The Prodigal Brother

So he’s back.

My wayward, snivelling, profligate brother, son of my father, has returned. What’s more he’s slotted right back in to where he was before, like a tent pole into the earth.

I saw the celebrations from the field, not once imagining it was all for him. To see our father make a giddy fool of himself as he dressed my bastard brother in fine robes and jewels and sacrificed a calf- it was too much.

‘He was lost and now he is found. He was dead and now he is alive.’

Ha! The words still boil in my head.

He won’t talk about where he was. But stories came back to us. I kept them from my father to shield him from the shame of a whoremonger son. I wish I’d told him, but he wouldn’t listen now, his joy so unabated. I sit across from them at dinner and watch my father rub his shoulder, pour his wine and give him the choicest cuts of meat and it makes me want to spit in the dust.

My brother tries to engage me, but away from my father I give him nothing. I won’t forget how he was before: never helping, sleeping in the afternoon sun, drinking wine with his friends. Then the audacity of asking for his inheritance, almost wishing the death of our father! Of course the money vanished, squandered on licentiousness.

I would have taken him up on his offer to be a hired worker. Work all day amongst the filth and sleep in a hovel: the just course for a debased winebibber. Yet no doubt half of what was to be my money will go to him now, just because everyone is so glad to have him back.

He’ll never know the ache he caused my father. The days of sorrow and worry. ‘How is he? Where is he? Is he well? Minding himself and his God?’ Ha! The blessings we threw his way. ‘May the Lord protect and defend him.’

I don’t believe in God anymore. How can I believe in a God who showers providence on a shameful son? A God who, like my own father, grants unreserved forgiveness to a flagrant, yet never recognises the steady work and devotion of a quiet, obedient son? It stings like a scorpion!

I am glad I no longer believe. It strengthens me to finish this, to give that dishonourable charlatan the end he deserves. I watch and wait for my chance. Maybe down a well, like that other spoiled brat, Joseph? Maybe quietly in a field, like Cain to Abel? Or something simple yet tragic: an accident with the herd or slip of the scythe?

Afterwards I will stand by my father as he grieves a second time. Finally he will turn to me and see the one son who has always done right.

And he will give thanks.