The Living Blood Read online

  “Lookin’ sharp, little man. Glad to see you up and about,” Cal said, grinning. His mustache looked frosted, and his sun-broiled face was streaked comically white with something chalky. Paint, Lucas realized. Cal and Nita must be painting their extra bedroom to make a nursery for their baby.

  “Can I tell you who you look like?” Lucas said. “Al Jolson’s albino twin.”

  “You hear how he does me, Jared?” Cal said. “See, he’s just mad ’cause he’s one of them high-yallow Negroes, got to lay out in the sun to get a tan. One of them Atlanta Negroes with a complex. It’s all right, Lucas, man. Black is on the inside, not the outside. Love yourself. Do I hear an amen?” Cal cocked his hand against his ear, waiting for a response.

  “Amen,” Jared said, giggling, then he turned to walk toward the house.

  “He looks good, Lucas,” Cal said, watching Jared walk away. “Real good.”

  “Yes, thank the good Lord,” Lucas said. “We had to use the chair today because he’s so weak, and neither of us likes that chair even a little bit. But at least I got him out of the house. Come on inside, Cal.”

  “Naw, I got too much to do to mess with you,” Cal said, winking. “Just making a delivery. I knew you’d want this, figured I’d better bring it ’fore I forgot.” He pulled a creased magazine out of his back pocket.

  “What’s this?” Lucas said, unfurling it.

  It was an Atlantic Monthly, one of the slick, commercial newsstand magazines Lucas never had time to read because, frankly, he’d never found many worth reading. A full-color caricature of Nelson Mandela’s genial, grandfatherly face decorated the cover. Eerily, the magazine was dated exactly two years earlier: June 1999. Even if he’d been inclined to pick up an Atlantic Monthly instead of Scientific American from the bookstore occasionally, Lucas would never have stumbled across this one, published on that date. Pleasure-reading had been the last thing on his mind that particular June, so soon after Jared’s diagnosis. The very last thing.

  “Nita, Miss Bookworm, was saving it like she tries to save everything about Mandela, but I said, hey, we got to get this over to the Medicine-Man. Check out the story on page thirty-eight.”

  “Oh, I understand now,” Lucas said, pulling his reading glasses out of his breast pocket. “You’re transferring your trash across the street. Clever move.”

  “You must not be as dumb as you look.” Cal’s cheeks deflated slightly as his grin softened. “Hey, know what? Let’s me and Nita come over later. We don’t have enough players for bid whist, but we can let Jared kick all our butts at go fish. Or maybe you can throw down some tunes for us?”

  “Oh, Jesus, now I know I’m being patronized,” Lucas muttered, smiling. Since Jared referred to any music with live instruments as old-timey stuff, Lucas couldn’t ordinarily beg or bribe anyone to listen to him butcher Scott Joplin, W. C. Handy, and Jimmy Reed on the barely tuned baby grand piano in his living room. Not that he’d even sat at the piano in a year, or longer.

  Today, though, Lucas understood the gesture. It was four years to the day of Rachel’s death. Two years after Jared’s diagnosis. Two family tragedies riding on each other’s back.

  “I’d enjoy the company tonight, Cal,” Lucas said quietly. “So would Jared.”

  “You sure?”

  “If I weren’t sure, I’d tell you,” Lucas said, squeezing Cal’s shoulder. At six foot five and a half, Lucas towered over Cal the way he did almost everyone he knew. Lucas broke eye contact first, glancing down to flip through the magazine. “What’s that page number again?”

  “Thirty-eight, I think. Headline is ‘Miracle Workers.’ Later, Doc,” Cal said, waving.

  “Do you think you could make the goddamn magazine more current next time?” Lucas called after him, but there was no response he could make out as Cal disappeared behind the stand of blooming big-leaf magnolia trees at the end of the driveway.

  Page thirty-eight, Lucas discovered as he strolled toward his door, was a piece of fiction. Nothing about miracle workers. Lucas gave up, rolled the magazine into a tube, and slid it under his arm. What the hell made Cal think he’d be interested in a two-year-old Atlantic Monthly? Politics, South African or otherwise, were Cal’s domain, not his. And what kind of miracle was he talking about?

  As Lucas tugged the aluminum frame of his screen door to let himself into the house, he wondered if maybe he should have declined Cal’s offer to visit tonight. Oh, he loved Cal and Nita, all right. They were Jared’s godparents, after all. But as much as he loved them, it was hard to sit in their company now. He couldn’t help recalling how Rachel would have shared a knowing glance with Nita when she thought he wasn’t looking, or noticing how bland the iced tea tasted without the cinnamon or ginger or orange peel Rachel used to spice it with. And hell, Rachel and Cal had turned into such good bid-whist players that Lucas had begun joking they needed to investigate their lineage, that maybe their respective grandparents had come from Poland and Scotland by way of Mississippi.

  Without Rachel, his meetings with the Duharts felt like forced, scrawny imitations. There were too many silences, all of them afraid to point out the missing pieces aloud. And Lucas couldn’t help reflecting on the morbid irony of their pregnancy: Cal and Nita were about to have a child, and he was about to lose one.

  “What’s high-yallow mean?” Jared asked, making his way down the wooden stairs adjacent to the foyer. He’d gone up to retrieve his basketball, which he’d stuffed under his arm. Jared’s movements were careful as he clung to the wooden banister tightly with each step, relying on it to support his weight during his gingerly descent. Finally, two steps from the bottom, Jared leaped, and his new Air Jordan sneakers squeaked against the gleaming floorboards below. Lucas felt his heart catch in his throat as Jared swayed for balance.

  “Whoa, whoa. What’s the matter with you?” Lucas steadied him with a deft grab of his thin arm. But he knew perfectly well: Jared had to cherish his good days. The bad days were never far behind, and they were worse all the time. Very soon, they both knew, Jared would not be able to handle the stairs at all.

  “Sorry.” Jared bounced his basketball once. “So what’s it mean?”

  “It’s a term old as dirt,” Lucas sighed. “Blacks used to call fair-skinned blacks yellow, or high yellow. Cal was just poking a little fun. Showing his age, is all.”

  “I’m high yellow, too?” Jared asked, stretching his pipe-sized arm alongside Lucas’s to compare their complexions. Lucas glanced up from Jared’s pale skin to his pointy-tipped nose and green-gold eyes. Even Jared’s accent was all Rachel, flat and Midwestern.

  “No, I don’t think anyone would call you high yellow,” Lucas said, remembering his own father’s words after he’d checked the family into a roadside Florida motel during a road trip to Miami in 1956, a place called Motel Marietta. That night, Lucas and his cousin Bonita had had to wait in the backseat of the huge old powder-blue Plymouth and sneak in later because they were too dark to pass like his father. This here ain’t about shame, his father had said. I’ve told you before, every one of us in this room is black as coal in the eyes of God, because not one of us wasn’t suckled on the suffering of a slave. I ain’t tryin’ to be white. I just want some sleep so I won’t drive us all in a ditch.

  Lucas made a mental note to work harder to awaken his son’s racial consciousness during the summer ahead, whatever it took. Then, with the effect of a hot poker cracking against his temple, Lucas realized this was Jared’s last summer. As important as race was, how could it rival everything else Lucas had left to say?

  “Dad, can I shoot some baskets?” Jared asked, bouncing his ball again.

  “Let’s not overdo it. We went to the mall today, and I already promised we’ll go to a movie with your friends tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, and you said we’d go to the rain forest this summer, too. But we’re not.”

  Lucas sighed, rubbing his forehead. Right before Jared’s bone-marrow transplant, Lucas had done something downright c
razy: He’d promised to take Jared to the Amazon over summer vacation. What the hell had been wrong with him?

  Probably just a combination of wishful thinking and plain old garden-variety guilt, he decided. Lucas had spent six weeks in Peru the summer after Rachel died, on a field trip to study under a shaman and refresh himself on the South American medicinal plant ayahuasca for an article he’d wanted to write for Healing Touch, the alternative-medicine journal he’d founded a decade before. He’d known he shouldn’t have left Jared behind only a year after Rachel’s death, but the truth was, he’d been looking for a way to shut the hurting out of his head and to get rid of the stomach cramps that had still sometimes doubled him over.

  The trip hadn’t been smart. Jared, staying with the Duharts, had developed a stutter while Lucas was gone. Luckily, much to the relief of them all, the impediment vanished a week after Lucas returned. But wherever Rachel’s spirit was, Lucas knew, she’d no doubt been frowning on him then. He’d made a vow to her before she’d agreed to conceive: A child meant he had to curtail his traveling. Period. He’d promised he was not going to raise a child who’d grow up thinking Daddy lived at the airport. And he had cut back, while she was here.

  But then, suddenly, she wasn’t.

  Forgive me, Rachel, but the way I remember it, this kid was supposed to have a mother, too, and now he doesn’t, so I guess all vows are off, he’d thought as his plane lifted off for Lima and his first whiskey sour had helped him realize how much he’d missed the freedom to go away, to pick his project and lunge into it. He extended his trip three times before finally, reluctantly, going home.

  Six weeks. The last healthy year of his son’s life, he’d left Jared alone for six weeks. The memory of it still made Lucas feel so guilty he wished he could crawl out of his skin. What would he give to have those six weeks back?

  “I said we’d go to the rain forest someday,” Lucas said, knowing full well that wasn’t what he’d said at all. “You’re not healthy enough for that kind of travel. We’ll do it when you’re well.”

  Jared sighed, gazing up at Lucas with sharp skepticism.

  “What’s with that look?” Lucas said.

  Jared bounced the ball again, less playfully, but he didn’t answer. Lucas could read his son’s silence: Let’s cut the bullshit, okay? We both know I’m not getting well.

  Lucas pressed his palm against Jared’s cheek. Jared’s skin felt a little warm, which alarmed Lucas, but he decided he’d get the thermometer to check a little while later. Not now. Jared was sick of being doctored. With a small grunt, Lucas sat down on the staircase, which put him at eye level with his son. “Jared, I know you’re a smart kid. I’m not going to try to fill your head with fairy tales. You and I both wish you were doing much better. Okay?”

  Jared nodded, waiting.

  Lucas had to pause a moment. He’d begun blithely enough, but as his own words caught up to his ears, he suddenly found it difficult to speak. “But I’m not about to roll over and give up on this. Not even close. And as long as that’s true, neither of us can say you won’t be healthy enough to go to the rain forest one of these days. Can we?”

  “No,” Jared said in a dull tone, shrugging, and Lucas could tell he wasn’t convinced. There was a pause as Jared seemed to gather his nerve, not blinking. “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know you’re trying to do a lot of stuff for me, right? But even though I’m supposed to go to the movies tomorrow, I might wake up feeling bad. And if that happens, I won’t get to go. I might even have to go back to the hospital. Right?”

  Lucas didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. They both knew Jared’s illness had a way of routinely ruining their plans, both big and small. The rule was this: Anytime his temperature reached 101, they went to Wheeler. Period. And in Jared’s case, there were rarely any routine visits. After his last close call, he was lucky he’d been able to come home at all. A lost spleen meant a weakened immune system, the last thing Jared needed.

  Jared looked down at the floor, nearly mumbling. “Well . . . the only reason I wanted the new shoes and stuff was so I could shoot some baskets. I won’t hurt myself. Just for ten minutes.” His voice teetered on the edge of tears. “Please? That’s all I want, Dad.”

  Suddenly, Lucas found his better judgment lying in shambles at his feet. He had few defenses against Jared’s tears. Lucky for him, it was an advantage Jared rarely abused.

  “Ten minutes. That’s all. And no jumping,” Lucas said. Jared grinned, spinning toward the door, and Lucas called quickly after him, feeling like the world’s biggest killjoy: “And then I want you to bring me the thermometer. You feel like you have a temperature.”

  “Oh, great. Big surprise,” Jared said as the screen door fell shut behind him.

  Lucas sighed. He’d screwed up. He had promised to take Jared to the rain forest, even though there was no way Jared would have been strong enough for a trip like that even if the operation had cured his leukemia the way they’d hoped. Lucas had always tried to be careful about making promises to his son, because he didn’t think he should be the one to teach Jared that promises were only a convenient way to dodge what no one wanted to face.

  Lucas had never made any promises to Jared even after Rachel got sick, when the two of them would sit alone in the waiting room and Jared would ask the ballsy questions he seemed to spend his days storing up. He’d been only six then, but the inquiries were searing and perceptive, dredging up things Lucas hadn’t even allowed himself to think about too long: Is that doctor as smart as you, Daddy? Should Mommy be so skinny? Does fatal mean you die? How come the Magic-Man can’t make her better? And Lucas had answered all of Jared’s questions, making no promises, trying not ever to lie.

  The whole thing had been a cosmic sick joke.

  There he was, Lucas Shepard, natural-medicines guru, alternative-therapies maverick, and all his expertise had been staggeringly, infuriatingly useless to save his own wife. One of the gloating E-mail jokes from his colleagues had accidentally strayed into his mailbox, forwarded as part of a group mailing that had originated from a med student at UC Berkeley:

  Q: What potion finally saved Lucas Shepard’s wife?

  A: Formaldehyde.

  He had failed, and everyone knew it. There just hadn’t been any answers. Lucas hadn’t expected answers from the oncologist, but he’d held out hope in the miracle disciplines. He’d seen for himself at vodun drumming ceremonies in the hillsides of Haiti, in smoky Lakota tents in New Mexico, in medicine women’s huts in Zimbabwe, at faith healings in the mountains of Tennessee, in chanting circles at the desert cancer center outside Phoenix where Three Ravens Perez routinely sent patients away healthy. Lucas had factored in the effects of mass hysteria, psychosomatic responses, and fraud, and none of that could explain how he’d seen dozens of people defy their conditions to walk, speak, and heal when doctors had given them up for hopeless. Spontaneous remission was real, and if magic was the term for what science could not yet explain, then so be it.

  But nothing had helped Rachel. Nothing. No good magic, no healing magic, could touch her. Rachel had spent two weeks at Three Ravens Perez’s center in Phoenix almost immediately after her diagnosis, but her condition had not changed. Perez wanted to try again, on her home soil. He’d flown to Tallahassee to help Lucas and Cal cut down the twenty-foot trees they had needed to support the heavy canvas for the sweat lodge they had built for her. Jared, shirtless, his face painted playfully in bright red Indian stripes, had helped build the massive tepee alongside the house, at the mouth of the woods. While they’d worked, Perez had told them all of their energy, all of their thoughts, had to be focused on healing Rachel.

  That afternoon, with Perez leading the ceremony, a group of skeptics and believers alike—Rachel, Lucas, Jared, Cal, Nita, Rachel’s twin brothers from Connecticut, Rachel’s best friend from her office, and three Cherokee healers from Georgia who knew Perez by reputation—tried to sweat the evil from their pores inside
that structure with its glowing fire-pit and stifling wet heat. Rachel was propped on pillows, half-awake, while Lucas held her hand. She could take only halting draws from the pipe when she was instructed, coughing each time. Jared had sat alongside Lucas, never once complaining, although the exercise had long ago stopped being fun. Jared understood how important it was, that it was for his mother.

  And Lucas had been convinced it would work. It should absolutely have worked.

  None of them had talked about it later, but they had felt the way the ground beneath them had shivered and shifted as Perez sang and chanted, they had all seen colorful lights dancing in a frenzied kaleidoscope outside of the fabric that encircled them. All of them in that tent had felt Perez’s power, had been transported by it. Lucas believed he had fainted or lost consciousness until he realized he was having a vision: blackness. Shadows. Swallowing him.

  And he would never forget the precise words Perez had spoken so wearily when the ceremony was finished near dawn and Rachel had been carried back to her bed inside the house. Lucas’s friend looked more defeated than Lucas had ever seen, the way he would look again much too soon, when he would come back for Jared: Lucas, she’s swimming in shadows. They won’t release her, even with the help of the spirits. I can’t find her. Give her permission to go the way of the shadows. Wish her a good journey.

  Two days later, Rachel died.

  Every detail about Rachel’s illness—the sudden appearance of a brain tumor when she had no history of cancer in her family, the remarkable spread within a span of only weeks—occurred gleefully, flying against reason, as if to demonstrate to him that healing magic, good magic, had a living rival. And it was stronger. It was not going to be fucked with by Lucas Dorsey Shepard and his Lasker Prize and his medicine cabinet full of herbs. It was not going to be fucked with even by the most gifted shaman in the continental United States. It was always going to have its way.