In those days he had been young, and when he looked back, now, he felt he must have been a child, and he could still remember his elders in the fields, with him, except they were old men, now, and he was in charge, and had been for years, and struggled to remember when it had been any different. When you’re a shepherd you know how your day’s going to go. There’s not much mystery.
There had been, that night, all those years ago, that star shining so brightly, and the angel…Later, he’d told himself he’d imagined it, dreamed it. Anything but admit that it had really happened. Alone, or alone now among those who had experienced it, it was easy to pretend. It had been a lifetime ago.
Anyway, he still occupied the same fields, still there in Bethlehem. Today he was asked to sell one of his sheep. The request came from people he’d been hearing about the last few years, people who had been traveling about, a network, agitated people. It wasn’t hard to find the like. Everyone was agitated these days. No one was happy about the Romans. If he kept to himself, paid his taxes, he’d found he didn’t have to worry about it too much.
Why someone would want one of his sheep over in Jerusalem, he couldn’t say. Seemed like a lot of bother. He assumed it was for the Passover, but it was a little early, and they’d seemed to be in a rush. “The master needs it now,” they’d said, “He’s in a rush. Never seen him like it.”
There were a lot of masters about, but the one spoken about had tended to inspire a different response. Normally he inspired calm. The shepherd knew these people. These were common people, for the most part, some of them important fishermen from Galilee, sure, who operated in circles similar to his, but who had spent their lives in the same daily fashion as him, busy about their work, hardly the like to change the world. In normal times, anyway. These weren’t normal times.
And this was not a normal day. He wondered. What was so different? What so urgent?
There was something in the air. A desperation. Something was going to happen. The authorities were frequently given to sudden gestures, to assure the population of who was in control, to solidify their position. These things followed patterns. Troublemakers were rounded up. The shepherd wondered if the master’s luck had run out.
All that was someone else’s problem. He tended his flock. He sold sheep. The urgency, though. These people. They seemed frightened. This was a movement of common stock. No one usually bothered to include men such as him in important affairs. His fields had been occupied by these people, though. He’d watched from a distance, too far away to hear, but surprised at the level of calm as the crowds listened.
He decided he’d ask around, in a few days. He led a simple life. But he could involve himself in something like this.
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