Two

The wineskin stayed undisturbed the next day and the day after that, though Thomas, full of fear and shame, did go to look at the tree. He could not keep away from it, and yet he dared not go too near. He could not believe he would not be found out, and once almost blurted out to his mother what he had done, but caught himself before he actually said anything.

She looked at him quizzically, and not without some suspicion, but put his embarrassed silence down to his being alone so long and not wanting to pester her about Samuel--"and," she said to herself, "he perhaps feels guilty that he has not come down with the disease and Samuel has. Twins are strange."

He did feel guilty, of a certainty, and was painfully aware that he could not hide it; but at the same time he felt supremely lucky that no one questioned him about his suspicious behavior. A hundred times during those two days, he resolved that he would never do this again, and that he would return what he had stolen--after all, he had made no use of it yet, which would compound the sin--but when he contemplated returning the skin, he realized that there was a severe danger that he might be caught in the act, and punished for the act of virtue as if it were the sin; and what would be the purpose anyhow of being branded a thief without even enjoying the fruit of his spoils?

And when nothing happened by the second day, not even the neighbor complaining that one of her wineskins was missing, it began to dawn on him that nothing would happen, and that he had his supply of wine to use at his discretion. "I have been careful," he said to the woods as he approached. "I must be specially careful now."

And he entered the woods and looked back from what seemed a place where he could not be seen (which he revisited years later and realized was clearly visible from the house but at a different angle), and then crept up to the tree and put his hand inside.

And felt nothing. He snatched his hand out in panic, sure that his parents had found it and were merely waiting for him to return home that night to confront him with it and--do he knew not what horrible thing to him to punish him.

After sitting by the trunk until he stopped feeling that his heart was going to burst through his chest, he reached into the hole again to make sure that indeed the skin was missing. And felt it. It had fallen farther down than he had thought, and he could barely grasp it with his hand. He stuck his shoulder inside and managed to get his fingers around the small, stoppered opening, and with considerable difficulty (and some noise also, which filled him with panic once again), he lifted it out and sat there with it on his lap, looking at it for a long time without daring to open it to give himself a drink.

After a while, it occurred to him that he was advertising his crime sitting there like that, and if he was going to do something with his booty, it had better be done quickly and gotten over with.

In tremendous nervous haste after so much inaction, he managed to work the stopper out of the skin, and put it to his lips--and the liquid flowed glowing down his throat, just as he remembered. He took the skin away and laughed happily, then caught himself, looked around, and became deadly silent. He must remember to be very, very careful.

He was about to put the stopper back in, when he realized that his hands were not warm, and that he had really liked the feeling when they were. "Perhaps one more swallow," he said to himself. "I must not drink too much, or they will know." He took a swallow, rather larger than he had planned, and the liquid coursed down his throat again, and now began spreading through his body. He laughed to himself once more, but very quietly, and was about to take a third drink, when he thought, "No. I must be very, very careful." He replaced the stopper with hands that he saw to his satisfaction were steady, though very relaxed and beginning to grow warm, and carefully put the wineskin back into its hiding-place.

Then he sat and enjoyed the pleasant world.

"Thomas!" His mother's voice stabbed his consciousness..

He rose and came out of the woods. She was calling from the door, looking everywhere but at him. "I am here, Eema," he said, and ran toward her, and--cleverly, he thought, zigzagged so that it appeared that he had come from a different part of the woods.

"What were you doing there in the woods?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? You have been digging, have you not?"

"Oh, I--just thought I saw a mushroom on a rotten tree," he answered, proud of himself that he had been so clever, "but--"

"You must never, never pick mushrooms you find in the woods and eat them. Some are poison. You could kill yourself! You did not eat it?" It was more of an exclamation than a question.

"No, Eema. It was not even a mushroom, just a--something there, under some bark and leaves. I know I should not eat mushrooms I find."

"Well, be certain you do not, or I will forbid you ever to go into the woods at all. Never eat anything you find there--at least without bringing it back and showing it to me."

"No, Eema. I will be very, very careful." He thought, with the casuistry of an eight-year-old, that she did not say that he could not drink anything he found there. He smiled to himself, a bit too broadly, which made her look at him again with suspicion.

"You did not eat anything, did you? No mushroom or anything else?"

"No, Eema."

"You are sure?" There was something there, she could see.

"No, Eema. I ate nothing at all."

"Very well. It lacks a very little time before you must come in and eat. You had best go in now and wash--and change that tunic; it is filthy." It had a spot or two on it, but Thomas's mother was a woman who had but two categories: perfect and completely unacceptable. Thomas went in, took off his tunic and threw it on his heap of dirty clothes, and went to the large stone water-jar at the back of his house, which his mother replenished each day from the town well, and washed himself. He changed into another tunic and presented himself to his mother, knocking at Samuel's door. "Very well," she pronounced. "I think it lacks but a day or two, and you will be able to be with Samuel again, and can return here to sleep."

"Has he stopped itching?" Thomas wanted no part of that, if he could help it.

"Almost. Another day and it will be gone, but we will give it a further day to be certain. Then--well, we shall see."

Thomas went to a corner of the house, where he sat waiting for his father, knowing that, once he had washed, he must do nothing to spoil his pristine condition. But he had a companion this time, and did not fret. The wine was in him, warming him all over and making everything that he looked upon glow. Life was good.

The prospect of Samuel's return, however, brought back his dilemma. Tomorrow and the next day were all the time he had before his every step would be watched. He thought and thought, trying to devise some stratagem by which he could be alone for a short time and fortify himself with what he now was increasingly convinced was a magic liquid that had nothing but good about it--if one were very, very careful, of course. He smiled, little realizing that anyone who looked at him would have thought him an imbecile--or a drunk.

The first couple of days after Samuel's return were no problem. His mother said that Samuel must come in and have a nap both in the morning and afternoon, since he was still weak; and during the afternoon nap, Thomas crept to his secret place in the woods and indulged himself--very, very carefully, as he kept reminding himself. And still no one noticed, and the world was good.

The next day, Samuel had a nap only in the afternoon, and the world was still good. But the day after that, he spent all day with Thomas, who became increasingly irritated and nervous, not being able to devise a ruse to escape him. Finally, he grasped his stomach, and said, "I must go and relieve myself," and dashed off into the woods, quickly taking a couple of large swallows, and returning with a stupid grin on his face, pleased at how clever he had been.

"Are you all right?" asked Samuel.

"I am fine now; it has passed," he answered. Samuel looked at him quizzically, but said nothing, and they continued to play (quietly, so as not to disturb Samuel too much) for the rest of that afternoon. The world was good--except that the wine was beginning to run a bit low in the stolen skin. Well, he would worry about that later.

The next day, he tried the same thing, saying, "It has come back. I will return in a moment," and Samuel looked after him with concern; and when he returned, with some suspicion. He came close and said, "You have been drinking wine! I can smell it on your breath!"

"Do not tell! Do not tell!"

"Abba will be home in a few moments. He will be very angry."

"Do not tell! Please do not tell!"

But he did tell, and their father called Thomas over and smelled his breath also; and then, without a word, he went out to the woods and came back with a switch, and still saying nothing, laid Thomas over his lap, and beat his buttocks with the switch many times, Thomas, writhing, wailing, and screaming in agony. What frightened him most of all was that his father said nothing, nothing at all, even after he released him.

Thomas could barely lie down at dinner that evening, and could not sit at all, for two days. His mother after dinner gave him the lecture he had expected from his father; but his father did not speak to him, and only looked over at him with fury--not unmixed, if Thomas had been astute enough to detect it, with worry.

And that was that, for the next two years.

His parents (and, it must be said, Samuel) kept a close eye upon him, to see if they could detect any sign that he had had more than the share of watered-down wine that they had been serving him. They had no idea where he had got it; his father saw no wineskin missing, nor any sign that any had had less than it should have had. It did not occur either to his father or mother that Thomas had stolen some from another's house, and where he had come by it remained a mystery to them--which made them even more vigilant than they would otherwise have been, and poor Thomas no longer had a moment to himself.

Gradually, of course, their watchfulness relaxed somewhat, though Thomas clearly knew that he was not trusted at all. But he and Samuel were growing, and went with their father onto the "Sea" of Galilee (which was actually a very large lake--one could barely see the other shore) in his fishing boat, so that they could see what he and the other men did and learn the skills of a fisherman.

At first, they simply stayed in the stern, trying to keep out of the way as much as possible, and enjoyed the trips and watching the men toil with their nets. Thomas particularly admired his father's technique in throwing out the net gracefully; he would gather it in his left hand, with his right hand controlling the edge of it, look out over the surface until he saw a place where a school of fish had darkened the water, and then fling out the leading edge of the net as he let the rest of it trail off from his left hand, and then use both hands to drag the net along after the boat, as two others rowed it. Others also fished, but they were not as skillful as Thomas's father, nor did they catch as many.

Sometimes--many times, in fact--the nets came up empty, but not as often when Thomas's father was plying them. He did not waste his effort in the mere hope that there might be a fish or two nearby, as some of the others in their boat and the other fishing boats on the sea did; he seemed to have an instinct for where they would be, and what the water looked like when there were fish beneath.

And then all the hands would drag the net back on board, wriggling with fish, and carefully separate out the fish from the toils they had caught themselves in, keeping them in a huge pail of water so that they would live until they reached the shore.

When Thomas was ten years old or so, his father showed him and Samuel how to hold the net, and how to cast it so that it spread itself out and did not simply fall into the water in a lump. On his first try, Thomas's net did not spread out at all, and the compact weight of it was too much for the floats that held up the top edge, and it promptly sank.

"Fear not, Thomas," his father said. "This happens to the best of us now and then; one must learn. It is not as easy as it appears, is it? Now you, Samuel, and then Thomas can try again." To Thomas's chagrin, Samuel's net did manage to spread out a bit, and at least did not sink like a stone, and his father praised him.

On the second try, Thomas's cast was almost perfect, better than Samuel's, and he cried, "I did it! I did it!" and was silenced by the father, lest he frighten the fish. Only then did it occur to Thomas that the idea was to catch fish in the net, not simply throw it and watch it spread itself out in the water.

Samuel's second try was an improvement over his first, but not as good as Thomas's; but Thomas's third cast was another failure, as was--he saw to his immense satisfaction--Samuel's.

The father then said that they had had enough for the day, and he had work to do, and so they resumed their post at the stern, watching carefully as his father and the others spent the afternoon fishing.

Afterwards, with aching arms, they helped in taking care of the fish and then in cleaning the nets, and then went home, arm in arm with their father, who held in his pail the part of the catch that they were to make their meal of that night. The two boys were as proud of what was in that pail as if they had netted the fish themselves.

As time went on, the thrill of doing what grownups do wore off, and became increasingly hard work. Thomas began more and more to look back on the days when he had nothing to do but play--and make an excursion to the hollow tree every now and then.

For the remnants of the wine were still there, he presumed. He had never revealed the stolen skin's whereabouts, in abject terror as to the beating he would receive if they knew that he had not only dunk wine, but stolen it from a neighbor. He did not regret the theft itself, truth be told, and was secretly rather proud of it, but he knew that his parents would not look on it as an act of cleverness, but would be horrified at what Thomas had made himself.

The lure of the wine never left him, however; it was only the fear of what would happen that kept him away from it. But as the days and then years wore on, and as the years began to turn more and more from recreation into drudgery, the wine called louder and louder, offering solace to his tired body. True, the watered wine they were having had become stronger, but it was not the same at all, not at all.

One day, he could stand it no longer, and on their way to the boat, he declared that he had left his pouch back at the house, and that he would have to go back and fetch it. "I will run and catch up with you," he said, and darted off before anyone could object--or discover that he had the pouch with him.

He dashed to the tree and felt inside, and was pleased to discover that his arms were now long enough to reach the skin easily. He quickly opened the skin and took a swallow of the wine, and almost spat it out, because by now it was for practical purposes vinegar (though it had not completely turned, since the recess in the tree was quite cool). Anyhow, in spite of the vile, sour taste, it still made a warm path down his throat.

He would have to replenish it somehow, he thought as he ran back to meet his brother and father, catching them as they were about to embark. He held up the pouch as he panted up to them, and began another day's work of fishing. The boys were actually catching the occasional fish by how, and on this day Thomas did quite well, for a boy.

But after all, it lacked only a year now before his bar mitzvah, when he would become (as the word meant) a son of the law, and be accepted as an adult.