My Soul to Keep (African Immortals)

  “It was thoughtless not to say anything,” David said in bed that night, wrapped around her from behind. When he spoke, she felt the warm air from his lips between her shoulder blades. “But you were so distraught. It never crossed my mind to mention it before we heard the news, of course. It was such a routine meeting. And after … I suppose I thought it would upset you needlessly. I wish I’d seen something, like I told that Reyes gentleman, but I just didn’t. So why bring it up?”

  Jessica’s eyes grew teary as she imagined Peter in his cartoon-inspired tie, laughing and smiling with David. What would have happened if David had waited just a few more minutes and the two had walked out together? Would David have been attacked too? Or would Peter’s assailant have been scared off?

  It was so random. It scared her that it was all so senseless. And it hurt. Her anger with David hurt. And her anger with Reyes. And especially her anger with the faceless killer. The anger had nowhere to go. “You should have told me,” Jessica said, sobbing.

  David’s grip tightened around her middle, and he rested his forehead against the nape of her neck. “I’m sorry, Jessica. I didn’t mean to hurt you or cause you discomfort. I wish I could go back and change it. I’d change all of it. Honey, I wish I could make it so it never happened.”

  I’m sorry, he kept saying. I’m sorry.

  37

  Jessica’s dream was peaceful.

  She was standing at the foot of the knoll, staring up at the cave, which was casting a splendid, tranquil white light. She saw the tall silhouette of her father centered in the cave’s mouth. And Peter beside him? They waved, and she felt washed in joy. I won’t be going there, she called to them. They nodded. They understood. Hold tight to Kira for me, her father’s voice said, and the dream was over.

  It was when Jessica woke up that her nightmare began.

  She flung the bedsheets away from her skin. It was so godawful hot. She touched her cheeks, her abdomen, and realized she was damp with perspiration. David shifted beside her, rolling away, but he was still snoring lightly. Glancing at his curled form, Jessica’s heart plummeted to her stomach. She felt like she would vomit.

  Four o’clock in the morning, the oak grandfather clock said in the moonlight. If David hadn’t silenced its mechanism, the clock would be tolling right now.

  Jessica couldn’t sleep. Unconscious thoughts, free to roam while her defenses were weak, were surfacing in her anxious brain.

  You know, like a flooring knife. For linoleum.

  Again, Jessica felt a constricting in her throat that warned her she might be physically sick. Her heartbeat was in a fury. Weakly, she climbed out of bed and searched for her shoes beneath the frame. Once her sneakers were on, she walked quietly into the bathroom, closed the door, and flicked on the light above the sink.

  She did not recogize the wild, red eyes she saw in the mirror. These were a stranger’s eyes. The eyes of a woman wondering, for the first time, if her husband was a murderer.

  David had never really liked Peter.

  David had probably been the last person to see Peter alive.

  David had a linoleum knife.

  “Oh, my sweet Jesus …” Jessica whispered. She doused her face with a cool stream of water from the faucet. This must be what fainting feels like, she thought, or diving from an airplane. You’re falling, and where will you land?

  Okay, she thought, steadying herself by curling her fingers over the rim of the sink, let’s be logical here. There’s no evidence, just a bunch of crazy notions. So what if the guards thought it was a dark-skinned man on the tape? She’d seen the tape herself, and all she could make out on the grainy image was a faint gleaming on the chrome when the killer opened Peter’s door.

  And why would David do something so vicious? Just to prevent them from writing their book? No way. He would need more motive than that. David had been coming around on the book anyway.

  The new voice from the recesses of her psyche shot her down. You think he came around on the book, the voice said. You don’t know that man. That man mutilated his own insides with a hunting knife. That man was born in an era your history classes never even taught you about. He told you himself he slaughtered men in the Civil War. The whole time you’ve known him, you haven’t even been calling him by his given name, which you can barely pronounce. You don’t know the first thing about that man.

  That man, the voice kept saying.

  But what about David? Who was he? Was he real at all?

  “Oh, my Lord … sweet Jesus …” Jessica whispered. What had she been thinking to stay with him? To agree to go away with him, and to drag Kira along? She must be certifiably insane.

  Then, just when she needed to most, Jessica remembered her Scriptures, the words of Jesus in the Book of Mark. Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?

  The work of God had unfolded in Jessica’s own hands, which had been soaked in David’s blood from the wound healed by a miracle. She alone had witnessed this, and there was no disputing what she had seen. She’d been chosen to see. And David had been chosen to show her. So, despite the slander of others, and her own weakness of mind, she must not let go of her faith. It was all she had.

  Besides, there was a simple way to make her doubts vanish. She could find David’s toolbox and hold the linoleum knife for herself. A killer would have disposed of his weapon.

  Then, she could go back to sleep.

  Downstairs, the darkened living room was crammed with packing boxes, and Jessica carefully felt her way around the stacks on the floor. Some boxes would be shipped to Africa, and others would go to charities. David packed each day while she was at work, despite her protests that she wanted to help. He’d packed his books and most of his music first. The shelves on the wall where he’d kept his CDs were bare, and already the house looked like it belonged to someone else.

  In the kitchen, moving cautiously, Jessica turned on the dim light above the stove and opened the drawer where they kept the Durabeam flashlight. When she lifted the flashlight, an old ice pick clattered to the floor, making her jump. Kneeling, she glanced up, tense, to see if David would come.

  She heard a sound on wooden stairs. She waited, still kneeling. Then Teacake, his plumelike tail standing straight up, came running into the kitchen. He mewed.

  “Please hush,” Jessica whispered, relieved, her heart flying.

  With Teacake leaping ahead, Jessica unlatched the door leading to the screened-in back porch and tipped outside into the humid night air. The moon was nearly full, making the river flicker in white. She almost didn’t need a flashlight on a night like this. When she navigated through the foliage to the shed, her cat didn’t follow. He sat in the grass and watched her slip inside from a distance.

  The first thing Jessica noticed was the scattered dried lizard skeletons on the concrete floor, at least a half-dozen. The reptiles’ eye sockets were empty, eaten away by ants. Had David put some poison down? Good thing she didn’t believe in omens, Jessica thought, or the wispy lizard bones would have spooked her right back into the house.

  “Okay,” she said aloud, to reassure herself with her own voice, “Where’s that toolbox … ?”

  The large toolbox was bright red and would be hard to miss, but she didn’t see it on the worktable beneath David’s carpenter’s apron. She didn’t see it on the plastic patio table or the folding chair in the middle of the floor. Now what? Was it in the car?

  Then, she spotted it. The toolbox was near the stepladder in a far corner of the shed, beneath a paper bag folded down at the top. The bag was heavy to lift, but she moved it aside and carried the toolbox to the table to examine it.

  Jessica didn’t recognize half of the tangle of tools she found. Wrenches big and small, duct tape, screwdrivers. She took them out one by one and laid them aside, burrowing her way down. A knife! But it wasn’t the right one; it was smaller, without the hooked tip. Damn. Where was the linoleum knife?

  It wasn’t in the toolbox. Jessica wip
ed perspiration from her forehead. More hurriedly, growing nervous, she searched the work-table, pulling out the plywood drawers and digging through them. Plenty of nails and small gadgets, but no linoleum knife. She scanned the various tools—his saws and shears—that hung from hooks on the wall. Damnit. Everything but the knife.

  By now, Jessica was more frustrated than frightened. Her eyes and body were craving sleep, and she began to think of how ridiculous it was to rummage through her husband’s things at four in the morning. She’d make up a reason to ask about it later.

  “Would that make you happy, Columbo?” she asked herself aloud. She shouldn’t have let Reyes get to her. Since she was fully awake now, her fears in the bathroom seemed alarmist. Ridiculous. It was only her mind still freaking out about David’s immortality, she decided. The spells were less frequent now, but they still came.

  As she replaced the toolbox, Jessica glanced once again at the folded paper bag. She hadn’t checked inside, and the knife had probably been there the whole time. She lifted the bag, bringing it out to the stream of light from the overhead bulb.

  The bag was filled with bottles. No wonder she couldn’t find the ammonia last week. And here was the bleach. She lifted the bottles out of the bag one by one. Rat poison? Maybe he’d used that on the lizards. She also found a tin can of paint thinner and a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol. What in the world … ?

  At the bag’s bottom were three plastic syringes. Two were empty, but one was quarter-filled with a dark-red liquid. She lifted the third syringe and examined it in the light; the liquid inside, which was the consistency of a watery syrup, swept around the syringe’s barrel as she turned it over in her hand.

  The liquid was warm.

  Suddenly, she knew. David’s blood.

  Jessica’s mouth fell open. She gazed at the blood with awe. Why had David drawn this blood?

  No, she had not found what she’d come looking for. But she’d found something else, something even more valuable. Her hand, grasping the syringe, began to tremble.

  “Who are you, David? What are you?” she whispered.

  Finally, she resolved, she would know.

  “Excuse me? We must have a bad connection,” Alex said.

  “Quit playing. I’m serious,” Jessica said, gazing around the newsroom to see if anyone could hear her. It was lunchtime, and no one was within earshot of her desk. She repeated herself, speaking slowly. “I’m going to bring you a blood sample so you can run some tests on it. But this has to be absolutely secret. You can’t tell anyone you have it. No one can see you with it. And you can’t show anyone the test results.”

  “This is a major research facility, not the free clinic. And what’s with all this James Bond foolishness?”

  “Alex,” Jessica said, her voice dipping low, “Just this one time, I need a favor. This is off the record. I can’t go to anyone but you. It’s for a story. It’s very, very important. I can’t tell you anything else. It’s very big.”

  Alex sighed, silent.

  “Please?” Jessica whimpered.

  “Girl, what have you gotten yourself into?”

  “I can’t tell you. I just need some tests run.”

  “What kind of tests?”

  “I don’t know. Screen it for diseases. I need to know if there’s anything strange about it. And I bet you there is.”

  “Where’d you get this blood from?” Alex asked.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Well, whose is it?”

  Jessica sighed. “Look. I can’t say. Can you do this?”

  This time, the silence was long. When Alex spoke again, there was no joking in her voice. “This doesn’t sound ethical. And depending on how old the sample is, it may or may not even be much good. You know that, right?”

  “It’s a fresh sample,” Jessica lied.

  “What about anticoagulants?”

  “Huh?” Jessica said. “Alex, I don’t know. Look, I’ve put the syringe in an envelope, and I’m going to come by and slip it into your purse. I’ll stay for lunch, but we won’t discuss it there. You can only begin testing when the lab is absolutely empty. If you feel like you have to call me at home, just say you want to talk about the book I lent you. And I’ll go to a pay phone. From now on, we call it the book.”

  “You know what?” Alex said after a moment. “You sound like you have lost your natural mind.”

  “Alex, will you do this?”

  “All right,” Alex said reluctantly. “Bring me the damn book.”

  David met Jessica at the door, grinning. “She made an offer.”

  At first, Jessica didn’t know who “she” was, or what the offer was for. Then she remembered that their house was for sale, and how busy David had been showing it to prospective buyers.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “One hundred fifty.”

  “For this?” Jessica hadn’t thought they’d clear more than ninety thousand.

  “She wants to shut out any other buyers. The woman is a historian. She’s very fond of the neighborhood, and she likes the river, the Indian lore, the burial ground, all of it.”

  As he hugged her and she thought about what this meant, Jessica whooped with joy. David had paid cash for the house, so everything they made from the sale was profit. They would have more than enough money to begin their new life, first in Senegal, and then wherever else they chose to go. Jessica was transported, at that moment, far from where her mind had been in the morning’s early hours, when she was turning the shed upside down searching for a knife David may have tossed out a year ago, when the floors were done. There was simply no reason to suspect him.

  Suddenly, she felt guilty. David trusted her, but she hadn’t trusted him. And now she had stolen his blood.

  David hadn’t been to the shed yet, she guessed from his preoccupation with discussing details about the sale. As soon as she got a chance, she would grab that paper bag and throw it away. If David asked questions, she’d tell him she’d been cleaning and thrown out a bag full of chemicals.

  After dinner, David was in such a playful mood that he started chasing Kira around the house, his head covered under a box with holes cut out for his eyes. They must have been playing the game earlier; David had painted the box with bold strokes of black and red paint, creating a horrible face. He was making convincing slobbering noises inside his mask.

  “Daddy’s the Box Monster!” Kira shrieked, ducking from him.

  Jessica watched them, smiling, from the table. She expected to have to clean up a scrape or a bump any moment, as they came precariously close to knocking over the packed boxes. But she felt a familiar twinge of envy. They were having fun together.

  Jessica picked up an empty box on the kitchen counter. “Where’s the paint? I want to play,” she said, pretending to pout.

  “Up in Kira’s room,” David said, sounding muffled.

  “Mommy’s going to be a monster too!” Kira cried, excited.

  As Jessica reached the top landing, the phone rang. Alex. She ran into her bedroom to pick up the phone. “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Sis,” Alex said. She sounded weary. “Look, I haven’t had a chance to start reading that book yet.”

  “Hello?” David’s voice interrupted from the downstairs line.

  “I’ve got it,” Jessica said quickly, and she waited until she heard the click as David hung up the phone. There was a new squeal from Kira downstairs.

  “There are too many people hanging around for me to do much reading, if you catch my drift. I have to crash.”

  “Okay. Just let me know,” Jessica said, her words clipped. Alex sounded like she thought this was some kind of game. For all Jessica knew, their phone line could be bugged. In fact, David had told her it probably was, since Mahmoud had known about their plans to leave. Of course, explaining the bugged phone to Alex would mean explaining many other things she could not.

  She should tell Alex to forget it, to throw the blood away. Why was she so curi
ous about what was in that syringe? Was she genuinely interested because David was her husband, or simply because, as a reporter, she felt a deep need to know?

  It was probably a little of both. *

  “We’ll talk tomorrow. Go on home and rest,” Jessica said.

  ”‘Night, Double-O Seven.”

  Jessica cringed and sighed, hanging up. As usual, Alex wasn’t being serious. Well, she thought, her sister would probably realize very soon that there was nothing at all to joke about.

  PART FOUR

  The Living Blood

  38

  Mahmoud drew his curtains, blotting out the infernal midday sun. Then, before taking Khaldun’s letter in his hands, he burned sage and lit the candle on his table. The movements of his fingers were deft and gentle on the envelope. His teacher’s correspondences were rare, to be treasured.

  The response was one line, written in Khaldun’s script in ancient Ge’ez: Redress Dawit’s grievous error, but be humane. Return with Dawit soon.

  Mahmoud read the words several times over. He had expected this, but the impact of the statement was powerful. Khaldun did not intend to send additional Searchers. Khaldun expected him to contend with his friend alone. As it should be.

  After this, his long friendship with Dawit would be no more.

  In the candlelight, Mahmoud waited for sadness to come. It did not. He tried to revisit his earlier rage at his friend’s transgression. That, too, would not come.

  Mahmoud felt nothing. He was ready.

  He blew the candle out.

  39

  The white glow from the television set bounced off the towers of boxes in the living room. “Was that cannon fire? Or was it my heart pounding?” Jessica heard Ingrid Bergman’s voice say.

  For the thousandth time, David was watching Casablanca. His face was full of such captivation that he could have been lost inside of unearthed home movies full of ghosts. His expression was the same when he watched It’s a Wonderful Life or The Philadelphia Story or any of those old flicks that bored her, frankly, because they were full of nothing but white faces. David never got sick of them. His eyes searched the glimmering screen, unblinking, half mournful, half hopeful.