In King Davids’ Shadow | The Scorpion’s Sting!
1979 – Somewhere in the Negev desert… The Israeli army jeep traveled at speed along the lonely ribbon of road that stretched on for an eternity.
I breathed heavily while watching the scorpions’ poison crawling up my leg while Deborah looked on in concern, her arm wrapped around my shoulder.
“The desert is not kind,” said the young soldier as he turned back momentarily before shielding his eyes from the heat that burned up the road from Eilat and northward on the four-hour ride to Tel Aviv.
All I could do was close my eyes and listen to the engines roar while the sun cast a long shadow over the sparse rugged landscape. Time curved along the bends of the desert road.
I saw myself standing in the great cotton fields of the Bet Shan valley, while the wind whispered and moaned of the ancient yet eternal King David. For it was here below the brooding mount Gilboa that David lamented “how are the mighty fallen”.
I was 21 and drove a tractor in the cotton fields below that craggy mountain that sheltered the great fields.
At lunch, I drank gallons of water in the shade of the olive orchards, and in the evening by candlelight, I read how King Saul was killed on Mount Gilboa, and from that point onward I was entranced with David.
I imagined myself one of Davids’ outlaws, traveling with him and surviving on our guile and wits in the highlands.
Adventure came quickly in the form of a scorpion bite and arm-wrestling a Bedouin tribesman for a camel-haired robe. Davids’ courage became mine.
But it was not the mighty King I sought but rather the outcast, the troubled one, the desperate David that filled me with wonder. Who was he as a young child? How did his home life shape his character? What was he like as a young boy and a young man? This part of his life captivated me and not the overblown stories of giants and swords.
I knew Jessie was his father, but what was his mother’s name.
David was mentioned 1000 times in the old testament, but not a word of his mother?
Nitzevet, or Nitzy, as I called her proved to be a hard taskmaster. After a few ill-written words, she came to me in a dream with grave misgivings. Her gaze shook me from my sleep and I vowed to honor her David.
The Leper Messiah is the culmination of that long-ago romantic vision, born in the cotton fields and raised high on the shoulders of the Shepard boy and King.
I was also an outcast: In 1958 I was born into a Gypsy clan from the pacific northwest, and for reasons long beaten back by time, given up to the Waverly Baby House, an orphanage tucked below the tree lines of the mighty Pacific forest.
“Gypsies steal babies, they don’t give them up” I remember thinking.
The years in the orphanage were a blur but what I learned was survival and that I would always be an outsider, desperately searching.
My adoptive parents saved a lost gypsy child, and I was spoon feed great literature at my mother, Suzanne’s feet. Stories of great adventure and mystery filled my young mind. Treasure Island, Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde were my breakfast and lunch. Charles Dickens was Moms’ favorite and I learned about social justice.
Somewhere in my childish mind, I began to think since my adoptive mother loved these master story-tellers, that well, if I could write a story as well as these great authors…she would love me that much more! My fortune was sealed.
Oh, there were telltale signs of a modicum of talent. Teachers happily read my poems and talked of a gift and responsibility. But at the age of 14, I started questioning my background and the answers disturbed my mind.
My mother had a flair for the dramatic and one night while watching Alexander Dumas: Man in the Iron Mask, she let slip the fact that I had a twin sister. My world tumbled down, and I was lost again living a lie in the comfortable home of a Professor and his kind wife.
My people were lost to me among the great pacific, deep in time and yet fascinating like a campfire burning in the night. I raged at the night and wrote poems by candlelight. “What did my twin sister look like?”. I thought. “Did she miss me?
I became an angry teen, and toughness was worn like a hard leather jacket. Words were weapons that wounded others often. Still, I wrote poems and tried my hand with short stories. I anguished over each word, each title, and each phrase, and I began to study the great story-tellers and tried to write in their styles.
I left the family at 16 and lived in the small coffee houses in the city. I frequented bars where I would arm-wrestle for beers only to find myself the next morning slumped over a table in a coffee house.
In 2003, my protector, my literary muse, my adoptive mother died. I realized that time was not my friend, and so gathered what modicum of talent I had with the idea of writing historical fiction.
Strangely, it all made sense, the Gypsy clan, the orphanage, and being saved by my adoptive parents.
I worshiped self-direction and with my single-minded focus slowly it became clear to me what my purpose was.
I was a messenger!
Robert