Back in camp, I've become a celebrity.
A 'reluctant hero,' the General calls me, because he knows that I really don't like to be paraded around and shown off. But it's necessary, or at least the General says that it is. "You're good for morale," he tells me. "The Hebrew spies sneak out of our camp and tell Saul of our increased confidence; our spies tell me that he becomes more disheartened every day."
And so, every morning, just after sunrise, when the sing-song chant of the Hebrews' morning prayer rolls out of the valley, the General and I march out to challenge them. Each day, at the General's urging, I try to be a little bolder than the day before. I mock them. I say that they are little boys, that they should run home and hide behind their mothers' skirts. I call them old women, frail and afraid.
I even make fun of their god. "Where is he," I ask them, "this all-powerful deity who promised to give you our land? Does he, too, tremble before the might of the Philistines?"
Once, I called to Saul by name; I dared him to come out and fight me himself.
"That was good, son," the General said, later, "but dangerous. Of all the Hebrews, Saul may be the only one crazy enough to actually do it."
"He may be crazy," I say, "but he's not that crazy. And he's not stupid."
Funny, isn't it? Now I'm the one reassuring him.
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©1996 Henry Charles Mishkoff