The Centurion and His Wife

— Hi, honey, how was work today?

— Not quite the usual.

— That’s what I was thinking. It got really dark about noon. Perfectly clear sky, but still dark. It was scary. I hope you weren’t outside.

— Well, I was.

— Another bunch of crucifixions?

— Yeah. But this group was different. Well, one of the guys was different.

— How so?

— From what I could understand he hadn’t done anything wrong. The other guys were thieves. They had it coming. But this guy was just – remember earlier in the week we heard there was a disturbance at the kikes’ temple? Some guy came into town on a donkey with a bunch of kikes waving branches and then went in there with a whip and messed up the merchants’ tables, right? It was that guy.

— Well, that’s not good.

— Maybe not, but remember, nobody asked us to prosecute him for that.

— True.

— And I guess all week he’d been back in the temple and everyone treated him like nothing had happened.

— OK, so?

— So last night the kikes arrested him, and this morning they got the gov to have him crucified. So we beat the ever-livin’ crap out of him and crucified him.

— Didn’t that bother you, having your men do that to an innocent man?

— Hey, sweetie, we’ve been through this before. I don’t issue the orders. I just follow them. We took him out, nailed him up, … You know, the usual.

— Except that the sun went dark.

— Yeah. That was when I started thinking there was something different about him. Not just that he was innocent, but, like, maybe he was in league with the sun god.

— A kike in league with the sun god? You really thought that?

— Hey, they don’t pay me to think about these things. But anyway, there were a couple of other things that were weird. Usually when people get crucified they’re either screaming curses at everyone or just feeling sorry for themselves. This guy was thinking about people’s sins. One of the guys up there with him talked to him like he was a king who could forgive his sins, and the kike said his sins were forgiven. Then he – it was like he prayed for his god to forgive the sins of those who had had him crucified. Then just before he died, his last words were “It is finished,” like the whole thing had been his idea from the beginning.

—  Maybe the pain made him crazy.

— May be. But I couldn’t help saying, “This man is truly God’s son.”

— Just like that?

— Just like that. So if you want to know how my day went, I have to say I spent it killing God’s son.

— Does that bother you?

— Like I said, I was just following orders. What’s for dinner?