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

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?”

P art VI
Passion
Nobody’s perfect…. Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him.
ANONYMOUS

S unday
    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