John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.
— Mark 1: 4-6.
His face was an altogether different thing, that morning he appeared descending the rock hill that marked the boundary-line of wilderness.
She recognized his gait, of course, still boyish even at thirty, skipping and kicking up gravel in a cloud behind him.
She thought he would come, as he had those last months, to the dooryard where she stood now, watching him.
Last time, he’d told her of locusts, how their wings, singed in a roasting fire, crunched between his teeth. He’d grinned at the face she made, then, relenting, told her of honey from the comb.
She, an old woman, remembered still the taste of honey from the comb.
This day he did not come.
He stopped there, where flat land met at last the hill’s rising, and stood, his arms hung limp at both his sides.
His face then was a different thing, which later she could not describe.
She only knew his knees, buckled and dropping to sand, his arms outstretched to the sun, which behind her had begun to rise.
His eyes were shining with it, that sun. She didn’t need to turn to see it.
She knew then how the crowds would come, drawn by what they’d never had, yet still somehow remembered. Rising from water, faces altogether different now, and on their lips that gentle sting, sweet and wild, like honey from the comb.
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