reflected the moon.
He bellowed, “Joe,” to get the younger man’s attention. “She’ll never get better if you pick her up and carry her over every obstacle she encounters.”
“My mama would roll over in her grave if I didn’t help a lady who needed me.”
“Your mama,” the doctor said, “is not here.”
Joe just grinned at him. After brief introductions, he opened the front door and took hold of Laurel’s nearest elbow to guide her over the threshold.
“Turn her loose and let her walk,” Dr. Harbison barked in the general direction of the closing door.
He settled himself on the rocker that Joe had abandoned. “So, we get a chance to talk at last. You’re Faye, the phantom archaeologist.”
“I understand that I have you to thank for this job.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do what?”
“You wrote the paper that started all this.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Don’t thank me. Thank Jimmie Lavelle for not getting chicken pox.”
“Run that by me again?”
“Lean over here close to me,” he said, taking Faye’s chin in his hands and giving her skin more scrutiny than any woman over thirty should have to endure. “There,” he said, pointing to a spot above her left eyebrow. He pointed to another spot beside her nose. “And there. Chicken pox scars. We’ve all got ’em. There’s a vaccine now, but Jimmie Lavelle is too old to have gotten it as a child. When there was an outbreak at Alcaskaki High, I waited for him to break out in spots, but he never did.”
“So he was your smoking gun? I wondered what set you on the trail.”
“I started keeping track of how many Sujosa adults were free of chicken pox scars. There were quite a lot of them. I know—it was a bizarre hobby, but I’m a dermatologist. Skin is my life.”
He let go of her chin. Faye had a powerful urge to run her fingers over her face, looking for pockmarks. She willed herself to keep her hands in her lap. “I’ve known people who never got chicken pox.”
“Yeah, me too, and who knows why? Usually, you can’t predict who might have an unusually potent immune system. But if an isolated culture like the Sujosa is passing a trait like that along, then maybe we can find a genetic marker. I thought it might rate a short article in an insignificant journal.”
“When did you know you had something more than that?” Faye asked, reflecting that Health was hardly an insignificant journal.
“You’re really interested?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.”
“I was sitting in my examining room, telling yet another married couple that one of them had AIDS. One of them. Somehow, the virus had failed to pass from husband to wife. And I realized that I’d delivered the same bad news before, more than once. On the day I gave Charles Lavelle the bad news about his HIV status, I looked into his wife Amanda-Lynne’s beautiful blue-green eyes and watched her struggle with the fact that she was going to be a young widow.”
He rocked his chair back and looked out at the night sky. “I flashed back to the day I looked into Jenny Hanahan’s eyes, the same color as Amanda-Lynne’s, and told her that her Barney was going to die. There’s nobody in the settlement with more classic Sujosa looks than Jenny and Amanda-Lynne and their blood kin. They’re healthy as horses. I thought of them, and I began to wonder.”
“Your paper referenced an incredibly detailed sexual history of this community, tracing the path HIV traveled through the settlement,” Faye said. “How on earth did you collect that data? I can’t imagine, say, Ronya Smiley, whom I had the pleasure of meeting today, giving you an itemized list of every man she’s slept with.”
“Well…actually, she did. In her case, it’s short. She started dating Leo when she was fourteen and married him a week after he got home from the university.”
Faye eyed Brent Harbison with some respect. Only the most diplomatic of men could have extracted enough
He bellowed, “Joe,” to get the younger man’s attention. “She’ll never get better if you pick her up and carry her over every obstacle she encounters.”
“My mama would roll over in her grave if I didn’t help a lady who needed me.”
“Your mama,” the doctor said, “is not here.”
Joe just grinned at him. After brief introductions, he opened the front door and took hold of Laurel’s nearest elbow to guide her over the threshold.
“Turn her loose and let her walk,” Dr. Harbison barked in the general direction of the closing door.
He settled himself on the rocker that Joe had abandoned. “So, we get a chance to talk at last. You’re Faye, the phantom archaeologist.”
“I understand that I have you to thank for this job.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do what?”
“You wrote the paper that started all this.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Don’t thank me. Thank Jimmie Lavelle for not getting chicken pox.”
“Run that by me again?”
“Lean over here close to me,” he said, taking Faye’s chin in his hands and giving her skin more scrutiny than any woman over thirty should have to endure. “There,” he said, pointing to a spot above her left eyebrow. He pointed to another spot beside her nose. “And there. Chicken pox scars. We’ve all got ’em. There’s a vaccine now, but Jimmie Lavelle is too old to have gotten it as a child. When there was an outbreak at Alcaskaki High, I waited for him to break out in spots, but he never did.”
“So he was your smoking gun? I wondered what set you on the trail.”
“I started keeping track of how many Sujosa adults were free of chicken pox scars. There were quite a lot of them. I know—it was a bizarre hobby, but I’m a dermatologist. Skin is my life.”
He let go of her chin. Faye had a powerful urge to run her fingers over her face, looking for pockmarks. She willed herself to keep her hands in her lap. “I’ve known people who never got chicken pox.”
“Yeah, me too, and who knows why? Usually, you can’t predict who might have an unusually potent immune system. But if an isolated culture like the Sujosa is passing a trait like that along, then maybe we can find a genetic marker. I thought it might rate a short article in an insignificant journal.”
“When did you know you had something more than that?” Faye asked, reflecting that Health was hardly an insignificant journal.
“You’re really interested?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.”
“I was sitting in my examining room, telling yet another married couple that one of them had AIDS. One of them. Somehow, the virus had failed to pass from husband to wife. And I realized that I’d delivered the same bad news before, more than once. On the day I gave Charles Lavelle the bad news about his HIV status, I looked into his wife Amanda-Lynne’s beautiful blue-green eyes and watched her struggle with the fact that she was going to be a young widow.”
He rocked his chair back and looked out at the night sky. “I flashed back to the day I looked into Jenny Hanahan’s eyes, the same color as Amanda-Lynne’s, and told her that her Barney was going to die. There’s nobody in the settlement with more classic Sujosa looks than Jenny and Amanda-Lynne and their blood kin. They’re healthy as horses. I thought of them, and I began to wonder.”
“Your paper referenced an incredibly detailed sexual history of this community, tracing the path HIV traveled through the settlement,” Faye said. “How on earth did you collect that data? I can’t imagine, say, Ronya Smiley, whom I had the pleasure of meeting today, giving you an itemized list of every man she’s slept with.”
“Well…actually, she did. In her case, it’s short. She started dating Leo when she was fourteen and married him a week after he got home from the university.”
Faye eyed Brent Harbison with some respect. Only the most diplomatic of men could have extracted enough
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