My Soul to Keep Part 21

Jessica nodded, not speaking.

"We're going to make a pa.s.sage tonight, Jessica. Both of us. Our faith in each other, and our love, will be our light on this path. By morning, we'll have witnessed a true miracle. I guarantee you that. We will."

Jessica couldn't think of anything to say. She realized that her toes and knuckles were curled tight. Her entire frame was tense. David had never spoken this way to her. No one had ever spoken this way to her. Her mind was too unsettled to process what he was saying, to respond at all.

Abruptly, David sat up. She saw him hang his head, staring at the floor. She saw him wipe his eyes. Then, painstakingly, he stood naked at his full height beside the bed, a far-off shadow.

"Mi vida," he said, "I have to stop talking now. I'm going to draw myself a cool bath and sit in the tub for a few moments. Okay?"

Jessica was relieved. Taking a bath was a very normal thing to do, and the thought of the routine returned her to the sense of reality that had been fleeing as David spoke.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," she said.

He leaned over the bed and kissed her forehead, so gently she could barely feel his lips. "We'll talk some more a little later. And remember-by morning, everything will be fine. Just like before. I promise you."

Jessica watched him walk, in darkness, to the bathroom. He closed the door, then she saw warm light stream across the wooden floor. It seemed to her that a long time had pa.s.sed before she heard him turn on the water for the tub.

In that time, inexplicably, she had the sense that she could open the bathroom door and he wouldn't be there at all.

Dawit sat on the rim of the tub, struggling to calm his shaking fingers as he grasped the hunting knife he'd hidden beneath the tub earlier, while Jessica was reading outside. He saw his own face, elongated and exaggerated, reflected in the shiny blade. Tonight, he would experience his personal moment of self-discovery.

Among his Life brothers, a small number had learned to worship and conquer pain. They conducted drumming ceremonies with swords and knives, amputating their own limbs, sawing through flesh and bone with maniacal grins on their faces. They culminated with disembowelment, mimicking what they had all witnessed Khaldun perform on himself the first night in the temple. A few of them went further, subjecting themselves to decapitation, a gruesomeness that turned Dawit's stomach. The severed head always withered away, and, over a period of twenty-four hours, a new one grew at its old stump. During its formation, the new head was a ma.s.s of b.l.o.o.d.y flesh and bones. For some reason, severed heads always grew back without hair, even eyebrows. Bald Life brothers, the beheaded, were highly respected.

These acts were considered the height of bravery.

Each rebirth, these exhibitionists believed, helped cleanse their souls. Dawit had always considered them foolish, and Khaldun himself never watched their b.l.o.o.d.y rituals, dismissing them as childish spectacle. But Dawit recalled their ceremonies and grins now, and he admired their courage.

Dawit had considered many methods of proving his condition to Jessica; a gunshot to his head, poisoning himself, leaping from a great height. No method, he believed, would be so effective as what Khaldun had done. His recovery would defy all explanation, and she would have no choice but to believe.

The tub was already a quarter filled with water. He must hurry, since the beating water was meant to cover the sound of his own cries. He, who had killed so many, must find the will to commit the same butchery against his own flesh. He must not shy from the pain. He must welcome it. He must revel in it.

Dawit extended his arms fully outward, grasping the knife with both hands, its blade pointing at his belly. The j.a.panese variation was hara-kiri, the ultimate act of sacrifice. His Life brothers called it The Cleansing. A union with the knife.

"I do not fear the pain," Dawit said aloud.

A full minute pa.s.sed. Then, he plunged.

"David? Did you call me?"

Jessica wondered if she had dozed off, but she wasn't sure. She heard the water running in the bathroom, the monotony of the sound growing overbearing. She was more sleepy than she'd imagined she would be, considering the strange things David had just said. Even though he'd only been gone a few minutes (that's what it felt like, anyway; she couldn't be sure), already their conversation had taken on a surreal texture in her memory-as though, just maybe, she'd dreamed it.

Suddenly, a practical consideration swept Jessica's consciousness, bad news to complement bad news. She'd left her birth control pills at home, and she hadn't taken one that morning. d.a.m.n. She was so good about remembering, but David hadn't thought to pack her peach-colored daily dispenser and she hadn't thought to check. Realistically, she could get pregnant this weekend; her doctor had warned her that the minipills she used, which didn't have estrogen, needed to be taken religiously at the same time every day to be effective. So much for that. David's sperm was roaming unchecked inside of her now.

But that thought, as soon as it came, was forgotten.

David's sperm. David's blood. If something was different about David's blood, did that mean it might affect Kira? Did he have some sort of genetic defect, like sickle-cell anemia? Was it something Alex should study?

I never get sick. Wounds vanish overnight.

Jessica's naked body was overrun by goosepimples. He had much more to tell her, he'd said. What could it be? What could sound more crazy than what he had already said? She no longer knew what to prepare for. There was no way to prepare at all.

Again, Jessica was certain she heard David's voice from the bathroom. Not calling her, exactly. A sound.

"David?" she called, propping herself on her elbows.

Only the stream of water answered. She wondered, for the first time, exactly how long he had been in there. It seemed to her that the water had been running for a long time, maybe fifteen minutes. Why did it seem he'd been gone so long?

Suddenly, Jessica thought of Uncle Billy in her mother's tub, dying, the water running over the rim and into the hallway. She remembered the way Bea had described the b.l.o.o.d.y gash at his temple. The thought scared her. She felt a momentary panic as she realized she was alone and nude in a strange place, in the dark.

Why hadn't David answered?

Jessica found David's T-shirt at the foot of the bed and slid it over her head, wearing it inside out. She slipped her feet into her Nikes, which were still damp from the afternoon, and stood up to shuffle toward the bathroom. This close, the sound of the water was nearly deafening. She knocked twice on the door.

"David? I thought I heard you say something."

The door was unlocked. She eased it open and peeked inside.

David had fallen asleep in the tub, his head turned away from her, and the running water was creeping up to his chin. Another inch and the water would be running onto the floor, just like with Uncle Billy. How had David managed to turn the water pink?

Jessica took two steps forward. She meant to turn off the faucet. She meant to lean over and tousle David's hair to wake him. She'd thought it might be nice to climb in with him.

That was when David's head snapped around and she finally saw his face. He was slack-jawed, his eyes wide but fluttering oddly. Though he was looking right at her, he wasn't seeing her. He raised his arm from the tub, pulling out a dripping knife he allowed to clatter to the floor.

The water wasn't pink, she could see now. Near David, it swirled deep red. The closer she moved, the more red and murky the water. The red was coming from him.

"I'm sorry, Jessica," David gasped.

She stared back down at the knife, and she knew.

Jessica couldn't stop screaming.

29.

Jessica was startled by the sound of a fanatical woman's wounded wailing echoing against the trees behind her, until she realized the sound was coming from her. She sloshed through the saw gra.s.s, nearly losing her footing in the knee-high water when she stumbled across something hard beneath the muddy surface. The beam from her flashlight skipped wildly from lilypads to gra.s.s stalks to isolated tree trunks, all looking large and forbidding. Another wrenching sob made her shoulders heave, and she had to wipe her eyes with her forearm because she couldn't see for her tears. The flashlight pointed uselessly into the dense, dark sky.

"Help me ..." she said hoa.r.s.ely. "Oh, Jesus ... someone please come help me ... David is ..."

Her mind wouldn't finish the thought. Instead, another sob rose from her chest and nearly doubled her over.

She didn't know what she'd expected to find out here at the water's edge. It was as though she'd thought this was a movie where she would run to the beach and see an ocean liner floating in the distance, and all she would have to do was build a bonfire and wave her flashlight, and paratroopers would come floating down. Or she could peer out and spot a nearby island with a fireplace flickering through someone's window, and she could yell out-water carried voices farther, didn't it?-and someone would peek out and say Joe-Bob, I think I hear something.

Something unseen splashed in the water five feet in front of Jessica, and the sound made her scream and leap back. No, she wasn't in one of those movies. She was in a f.u.c.king swamp, surrounded by snakes and alligators and G.o.d-knows-what-else. It seemed unbelievable that an airboat from the mainland had dropped them off here just a few hours before. A few hours. And now everything was all wrong, and no airboat would come to her no matter how long she screamed into the night.

Her feet were being sucked into the soft mud, and each time she took a step, the gunk nearly pulled off her untied shoes. Mosquitoes were biting her all over, and viciously-her face, her arms, her legs, her bare b.u.t.tocks. Mosquitoes were raining on her.

Sucking her blood.

She thought about the blood everywhere, on the bathroom linoleum, in the tub, on the bedsheet she'd tied around his middle to hold his insides in because, yes, his insides were falling out through that mess he'd made in his belly, and when she finished vomiting in the sink she tied the sheet into a tight, tight knot around David's middle like they would have done on Emergency! when she watched it as a kid. And the white sheet soaked through, just like that, into crimson. The Quicker Picker-Upper.

She could smell it even here, the blood. It was on her hands, on her shirt. The blood smell blended with the smell of wet rot all around her, and she imagined her feet were drowned in blood. She shined the flashlight at the water to be sure, and all she could see was a pool of black filled with white specks.

The mosquitoes pulled her from her trance. Eating her alive, her mother always said. Yes, they were. With another scream, she ran out of the saw-gra.s.s bed until she reached the beach. Her feet kicked up sand, which clung to her damp legs and pelted her face.

Then, somehow, she was on her knees. She'd fallen. She collapsed onto her palms and wept. She remembered to pray again. She had been praying so long and so hard.

Help me, Jesus. Please don't let him be dead. Please, oh please, let him make it through the night.

At that moment, Jessica had forgotten that David would have to make it through the night and all of the next day, and through an airboat ride, and through a journey to some hospital bound to be far, far away. She kept thinking he needed to make it through the night, until morning, that was all. And he'd be all right. Hadn't he said something like that? If he just made it to morning, everything would be fine.

She needed to check on him. She needed to go back.

Jessica was gasping to breathe when she made it up to the cabin and kneeled on the blood-spattered floor beside the bathtub. She hadn't realized she'd been thinking please, please, please over and over again until David's eyes opened and the thought turned into thank you, thank you, thank you.

David didn't say anything, but he looked like he was trying to smile. His head was still resting on the pillow she'd propped up on the rim because she couldn't think of how else to make him comfortable after she drained out the tub. She would have liked to carry him out of the tub herself, but she didn't think she would be strong enough even if she acquired that superhuman strength people get in a crisis that she'd read about in Reader's Digest; and, besides, what if she was carrying him across the room and his intestines spilled out? She'd seen something-she didn't know what-some soft, b.l.o.o.d.y organ poking through the hole in his belly.

David hadn't said anything in a long time, since he'd told her that he was sorry, right in the beginning when she first found him. He'd been crying before, with her, the two of them crying hysterically, but he looked too weak to cry now. It wasn't all the blood or even her shock that made Jessica cry. It was David looking so scared, writhing when she touched him, screaming for the pain to go away.

Jessica squeezed his hand, and she felt him move his fingers inside of hers. "I'm here now. I won't leave you," she said. "You just hold on. Okay? Just hold on."

David was fighting to swallow. Then, when he did, he opened his mouth to try to speak. No sound came out. I waited, his silent lips said. His head sank back into the damp pillow, and his mouth closed again.

Jessica didn't know what else to do, so she began to sing the most cheerful church song she could think of: "Jee-sus loves me ... This I know ..."-she swallowed back a sob-"Cuz the Bi-ble ... Tells me so ..."

A very rational voice in Jessica's mind spoke to her in such a calm tone that it transfixed her. Your husband is about to die, the voice said, and there is nothing you can do about it except sit here and hold his hand, so that is what you must do.

Jessica squeezed David's fingers, but he didn't squeeze back. Pursing her lips, she gazed at his eyes. They had fallen shut. His eyes had been closed when she came back, she remembered. His eyes had never been closed before she went outside.

I waited, he said.

"David?" she whispered. "Honey, please ..."

No, he would not open his eyes again. His chest had stopped moving, so his breathing was gone. Most of his blood was in the tub, dripping down the open drain. His heartbeat was gone.

David was gone.

Jessica cradled her husband's head against her breastbone. "You don't have to be scared anymore, baby," she said. "See? See? The hurt's all gone. It's all gone now."

That was all that mattered to her shutdown mind. Then the rational voice inside whispered to her, nudging: David is dead.

The fanatical woman's strange wailing jarred her again.

Dawit's first sight when he opened his eyes was Jessica. She was sitting half naked on the bathroom floor in a b.l.o.o.d.y T-shirt, her legs spread straight out in front of her, her head resting against the wall as she slept. Her face was not at rest. In fact, he barely knew that face; it was ashen and crusty, her eyelids swollen, her mouth half open as though she'd fallen asleep in the midst of a moan.

Still, Dawit smiled. He could not move his head yet to do much more, or reach out to touch her, but he smiled. It was a privilege to be so loved. An honor. His eyes overran with tears he didn't have the strength to wipe away. He felt as though he would need to sleep for days, but he knew he could not. It must be dawn, and there was so much to do. So much to say.

"Jessica," he rasped.

Her eyelids flinched, but she did not answer.

A few minutes pa.s.sed. Finally, Dawit strained to raise his hand to his tender stomach, where he felt so much pressure that it was a labor to breathe. She must have tied something around him, a tourniquet. Bless her, she had been so desperate to help him! His fingers found a knot in the sheet beneath his rib cage, and he fussed with it until it loosened slightly. There.

The next time Dawit glanced back at Jessica, her eyes were open, regarding him. Her expression had not changed, as though she were dispa.s.sionately watching a hallucination.

He smiled again. "I'm sorry I scared you," he whispered.

Jessica sat bolt upright, her eyes darting frantically from her hands to her bloodied shirt to him again. All her confusion and grat.i.tude and fear were written in her face, in her trembling mouth. "I thought I'd lost you," she said with wonder, kneeling beside him, pressing a warm palm to his face. New tears streamed down her cheeks, clearing a path through the the old ones.

Dawit struggled with the knot to untie it, summoning all his strength to arch his back so he could pull the blood-soaked sheet away from his flesh. Alarmed, Jessica grabbed his hands.

"No," she said, holding him with a firm grip. "Shhhh. Don't do that. You're hurt. David, don't. Baby, stop that."

He stared into her eyes. "My wounds heal, Jessica. It's morning now. It's all right." She looked at him, frozen, her eyes squinting with bewilderment. She didn't move as he clawed at the sheet to expose his abdomen. "Look. I heal."

Above his protruding navel, there was a jagged, closed scar. Fading signs of a wider lesion remained at one end, where Dawit had first stabbed himself and twisted the blade while he struggled, through the pain, to carve across his abdomen. It had not been pretty work. He'd only progressed seven or eight inches, roughly halfway, before he began to feel faint from the agony of his task.

The scars looked old, as if they were from many years before. The blood that remained on Dawit's skin, while it still appeared fresh, was not seeping from the closed wounds. He wiped his palm across his stomach, cleaning some of the blood away.

Jessica was leaning over the tub, peering at his flesh closely. She touched him, gently at first, running her hand across the scar, then she began to prod. Dawit felt a burning sensation and hissed. "Cuidado. I'm still sore, Jess," he said.

Jessica drew her hand away, staring wild-eyed at his face. Her mouth fell open and closed as she struggled for words. "I don't ... But I saw ..."

Dawit took her hand and kissed it. "Remember what I said? My blood isn't normal. My body isn't normal. My wounds heal. In an hour or so, even these scars will be gone. I'm all right, Jessica. Just like I said, remember? I said that by morning, I would be all right. I had to show you."

" ... Show me?" she whimpered, still helplessly confused.

He nodded. "I'm sorry. It was the only way."

Jessica blinked uncontrollably. Then, a guttural sound rose in her throat, turning into a rage-filled scream, and she began to pound Dawit's chest with her fists. Her blows hurt, sapping away what little energy Dawit had gained. He cried out and fumbled to grab her fists, to hold them tightly. "No, baby," he said. "Please don't. That hurts."

Jessica gasped, as though he'd struck her. She stared at David with reddened eyes that were wide, frantic. Then, her pupils drifted upward, gazing toward the ceiling, and she collapsed against the tub with heaving, wretched sobs.

"It's all right, Jess. It's all right. I'm here. I'm never going to leave you," Dawit said, reaching over to drape one arm across her shoulder. Jessica flung her arms around him, burying him, and sobbed into his ear. Her grip around his neck was so tight that he felt he would choke, but he tolerated the discomfort. He stroked her matted, sandy hair. His own tears stung his eyes.

"It's okay, baby. I'm sorry. I'm here. I'm here forever."

Though she would try many times, Jessica could never fully remember the details of her first day with David after she watched him die.

Her first memory was being in the cabin's bed, somehow washed, wearing her own fresh-smelling nightshirt. A cool washcloth was draped across her forehead, and occasionally she felt David take it away and bring it back, damper and cooler than before. The blood smell was gone from her, but she could still smell it on him.

"You have a fever," she heard David say, and it reminded her of being a little girl in her bedroom, when she would stay home from school with the television playing Partridge Family reruns, and her mother would make her sit up to chew bittersweet, orange-flavored children's aspirin. And she'd dab cool water across her forehead, just like David was doing now.