The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

The fact that Batman the Robin had survived inside I-tier for several weeks on crusts of toast and bits of oatmeal was a wonder in its own right, not to mention the fact that he’d cheated death once before.

  “Give him CPR,” Joey Kunz suggested.

  “You can’t do fucking CPR on a bird,” Calloway snapped. “They got beaks.”

  I put down the makeshift brush I was using to paint—a rolled wad of toilet paper—and angled my mirror-shank out my door so that I could see. In his enormous palm, Calloway cradled the bird, which lay on its side, unmoving.

  “Shay,” he begged, “please.”

  There was no response from Shay’s cell. “Fish him to me,” I said, and crouched down with my line. I was worried that the bird had grown too big to make it through the little slit at the bottom, but Calloway wrapped him in a handkerchief, roped the top, and sent the slight weight in a wide arc across the floor of the catwalk. I knotted my string with Calloway’s and gently drew the bird toward me.

  I couldn’t resist unwrapping the kerchief to peek. Batman’s eyelid was purple and creased, his tail feathers spread like a fan. The tiny hooks on the ends of his claws were as sharp as pins. When I touched them, the bird did not even twitch. I placed my forefinger beneath the wing—did birds have hearts where we did?—and felt nothing.

  “Shay,” I said quietly. “I know you’re tired. And I know you’ve got your own stuff going on. But please. Just take a look.”

  Five whole minutes passed, long enough for me to give up. I wrapped the bird in the cloth again and tied him to the end of my fishing line, cast him onto the catwalk for Calloway to retrieve. But before his line could tangle with mine, another whizzed out, and Shay intercepted the bird.

  In my mirror, I watched Shay take Batman from the kerchief, hold him in his hand. He stroked the head with his finger; he gingerly covered the body with his other hand, as if he had caught a star between his palms. I held my breath, watching for that flutter or feather or the faintest cheep, but after a few moments Shay just wrapped the bird up again.

  “Hey!” Calloway had been watching, too. “You didn’t do anything!”

  “Leave me alone,” Shay repeated. The air had gone bitter as almonds; I could barely stand to breathe it. I watched him fish back that dead bird, and all of our hopes along with it.

  Maggie

  When Gordon Greenleaf stood up, his knees creaked. “You’ve studied comparative world religions in the course of your research?” he asked Fletcher.

  “Yes.”

  “Do different religions take a stand on organ donation?”

  “Yes,” Fletcher said. “Catholics believe only in transplants done after death—you can’t risk killing the donor, for example, during the donation. They fully support organ donation, as do Jews and Muslims. Buddhists and Hindus believe organ donation is a matter of individual conscience, and they put high value on acts of compassion.”

  “Do any of those religions require you to donate organs as a means to salvation?”

  “No,” Fletcher said.

  “Are there Gnostic Christians practicing today?”

  “No,” Fletcher said. “The religion died out.”

  “How come?”

  “When you have a belief system that says you shouldn’t listen to the clergy, and that you should continually ask questions, instead of accepting doctrine, it’s hard to form a community. On the other hand, the Orthodox Christians were delineating the steps to being card-carrying members of the group—confess the creed, accept baptism, worship, obey the priests. Plus, their Jesus was someone the average Joe could relate to—someone who’d been born, had an overprotective mom, suffered, and died. That was a much easier sell than the Gnostic Jesus—who was never even human. The rest of the Gnostics’ decline,” Fletcher said, “was political. In A.D. 312, Constantine, the Roman emperor, saw a crucifix in the sky and converted to Christianity. The Catholic Church became part of the Holy Roman Empire . . . and having Gnostic texts and beliefs were punishable by death.”

  “So, it’s fair to say no one’s practiced Gnostic Christianity for fifteen hundred years?” Greenleaf said.

  “Not formally. But there are elements of Gnostic belief in other religions that have survived. For example, Gnostics recognized the difference between the reality of God, which was impossible to describe with language, and the image of God as we knew it. This sounds a lot like Jewish mysticism, where you find God being described as streams of energy, male and female, which pool together into a divine source; or God as the source of all sounds at once. And Buddhist enlightenment is very much like the Gnostic idea that we live in a land of oblivion, but can waken spiritually right here while we’re still part of this world.”

  “But Shay Bourne can’t be a follower of a religion that no longer exists, isn’t that true?”

  He hesitated. “From what I understand, donating his heart is Shay Bourne’s attempt to learn who he is, who he wants to be, how he is connected to others. And in that very basic sense, the Gnostics would agree that he’s found the part of him that comes closest to being divine.” Fletcher looked up. “A Gnostic Christian would tell you that a man on death row is more like us than unlike us. And that—as Mr. Bourne seems to be trying to suggest—he still has something to offer the world.”

  “Yeah. Whatever.” Greenleaf raised a brow. “Have you ever even met Shay Bourne?”

  “Actually,” Fletcher said, “no.”

  “So for all you know, he doesn’t have any religious beliefs at all. This could all be some grand plan to delay his execution, couldn’t it?”

  “I’ve spoken with his spiritual advisor.”

  The lawyer scoffed. “You’ve got a guy practicing a religion by himself that seems to hearken back to a religious sect that died out thousands of years ago. Isn’t it possible that this is a bit too . . . easy? That Shay Bourne could just be making it all up as he goes along?”

  Fletcher smiled. “A lot of people thought that about Jesus.”

  “Dr. Fletcher,” Greenleaf said, “are you telling this court that Shay Bourne is a messiah?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “Your words, not mine.”

  “Then how about your stepdaughter’s words?” Greenleaf asked. “Or is this some kind of family trait you all have, running into God in state prisons and elementary schools and Laundromats?”

  “Objection,” I said. “My witness isn’t on trial here.”

  Greenleaf shrugged. “His ability to discuss the history of Christianity is—”

  “Overruled,” Judge Haig said.

  Fletcher narrowed his eyes. “What my daughter did or didn’t see has no bearing on Shay Bourne’s request to donate his heart.”

  “Did you believe she was a fake when you first met her?”

  “The more I spoke with her, the more I—”

  “When you first met her,” Greenleaf interrupted, “did you believe she was a fake?”

  “Yes,” Fletcher admitted.

  “And yet, with no personal contact, you were willing to testify in a court of law that Mr. Bourne’s request to donate his organs could be massaged to fit your loose definition of a religion.” Greenleaf glanced at him. “I guess, in your case, old habits die fairly easy.”

  “Objection!”

  “Withdrawn.” Greenleaf started back to his seat, but then turned. “Just one more question, Dr. Fletcher—this daughter of yours. She was seven years old when she found herself at the center of a religious media circus not unlike this one, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you aware that’s the same age of the little girl Shay Bourne murdered?”

  A muscle in Fletcher’s jaw twitched. “No. I wasn’t.”

  “How do you think you’d feel about God if your stepdaughter was the one who’d been killed?”

  I shot to my feet. “Objection!”

  “I’ll allow it,” the judge answered.

  Fletcher paused. “I think that kind of tragedy would test anyone’s faith.”