The Injustice Done Joseph
Joseph, husband to Mary Mother of God, sat all the way in the back in The Famous and Local Bar. He liked sitting there for that corner received the least amount of light. No one could see him even if they tried. Only Sam the barkeep knew he was there since the foster father of Jesus was always the first to arrive and the last to depart. The man drank no spirits, not even the occasional glass of water to quench his thirst. He never rose to ask Sam for anything, nor made his way to the toilet to take a leak. He preferred instead to brood at his corner while keeping a wary eye on the Christians seated at numerous tables sprinkled like islands at some far off sea. There were plenty of non-Christians too, but he never saw them. He knew intuitively who his people were for they smelled of his son who was long since physically dead.
“Can I get you something?” asked Sam as he wiped the table beside the sedate man of Bethlehem.
“No, Sam, thank you,” whispered Joseph. His voice was so low Sam strained to hear. Sam did not know why he bothered to ask for the answer was always the same. He nodded curtly and was about to leave when Joseph said:
“Tomorrow is His birthday, you know.” His voice was so wracked with tragedy it rasped. Sam could only assume they were talking about Jesus since tomorrow, indeed, was Christmas — the only day of the year the bar was closed.
Sam always looked forward to Christmas because of that. He also looked forward to going home each night — although, being just 10:17PM, the bar and its closing were a ways off.
“Would it interest you to learn he was not born in December, let alone the 25th?” Joseph continued, staring at the barkeep with a deep set of brown eyes as dark as the corner in which he sat. He was in his early 2000s, a man so ancient the long grey smock he wore oozed antiquity.
“Really?!” Sam finally exclaimed for he could not imagine any other day for Christmas except December and the 25th. His eyes left Joseph momentarily to dart to the bar in case of customers. Since there were none needing his attention at the moment, he returned his focus on the old man whom he called Grandpa.
“Uh-huh,” Joseph confirmed, nodding slowly his silver mane of hair.
Sam thought for sure the Saint was about to offer the Son of Man’s real date of entry into the known world when Joseph disappointed him with:
“So much of what you people know about that boy of mine is false.”
“Is that right?” Sam deadpanned. You can see he was beginning to wonder if the venerable patriarch was off his rocker. In this Crazy and Local Bar, as Sam liked to call it, Joseph would hardly be alone.
“Yes, goddamn it!” roared the old man, meaning the curse, for he had detected in Sam’s wry tone yet another dismissal of his rightful claim. “And make no mistake, Sam, that boy was mine!”
The exclamation was so loud it startled Sam, and appeared to be the reason customers turned their heads in that general direction.
“Everyone knows that, grandpa,” Sam said with great caution. Generally speaking, he wants no trouble from drunkards or nuts.
“Go read the goddamn Bible!” Joseph retorted, knowing fully well Sam was not a practicing Christian. “That’s not what it says!”
“Take it easy, okay?” Sam continued to placate. “I meant nothing by it.”
“No one ever does,” responded Joseph, relaxing a bit. But not entirely relaxed for he went on mumbling. “Good book, my arse,” he muttered about the Good Book. “Awful book!” he exclaimed with bitterness.
A wall of acute hurt shimmered in his eyes. Indeed, the very contours of his face seemed erected by it. He grabbed his matted beard, and began interacting with it as one would the body of a dog. The beard was so long it pooled in a circular pattern on the tabletop.
“Trust me, Sam,” he continued dismally, “you wouldn’t like it if it were you. Trust me, you wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t like what?” Sam asked, perplexed, not sure what they were talking about anymore. Just then, he saw Alfred the sailor push his chair back from a table around which hunched a flock of his brethren gleaming in white. The seamen have been nursing wicked brews all night and were full of cheer, given the Christmas air. They were mostly reminiscing about foreign women they might have impregnated.
Alfred rose unsteadily on his feet. He was a young man of just 22, so brash in mannerism his very walk proclaimed it. At the moment though, he weaved towards the counter. He would be needing another bottle of Stout, Sam knew. He ignored the boozer for the time being and again returned his attention on Joseph.
“That boy was the greatest man the Western world has produced to date,” spoke his eminence. “Millions follow his teachings. The damn calendar is organized with events before and after his birth! It is my blood that courses through his veins! And yet I was only mentioned in Matthew and Luke!” He meant the gospels. “I was never quoted after his age of 12! And trust me, Sam, I said plenty!” he bristled. “Nor was I seen throughout his ministry. That book erased me as if incidental!”
“Why, grandpa?” Sam asked, ashamed to have forgotten most of his catechism. He struggled to remember if all Joseph had imparted could possibly be true. “Why?” he repeated for if indeed facts then injustice was surely done.
Joseph swallowed tension and lowered his head. “It was done, Sam, to cover my sin,” he admitted in a whisper, which found Sam straining again to hear. “Twas I,” continued the patriarch, “who provided them the chance.”
Sam did not hear the latter part because he was stuck on the Cover my sin part. “Your sin?” he asked curiously. The sailors suddenly distracted him again.
From where Sam stood, he could see one other of them peel from the group to join Alfred. Now two at the counter, they were leaning against it to keep from keeling over, while staring at him with eyes squinting to focus.
“I was not supposed to touch her before we were wed,” Joseph intruded upon Sam’s attention to continue. “But I’ve seen no woman — then or now — more beautiful than she.” He meant Mary, of course. “We tried to resist temptation but I was young and she — well, younger.” He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought.
“It was no use,” he said at last. “We bowed before God and confessed our sin. It was not necessary, you see, for He is the Almighty and sees everything. It was He who sent the Gabriel with wings to tell us to say Mary was filled with the Holy Spirit! ’Twas it responsible for the babe in her womb. We offered the story to everyone, with all its confusion and absurdity! I stood back in shame to save my face and the honor of she most dear to me. The spin weaved forever into humanity’s lore, that the greatest Prophet who was born of the ‘virgin’ had been planted by the Third Trinity! The scribes’ true intent soon submerged my own — they needed him half divinity and needed him half royalty. And thus I was branded surrogate, and his siblings half brothers and sisters. Yet, they traced his line through me to Jacob, through Jacob to Josiah to Asa to Solomon, down to the greatest of our kings King David himself! I ask you, Sam, how can he not be made of me yet have his line descend through me down to Abraham the father of our race? I did not know then what I know now and that is — he would be no less revered or loved if I his true father were made known to man!”
“Sam, goddamn it!” bellowed Alfred with a pronounced slur. “What you doing over there peering in the dark?!”
“Yeah!” echoed his companion, his slur just as wicked. “What’s a man gotta do to get served ‘round here, by God?!”
“Shut it!” Sam retorted back to the souses. “Give me a moment, why don’t ya?!” He returned to Joseph whom he regarded a long time with profound compassion. “You raised him, did you not, grandpa?” he asked, his tone tender and soft for Joseph’s crushed demeanor demanded it.
“I did — yes,” answered Joseph with defense.
“So the child he was, you nurtured. Many a portrait have I seen of you and his mother, the babe ‘tween your arms — the Holy Family! Verily, your name is synonymous with Mary’s in import as regards the blessed lad. What does it matter the Book spins fiction? And when he threw off the cloak of youth, the man he became he molded after you. Can you not content yourself with that?”
“No!” Joseph roared. Unable to take it sitting down, he quickly rose — though not on his feet for he too has been dead as long as his wife and his sons and his daughters. His long beard uncurled from off the table and rose up with him like a drunken cobra. He hovered above the table, stewing in anger as he intently focused, one after the other, on the tables at which sat a practicing Christian.
“I am Joseph! I am Joseph of Bethlehem!” he proclaimed with ire. “I am the father of the Son of Man! I am the father of the Son of God!”
Too bad no one in The Famous and Local Bar could hear his shriek of anguish nor even see him — except for Sam, of course, who has a way with the dead and the downtrodden, not to mention the oppressed and all those who are hungry. Sighing heavily, he left the hanging saint in the air and returned to the bar, whereupon he slammed the requested Stouts before the twins who weaved back and forth as they made slowly back to their seats.
Up above, madness seized Joseph to be thus ignored. He held his breath as he rose even higher. When his head was inches from the ceiling beams, he let out the air trapped in his lungs. A mighty wind rushed throughout the bar, knocking glasses and bottles from off the hands of the practicing Christians while skirting round the non-Christians. The wind tipped Alfred’s chair suddenly back. He hit the ground hard and upturned his Stout, splashing dark liquid on his uniform of white.
The non-Christ people couldn’t help it — they burst into laughter, albeit nervously, to cover unease for none gathered there could hardly understand from whence the wind had come at all, the doors and the windows of the Famous Bar being completely shut tight.
Only Sam kept his eyes upon the rafters as he watched Joseph and his silver beard begin to descend. His anger now spent, the Father of Man returned to his corner where it didn’t even matter he sat in the dark.
