Bernard and Joseph

Artie Powell tracks down Bernard Walton at work and startles him so badly that the window washer jumps straight up and lands with one foot stuck in his bucket. Once Artie has pried the bucket loose, he explains what he really came for: the rest of the story Bernard started and never finished, the story of Joseph and his eleven brothers. Artie remembers exactly where they stopped. Joseph had been thrown into an Egyptian prison because of Potiphar's wife, but God blessed him there, and the chief jailer put him in charge of the whole prison.

Bernard picks the tale back up. Pharaoh has grown angry with his chief baker and his wine taster and has thrown them both into that same prison, and one morning Joseph finds the two of them badly shaken. Each has had a strange dream and there is no one to explain them. Joseph tells them that interpreting dreams is God's business, then agrees to listen. The wine taster describes a vine with three branches that budded, blossomed, and produced ripe grapes, which he squeezed into Pharaoh's cup and carried to the king. Three branches mean three days, Joseph says, and in three days Pharaoh will restore him to his old job. Joseph asks one small favor in return: he was kidnapped and brought to Egypt and jailed for nothing, so would the wine taster please mention him to Pharaoh. The wine taster promises he will. Then the baker eagerly tells his own dream, three baskets of pastries on his head with birds eating the top basket, and Joseph warns him gently that dreams can carry bad meanings as well as good. The three baskets are also three days, but at the end of them Pharaoh will have the baker executed.

Everything happens just as Joseph says. And the moment the wine taster is back pouring for the king, he forgets Joseph completely, for two whole years, until Pharaoh begins having nightmares that none of his magicians or wise men can explain. Only then does the wine taster remember, confess his forgetfulness, and tell Pharaoh about the Hebrew in the prison.

Brought before the throne, Joseph refuses the credit at once. He cannot interpret dreams, he says, but God can. Pharaoh describes seven fat cows rising from the Nile and being eaten by seven bony ones, and seven plump heads of grain swallowed by seven withered ones. Both dreams mean the same thing, Joseph explains: seven years of tremendous prosperity across Egypt, followed by seven years of famine so severe that even the memory of the good years will be wiped away. His advice is to find the wisest man in Egypt and put him in charge of gathering the extra grain while there is extra grain to gather. Who that man should be, Joseph says, only Pharaoh can decide. Pharaoh has already decided. He appoints Joseph over the whole kingdom, second in rank to no one but himself.

The seven good years come, and then the famine, and it strikes far beyond Egypt. Because of Joseph's storehouses, Egypt alone has food, and Joseph sells grain to people from everywhere, including the land where his own family lives. Jacob sends ten of his sons down to buy grain, keeping his youngest, Benjamin, safely at home. The ten bow low before the great overseer of Egypt, exactly as in the dream Joseph once had. Joseph knows them instantly. They have no idea who he is, and he decides to keep it that way a while longer.

Reuben speaks for the group, and Simeon adds that they have only come to buy food, but Joseph accuses them of being spies. When they protest that they are twelve honest brothers, he says their own words trap them, since he counts only ten. Judah explains that the youngest is home with their father and one brother is dead. Joseph demands proof: one of them must fetch the youngest brother while the others wait in prison. Behind the walls, the brothers turn on themselves. Judah says plainly that this is happening because of what they did to Joseph, whose terror and pleading they ignored, and Reuben reminds them all that he begged them not to do it. Joseph, listening unseen, is deeply moved.

After three days he brings them back and offers mercy. Only one of them will stay behind, and that one is Simeon. The rest go home loaded with grain, never knowing that Joseph has quietly slipped each man's payment back into his sack. When the money turns up in Canaan, Jacob is beside himself. He has lost Joseph, Simeon is gone, and now they want Benjamin too. Even Reuben's offer to guarantee the boy's safety cannot move him.

But the famine does not lift, and hunger is a powerful persuader. When the grain runs low, Judah tells his father the truth: that ruler was not joking, and they cannot go back without Benjamin. Judah personally pledges to bring the boy home or bear the blame forever, and Jacob at last gives in, praying that God Almighty will grant them mercy, release Simeon, and return Benjamin.

Seeing Benjamin among them, Joseph orders his household manager to bring the brothers to his palace for a feast. The brothers are terrified, certain they are about to be made slaves, and only relax when they see the banquet and watch Simeon walk in free. But Judah keeps noticing strange things and whispers them to Reuben and Simeon during the meal. The household manager did not blink when they confessed about the returned money. Egyptians will not normally eat with Hebrews, yet here they sit dining from the great man's own table. They have been seated in order of age, which no stranger could know. Benjamin has been served five times as much as anyone else, and the ruler had to leave the room when he first laid eyes on the boy. Something is very odd, Judah decides, and they agree to leave at first light.

While they talk, Joseph gives his manager private orders: fill the sacks to the brim, return the money again, and hide his own silver cup at the top of the youngest brother's sack. Barely outside the city the next morning, the brothers are overtaken by the manager and his guards and accused of stealing. They protest, they open every sack, and the cup is found with Benjamin. Stunned and weeping, they load up and go back to throw themselves at Joseph's feet. Joseph declares that only the thief will become his slave, and Judah steps forward. He describes their aged father, the boy born to him late, the brother already lost, and the promise he made to keep Benjamin safe, and he begs to be taken as a slave in the boy's place.

That is when Joseph sends his attendants out of the room and tells his brothers who he is. They can hardly believe it, and they plead for mercy for their terrible sin against him. Joseph will not let them stay angry with themselves. It was God's doing, he tells them. God sent him ahead to preserve their lives, to keep their families alive through a famine that is only going to get worse, so that they will one day become a great nation. What matters now is that they are together again.

Bernard finishes it out. Joseph loads wagons with food and sends the brothers back for their father, who does not believe them at first but is finally convinced by everything Joseph has sent, and the whole family packs up and moves to Egypt. They live more or less happily ever after, Bernard says, at least until a man named Moses comes along. Artie says he already knows about Moses and just wants to hear Bernard tell it, because Bernard is a really good storyteller. Bernard asks him not to spread that around, since he will never get any work done with kids lining up for stories. Moments after Artie leaves, Whit strolls over, asks whether that was one of the Powell kids, and remarks that the youngest of seven would love the story of Joseph. Bernard groans. The secret is already out.