Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

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.

C hapter 24
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