“The prophet Micaiah told me,” Bidkar told him, winking with his only eye.

*

Adella died peacefully two years later with her family at her side. They buried her at the far edge of the property in a grove beyond the fig trees. The captain taught the boys to ride that summer, entertaining them as they progressed with accounts of their father’s first awkward jaunt upon the borrowed horse, Alon, from Jezreel to Samaria, to see two storied kings sit before the city’s gates.

Yashar grew to believe that he could never be happier, but he was wrong. In the spring of the following year, Nurit gave birth to their third son, five in all, whom they named Naboth. Just like the old vintner whose name he had been given, the boy had bright eyes and wild hair. He grew quickly, full of questions and odd ideas, coming to call Bidkar, grandpa, always laughing though a bit frightened when the captain set his chubby pink fingers upon the thick scar that had replaced his eye.

When little Naboth became old enough to work beside his family in the vineyard he pestered them at every opportunity, asking all who would stop to answer about the land, its vines, soil and roots, its slopes and terraces, its secrets, its potential, its breathtaking beauty and its delicate need for rain. And nothing curbed little Naboth’s curiosity or lessened his passion to someday work among the vine rows beside his father, eyeing drifting clouds and sniffing God’s sweet earth while raising grapes.