by Jodi Picoult
I stared at him. “I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in Shay.”
“Thank you for your time, Lucius,” the priest said softly, and he walked down the tier.
He may have been a priest, but he was looking for his miracles in the wrong place. That day with the gum, for example. I had seen the coverage on the news—it was reported that Shay had somehow taken one tiny rectangle of Bazooka gum and multiplied it. But ask someone who’d been there—like me, or Crash, or Texas—and you’d know there weren’t suddenly seven pieces of bubble gum. It was more like this: when the piece was fished underneath our cell doors, instead of taking as much as we could, we made do with less instead.
The gum was magically replicated. But we—the blatantly greedy—balanced the needs of the other seven guys and in that instant found them just as worthy as our own.
Which, if you asked me, was an even greater miracle.
MICHAEL
The Holy Father has an entire office at the Vatican devoted to analyzing alleged miracles and passing judgment on their authenticity. They scrutinize statues and busts, scrape Crisco out of the corners of supposedly bleeding eyes, track scented oil on walls that emit the smell of roses. I was nowhere as experienced as those priests, but then again, there was a crowd of nearly five hundred people outside the state prison calling Shay Bourne a savior—and I wasn’t going to let people give up on Jesus that easily.
To that end, I was now ensconced in a lab on the Dartmouth campus, with a graduate student named Ahmed who was trying to explain to me the results of the test he’d run on the soil sample taken from the vicinity of the pipes that ran into I-tier. “The reason the prison couldn’t get a conclusive explanation is because they were looking in the pipes, not outside them,” Ahmed said. “So the water tested positive for something that looked like alcohol, but only in certain pipes. And you’ll never guess what’s growing near those pipes: rye.”
“Rye? Like the grain?”
“Yeah,” Ahmed said. “Which accounts for the concentration of ergot into the water. It’s a fungal disease of rye. I’m not sure what brings it on—I’m not a botanist—but I bet it had something to do with the amount of rain we’ve had, and there was a hairline crack in the piping they found when they first investigated, which accounts for the transmission in the first place. Ergot was the first kind of chemical warfare. The Assyrians used it in the seventh century B.C. to poison water supplies.” He smiled. “I double-majored in chemistry and ancient history.”
“It’s deadly?”
Ahmed shrugged. “In repeated doses. But at first, it’s a hallucinogen that’s related to LSD.”
“So, the prisoners on I-tier might not have been drunk . . .” I said carefully.
“Right,” Ahmed replied. “Just tripping.”
I turned over the vial with the soil sample. “You think the water got contaminated?”
“That would be my bet.”
But Shay Bourne, in prison, would not have been able to know that there was a fungus growing near the pipes that led into I-tier, would he?
I suddenly remembered something else: the following morning, those same inmates on I-tier had ingested the same water and had not acted out of the ordinary. “So how did it get uncontaminated?”
“Now that,” Ahmed said, “I haven’t quite figured out.”
* * *
“There are a number of reasons that an advanced AIDS patient with a particularly low CD4 count and high viral load might suddenly appear to get better,” Dr. Perego said. An autoimmune disease specialist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, he also served as the doctor for HIV/AIDS patients at the state prison and knew all about Lucius and his recovery. He didn’t have time for a formal talk, but was perfectly willing to chat if I wanted to walk with him from his office to a meeting at the other end of the hospital—as long as I realized that he couldn’t violate doctor-patient confidentiality. “If a patient is hoarding meds, for example, and suddenly decides to start taking them, sores will disappear and health will improve. Although we draw blood every three months from AIDS patients, sometimes we’ll get a guy who refuses to have his blood drawn—and again, what looks like sudden improvement is actually a slow turn for the better.”
“Alma, the nurse at the prison, told me Lucius hasn’t had his blood drawn in over six months,” I said.
“Which means we can’t be quite sure what his recent viral count was.” We had reached the conference room. Doctors in white coats milled into the room, taking their seats. “I’m not sure what you wanted to hear,” Dr. Perego said, smiling ruefully. “That he’s special . . . or that he’s not.”
“I’m not sure either,” I admitted, and I shook his hand. “Thanks for your time.”
The doctor slipped into the meeting, and I started back down the hall toward the parking garage. I was waiting at the elevator, grinning down at a baby in a stroller with a patch over her right eye, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Dr. Perego was standing there. “I’m glad I caught you,” he said. “Have you got a moment?”
I watched the baby’s mother push the stroller onto the yawning elevator. “Sure.”
“This is what I didn’t tell you,” Dr. Perego said. “And you didn’t hear it from me.”
I nodded, understanding.
“HIV causes cognitive impairment—a permanent loss of memory and concentration. We can literally see this on an MRI, and DuFresne’s brain scan showed irreparable damage when he first entered the state prison. However, another MRI brain scan was done on him yesterday—and it shows a reversal of that atrophy.” He looked at me, waiting for this to sink in. “There’s no physical evidence of dementia anymore.”
“What could cause that?”
Dr. Perego shook his head. “Absolutely nothing,” he admitted.
* * *
The second time I went to meet with Shay Bourne, he was lying on his bunk, asleep. Not wanting to disturb him, I started to back away, but he spoke to me without opening his eyes. “I’m awake,” he said. “Are you?”
“Last time I checked,” I answered.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his bunk. “Wow. I dreamed that I was struck by lightning, and all of a sudden I had the power to locate anyone in the world, anytime. So the government cut a deal with me—find bin Laden, and you’re free.”
“I used to dream that I had a watch, and turning the hands could take you backward in time,” I said. “I always wanted to be a pirate, or a Viking.”
“Sounds pretty bloodthirsty for a priest.”
“Well, I wasn’t born with a collar on.”
He looked me in the eye. “If I could turn back time, I’d go out fly-fishing with my grandfather.”
I glanced up. “I used to do that with my grandfather, too.”
I wondered how two boys—like Shay and me—could begin our lives at the same point and somehow take turns that would lead us to be such different men. “My grandfather’s been gone a long time, and I still miss him,” I admitted.
“I never met mine,” Shay said. “But I must have had one, right?”
I looked at him quizzically. What kind of life had he suffered, to have to craft memories from his imagination? “Where did you grow up, Shay?” I asked.
“The light,” Shay replied, ignoring my question. “How does a fish know where it is? I mean, things shift around on the floor of the ocean, right? So if you come back and everything’s changed, how can it really be the place you were before?”
The door to the tier buzzed, and one of the officers came down the catwalk, carrying a metal stool. “Here you go, Father,” he said, settling it in front of Shay’s cell door. “Just in case you want to stay awhile.”
I recognized him as the man who had sought me out the last time I’d been here, talking to Lucius. His baby daughter had been critically ill; he credited Shay with her recovery. I thanked him, but waited until he’d left to talk to Shay again.
“Did you ever feel like that fish?”
Shay looked at me as if I were the one who couldn’t follow a linear conversation. “What fish?” he said.
“Like you can’t find your way back home?”
I knew where I was heading with this topic—straight to true salvation—but Shay took us off course. “I had a bunch of houses, but only one home.”
He’d been in the foster care system; I remembered that much from the trial. “Which place was that?”
“The one where my sister was with me. I haven’t seen her since I was sixteen. Since I got sent to prison.”
I remembered he’d been sent to a juvenile detention center for arson, but I hadn’t remembered anything about a sister.
“Why didn’t she come to your trial?” I asked, and realized too late that I had made a grave mistake—that there was no reason for me to know that, unless I had been there.
But Shay didn’t notice. “I told her to stay away. I didn’t want her to tell anyone what I’d done.” He hesitated. “I want to talk to her.”
“Your sister?”
“No. She won’t listen. The other one. She’ll hear me, after I die. Every time her daughter speaks.” Shay looked up at me. “You know how you said you’d ask her if she wants the heart? What if I asked her myself?”
Getting June Nealon to come visit Shay in prison would be like moving Mt. Everest to Columbus, Ohio. “I don’t know if it will work . . .”
But then again, maybe seeing June face-to-face would make Shay see the difference between personal forgiveness and divine forgiveness. Maybe putting the heart of a killer into the chest of a child would show—literally—how good might blossom from bad. And the beat of Claire’s pulse would bring June more peace than any prayer I could offer.
Maybe Shay did know more about redemption than I.
He was standing in front of the cinder-block wall now, trailing his fingertips over the cement, as if he could read the history of the men who’d lived there before him.
“I’ll try,” I said.
* * *
There was a part of me that knew I should tell Maggie Bloom that I had been on the jury that convicted Shay Bourne. It was one thing to keep the truth from Shay; it was another to compromise whatever legal case Maggie was weaving together. On the other hand, it was up to me to make sure that Shay found peace with God before his death. The minute I told Maggie about my past involvement with Shay, I knew she’d tell me to get lost, and would find him another spiritual advisor the judge couldn’t find fault with. I had prayed long and hard about this, and for now, I was keeping my secret. God wanted me to help Shay, or so I told myself, because it kept me from admitting that I wanted to help Shay, too, after failing him the first time.
The ACLU office was above a printing shop and smelled like fresh ink and toner. It was filled with plants in various stages of dying, and filing cabinets took up most of the floor space. A paralegal sat at a reception desk, typing so furiously that I almost expected her computer screen to detonate. “How can I help,” she said, not bothering to look up.
“I’m here to see Maggie Bloom.”
The paralegal lifted her right hand, still typing with her left, and hooked a thumb overhead and to the left. I wound down the hallway, stepping over boxes of files and stacks of newspapers, and found Maggie sitting at her desk, scribbling on a legal pad. When she saw me, she smiled. “Listen,” she said, as if we were old friends. “I have some fantastic news. I think Shay can be hanged.” Then she blanched. “I didn’t mean fantastic news, really. I meant . . . well, you know what I meant.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“Because then he can donate his heart.” Maggie frowned. “But first we need to get the prison to agree to send him for tests, to make sure it’s not too big for a kid—”
I drew in my breath. “Look. We need to talk.”
“It’s not often I get a priest who wants to confess.”
She didn’t know the half of it. This is not about you, I reminded myself, and firmly settled Shay in the front of my mind. “Shay wants to be the one to ask June Nealon if she’ll take his heart. Unfortunately, visiting him is not on her top-ten list of things to do. I want to know if there’s some kind of court-ordered mediation we can ask for.”
Maggie raised a brow. “Do you really think he’s the best person to relay this information to her? I don’t see how that will help our case . . .”
“Look, I know you’re doing your job,” I said, “but I’m doing mine, too. And saving Shay’s soul may not be important to you, but it’s critical to me. Right now, Shay thinks that donating his heart is the only way to save himself—but there’s a big difference between mercy and salvation.”
Maggie folded her hands on her desk. “Which is?”
“Well, June can forgive Shay. But only God can redeem him—and it has nothing to do with giving up his heart. Yes, organ donation would be a beautiful, selfless final act on earth—but it’s not going to cancel out his debt with the victim’s family, and it’s not necessary to get him special brownie points with God. Salvation’s not a personal responsibility. You don’t have to get salvation. You’re given it, by Jesus.”
“So,” she said. “I guess you don’t think he’s the Messiah.”
“No, I think that’s a pretty rash judgment.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. I was raised Jewish.”
My cheeks flamed. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“But now I’m an atheist.”
I opened my mouth, snapped it shut.
“Believe me,” Maggie said, “I’m the last person in the world to buy into the belief that Shay Bourne is Jesus incarnate—”
“Well, of course not—”
“—but not because a messiah wouldn’t inhabit a criminal,” she qualified. “I can tell you right now that there are plenty of innocent people on death row in this country.”
I wasn’t about to tell her that I knew Shay Bourne was guilty. I had studied the evidence; I had heard the testimony; I had convicted him. “It’s not that.”
“Then how can you be so sure he’s not who everyone thinks he is?” Maggie asked.
“Because,” I replied, “God only had one son to give us.”
“Right. And—correct me if I’m wrong—he was a thirty-three-year-old carpenter with a death sentence on his head, who was performing miracles left and right. Nah, you’re right. That’s nothing like Shay Bourne.”
I thought of what I’d heard from Ahmed and Dr. Perego and the correctional officers. Shay Bourne’s so-called miracles were nothing like Jesus’s . . . or were they? Water into wine. Feeding many with virtually nothing. Healing the sick. Making the blind—or in Calloway’s case, the prejudiced—see.
Like Shay, Jesus didn’t take credit for his miracles. Like Shay, Jesus had known he was going to die. And the Bible even said Jesus was supposed to be returning. But although the New Testament is very clear about this coming to pass, it is a bit muddier on the details: the when, the why, the how.
“He’s not Jesus.”
“Okey-dokey.”
“He’s not,” I pressed.
Maggie held up her hands. “Got it.”
“If he was Jesus . . . if this was the Second Coming . . . well, there’d be rapture and destruction and resurrections and we wouldn’t be sitting here having a normal conversation.”
Then again, there was nothing in the Bible that said before the Second Coming, Jesus wouldn’t pop in to see how things were going here on earth.
I suppose in that case, it would make sense to be incognito—to pose as the least likely person anyone would ever assume to be the Messiah.
For the love of God, what was I thinking? I shook my head, clearing it. “Let him meet with June Nealon once before you petition for organ donation, that’s all I’m asking. I want the same things you do—Shay’s voice to be heard, a little girl to be saved, and capital punishment to be put in the hot seat. I just also want to make sure that if and when Shay does donate hi
s heart, he does it for all the right reasons. And that means untangling Shay’s spiritual health from the whole legal component of this mess.”
“I can’t do that,” Maggie said. “It’s the crux of my case. Look, it doesn’t matter to me whether you think Shay is Jesus or Shay thinks Shay is Jesus or if he’s just plain off his rocker. What does matter is that Shay’s rights don’t get shuffled aside in the grand mechanism of capital punishment—and if I have to use the fact that other people seem to think he’s God to do it, I will.”
I raised a brow. “You’re using Shay to spotlight an issue you find reprehensible, in the hopes that you can change it.”
“Well,” Maggie said, coloring, “I guess that’s true.”
“Then how can you criticize me for having an agenda because of what I believe in?”
Maggie raised her gaze and sighed. “There’s something called restorative justice,” she said. “I don’t know if the prison will even allow it, much less Shay or the Nealons. But it would let Shay sit down in a room with the family of his victims and ask for forgiveness.”
I exhaled the breath I had not even realized I was holding. “Thank you,” I said.
Maggie picked up her pen and began to write on the legal pad again. “Don’t thank me. Thank June Nealon—if you get her to agree to it.”
