“So?” his father asked.
“How did you stop?”
“Stop? The visions? I see.” He steepled his fingers and closed his eyes.
Joshua waited for his father to continue. He looked over the knickknacks in the room. None had changed, not even in location. This room was a fossil, a museum. Just as his father was, a fossil of faith gone by. The past had been so comfortable and safe, so calm and innocent. His problems were with and in the future.
“God,” his father abruptly said, “when He discovers a good trick, He uses it over and over.”
If this comment was meant to illuminate, it failed. “And?” Joshua prodded.
“Why do you do these things?” Benjamin asked.
These things. These things? This neck yielding to a wire—the quiet thud! “What things?” Joshua asked.
“Let us not play word games. Why do you frustrate these visions?”
“Frustrate these visions?” Talk about playing word games. Let’s call a spade a spade here. “You mean why do I fly around and kill babies?”
His father was surprised or shocked by the brutality of the question. Maybe he hadn’t been prepared for not playing word games.
“No need to shout,” he replied. “Your mother… But yes, why did you… kill babies?”
“Because you told me I must,” Joshua said. Obey your father. He knew it was not true, even as he said it. He wanted to hurt the old man, blame him for what he himself had done.
“But why?” his father asked, nonplussed. “You could have sat on your hands and done nothing.”
Why is he doing this to me? Joshua asked himself. He’s the one who told me I couldn’t do nothing.
“Let me tell you,” his father said. “You do it to protect your own children.”
Without having to think about it, Joshua knew this was true. If not his children, then his children’s children. Unto the fourth generation. His children’s future. His own children, not the Jews of the world.
His father continued, “You remember the story of Abraham and Isaac in the land of Moriah?”
More Biblical cant, Joshua thought. But what other explanation could there be. Insanity? “Yes, when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. So?”
The finger rose into the air, the point was about to be made. “It is well that you remember your boyhood lessons. That was a good trick.”
There was nothing more his father would tell him, nothing about how to stop. Which meant that Joshua would have to continue. To find the strength to go on. Or the strength to stop without help. Where, he wondered, could he find the strength. In a belief in God? Did he believe in God now? Only God could make him do what he had done.
But did he believe?
Joshua’s last vision came when he was about to take a shower. He reached for the shower handles and stopped before turning them.
“Are you sure, sir?” a very young lieutenant asked. His voice was shaky.
“Yes. Input your code and turn the key!” It was an older man speaking. Joshua could only see the gray of the man’s hair and the general’s stars on his shoulders. When the lieutenant did nothing, the voice said, “This is a direct order from a superior officer.”
The lieutenant chewed his lip as he typed his code into the launch computer.
“Bear up, Lt. Mollar.”
“Yes, sir,” Mollar replied. He was unable to turn the key.
“Let me help you.”
“I’m sorry, General Yosevs, it’s mated to my fingerprint. I’ll be able in a moment.”
“Take your time, soldier. We can wait another thirty seconds.”
The young lieutenant waited another moment, sweat beading on his face. Then he turned the key.
Horrified, Joshua looked at the shower head and saw a mushroom cloud. He backed away and soon mushroom clouds filled the shower. Buildings on the tile melted. Cities crumbled. Forests burned away in seconds. Oceans evaporated. People disappeared in flashes of light. Not only Jews, but everyone, the entire future itself. Gone, Joshua knew without question, because of the madness of one man. A man who had managed to hide his insanity until it was too late.
Joshua had clearly heard the general’s name.
General Yosevs. “I’m sorry, General Yosevs, it’s mated to my fingerprint.”
Yosevs. I’m sorry, General Yosevs. Yosevs, the last name of Joshua’s father who was too old to be the general in the vision.
Naked, Joshua walked to the bedroom and dialed his father. He tried to think as the phone rang.
Yosevs was Joshua’s own last name. Joshua would never be a general.
“Hello,” his father answered the telephone cheerfully.
Yosevs was the name of perhaps one hundred others in the country. Maybe fewer.
Joshua did not know what to say. He held the phone and listened as his father asked, “Yes, who is there, please?”
Yosevs was the last name of Harlow and Kevin, both of whom, either of whom would be the proper age at the proper time. Another of God’s good tricks. Abraham asked to sacrifice his son.
“Which of my boys did you see?” Joshua managed to ask finally. To the silence which met his question he added, “In your last vision. Which of my boys did you see destroy the world?”
Still the silence from his father.
“Joshua, I am sorry,” the old man said painfully. “It has come to you, too. This final dilemma. I am so sorry.”
“Which one?” Joshua asked. The less time this took…
“I,” his father said. After another pause he said, “I saw only you, Joshua. Only you. You were the only one I saw. Not your boys, neither of them. And the vision that it would be the end of everything if I did not…”
“Kill me,” Joshua muttered. More loudly he said, “The end of everything, and you didn’t kill me.”
“I was not Abraham. I could not give up what he was asked to give up. I loved my son too much. Even though you had given up the faith, Joshua, you were still my son.” Even though he had married Socorro and his father hadn’t spoken to him in ten years, still he was his father’s son.
Harlow and Kevin—they were both his sons.
“What can I do?” Joshua knew what he could not do, but not what he could.
“Trust in God. Trust in love.” The two were mutually exclusive.
“Help me,” Joshua begged.
“I can’t,” his father answered.
Joshua put the telephone down on his bed. Yosevs was the last name of Kevin and Harlow, both of whom would be of the proper age at the proper time. Since his father had seen Joshua as the nexus, it must be either Kevin or Harlow. Either. Both.
Which? Joshua had no way of knowing. If the visions went to one of the boys, would they be the force that drove him insane? He could not know. Better dead than insane.
Socorro came to check on Joshua after he had been in the shower for more than an hour.
“Another vision?” she asked from outside the door.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t speak. The water ran off Joshua, not cleaning what could never be cleaned. It was appropriate that he was in the shower. Many a good Jew had died in the shower.
Gas.
She helped him to dry, dress, and to bed.
“You know I love you and the boys,” he said, helplessly from the bed.
Socorro turned off the lights by the beds. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Now, go to sleep.”
He slept.
When he woke, Kevin was standing at the foot of the bed. Harlow ran in and said, “Good morning, Dad,” with his usual chirrup, bounced up onto the bed.