Wayward Son (50 page)

Quintus could sense that his father, normally so upbeat and encouraging, was still brooding over the events in Jerusalem. He didn’t know how to begin, so he asked directly, “Father, what happened in Jerusalem?”

Cain stared at the boy sorrowfully, “They crucified Jesus, Quintus.”

“How could he die, Father? You said he was the Son of God!”

“I don’t know, son. He healed you, and many others, but why he could not save himself is a mystery.”

“Were you able to see Jesus before he died?”

“No, I was too late,” he said bitterly.

Cain rose from his chair and crossed to the bed, where he reclined with his head propped up on the pillows. He motioned for Quintus to remain in his seat. A simple supper of hot fish soup and bread was brought to the cabin.

“Take some food, Quintus. I am not hungry,”

While the boy ate, his father described the storm that had delayed him on his chariot ride to Jerusalem.

“If it were not for that storm,” he said sourly, “I might have reached Jesus in time.”

“Did you see any of his followers?”

“None that I recognized,” Cain replied, suppressing any mention of Judas, whom he regarded as a traitor, scarcely a follower.

“That’s odd,” remarked the child. “I would think Jesus’s friends would stand by him if he were in trouble.”

The boy speaks truer than he knows, thought Cain.

Quintus had finished his meal. His father did not seem especially inclined to talk further about Jerusalem.

“Where are we headed, Father?”

“We are going straight to Herculaneum.”

“Oh,” the boy said with a disappointed frown. “I thought we were headed for Rome. The new racing season will be starting next week.”

“I’m sorry, Quintus,” Cain said absently. “But I have important work in Herculaneum. Now, if you are finished with supper, please return to your cabin and get ready for bed. I haven’t slept in three nights.”

As his father waved his hand in dismissal, Quintus rose from his seat and quietly departed.

With a sigh, Cain rolled onto his side and curled up, facing the bulkhead. After a short while, he finally fell into a much needed sleep.

***

Once again, the crosses stood at Golgotha, grotesquely silhouetted against a lurid purple sky. Cain, at the foot of the cross in the center, stared up at the pierced body of Jesus, flanked by the two thieves. A sudden lightning strike blinded him, and he shut his eyes in pain. When he opened them again, the scene had changed. He himself, writhing in agony, had been crucified. Across from him, he saw Abel, his head lolling in death. Jesus, in the center, was also dead.

“Too late!” Cain shouted to the darkness. “Too late!”

“Yes, too late,”
a metallic-sounding voice echoed in Cain’s dream.
“I’ve told you all along that God would abandon you forever. Why, look at what just happened in Jerusalem. God has forsaken his very own son! He is a faithless God, yet you stubbornly wish he will somehow accept you. You have no hope of an afterlife with God. Your only chance is with me. God has forsaken you, too, just as King David said in olden times.”

Cain recognized the phrase as one of the psalms sung by the Hebrew translators in Alexandria. “You are not above quoting the Scriptures for your purposes, evil one?”

His dream visitor gave vent to a gurgling laugh.
“The Scriptures delight me, Cain! They provide a matchless record of human folly. Illusions without number can be found in them. But I am not here to debate you.”

“Why, then, have you come?”

“You disobeyed me. That is why I punished you at the Circus in Rome. But then I restored you to full health, so that you would come to know my power. I could have healed Quintus, if only you had asked me and shown homage.”

Cain noticed that the spirit failed to mention the winged being who had rescued him from the chariot axle. “It never occurred to me to ask you,” he muttered.

“More’s the pity, because I am stronger than God. I helped the wretched humans put God’s son to death. I entered into Judas and turned him. No one can contend with my power.”

“Quintus was healed, and not by you, spirit! Jesus declared it to me. You cannot deny that fact!” For the first time in their encounter, Cain raised his voice.

“Let us not argue,”
the spirit replied soothingly.
“Instead, let us set our sights calmly on the future. The eternal future. God is just playing with you, my friend. He trifles with you the way a mongoose toys with a snake. Yes, your son was healed. But don’t be deceived. Both you and Quintus will be destroyed when God seeks retribution for the slaying of Jesus. The end of the world is at hand, Cain, but this time there will be no ark. There will be total annihilation from an angry God. But just as you found rescue on a ship with Noah, now your own ship can be your salvation.”

Cain’s curiosity stirred. “What do you mean by that, spirit?”

“The Nostos opens the door for your suffering to end on your own terms! Go on deck, walk to the bow, and throw yourself overboard. The tremendous pressure of the bow wave will end your misery instantly, and the sweet haven of my outstretched arms will receive you. You will find peace there!”

Cain knew that the crusted layers of sharp barnacles on the ship’s hull would result in one of the most painful deaths imaginable. The agony of his flesh being torn apart as he rolled under his ship would equal or exceed what he had suffered at the Circus. Yet his mind wavered as the spirit left him.

Perhaps that was exactly the sort of death he deserved.

***

After a few nightmarish hours during which he was neither awake nor asleep, but almost delirious, Cain gasped for air. Covered in a cold sweat, and clad only in breeches, he stumbled from his stateroom and exited from the midship companionway to the deck. The
Nostos
was racing downwind, driven by gale-force gusts. Captain Felix and the eight oarsmen struggling to steer the ship did not even notice him, as they were focused intently on keeping the ship positioned down the face of the mountainous ocean swells. If the
Nostos
slipped sideways, she would broach and quite possibly capsize.

As Cain traversed the heaving deck toward the bow, occasional lightning bolts lit up the pitch-black sky. Towering above his head and hissing in his ears was a phosphorescent green bow wave. When he reached the front of the ship, the master of spirits whispered in his ear.
“The moment is now! Abandon your vain hopes and enter eternity with me!”

Cain stared forward, anticipating the next surge. Adorning the prow of his ship was a beautiful sculpture depicting a mermaid with dolphins. As his gaze fell upon it, the figures were transformed and melded into the entangling figure of a sea serpent twisting back toward the ship and staring directly at Cain with large, fiery eyes. It was as if the devil had sought a front-row seat to watch the first man ever born commit suicide.

Distracted and unnerved, Cain had to struggle to maintain his footing on the pitching deck. A bolt of lightning blinded him temporarily, just as he heard the sound of multiple thuds on the deck. When the ship rolled suddenly, he slipped and fell flat on his stomach. Stretching out his hands to break the fall, he skidded forward on a slippery substance. A loose nail sticking up from the deck pierced the palm of his right hand. Then he realized what had happened. Large squid leaping from the bow wave had landed on deck. Their oily bodies had combined with the ship’s roll to cause his fall.

Lying prone, Cain saw the feet of a man between him and the bow. Looking upward, he gasped as he recognized Jesus of Nazareth standing over him, dressed in a white cloak and barefoot. Jesus’s face and head were pristine. There was no trace of the wounds he had endured from scourging and the crown of thorns.

“That is not the way,” Jesus said tenderly as he extended both his hands to help Cain to his feet. He noticed that Jesus’s hands and feet, in contrast to his face, still bore the imprint of the nails used to pin him to the cross. Stunned, and struggling to regain his composure, Cain stared at the man he’d seen crucified less than a week before. The two stood together very near the ship’s prow. Although the storm continued unabated, Cain was somehow able to maintain his footing on the pitching deck and clearly hear Jesus’s words above the crashing of the waves. Even Jesus’s cloak draped loosely, unruffled by the wind.

Jesus turned slightly and placed his hand on the head of the wooden sea-serpent figure. A dark, powdery dust spewed from the sculpture and blew out to sea as the master of spirits was evicted, and the prow resumed its original shape of a mermaid surrounded by dolphins. Then the dust gathered itself into a tight cloud, reversed course, and flew against the prevailing wind toward the stern. Cain’s attention, however, remained riveted on Jesus, and so he failed to see the particles strike the crew manning the steering oars, including Captain Felix. The ship immediately lurched as the sailors altered its course by about thirty degrees. Jesus then turned back and faced his audience of one with a smile.

“Wha…what are you doing here aboard my ship?” Cain stammered.

“I came to see you, Cain.”

Cain flinched. It was the first time anyone since Tanith had addressed him by his given name.

“I thought you were dead. I saw you on the cross!”

“Yes, I was dead. But now I am alive again.”

“How is this possible?”

“You made your own inquiries through Demetrius and came to believe I was the Son of God. You have lived in my creation longer than any other human being. Do you not believe that with God all things are possible?”

“I suppose I do now,” he acquiesced after a moment’s reflection.

“And so you understand that my Father has raised me from the dead,” Jesus continued.

Nodding less than confidently, Cain asked, “So, why have you come to see me?”

“I wish to continue our conversation,” Jesus said in a reassuring tone.

“Will this remain between us, or will your Father come to know about it, too?”

“If you have seen me you have also seen my Father. I and my Father are one.”

Cain paused. Although he could scarcely grasp the full implications, there was only one conclusion he could draw from Jesus’s statement. He was standing in the presence of God.

“Let me ask
you
something,” said Jesus gently. “Why were you in such a rush to find me in Jerusalem?”

“I wanted to thank you for healing Quintus. But, most of all, I needed to talk about my cursed life,” he added.

“The moment was not right then. I was busy laying the cornerstone for that house I am building. But now, please tell me what has troubled you.”

After catching his breath, Cain plunged in. “Your cure of Quintus was a miracle, but
my
daily regeneration has been a curse. I merely asked you for protection against those who might slay me, and I ended up fated to linger on and on through these thousands of years.”

“My child, what you saw as a curse, I meant as a blessing. Have you considered that I marked you not only for protection, but also to give you the time you needed to journey home to me?”

Cain pondered Jesus’s answer to the great question of his life. It seemed as though Jesus was suggesting that all along, it was in his own hands to return to God, yet he continued to wander away. He was instantly filled with remorse, and countless confusing thoughts about his past flooded his mind, but at length Cain could only permit himself to respond, “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“Cain, though you may be the oldest, you are by no means my only
wayward son
,” Jesus said warmly. “Now, tell me. Do you have any other regrets?”

Sensing where the conversation was headed, but still hesitant, Cain responded, “Well, I cannot believe I actually offered
you
a carpentry job!”

Jesus chuckled. “I was flattered, but I meant now that you know who I really am.”

“Of course,” Cain glanced downward. “About Abel. I am truly sorry for what I did that day.”

“I am glad to hear that, but you must understand that your sin did not consist just in Abel’s killing,” Jesus said pointedly. “It actually began the moment you yielded to anger with your brother. I warned you that such rage is fertile soil in which the devil cultivates all sorts of evil in your life.”

Cain hung his head as Jesus continued. “Consider his work against you from the beginning. He stirred your anger first against your brother, then me. From that day forward, he twisted your thinking to keep you away from me. But his attempts to convince you that I was angry and had abandoned you were all lies. I have nothing but love for you, Cain.”

“But how can you love
me
? I am guilty of hundreds of sins.”

Jesus raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat.

Realizing the foolishness of his comment, Cain admitted, “Okay, so many that I have lost count. My guilt and regret are bottomless.”

Jesus smiled. “I created you, and all of humanity, out of love. I desire nothing from people other than to be in loving relationship with them. Yes, you sin. Out of anger, out of fear, out of selfishness. And then the devil declares that you are unworthy. But this is false, because my love for you is not based on how you act or feel. It is the essence of who I am. This is why I came into the world!”

“So why did you allow them to kill you?”

“My death was planned from the beginning. I took all the sins of humankind upon myself, and I bore the punishment of death so that people would not have to bear it themselves. And I have risen from the dead to give all who come to me the gift of eternal life.”

“The
gift
of eternal life?” Cain exclaimed incredulously. “I have tasted this bitter fate. For me, death would be more welcome.”

Jesus replied, “I know that you, of all people, are tired of living, but I am not talking about the life of your flesh. I am talking about the life of your spirit, your soul. If your soul dies, you and I will be separated for eternity. I love you too much to have that happen, which is why I died in your place.”