Deeper Waters, Part Two

The three of them sat silently with their faces to the lake’s cold breeze.  The sun was approaching its full height, and shadows were scant.  The sound of the sail in the wind played counterpoint to the waves lapping on the ship’s prow.  Another boat lapped along not far away.  It belonged to his friends, partners in the struggling business.  They had also had a fruitless night.  When Simon had told them they were going out one more time with the teacher, they shrugged in a Why not fashion and headed out beside them.

The teacher was gazing out into the water now, like a boy on a boat for the very first time, waving a grand Hello to the other boat.  Simon couldn’t help but smile at the oddly innocent look of wonder on his face.  This is the man who took a shot to the face and preached a sermon about it, he thought, and shook his head.  

“You haven’t done much fishing before have you?”

Jesus turned his attention to Simon.  “Only from the shore.  My cousin and I used to use a hook and line when we were little.  Never used nets before.”

Despite his best efforts, Simon couldn’t help beginning to like this man.  And he still kept glancing at that welt under his eye.

“Would you like to try it?” asked Simon.

“Really?”

“Of course!”

“Yes!  I’d love to!”

“Well, rabbi, you just tell us where to throw them, then.”

The preacher peered over the side of the boat.  “Here.  I think this is deep enough.”

“Very good.  We’ll drop them here then.  Just watch me first, and then you can have a go yourself.”

Andrew and Simon stood to take down the sail and retrieved their nets, each automatically turning to “his” side of the boat.  Simon tied one end of the rope to his right hand, and gathered it in loops in his left.  

“Like so.  See?  And then, one fluid throw like this…”

Simon turned at the waist and threw the net out upon the sea in a surprisingly graceful motion.  Andrew did the same, and the nets fell with an almost simultaneous splish.  There was a momentary circular grid on the water as the nets descended slowly from the surface.

“Got it?” Simon asked, turning his head to the rabbi.  

The rabbi was truly entranced by the fisherman’s skill.  He chuckled.  “We’ll see!”

Simon smiled again, and pulled in the empty net.  “Are you right-handed or left?”

“Uh… Both.”

Simon raised his eyebrows to his brother.  Andrew shrugged and smirked.

“Right for this, I think,” said the preacher.

Simon proceeded to tie the end of the rope around the rabbi’s left hand and helped him loop it in his right.

“All right.  Now, one nice swing and release.  Go ahead.”

The rabbi turned at the waist, swung out, and released… too soon.  The net fell impossibly close to the boat in a half-moon shape, and he began to laugh.  “Perhaps I’ll leave the fishing to you,” he said.

Simon noticed there was not a shred of embarrassment in his voice.  He admired that.  “And I’ll leave the preaching to you.”

Simon, as he regathered the rope and net, watched the preacher carefully.  “I noticed that scratch under your eye,” he said.

“I know,” said the rabbi.

Andrew turned and looked from Simon to the rabbi.  He had not, until now, been as observant.  But there it was: a thin, red comma beneath the teacher’s right eye.

Simon cast the net again, and again watched the grid disappear into the calm waters.  “What you said this morning about, how did you put it?  ‘Turning the other cheek’?  You really did that, didn’t you?  I mean, that wasn’t just some kind of illustration, was it?”

“Only inasmuch as the illustration is real.”

The fisherman appreciated that there were no attempts to dismiss the accusation for the sake of false humility.

Jesus spoke quietly.  

“Strength isn’t always what you think it is, Simon.”

Simon had no response.  He held the net’s rope thoughtfully and silently.  He knew they weren’t going to be catching any fish today, especially at this time of the day and in this spot, but he was glad to be out in the boat with this preacher.   

Suddenly his hand was burning.  The rope was disappearing into the lake.  An astonished cuss filled his mouth as he quickly grabbed it with both hands.

“Andrew! Help me here!”

But the rabbi was there before Andrew could secure his own net and respond, and Jesus was pulling with all his strength alongside his new shipmate.  Simon’s disbelieving eyes grew wide as the bulging net drew closer to the surface.  

“My God!”  Andrew stood staring at the two of them, his own rope held dumbly in his hands.  He was nearly pulled overboard when his own rope ran away from him with an unexpected zhip.  His eyes grew wide and his language limited with stupefaction.  “Net… Fish!”

Simon and the teacher were still attempting to pull their own net aboard, but as it began to break the surface and take on more weight, Simon could tell the old nets wouldn’t hold.  More hands were needed.  He called across to his partners in the other boat, waving his free hand frantically.

“Hey!  Hey!  We need your help!  You won’t believe this!”

Andrew also called out.  “Fish!”

---

By the time the fraying (but somehow still holding) nets were drawn, the three men sat with flopping tilapia up to their knees.  Their boat, and their partner’s boat, were resting dangerously low in the water, and water lapped over the edges onto the squirming fish.

Simon sat incredulously staring at the black-eyed rabbi.  Never in his life, nor in the lives of anyone he knew for that matter, had he ever seen such a haul of fish.  It had been a difficult season, and in one haul, they had caught more than they had all year.  This wasn’t just a good catch.  It was a life saver.  

He knew this was no coincidence.  He wasn’t a brilliant man, but he knew a miracle when he saw one, and he knew that this man, somehow, had been in charge of it.  He realized he was staring, and turned his gaze from the preacher to the shore.  It was approaching quickly now.  

There were astonished gasps, and many things declared “Holy” when the fishermen on the shore saw the haul.  Simon, who would ordinarily have been laughing and hooting with the rest of them as they began the work of sorting, worked silently.  He set his eyes on the rabbi.  The teacher was throwing himself into the work of sorting the hundreds of fish that had been caught, right alongside the rest of the men.  He was sharing a laugh with Andrew.  Simon, however, was grappling hard against the tears that fought their way to the corners of his eyes.  His heart was held firmly in his throat, fighting as it was to escape his mouth in a bawl.

His thoughts seemed to be swirling in disconnected memories and feelings, but they were all connected, somehow.  They were connected with the rabbi he had disregarded just a few hours ago.  In fact, he seemed to be at the very center of them.  The pain of losing Adah, even the joy of finding her in the first place, was strung like a net and a rope from that preacher, and Simon was caught in the center of it.  

It was something about the ease with which he seemed to invite friendship that reminded him of these things, of her.  There was something holy about it.  That was it.  That was the connection.  Holiness.  That was the net, and the preacher had cast it as gracefully as Simon tossed his own fraying net.  

Here he saw Adah’s smile for what it was, and what it always had been: Pure.  Undefiled.  Holy.  Every moment of tenderness glowed in his memory with this holiness.  The water trickling from her nose when she’d burst out laughing, cup to her lips, at that first embarrassing meal with the family.  Her hands as they worked at an everyday task.  Her eyes when she said something as common as a casual good-bye.  Sacred.

Then he remembered himself.  He remembered every cruel word he’d spoken since her death.  Every “shut the hell up” he’d said to his brother, a brother whose love for him had only been surpassed, and just barely, by Adah.  He saw himself drunk at the tavern, fists blazing, each blow to a stranger’s face a testament to his own weakness.  He saw himself for what he was:  Defiled.  Hateful.  Broken.  Sinful.

Yet here he was, counting fish, in the presence of Love itself, and a thought came to him as a swelling tide: This is the holiest man I ever met.

He stood, his hands visibly trembling, and approached the rabbi.  His legs began to quaver and he fell to his knees, fish still flopping at his feet.  Tears broke upon his cheeks, pouring down upon his beard like oil.  Jesus knelt with him, and held him. Simon’s heart, at long last, escaped his throat, and it wept and wailed in the teacher’s arms.  

“Please,” Simon sobbed, “Please leave me, Lord!  I’m a sinful man!  I’m a wretch.  I’m nothing.  I don’t know why you came here, I don’t know why you even said hello to me, but please, go!”

Jesus spoke quietly in his ear.  “No.”

Another wave of tears came over the whimpering fisherman.

“I see it all, Simon.  I see who you are.  I see who you’ve chosen to be.”

Simon’s eyes cleared for a moment, and he found himself staring into the eyes of Jesus.

“I see you, Simon.  You were meant for more than this.  More than being in bar fights or even fishing for musht.  There are deeper waters than these.”

Simon’s heart beat loudly in his ears.  He felt it thrumming in his chest, until his grief seemed to give way to something else.  He felt hope and fear swimming in circles within him.  He was afraid, for the second time today, that he just might do anything this man asked of him.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Jesus. “Follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men.”

Simon wasn’t sure what this meant, but he knew it was true.  After all, he’d just been caught.

He left everything, and followed Jesus.

Mending

“Ah, shit!  Another tear!  Dammit!”

Simon watched the hard-earned haul of fish disappear into the water as he attempted to pull them in, his powerful hands now powerless to gather in the multitude pouring out of the tattered net.

“I swear to God if the old man doesn’t get us some decent nets I’m gonna quit!  Dammit!”

“You know, you should have quit about fifteen times by now,” his brother said from behind him.

“Oh, shut the hell up, Andrew.”  Simon threw the frayed net, and four straggling fish, into the hull of the old boat and sat with an audible thud. His back was to his younger sibling, and Andrew watched his silently fuming brother.  Simon’s large frame always seemed a little larger when he was angry, with his hands resting childishly on his hips.  The wind tossed his dark hair about, giving to Andrew the apropos effect of his brother’s head being engulfed in a kind of black flame.  

The voyage back to the shallows was a silent one.  When the water was waist-high, Simon threw himself out of the boat, and stomped and splashed his way up the beach, the dark flame unextinguished by the water.

Andrew, still seated in the hull, had once again been left to clean up Simon’s mess.  He smiled sardonically and rowed in until he reached the soft thud of the shore.  He hopped out and pulled the boat partway into the sand.  Reaching inside, he carefully pulled out the net, and stood for a moment, watching the four fish take their last useless gasps.  He carried the net to the beach and sat, thoughtlessly fingering the frayed cords.  He did all of this silently and without complaint.  

He was used to his brother’s rants.  They came often and furiously, especially when he’d been especially venturesome at the tavern the night before, and was nursing a low- to- mid-grade headache.  Last night’s excursion to the tavern had been particularly venturesome, and had ended with a black eye for just about everyone but Simon, though he was definitely nursing his wrist today.  Andrew was fairly certain Simon’s headache was no mid-grade ordeal.  It was a throbbing, blinding penance inflicted on him by a body that was sick of being mistreated.

Andrew was patient with his brother, perhaps to a fault.  Though he was long past the age when the younger idolizes the older, Simon still held a place of honour in Andrew’s mind, like an heir to a throne.  Although the “throne” in this case was a struggling business and a leaky boat.  Besides that, Andrew was fairly certain that when the time came for Simon to ascend, he would gladly abdicate, and Andrew had some ideas about how to rescue the faltering kingdom.  The first idea involved spending significantly less of the earnings on alcohol.

But there was another, stronger reason Andrew was patient with his brother.  Her name was Adah.  She had been perhaps the most beautiful woman Andrew had ever known.  She and Simon would have been married 25 years today.

He remembered the first meal he had eaten with Adah as a member of their family.  He was  still quite young, no more than twelve, and it seemed to him that Simon had married into royalty.  He remembered Simon making a terrible joke, and Adah spitting her water through her nose.  She was very embarrassed, but kept laughing through her apologies with an ease that was completely endearing.   To a twelve year old little brother-in-law, she had become a legend: a gorgeous woman who blew water out her nose and laughed like an angel.  Perhaps she was a goddess.

Over the years, he heard much more of that laugh.  It was free and boundless and always betrayed her attempts at stifling it or being polite.  Sometimes she hid it behind her hand, but this only brought attention to her laughing, green eyes.  Her joy, so often, had been a perfect foil for Simon’s temper.

When she died, however, that joy did not become the stuff of consoling memories for Simon.  Rather, the lack of it became a constant reminder of all that he had lost.

Her death had been tragic, and unexpected, though slow and painful.  Such a disease rarely came to one as young and vital as she, but it had come nonetheless, and Simon became a widower at the age of thirty-five.  Simon had always been prone to moodiness and a simmering vexation, but it had been tempered nicely by his wife’s ease.  With her death, his capricious nature was tainted with something that turned it from an almost laughable quirk into something truly destructive.  Bitterness had taken hold of Simon somewhere deep in his blood, and, like the disease that took Adah from him, it grew with an alarming intensity.  Over the years he seemed to become an ill caricature of his worst traits.

Most distressing to Andrew was how Simon had lost his faith in God.  He had lost his faith, though not his belief.  He lost his faith the way a man loses faith in a friend who betrays him.  In such a relationship, the two may see one another from time to time, perhaps even exchange hellos and pleasantries, but the friendship is dead, lost forever to a dreadful silence.  To Simon, God was a faithless friend.  He went to synagogue and said hello, shaking God’s hand from a distance with a look in his eye that said, “Never again.”

Now, Simon had once again exploded over a matter which shouldn’t have mattered at all.  Andrew, lean and and still youthful despite the crows feet creeping into the corners of his eyes, watched his older brother, large and older than he should have been, stomp up the beach toward home.  He knew that the night would bring another adventure at the tavern.  He knew that he, Andrew, would need to watch over his brother, that he would have to remove Simon before he repeated the previous night’s story, or was tossed out by the management.  He knew that Simon would very likely take a swing at his little brother, and that by the time Andrew had brought him stumbling to his bed, Simon would be crying in his arms like a baby.

“I miss her so god damn much!” he would weep.

“I know,” Andrew would say.  “Get some sleep.”

Andrew thought of all of this in the space of a few seconds.  He sighed, and slapped his knees in a kind of concluding rite to his moment of contemplation.  Inspecting the worn twine of the torn net more closely, and certainly with much clearer vision than his brother, he quietly set himself to the steady work of mending.

Fishing.

The sun wasn't up yet, but the charcoal black sky on the eastern side of the lake was taking on a dark shade of navy blue. Abraham's stars hung silently. He sat by the water and breathed deeply, closing his eyes and filling his lungs with the cool morning air. The scent of the water refreshed his mind, and he quietly whispered, “Thanks.”

His fishing pole lay next to him, and as the night sounds lingered on. He squinted one eye in the starlight and threaded his hook. The bait squirmed as he placed it upon the barb. “Sorry, little fella.” he murmured. He slipped off his shoes and took a sharp breath as his feet met the bracing water. He waded out a short distance, and tossed out a line. The hook plopped nearly noiselessly into the stillness of the lake.

He waited.

The sounds of the early pre-dawn surrounded him. The gentlest of waves massaging the rocks. Insects singing their repetitive songs. The rustling of a bird's silent wings.

He was unaware of how much time had passed when he finally felt a tug on his line. He jerked quickly on the line, but the tug was gone. “Come on, buddy,” he whispered. The line twitched again, and he gave it another tweak. This time the tug remained, and grew more violent. Carefully and swiftly he pulled in the line as the catch struggled.

He lifted the fish from the water and into his free hand. Its green scales glistened in the remnants of starlight. “Hello, little guy!” he said as he deftly removed the hook from its mouth. The tilapia were common in this lake, and although this 'musht' was a modest size, it was large enough to keep. He waded back to shore and tossed his catch into a small bucket. He retrieved his supply of bait, and in moments he was back out in the still waters.

“Thanks,” he whispered again.

He gazed out at the ever-growing dawn, and spied the first sliver of the sun's circle over the far hills. A lone fishing boat glided upon the open waters. When he once again felt the familiar tug at his line, the sun seemed to be peering over the hills like a small child at the kitchen table. Once again he pulled at the line, chuckling at the vigor of the small fish. A moment later, and two fish were in the bucket.

The sun began to warm his face as he tossed another line into the now golden water. The slightest breeze rippled the surface, and it seemed that another tug came almost instantly. He jerked upon the line, and seemed to lose his prey. Another moment later, however, and the line was taut.

Three fish now lay in his bucket as he gathered dried driftwood scattered upon the shore. He made a small fire, placed some charcoal around the flames, and took out his knife to prepare his catch.

Laying the fish on a flat rock, he carefully cut around its gills, along the middle of its belly, and then along its back. He pared back the skin, and skillfully began to remove the meat. Not a bit of it was missed. After salting and seasoning the meat, he gently wrapped it in fig leaves and placed it on the coals. The scent was delicious, and his stomach rumbled as he took some bread and placed it next to the fish.

He stepped back to the shore and crouched down by the water to clean his hands of blood, salt, and fish scales. The sun was just inches above the horizon now, and the lone fishing vessel had come closer to shore. He stood and held his hand above his eyes to see the boat more clearly. The voices of the people aboard carried clearly across the lake as they went about their work.

He smiled, and returned to his fire and his fish.

The meat was hissing and popping soothingly over the flames when he glanced once more at the ever-nearing fishing boat. He watched the men move about, still silhouetted against the morning sun. He smiled when he recognized the gait and swagger of the bigger man.

With one hand to his forehead and the other to his mouth, he called out to them.

“Hey! You kids catch anything to eat?”

“We ain't caught nothing but a buzz! We've been trying all night!” came the familiar man's reply.

“Try the other side. Over there. I think there's a school of musht there. I caught a few stragglers,” he said, and pointed to his fire.

“Thanks, buddy. We'll give it a try.” the fisherman called out.

Tending to his breakfast, he watched them toss their net into the drink.

“Whoa!” he heard, amidst laughter. “Look at that!”

He was right. A shoal of musht were there, finding haven from the cold waters in a warm current.

He noticed one of the men taking a second look in his direction, and lean in to whisper something to his bulky friend. The burly man raised a hand to his forehead and peered towards the shore. A moment later, and the man was out of the boat, half swimming and half running towards the shore as soon as he could touch the bottom.

He emerged from the lake, dripping and shivering and smiling abashedly.

Jesus laughed.

The two old friends embraced fiercely. Peter snuffled, and Jesus sniffed.

“You smell like booze and dead fish,” Jesus said, smirking. “And you're getting me soaked.”

Peter released him, and stood back, chortling in spite of his quivering lip.

“Hungry?” Jesus asked.

“Very.”

“Let's have some breakfast.”

And the two resurrected men sat by the fire and ate.