For a long time afterward, the only way he could get any work done was to stay up late, after the curiosity seekers had given up and gone home. He understood their wanting to hear what had happened, and he didn't mind telling it over and over, but talking didn't mend the sandals of Joseph-the-Herder nor make the new pair Barnabas needed for the trip to Antioch.
        Some of the visitors came many days' journey from far away, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Lazarus didn't have the heart to ask them to clear out and let him tend to business. Their accents were many and often strange sounding to his ear, but their questions, to a word almost, were always the same. He answered patiently until dusk came and they took their leave at last. Oftentimes he was still hunched over his workbench at cockcrow, hammering the leather to make it velvety, the color of the clay walls.
        His sister Martha fretted about his late hours, but nevertheless she made extra candles for his shop, taller and fatter than the ones for the house. Working after the day's end, although he became tired, was not disagreeable. With the door bolted fast and no outside air, the smells of wax and tallow were intensified, and the endlessly gyrating shadows were pleasant companions. Lazarus welcomed the chance to pray and sing Psalms. All the same, he frequently fell asleep over his work, his needle dropping from his hand to the earthen floor. As much as he wanted to be of service, it was draining, this retelling his story and listening to other people's troubles. The pushy visitors especially exhausted him, wanting some souvenir to take back home; wanting a piece of his clothing, a tool or one of his scrolls. Once a wild-eyed shriveled old woman had even pulled hair from his beard.
        Eventually, though, about a year after Jesus was killed, the crowds coming to Bethany trickled down. Lately there were only a few strangers a week except for an occasional Jerusalem-bound caravan. For the most part, these visitors were considerate. If he were busy mixing dyes, they would sit on the bench and wait for him to address them.
        Now that he could work in the daytime again, the twin furrows on Lazarus's forehead had receded a little. The family income was almost back to normal. Martha had managed, somehow, with the egg money she'd saved and the pittance Mary got from sewing for the tax collector’s wife. Yahweh had provided.
        Late one early-April morning, on a day teetering recklessly between winter and spring, Lazarus went to the door and stretched. With stained hands splayed at his waist to ease the small of his back, he stood for a moment watching a feisty, short-legged mongrel dog drag a yellowed bone down the street. The dog and his bone left designs in the dust. Across the way, the merchant Amos was beating a brightly colored carpet and keeping a suspicious eye on the dog.
        Lazarus was thirsty. Going back into the shop, he took a dipper from a hook and bent over the pottery jar Mary kept filled. He smiled as he drank, remembering what Jesus had said about living water. How the Pharisees had bristled over things like that! Until the crowds stopped coming, the Pharisees had pestered him, too. Lazarus wasn't afraid of them, but they made his sisters nervous.
        Wiping his beard, he picked up several thongs and began to put them in a diamond pattern. In order for the sandal to fit correctly, the tension on each leather strip had to be exact. Lazarus grew so absorbed in the task that he didn't notice when Samuel-the-Builder entered the shop. Only when he became aware that the light had grown dim did Lazarus look up and see the wide-shouldered man in the doorway.
        "Shalom Samuel," he said, setting down his work with great care. "Come in. I'll have my sisters bring you a cool drink."
        "No, no. Don't trouble them. I've come to ask a favor." He said it briskly, as though to hasten the conclusion of an unpleasant mission. Samuel-the-Boat-Builder, the second wealthiest man in town, was accustomed to telling, not asking.
        "Ask," Lazarus said. "Is it something for the rainy season? I have here some fine ox skin."
        "No sandals, Lazarus. A personal favor," Samuel said, and scraped his bottom lip with sharp, even teeth.
Lazarus put up the awl, wiped his hands on his apron and waited.
       "I'll be honest with you," Samuel blurted out. "I suppose you know I don't believe what they say about you, I mean about what happened. I was away at the time, testing a boat at the seashore."
        Lazarus gave him a look of gentle amusement. "It's very hard to believe, I know."
        "You were probably just in a deep sleep or something, and the Nazarean woke you up."
        Lazarus shrugged. A smile lifted the corner of his beard where gray was overtaking the brown.
        "But my wife, Esther, she believes it, and..." Anguish spread over Samuel's face like cracking glass. "The physician says she's dying!" His control gone, the man sank to a stool and began to weep noisily. Lazarus put a hand on Samuel's shoulder until the shuddering abated.
        "I'll go with you," he said. "Just let me tell Martha and Mary."
        "But you haven't eaten!" Martha protested. "Can't he wait just a few minutes? The stew’s almost done."
        Lazarus kissed the top of her head. "Save mine." To appease her, he took a bun from the basket on the table. "I'll eat this on the way."
        Out on the street he could hear her cluck as she jabbed the coals. Mary ran after him with his cloak.
        "You'd better close up the shop," he told her. "I don’t know when I'll be back. And pray for Esther."
        The house of Samuel lay on the other side of town near the best vineyards, a fine whitewashed building with date trees in the courtyard and an imposing front door of intricately carved olive wood. The two men fell in step and walked there swiftly, speaking little.
        Samuel's servants must have been watching, for they were waiting at the entrance with an enameled basin and the softest towels Lazarus had ever used.
        "How is she?" Samuel demanded. A gaunt, aged maidservant lowered her head and shook it from side to side.
        The woman led them through dim hallways to a curtained doorway where she drew aside the heavy fabric to give them passage.
        The room they entered was so dark that Lazarus’s eyes could not at first adjust, and the air was thick with the rancid smell of death. The only illumination came from a candle guttering in a bronze bowl. It took a moment for Lazarus to make out the white-faced patient twisting feverishly on a cushion-laden couch.
        "Peace be with you, Esther," he said, stepping close.
        "I've brought you Lazarus," her husband announced with a catch in his throat.
        "Lazarus?" she said in a scratchy whisper. "The one who...?”
        "Yes, yes," Samuel said. He indicated a tapestry pillow beside the couch. "Here, Lazarus. Sit here where she can see you."
        Esther's breath was quick and light as the fluttering of a weakened sparrow. Her once onyx eyes were clouded with fear and ringed with pain.
        "Does it hurt so much?" Lazarus asked.
         She nodded yes and attempted to lift one hand, but it flopped and fell sideways like a fish that is spent and gives up the struggle.
        "Lazarus?" she managed to say at last. "Tell me again what it was like. Weren't you afraid? I am so afraid!" The effort left her gasping. Lazarus waited while the maidservant bathed Esther’s face and turned the hot pillows.
        Samuel, standing at the foot of the couch biting his fingernails, signaled for Lazarus to go on.
        "I wish I could find better words," Lazarus said. He leaned close to be sure Esther heard. “At first I was frightened just like you are, but suddenly the pain stopped and it seemed as if I were floating - floating as lightly as the web of a spider floats upon the air. Yet all the time with part of my mind I could see Martha pleading with me to drink the chicken soup and Mary, crying and talking to the physician. I wanted to tell them it was all right, not to worry, but they seemed to become farther and farther away, like an echo."
        Esther's threshing had stopped, leaving the room silent except for the rasp from her lungs.
        "Why don't you open the window?" Lazarus suggested to the servant. The woman looked doubtfully at Samuel, but Samuel nodded curtly and it was done. Instantly they felt the delicate ruffling of a breeze. Esther's breathing eased.
        "And then?" she implored Lazarus.
        "And then I found myself moving down a long narrow path, moving very fast. It wasn’t like walking. Smoother, the way a boat moves when a swift current carries it along. At the far end of the passage I could see light, and the light grew brighter and brighter the closer I got. It was the most beautiful light I've ever seen, more beautiful than..." He had groped ever since for some way to describe it. "Than a sleeping baby," he said, "or a summer sunset... or the dew on a rose that has just opened! I think it was what perfect happiness would look like if you could see it.
        "Ohhh..." Esther whispered.
        "I was filled with indescribable joy," Lazarus said, "and it seemed to me that someone - the light was so bright I couldn't see who - was saying, 'Welcome home, Lazarus. Welcome to the Great Feast!"'
        Samuel and the servant stared at him, open-mouthed.
       "That's all I remember," Lazarus said, “’till I heard Jesus calling. I don't think I wanted to return, it was so wonderful there. All I know is that I came to in the tomb with that cloth stuck to my face and my feet all tangled up in the burial wrappings. They said I'd been dead four days, but I felt fine."
         Esther's eyelids fluttered. "Will you have to die again?"
        "Yes, some day. Like everyone else."
        "And you’re not afraid?"
        "Oh, no, Esther. Not anymore."
        "But will it be like that for me?"
        "For all who love Yahweh," he assured her. "Our Lord himself has gone to prepare a place.”
Her breathing was less labored after that and she slept. Lazarus remained a little longer, murmuring Psalms and the prayer Jesus had taught. Samuel would have shown him out, but Lazarus said softly, "No, stay with Esther. I think it won't be long, now."
        Feeling the need of some solitude before going back to the shop, he left the road at the edge of the vineyards and climbed the trail leading to the village cemetery. Clover padded the stones on the path, and the trees were glazed with the yellow-green of new leaves, leaves that would become yellow again in the fall. The wind that billowed the sleeves of his robe and lifted his cloak was agreeably cool, though when he paused to rest, the gray boulder on which he sat was soaked with sun.
        Lazarus seldom had any desire to revisit his burial place, but the encounter with Samuel had given him the urge. The family crypt was just a hollow in the cliff a few widths deep. In the beginning, much to his dismay, pilgrims had turned it into a shrine. He was glad to see his sisters had removed the clutter. Only a spray of wildflowers marked the place. The ground, trod grassless, had been neatly swept.
        It was necessary for Lazarus to bend to step into the opening. In the semidarkness he peered at the ledge where they told him he had lain. He had no memory of that, but he could still see Jesus, haloed in sunlight, with the crowd behind him gawking as though they'd seen a ghost. Lazarus sighed. People said it was his miracle that had signed Jesus’ death warrant. The high priest was afraid too many people would believe. Turning to go, Lazarus noticed that someone had scratched the outline of a fish in the stone.
        He walked home slowly, pausing now and then to pray for Esther and Samuel. He envied Esther, almost. It wouldn't be right to want something that would hurt Martha and Mary, but there was a homesickness in him now, a longing he couldn’t explain. When he was alone, he talked to the Lord about it, mostly in his head, or out loud if he was sure no one was listening. He missed Jesus. He missed listening to him in the synagogue. He missed having him at the table with them, dipping barley cakes in honey. He missed seeing him go off fishing with Peter and the Zebedees. What wonderful conversations they used to have, afterwards, cleaning the day's catch.
        The high voices of children penetrated his reverie and Lazarus was surprised to realize he was almost home. The sound came from six little boys too small for the synagogue school. They were gathered near the well and he saw that they were gesturing fiercely, clearly having an argument. Coming closer, Lazarus heard one boy say, "You ask him, Ben."
        "No, you, Aaron. You said you would!"
        "What are you scared of?"
        They pushed the boy in the red tunic out in front. Lazarus recognized the son of Obadiah- the Winepresser.
        "Lazarus-the-Sandalmaker?" The boy gulped and then said in a voice so nervous it squeaked.         "C-can we ask you something?"
        Lazarus squatted to make it easier. "What is it you want to know?" he asked.
        The boy Aaron, after a quick glance at the others, blurted out, "Is it true you were really, really dead?"