By DEXTER DUGGAN
Joseph had just finished waving goodbye to the three wise men when he noticed an elderly fellow rambling down the road.
“May I help you, dear sir?”, Joseph asked.
“What, what, who what are you? Your uh name?”, the fellow replied.
“I am Joseph of Nazareth.”
“Don’t uh name, that name, I don’t know that name. Shouldn’t you be famous in order to get in here to see me?”
“I expect that you would not know my name. I am a humble carpenter from Nazareth, here with my wife for the census, and we have just been blessed with the birth of our Son.”
“Is that a wanted child or not? Seems to me that I help lots of people, you know, when some burdensome kid tries to um tries you know, get in the way of their life. Not sure why I do this to the useless kids, can’t quite think of why right now. What was your name again?”
“Joseph of Nazareth.”
The elderly fellow searched through all his pockets. “Oh, here’s my list. The list. Has all the names on it. Your name is Izzy or Nazzy or something? Jazzy?”
“Joseph of Nazareth.”
“No, I can’t talk to you. They tell me only to call on the names here on my list that they give me. Are you David Muir? Or Lester Holt? Margaret Brannan O’Bannon Brennan? Miguel Almaguer? Oh, haha, Princess Nanzee told me never to mention that Alamalagueura name again after he embarrassed uh her husband. No problem, I’ll forget it sooner than you think.”
“None of those names is mine, I’m afraid,” Joseph said. “I wasn’t trying to engage you in a conversation if you don’t want, sir. I only thought that you may have needed help finding where you’re going.”
“Don’t worry about that, young fella. When I get bored at home, they tell me just to follow the grasshopper wherever he jumps and I’m sure to learn something along the way. But how did you ever uh ever get in here if, like I said, if you’re not famous? They only let um famous you know um people get in around me.”
“Excuse me but I was only standing here in the public road, sir. I don’t mean to intrude.”
“Well, Mr. Jazzy, I would uh hope you know better than to force yourself in like this.”
“May I ask where we are, sir, if I should not be here?”
“If you don’t know, how do I know? But don’t you know who I am?”
“I deeply apologize but I’m afraid not.”
“King David, of course. Look it up. I can get them to give you a list, if you need one, just like all those lists they give me. ‘Turn right. Sit down. Stand up. Shake hands without holding the list. We’re here to celebrate, um, Passover. Sit down. Eat some lamb. Exit right’.”
“You mean you’re a King David from one of the distant territories, sir?”
“King Saul then me, King David in Jerusalem!”
As much as Joseph knew that the sun and moon are in the sky, he knew this couldn’t be King David from a thousand years ago.
“Um, sir, I see there’s a tag on your robe. May I have a look?”
“Oh, go ahead, go ahead. Reading things always helps me, too.”
Joseph’s eyes grew wide and he excused himself, stepping inside.
“Mary, there’s the most extraordinary thing. Well, almost as extraordinary as our Child and then the wise men visiting us from out of nowhere. There’s a confused old fellow outside and he says he’s King David but I’ve just read his nametag and it says: ‘If found, please return to the royal palace. King Jo Ahr Zabidin stands before you’.”
Joseph continued, “We know that King Zabidin’s reign was so evil, he was wiped away from the scrolls of our history 10 years ago to spare our land his scandal. But he must have wandered away from his caretakers now.”
“There was always the question, Joseph, whether he knew what evils he was doing or if his advanced age had taken away his mind and the blame should be on his caretakers,” Mary said. “Let’s see if we can find out his home address now.”
Joseph stepped outside again.
“Thank you for waiting patiently, sir. Could we sort of verbally retrace your steps before you got here?”
“Well, I used to be an ordinary working guy, like you. They called me Camel Train Jo, just riding to work in Jerusalem every day, where I sold doves in the Temple precincts. Made a little nice profit there. The high priest sort of let me do as I pleased, even if he uh he should have known better now and then. I think he was sort of scared of me, old Camel Train Jo!
“Anyway, that was before my son Moses was hunting and hunting through the bulrushes down by this river in Ukraine and he found this submerged basket full of gold with someone else’s name on it.
“Well, you know, ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers,’ so my wonderful hunter Moses brought me most of the gold after taking his cut. I’m plowed uh um proud of how my boy has learned from my example! And you know how people get renamed in our Holy Scriptures, so I renamed him um um, oh yeah, Hunter. And the wealth helped me to assume my rightful place in the world.”
Joseph replied, “Yes, I do seem to recall hearing something like this. Could you please refresh my mind a little about what happened next?”
“Well uh yeah, Camel Train Jo, humble as you are, that’s me. But there was a wicked king with awful orange hair who was wicked because he had what I wanted, which was being king. So I had the soothsayers and necromancers swear on the scrolls — which was false witness and defamation but it worked — that he had cursed the heavens, so all the Temple priests deposed him!
“They absolutely took away his kingship,” the old man said, “and ruled that no one ever dare think of restoring him to it again or they would be deposed, too, so here I am, happy as shrimp in a pork stew!”
Zabidin’s idea of a tasty meal only confirmed what Joseph and Mary heard with their own ears about his grasp of tradition.
They thought together, “The birth of our Child is much needed in this age.”
“See here,” Joseph told the old fellow. “Let’s see if we can put you — and all of our society — on the right path home.”
“Whatever that means, I won’t say no,” the old fellow said. “Maybe I should tell Princess Nanzee about listening to you, too.”
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