Now she felt Abukcheech trembling behind her, and she reached and pressed his hand. She could feel herself dissolving, her body of pain falling away, her spirit straining to be released, and she whispered, “Remember.” Then she gave herself up to the chant of the powwow, to the song summoning a powerful spirit to carry them both far beyond any mortal village.
And here she was in a garden full of summer, the corn as high as her shoulder, the sunflowers above her head, and beside her, a strange woman who had paused a moment from her grinding, but who had not yet voiced the thought that had made her stop. Time seemed suspended here, although night came, a sudden, silent darkening, when the bright shapes with their strange voices vanished; the powwow fell silent; the wind whispered without breeze, and the soft night glow lacked moon or stars. Morning was similarly abrupt. In a moment, the dim twilight of the village day unfolded, the powwow began his chant, and, as if summoned by him, the bright shapes returned.
Nadie was frightened of the powwow, whose chanting was foreign and whose voice was lighter than Ahanu's and with an accent, as if the singer had lived too long among the English. This was a false powwow, Nadie understood. Ahanu had deceived her and left her in the grip of some great and evil spirit. The proof was that she was both alive and dead, aware but paralyzed, in this uncanny village with its bright ghosts. I must get back, she thought, I must get back. I must take the birch basket from Abukcheech and burn it. I must get back before Ahanu discovers I've cheated him!
Nadie tried to scream, to call on the powwow, to warn Abukcheech, but there was no sound except in her mind; she tried to move, but she felt not even the faintest sensation, nothing, nothing, only an awareness of the dim light and the sunflowers and the voice of the false powwow, unending, inescapable, immobilizing.
* * * *
"They're all wonderful,” the tribal chairman said, smiling at the sculptor, a small, intense woman who had coordinated all the work on the dioramas, “but this one's my favorite.” He nodded toward the life-sized figure of a woman sitting in front of one of the smaller wigwams. “Even more than the warriors and the sachem, this one seems to me totally alive and believable."
The sculptor gave him a look. The chairman had been complimentary about the warriors and the old men of the village, and rightly so, for she had done an immense amount of research, locating photographs and drawings of Algonquins, even measuring the skulls in the university collections and estimating heights from their skeletons. But she'd found many more portraits of men than of women, and despite her best efforts, the females of the dioramas were more generic in face and figure than the males—except for this very woman. The sculptor had not anticipated such sensitivity from the chairman, who was all about profit margins and publicity and image.
"I tried to make them as individual as possible,” she said. “And still ethnographically correct."
"Indeed, indeed. You have recreated the look of our people,” he said.
Truly, recreation was the word, because the tribe had become hopelessly heterogeneous over the centuries. The tribal chairman now looked more Irish than Algonquin, and his wife had ancestors from both Germany and Africa.
The sculptor nodded. “Though even before Contact, people were of mixed stock."
"I like the fact there are medicine bundles in this house,” the chairman said, changing the subject, for the ethnic composition of the present-day tribe was a point of controversy. “I'm almost sorry we have her scraping corncobs. You know my great-great-great-etc.-grandmother was supposed to have been a medicine woman?"
"Really!"
"It might be nice to include a figure with the medicinal plants display."
"It wouldn't be hard to make that change,” the sculptor said. “We'd just need another figure here. We want to show the entire process of preparing corn."
"Oh yes, this is great, educational. But maybe in the future, this figure might be moved. You know, we will eventually have to freshen and vary the dioramas. Not the village—the village is perfect—and the caribou hunt too. Those will be good for a long time. But maybe the post-Contact room? I think that lacks something.” The chairman was oriented toward novelty, toward the constant change and upgrades required by the immensely successful casino that funded the museum.
"It's hard for the more static exhibits to compete with the village,” the sculptor agreed. She could foresee more profitable work. “Let me know what is needed—once the concept is firmed up."
"We'll suggest it to the anthropologists, get them to lay out some ideas. So long as they include this figure."
He looked at the woman again, the woman who had haunted the sculptor's dreams, who had forced, as it were, her features into the clay and come to individual life. The sculptor was under no illusions about her art. She did high quality ethnographic figures, the three-dimensional equivalent of illustration. But this one figure was the exception. The woman with the corncobs deserved more than fiberglass, and the sculptor would like to have cast her in bronze.
"I think my great-great ancestor must have looked like this,” he said. “I think there is a resemblance. What do you think?"
The sculptor's impulse was the blunt honesty that sometimes offended her clients. The chairman was bluff and fair skinned, with fading light brown hair, but on second look, there was something about his expression.
"The eyes,” she said. “There is something about the eyes,” and he smiled, pleased. It was amazing how eloquent glass eyes could sometimes be.
"They say she was a terrible woman who poisoned a powwow."
The chairman did not seem terribly upset by this, but you couldn't always tell with him, and the sculptor settled for caution. “There are lots of lies in the old records,” she said. “Medicine women were suspect to the colonists."
"Absolutely. We won't take their word without documentation. But still—” He stretched out his hand and touched the figure lightly on the shoulder. “A remarkable figure. So lifelike. So haunting. I'm not sure I'd want to be here with her at night,” he said, and laughed.
* * * *
For an instant, Nadie heard the powwow, heard Ahanu's laugh. Then his voice faded. There was only the sound of the stranger chanting, and in her last moment of sanity, Nadie recognized eternity.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Copyright © 2005 by Janice Law.
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Conversation with Janice Law
In a career that has spanned thirty years, Janice Law has written short stories and scholarly articles, mysteries both contemporary and historical, non-mystery fiction and nonfiction. Her very first book, The Big Payoff, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1977. Her historical mystery All the King's Ladies takes place during the reign of Louis XIV in 17th century Versailles. With her most recent novel, Voices, Ms. Law moves beyond the mystery genre to explore the connection between memory and identity in a compelling story about a woman who “remembers” being abducted as a child. Voices was a fiction award finalist from the Connecticut Center for the Book. Ms. Law talked with us recently about writing the female sleuth, letting a long-running series wind down, and how her academic career (she has a PhD in English) and her writing career have dovetailed.
AHMM: Your novels and stories often have very specific origins. How did the story in this issue come about?
JL: My new daughter-in-law and I went to see the Pequot Museum, which is every bit as good as its reputation. I was particularly taken with the village display with its variety of bark houses and a long house, and in one, a powwow treating a patient, complete with piped-in chanting. I've had an interest in Native American art since I was taken up to the museum in Albany in seventh grade, and I found the whole display impressive but also a bit creepy, as these waxwork type of things are, and it made me think how disconcerting it would be to awaken there.
AHMM: Your character Anna Peters debuted in 1976, making her one of the earliest of the modern women detectives. How did you co
me to create this character? How has she changed over time?
JL: Anna came straight out of the then ongoing Watergate scandal. I was fascinated with the whole thing and convinced that some underpaid secretary must know what was going on. I moved Anna to an oil company and that was that. The other thing is that she was my feminist revenge for all the available and pliant and usually blond females in so much mystery fiction at the time.
Oddly enough, Anna was originally to have been even more forward looking: my first thought was a woman with two children. Quite unheard of at the time for a detective, and I nixed that as implausible. Other than that, I gave her some of my interests and a good deal more courage and moxie.
I made a tactical mistake from a marketing standpoint, as I kept aging her. She aged with me, which was fine even into her forties, but when she hit the fifties and developed a bad back, I thought that it was time to get her off the streets. Probably, it was time anyway. I thought I'd done all I could with her and I hate repeating myself.
Once in a while, I consider using Anna in a short story, but haven't found the right plot yet; meanwhile she's getting older, and I don't want to turn her into Miss Marple—Agatha Christie did that first and best.
AHMM: What do you think has been the influence on the field of the popular women detectives of the past couple of decades?
JL: I think it has been nothing but good. When you think that the hardboiled or sophisticated detectives of earlier eras were pretty much the two poles of work, I think women detectives like the ones created by Sara Paretsky and Lynda La Plante have certainly added another dimension, and women writers have brought considerable variety and I think a slightly more subtle way of looking at crime and detection as a whole. For one thing, I think women detectives (and dare I say women writers?) are less sentimental than their male counterparts, who do go on a bit even though it is disguised in tough guy language and poses. I personally love Ruth Rendell, the much underrated Magdelen Nabb, and I was very im-pressed by Out by Natsuo Kirino, who is using the crime novel as social commentary. Of course, not all of these are straight detective fiction, but I'm neither so interested in (nor at all good at) “puzzle” mysteries.
AHMM: Since your last Anna Peters novel, you have written a few stand-alone novels. How is writing a series book different from writing a stand-alone?
JL: I wrote one stand-alone mystery (Infected Be the Air) about a woman who might have become a series character, but I really felt I had done enough (nine novels) with the form. The Night Bus was suspense, which I'd always wanted to try, as was The Lost Diaries of Iris Weed. My most recently published novel, Voices, had no crime in it, except a long ago kidnapping. My newer novels (at present looking for publishers) have crimes somewhere slightly off center—I am interested in how people cope with crime either as victims or as perpetrators. However, given the present market for mid-list books, especially slightly off-beat ones, I can't be sure when they will reach print.
I didn't find too much difference in writing a stand-alone novel. I always disliked the necessary filling in and background needed in a series, although it was fun to have, in effect, a little repertory company. But the basic thing is the same—you get an idea, it begins in enchantment, devolves into hard work, and unless you are very, very lucky, ends with just a touch of disappointment. Nothing is quite as delightful as the initial idea and the realization that there is enough there for the book to go, which, I suppose, is why one keeps going back to the computer.
AHMM: As a college professor, your area of specialization is 19th century British and American fiction. Why not crime fiction? How has your work as an academic influenced your mystery writing?
JL: Unfortunately, as one of the army of untenured adjunct instructors, I only rarely got to teach my specialty amidst the thirteen other courses I've taught for the university. This has made me an academic jack-of-all-trades, which has been interesting. I owe The Lost Diaries directly to my other job, as it is set at a university and peopled by academics and writers. It also was a finalist for the Connecticut Center for the Book fiction prize.
I've done a number of short stories with an academic setting, oddly enough, usually about archeologists—all those bones are tempting, I guess. And even “The Chant of the Powwow” has a little whiff of academe in the background.
As for why not crime fiction, I suppose I might have offered a course—a course on noir crime fiction was actually offered last year, I believe. I guess I like keeping the two activities separate to keep either teaching (which I do love) and writing (ditto) from beginning to seem like real work. Also, I have certain reservations about teaching creative writing and tend to prefer teaching what I guess is uncreative writing, where I can tear student work apart and put it back together and give them a good foundation without the tears and anguish of dealing with painful and intimate topics. They can do that on their own when they have the skill.
AHMM: You also teach a course on publishing at the University of Connecticut. What expectations do college students bring to such a class? What misconceptions?
JL: The key thing is that they want help getting a job, and actually the course has, in a small way, helped a number of them, so that is satisfying. We focus on the professional writing formats, basic page layout, and beginning HTML, and we have speakers in to talk about various ways one can make money in writing, from PR to radio to magazine publishing.
The main misconception they come with is the idea that you can make money doing creative writing of the sort they study. I have to give them the bad news that this is most unlikely unless one is a gifted self-promoter and even then the odds are very long. Basically, I have to let them know that a real love of any art is an addiction, a very pleasant addiction and harmless as those go, but one has to support it. I usually suggest learning plumbing or marrying money—and not necessarily in jest!
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The Last Day of the Season by Lawrence K. Furbish
Leaning over the car's fender, he squared the end of the wrench on a large bolt and pulled upward. It didn't move. He tugged again, harder. Nothing. Shifting his hand as far out as it would go on the wrench handle and taking a deep breath, he yanked sharply back. The bolt gave way, crushing his knuckles into the fan belt pulley.
"Shit!"
Blood oozed from the break in his skin, spreading in a dark streak across the back of his grease-blackened hand. “Damn it."
He straightened up and with the movement felt the cold in the base of his back. Walking away from the car, he pressed his hand between his arm and the side of his chest. Through the front window he could see Sam outside at the pumps talking with a dark-haired woman in a yellow foreign car. The woman smiled and flicked at her hair with her fingers in a nervous gesture somewhere between flirting and impatience.
The sink was in back, behind the boiler, its white sides long ago permanently dulled to a flat gray by the dirt and grime that splattered its surface. He tried to be careful, but bits of pumice from the lava soap burned the raw scrape. When he had rinsed the dirty suds away, he stared at the stains remaining around his fingernails, the creases of his fingers, and the lines on his palms. Splashing water on his neck and face, he dried himself with a clean rag from beneath the sink.
The clock read eleven thirty. Sam had come back inside and was in the grease pit. He squatted and peered down at him under the blue sedan. “It's pretty slow today."
Sam looked out from under the car. “It was busy earlier. Mostly people on their way to work, a few going hunting. Only two days left.” Sam spat in disgust. “Friggin’ state. Way they keep shortening the season, pretty soon it'll only last a week."
"Yeah.” His hand was beginning to ache.
"What about Saturday?” asked Sam.
"You'll have to work. My last chance at a deer this year, I guess. I thought I'd try the strip lot over behind the airport."
Sam looked unhappy. “But you went out this morning."
"That was only for
a couple of hours. You took two days off last week. Besides, you already got your deer."
"I know. But Sharon wants me to take her and the kids shopping over in New Hampshire.” Sam was the butt of comments from the regulars about who wore the pants in his family, and sometimes he didn't take the kidding very well. But it distressed him whenever he was unable to accommodate his wife's wishes. She had a harsh tongue when crossed.
"Sorry, but I want my last chance.” He stretched and rubbed his lower back. “I'm going home to eat."
"When you come back bring me some coffee. We gotta do something about that boiler. It's cold as hell in here."
Outside, the late November sunshine had failed to warm the day, and now the sun was disappearing behind a cloud bank moving in from the southwest. The horizon was filling up with low, gray storm clouds.
His pickup started reluctantly, and he cursed all Chevrolets, vowing once again never to own another. He would have to find the time to give it a tune-up. Why was it mechanics never had time to work on their own vehicles? He gave the truck's engine no chance to warm up, and it ran sluggishly for the short drive home. He parked on the street. Next door the election poster with Ike's smiling face was looking frayed, and he wondered when his neighbor would finally take it down.
Oak and maple leaves cluttered his yard and covered the top of the woodpile. Floating down from the stark branches, they had been picked up, whirled around, transported, and redeposited by the wind, collecting in nooks and crannies around the house and under the eaves of the bulkhead. He needed to rake. Maybe Sunday.
When he opened the door, moisture and the pungent aroma of ham and split peas assaulted him with almost physical force. It pushed the cold from his insides and replaced it with hunger. He was washing again when Rosemarie came up from the cellar with a plate of sour pickles and an onion.
"You look tired.” Her voice was low and soft. It had a deep husky tone that he liked and found sexy, but sometimes he also found it hard to hear her or understand what she was saying.
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