Chapter 14 | Order and Breath #2
“I am letting you help with the vines,” I said, chin lifting. “A few.”
His mouth curved. “Baruch will weep at the recklessness.”
A chuckle slipped through.
He smiled, clearly satisfied with himself.
“Only a few,” he agreed easily. And then, “Thank Adonai for small miracles.”
I shot him a look as we set off again.
By the time we reached the lower terrace, Abba had risen from beneath the fig tree.
“Shalom,” James called, respectful, not brash now.
Abba studied him a moment. “You are the fisherman.”
“I am.”
“He wants to loosen the ties,” I said, announcing it as an offense. “Says his uncle has a vineyard. Claims the vines need air.”
Abba considered that, eyes drifting toward the rows.
“Hm.”
I folded my arms.
“It’s true, vines must breathe,” Abba said at last. “We can try a few. If they fail, we bind them again.”
I stared at him. “You are taking his side?”
“I am taking the side of sunlight,” Abba replied mildly.
James did not smile, but a pleased look flickered in his eyes.
Traitor, I thought—though I could not say to whom.
James stepped into the first row and reached for the tie.
There was no fumbling.
His fingers worked the knot with practiced ease, not like a fisherman guessing at vineyard rope, but like a man who understood tension—how much a line could bear before it strained, how little it needed to hold.
He loosened it only slightly.
The vine eased outward, enough to allow space between leaves.
He tested the slack, adjusted the trellis, moved to the next.
Sweat gathered at his brow in the afternoon heat. He brushed it away with the back of his wrist and kept working without commentary, without boasting.
Lavi trailed behind him, watching as though witnessing something sacred.
I watched too.
Not because I doubted him.
Because I needed to see whether he was wrong.
Watching him work… he carried an air about him. No hesitation, no second-guessing. Even at something that was not his usual work, he simply stepped in and did it as though he knew what he was doing—could even lead others, if tasked with it.
And yet… he followed someone else. Jesus.
I did not look at him when I said it—the question slipped out before I could stop it.
“So this teacher of yours… what does he teach you?”
James did not answer at once. I heard the scrape of his sandal shifting in the dirt. I thought he might laugh it off.
Instead he said, “He teaches us to look twice.”
I glanced up. “At what?”
“At everything.”
He bent and lifted a vine that had crept too close to the ground, turning it between his fingers with quiet attention, studying it as though it were new to him.
“At the Law,” he said. “At the poor. At men we have already decided about.”
I snipped too quickly and nicked a leaf. “We already know what the Law says.”
He nodded. “So did I.”
There was no heat in it. No argument.
He straightened and shaded his eyes toward the hills. “He says the kingdom of God is like seed.”
A pause. “A man scatters it. It falls into earth. It disappears.”
“That is what seed does.”
“Yes.” He looked at me then. “And yet it grows. Whether the man watches or not. Whether he understands how or not.”
The wind pressed the leaves together in a soft, restless hush.
“He says it begins small. Smaller than we expect. Smaller than we would choose. And that is precisely why men miss it.”
I wiped my hands on my wrap. “And this kingdom—where is it meant to be? In Rome? In Jerusalem?”
His mouth twitched faintly. “That is what we asked.”
“And?”
“He said it is among us.”
I gave a short huff that might have been a laugh. “Among fishermen and tax collectors.”
“Yes, and hardworking women,” he said.
I turned back to the vine, but my hands had slowed.
“So… yes, He teaches us to look twice,” James went on more quietly. “At what seems weak. At what seems wasted. At what we might normally overlook or avoid.”
He crouched and lifted a fallen branch I had meant to clear away. “At this,” he said. “We would call it useless. Fit only for fire.”
He broke the dry end cleanly and set the living part back against the trellis.
“He says nothing is beyond tending.”
For a moment neither of us spoke.
The vineyard stretched in ordered lines around us.
“Looking twice will not change Rome,” I said.
“No.”
“And it will not heal my abba.”
His jaw tightened, only slightly.
“No,” he said again.
I waited for more. For a promise. For something bright and impossible.
Instead he said, “But it changes the one who looks.”
The shears rested in my palm. The wind moved again through the leaves, and for a strange moment I wondered what I had failed to see all this time.
But, I did not tell him that.
“Looking twice sounds like a good way to miss what’s already clear,” I said.
“Or to see it properly,” he replied.
Then he bent back to the work, the conversation left behind, though his words refused to leave me.
~
The rows he touched did not fall into chaos. They did not sag or droop or collapse into waste.
They simply… breathed.
Air moved where before it had not. Light reached where shadow had pressed too long.
After the third row, he stepped back, wiping his hands on his tunic. Dust clung to his forearms; a streak of soil cut across his cheek. He did not look inconvenienced by it. If anything, he looked more himself.
“Only a few,” he said.
The breeze moved through the loosened leaves, and the sound was different.
Not strained, not tight, but alive.
James inhaled deeply, filling his lungs as though the earth itself were something to be tasted.
“I love this,” he said quietly.
I glanced at him. “Loosening knots?”
He shook his head faintly. “The smell. Fresh soil. Crushed leaves. It makes me feel… closer.” He searched for the word. “Nearer to Adonai. Like the ground remembers Who made it.”
That was not something I expected from him.
Not from a man who boasted of being favored. Not from a man who laughed too loud and walked too boldly.
He stood there, sun on his shoulders, dirt on his hands, looking entirely at home in the work.
“We should pray,” he said suddenly.
I blinked.
Not reluctant.
Just… surprised.
“For the vines?” I asked.
“For the vines. For the hands that tend them. For the season ahead.”
There was no show in it. Only conviction.
Lavi’s eyes widened as though something wonderful had been proposed.
James bowed his head. Lavi mirrored his movements like a small shadow.
James began the prayer, and I couldn’t help but notice the change in his voice.
Deeper. Steadier.
“Barach atah Adonai,” he began, “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe. You who send rain in its season and cause the earth to yield her strength… breathe on these rows. Guard them from rot and blight. Let wind pass where it must. Let light fall where it is needed. Strengthen the hands that labor here. And teach us to tend what You have planted.”
There was no flourish in it. Or dramatics.
Only fire held in restraint.
The kind that warms instead of burns.
“Amen,” I said quietly.
Lavi echoed it, earnest and bright.
James lifted his head and looked across the vineyard as though he expected an answer in the movement of the leaves.
The wind stirred again.
And I had to admit that it felt like one.
He turned back toward me, brushing soil from his palms. “Work like this,” he said, almost to himself, “it doesn’t exhaust me. It wakes me up.”
There was something in his eyes then—not arrogance, not teasing.
Calling.
I saw it. And, I understood that his thunder was not noise.
It was direction.
He stepped away at last, offering Abba a respectful nod before turning toward the road. “Only a few rows,” he reminded me.
“Only a few,” I answered.
“Shalom, Yosef,” he said to Abba. Then his gaze shifted to Lavi. “Shalom, brave one.”
Lavi practically bounced as he waved.
James’s eyes flicked to me, softer than I expected. “Shalom, Talia.”
Abba returned the farewell with a calm nod. Lavi kept waving until James laughed and lifted a hand in reply without turning back.
I stood where I was, shears still in my grip, watching him go—startled in a way that had nothing to do with vines.
A moment ago he had been all swagger and teasing. Then he had prayed like a man who meant every word. He had worked like the earth gave him strength instead of taking it.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
But as he disappeared down the terrace and the wind moved through the altered vines, I could not deny what I had witnessed.
Once, I had thought him nothing more than thunder and hot air, but I had seen what was underneath, and I did not despise it.