I Am Not That Man

By Andrea Lingle

The blood was dried in drops along his left side. Near his shoulder they were round, rusty brown disks, stiff and dry. Near his waist they were oblong, having fallen a greater distance. One, on the crest of his shoulder had run creating a drip.

His anger hadn’t dried with the blood though. He could still remember the warmth of it as it hit his face. They had been standing side by side, he and his brother, ordered to the garden to collect the teacher, Jesus of Nazareth. The High Priest had sent them; the priest who owned them both.

The blood had spattered across his face before he saw the sword. The man who had swung it was a big man. Dark-faced and thickly bearded. His eyes had been closed. The blood had been hot. So hot. Hotter than he remembered his own ever feeling. Black spots had appeared before his eyes when he had seen his brother’s face, staring, white beneath the dripping blood—black in the lamplight. Something lay on the ground, oddly still, stupidly still. 

It was an ear.

Now, he saw the man, here, just inside the gate, standing by a fire pot. Just standing there. His robe bore the same pattern as his own. Apparently he hadn’t taken time to change either. The blood had covered the man’s right arm and chest. He remembered that the man had dropped the sword and stood clutching the fabric of his robe and staring at it with tears washing blood into his beard.  

Anger caught him around the edges of his gut. How could this man come here? 

“You! You are one of his disciples! I saw you. I know I saw you.” His voice was shaking. He wanted to shout, but he just hissed through his teeth. He raised his fist. For what? It also shook. He looked at his hand. A bound hand. A slave’s hand. What good is a slave’s fist?

The man didn’t even look up. He stared deep into the coals, unblinking. His beard was matted with dust and tears and blood. “I am not. I am not that man.”