What else could I have done? 4

Part 4 - The Penitent Thief

Blimey! He was right… well I think he was, ‘cos this sure looks like Paradise to me…

What a day it’s been. We were out last night, Jim & me, doing a bit of thieving… unfortunately there were a lot of guards about last night; they were bringing in another guy and caught us sneaking out of Cohen’s pawnbrokers – would you believe it?!

Well, it was a quick trial – didn’t want us hanging around over the holiday weekend (no pun intended, by the way) – so they scheduled us for execution that morning. And what do you know: they put us with the guy they were bringing in last night. Jesus his name was. And you’ll never guess what he was up for – ‘King of the Jews’ it said. To be honest I thought I’d seen him before, then I remembered: it was last Sunday, we were mingling with the crowd, relieving people of their heavy loads – well, heavy purses – and he came riding through the crowd on a donkey. We laughed at the time, but everyone else seemed quite excited. Who’d’ve thought, eh?

I’ll say one thing for the Romans, they’re efficient. They’d got us stripped off, nailed down and strung up before you could say Pontius Pilate. I’ve never known such pain. But the weird thing was that this Jesus doesn’t scream; he prays, and he prays that God would forgive them for crucifying him.

Well Jim’s hanging there, cursing all the gods he can think of and then some, and folk are coming past and having a go at us, but particularly at Jesus. And he just hangs there and takes it. Then Jim has a go at him, but I think, no, he don’t deserve this, and I tell Jim that. Then I think, ‘what the heck’ and I asks Jesus to remember me when he comes as King. I don’t know why – it just seemed as if it was my last hope… But what else could I have done?

(c) John Simms 2010