A Short Story by A.B. Timothy
Artemas stood in the marketplace listening to the preachers. Just who did these men think they were? Every time he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover, there was a new preacher and a new heresy. A few years prior, he had shouted ‘crucify him’ along with a crowd of other upstanding Jewish men. While he himself was a proselyte, he felt a kinship with the jews, and now there were these preachers in the dusty marketplace of Lystra, where he was going to get on his boat back to Athens. The lead preacher, a Jew from the looks of him, was preaching some fresh heresy, that Jesus was risen from the dead. Preposterous, the whole situation was preposterous! There is only resurrection on the last day. Everyone knew this, even a lowly gentile like him.
The crowd began to move, and a massive cloud of dust arose as the angry mob shoved and pushed this ‘Paul’ outside the city walls. “They disgrace the law and the prophets!” Artemas found himself shouting. His words were lost in the incoherent yelling of the mob. “They must be put to death for this blasphemy! Stone the heretics.” Artemas took up a stone the size of his own head and threw it at the man who led the preachers, the supposed ‘Paul’. Artemas watched the man fall under a hail of stones and spat at his body as it fell limp to the sandy floor of the desert. Dirty heretic, Artemas thought. He should have been stoned as soon as he mentioned Jesus of Nazareth.
Artemas went about his day like nothing had happened. At sundown, he boarded a ship set for Athens and forgot about the heretic he had helped kill.
The waves of the Mediterranean Sea rocked Artemas to sleep, and he fell into a dream. The dream was hot and foreboding, but he could not remember a single crystal detail of the vision. As he went about his life on the ship, he missed his wife dearly. The stabilizing woman had been there with him in Jerusalem every year for almost a decade since she converted him to her Jewish faith. (A piece of him still ached at what that conversion cost him.) She had not come with him, this time, however. She lay at home while insisting that he not miss his yearly expedition to the promised land. He did as she wished and went. He was glad he did. He had not only gotten to see the wonders of the temple and the proceedings there, but he also got to stone a heretic on the way back. A wonderful story.
He took his sandals off at the door and grabbed a rag hanging from the water pot they kept by the door and wiped down his feet as he entered his Greek home. He kissed the tips of his fingers and whispered a small prayer to Adonai as he passed the mezuzah. He rushed into his wife’s room, where he found her being comforted by their two sons, both not old enough to join their father in Jerusalem. “Abba!” They both said as he walked in. They rushed and hugged him while pointing at their mother and talking on top of one another.
“Whoa, slow down, boys, one at a time.” Artemas hugged them both and then approached his wife.
“Ima, you should go first. Tell daddy what you did while he was gone.” The older boy said.
“Welcome home, my love.” The dying woman spoke softly to her husband as he leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.
“Shalom, my love,” Artemas said.
“Boys, would you leave us for a moment?” The two children, both spitting images of the other spouse, depending on who you asked, ran off and closed the door behind them.
“Artemas.” The woman said softly and slowly. “We are Christians now.”
The man’s world fell apart. He could not accept this. His wife would explain how a man named Paul had been through the city preaching the resurrection and that one of their friends had gotten converted. “It was as if Adonai spoke through her, dear, she produced, from the scriptures, something we’ve both only heard in Synagogue, proof of the messiah. It was amazing!” She would say. She had been baptized on the shore only a few weeks prior to Artemas’ return.
Over the next few months, Artemas saw a light return to his wife’s eyes more and more each day. Despite this, her body got weaker and weaker. “It won’t be long now.” She would say. “Oh my love, I would just ever so love to see you baptized before I go.” But Artemas could never even bring himself to tell his wife that he had helped kill the man she idolized. She knew of his involvement in the death of her Messiah, but she forgave him for that.
When the day came, Artemas decided to let his wife’s Christian friends take care of her body and bury her as they wished. He was glad that she had found her messiah, but was full of so much pain and rage to care what happened to her body. He suffered the Christian proselytizers whom he had once called friends, and paid them platitudes.
Another three months passed, and Artemas had begun to heal. His sons were doing fantastically in Hebrew school and had been progressing in their studies greatly; he might even have a few Pharisees on his hands.
It was a cool Shabbat afternoon and Artemas found himself weeping at the place where the Christian’s had buried their dead, however few of them there were. While he put up a front for his sons every time they mentioned their mother, he cried inside. This afternoon, as he knelt, weeping, he heard a pair of voices whispering, “No, Silas, I am still going to talk to him.”
Artemas stood and turned around, his bare feet crunching a patch of dried grass as he faced—. He felt the blood drain from his face. He was staring into the eyes of a ghost. There, before him, was the face of the man whose skull he had helped flatten. “Paul?”
“Artemas.” Paul maintained a sober demeanor in honor of where they stood. “It is good to see you again.”
“Good to see me?” Artemas felt his eyebrows raise in shock. “How can you, of all people, possibly say that?”
“Come with me, I will explain everything.”
