Free The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker by Cynthia DeFelice Page A

the signs that Thomas still lived.”
    â€œWhat signs were those, lad?” asked Doc.
    â€œHe looked—well, like himself, I guess. And there was living blood, Mr. Stukeley said, in his heart. His eyes were open and his fingernails, Doc! They had grown.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œThen Mr. Stukeley took Thomas’s heart. And they burned it so Sarah and everyone could breathe the smoke, and then Mrs. Stukeley made a medicine from the ashes, and Sarah drank it, and it will make her well!” Lucas finished triumphantly.
    â€œYou say this Mr. Rood told you of the cure after your mother had passed away, Lucas?” Doc asked gently.
    Lucas looked away. “He came to tell me before, but—”
    â€œBut what, lad?”
    Lucas swallowed back the lump that had risen in his throat at the thought of how close he had come to being able to save his mother. “But I didn’t go to the door…not until two days later, when Mama was gone.”
    There was a silence. Then Doc asked, “Who was the first to die, lad?”
    â€œUncle Asa,” said Lucas. “Mr. Rood figured it was Asa who was—the mischievous one.”
    Doc cleared his throat, looking disturbed.
    â€œI didn’t really understand the cure, how it worked. But now I do, thanks to you.”
    Doc appeared startled. “How’s that, Lucas?”
    Lucas was surprised by Doc’s question. “Well, you said—you said—lots of things. You said doctors don’t always know what to do.”
    Doc smiled bleakly. “True enough.”
    â€œAnd you said that old witch woman—”
    â€œMoll Garfield?”
    â€œYes. You said she knows a lot even though people call her a witch, and if she used hair from a dog that bit you it might cure the bite. And you told me how you can protect yourself from getting smallpox real bad by making sure you get just a little bit of it. So, when I thought about the cure, the one Mr. Stukeley did…”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWell, it seemed the same.” Lucas stopped. All the things he was trying to explain to Doc had fit together perfectly when he’d thought about them. But somehow saying them aloud made his thoughts sound foolish. He tried again.
    â€œSo it seemed to be the same kind of cure…to take some smoke from the fire and to make medicine from the ashes, ashes that came from the thing that was making Sarah sick…Like a—what did you call it? A noc—?”
    â€œInoculation,” Doc said softly.
    â€œIt seemed like that. And, at first, when Mr. Stukeley began to cut into Thomas, I got a shivery feeling and I thought maybe we were doing wrong. But then I remembered you said that in medical college you did dissections, and isn’t that—well, doesn’t that mean cutting into bodies that are dead?”
    â€œIt does, indeed,” answered Doc.
    â€œSo I figured it was all right. And you said you learned about bleeding people to get the bad blood out. And you had to cut off Clem’s leg, because it was the bad part that was making the rest of him sick. So I thought taking the heart out—”
    â€œI can see how you were thinking, lad,” said Doc.
    But that wasn’t all. There was something else Lucas wanted to explain. “Remember you said that sometimes you think the good of what you do isn’t in what you do so much as in the—the kindness you show in doing it?”
    â€œYou don’t miss much, do you, lad?” asked Doc with a tired smile.
    Lucas sat quietly for a moment, trying to find the right words for the certainty that had been growing within him ever since his visit to the Stukeley farm. Finally, taking a deep breath, he began, “I know Sarah will get well. I can’t say how I know. I—Mama’s gone, but I could help the Stukeleys. It felt right, what we did.”
    It was coming out all mixed up. But it was all jumbled up together. That was