Animal Appetite (14 page)
Authors: Susan Conant
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women dog owners, #Women Sleuths, #Winter; Holly (Fictitious character), #Dog trainers, #Dogs, #Maine, #Massachusetts, #Indian captivities, #Women journalists
Randall certainly noticed that the dogs were no longer depositing dirt on his jacket and digging their nails into the suede, and although he probably observed that the huge, sharp teeth and smiling jaws were no longer within immediate striking range of his throat, I somehow had the sense that he didn’t fully appreciate the perfection of those sphinxlike downs. He was busy brushing off the sleeves of the jacket.
“They haven’t torn the suede, have they?” I asked.
Eyeing the dogs, he shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“They misunderstood,” I explained. Raising my arms, I said, “Up!” And the dogs sprang to their feet, rose on their hind legs, and placed their paws on my arms. Malamutes look especially athletic when their bodies are stretched up like that. Rowdy and Kimi’s white tails were wagging. “Good dogs. Okay! Off.” To Randall, I said, “You see? It was a misunderstanding. But I’m really very sorry. Come in and we’ll have some coffee.”
To prevent any additional miscommnunication, I put the dogs in my bedroom. Then I made a pot of French roast, offered to pay to have the jacket cleaned (he refused) and, as I’d done on my visit to Randall, assured him that I was the strong alpha leader of my little pack and that Rowdy and Kimi were friendly and gentle. “I train dogs,” I explained, gesturing to the dozens of leashes that hung on hooks on the kitchen door. He eyed the leashes with curiosity. I really own more than I need. Maybe he suspected me of having a few dozen additional dogs stashed somewhere, ready to do a real job on his jacket.
“I’m not
afraid
of dogs,” Randall informed me.
afraid
of dogs,” Randall informed me.
“Of course not.”
“Far from it.”
“Of course.” After pouring coffee and offering cream and sugar, I took a seat opposite Randall at the kitchen table and thanked him for the material about Hannah Duston.
He inquired about the progress I was making with my research and asked what had aroused my interest in Hannah.
“My car broke down in the center of Haverhill, and I saw the statue.” I did not, of course, mention Rita’s five-hundred-dollar bet. Rather, I pulled out my folder of notes and photocopied material, and, succumbing to the low impulse to name-drop, casually mentioned that I was having tea with Professor Foley on Friday.
Randall rested a well-groomed hand on the Laurel Thatcher Ulrich book. He smiled. “Read this before you see him,” he advised.
I smiled back. “Oh, I always do my homework on time.”
“There’s a surprise buried in here.” He stroked the copy of
Good Wives
as if caressing a fat, sedate cat. “Let me know what you think of it. It’s always interesting to see how matters appear to the untutored eye.”
Good Wives
as if caressing a fat, sedate cat. “Let me know what you think of it. It’s always interesting to see how matters appear to the untutored eye.”
The untutored eye!
Both of mine blinked. Soon thereafter Randall Carey left. He didn’t thank me for the coffee. As soon as he departed, I let the dogs loose. “If that man ever shows up again,” I told them, “dig your nails into his damned suede jacket. In fact, have it for lunch.”
Both of mine blinked. Soon thereafter Randall Carey left. He didn’t thank me for the coffee. As soon as he departed, I let the dogs loose. “If that man ever shows up again,” I told them, “dig your nails into his damned suede jacket. In fact, have it for lunch.”
I was, however, chagrined to discover that Randall Carey was right about
Good Wives
. The book revealed an unsettling connection that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich had made. As I’d known, Cotton Mather preached a sermon about Hannah Duston, who was in the church when he proclaimed her a savior of New England. Four years earlier, Mather had preached a sermon of condemnation about a woman named Elizabeth Emerson. The unmarried mother of one child, Elizabeth Emerson had given surreptitious birth to twins and promptly killed them. In 1693, she was convicted of murdering her newborn babies. Hannah Duston’s maiden name was Emerson. Hannah Duston and Elizabeth Emerson were sisters.
Good Wives
. The book revealed an unsettling connection that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich had made. As I’d known, Cotton Mather preached a sermon about Hannah Duston, who was in the church when he proclaimed her a savior of New England. Four years earlier, Mather had preached a sermon of condemnation about a woman named Elizabeth Emerson. The unmarried mother of one child, Elizabeth Emerson had given surreptitious birth to twins and promptly killed them. In 1693, she was convicted of murdering her newborn babies. Hannah Duston’s maiden name was Emerson. Hannah Duston and Elizabeth Emerson were sisters.
CHAPTER 16
The next morning, I put both dogs in the Bronco and set out for Haverhill. Before leaving Cambridge, I stopped to mail a small package to Oscar Fisch. Then I headed north. This time I got off at a different exit from the one I’d taken the day I’d met Hannah Duston. Just off the highway was a nursing home named in honor of Haverhill’s colonial heroine. Somehow, the name didn’t connote tender loving care.
By now, of course, I knew more about Hannah than I had at our first encounter, yet I felt almost eager to see her again. I’d also learned a bit about Haverhill and now saw it through what I insist on calling tutored eyes. The main drag was a wide thoroughfare lined with municipal and medical buildings in new brick that suggested old mills. I hoped that what the architects had had in mind was an appearance of uncompromising functionality. At the bottom of the hill, the street became a battered concrete bridge that spanned the Merrimack River. At one corner of the bridge was a defunct Woolworth’s, its bleak storefront windows barren except for a scanty display of red, white, and blue banners that weren’t quite flags. At the corner opposite the bygone five-and-dime was a small memorial to citizens of Haverhill who had died in Vietnam. Uphill was the G.A.R. Park, which, of course, memorialized the Civil War and also, as you know, Hannah Duston, who had lived a few hundred years too early to serve in the War Between the States and wouldn’t have been allowed to enlist, anyway, on the grounds that women were the weaker sex.
During the drive, I’d cultivated a romantic vision of myself addressing a series of profound questions to the mute, memorialized Hannah. I’d also had in mind the practical plan of getting some good photographs to accompany whatever it was I was supposed to be writing. I had no trouble parking. Most of the spaces in a vast blacktopped lot near the G.A.R. Park were empty, and next to the park itself stretched a city block of vacant spots with expired meters. I pulled the Bronco to the curb, fed the meter, and got the dogs out, but soon returned them to their crates. There was at least as much broken glass underfoot as there was grass. A raw-concrete grandstand clearly intended for summer concerts and Fourth of July speeches had evidently served instead as the focal point for a spree of bottle-breaking. Its walls were spray-painted with initials and obscenities. Pigeons poked at the ground as if feeding on shards of glass. Rats with wings.
The weathered-bronze Hannah was still gripping the hatchet in her right hand. Her left index finger still pointed in permanent accusation that now had an obvious cause. Beneath her left arm, above the bas-relief of Thomas Duston’s defense of his children, someone had scrawled in big purple letters BURN BITCH. On the opposite side of the monument, above the depiction of Hannah’s return, immense block capitals in what looked like thick crayon spelled out INDIAN KILLER. Below the picture of the two women and the boy in the canoe, like verbal fingers pointing back at Hannah, were more graffiti: A.I.M. RED POWER and INDIAN MURDERER.
The counteraccusations, no matter how justified, made it difficult for me to get the photographs I’d wanted. The best shot shows only Hannah and excludes the monument on which she stands. On the right of the picture, an American flag waves from a white flagpole. Hannah aims her finger directly at the flag. What I like about the view is that you can read it as you please: Hannah Duston, colonial heroine, savior of New England, points with pride to her role in shaping the country’s future. Alternatively, Hannah Duston, Indian killer, directs the blaming eye to national shame.
After I’d taken close-ups of the reliefs, including a few that showed the graffiti, I checked on the dogs and then went across the street to the public library in hope of finding a copy of the old privately printed biography of Hannah that Professor Foley had mentioned. The library was a modern building with lots of levels and lots of glass. As it turned out, the library did not have the book I was after. I did, however, learn its title:
And One Fought Back
. The author was adventurously named Lewis Clark. My effort to find the book itself caused a mildly unpleasant scene. When I inquired at the desk, an important-acting man angrily informed me that the volume had disappeared from the library’s special collection. If I’d stolen it, I’d hardly have been making an open inquiry, and I suffer from an honest, wholesome countenance. Still, the man seemed convinced that I was a book thief engaged in a paradoxical scheme to cover up my guilt. I left.
And One Fought Back
. The author was adventurously named Lewis Clark. My effort to find the book itself caused a mildly unpleasant scene. When I inquired at the desk, an important-acting man angrily informed me that the volume had disappeared from the library’s special collection. If I’d stolen it, I’d hardly have been making an open inquiry, and I suffer from an honest, wholesome countenance. Still, the man seemed convinced that I was a book thief engaged in a paradoxical scheme to cover up my guilt. I left.
On a street that ran along the river, I found a big seafood restaurant and decided to stop for lunch, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I discovered that the place had gone out of business. Farther along the same street, I located the headquarters of the Haverhill Historical Society, which, according to the article in
Yankee
I’d read at the Newton Free Library, housed tedious exhibits in a shabby old building. To my eye, the museum, Buttonwoods, showed none of the disrepair I’d expected. A modern wing blended smoothly into a handsome old colonial house. The entrance hall was a bright, cheerful room with freshly painted white walls and attractive displays about the Native Americans who’d inhabited what later became Haverhill. So much for trusting the printed word.
Yankee
I’d read at the Newton Free Library, housed tedious exhibits in a shabby old building. To my eye, the museum, Buttonwoods, showed none of the disrepair I’d expected. A modern wing blended smoothly into a handsome old colonial house. The entrance hall was a bright, cheerful room with freshly painted white walls and attractive displays about the Native Americans who’d inhabited what later became Haverhill. So much for trusting the printed word.
The
Yankee
article had made the museum guides sound bored and unhelpful. It seemed to me that they tried their best to assist me despite overwhelmingly adverse circumstances, specifically, two thousand drippy-nosed school-children. Actually, there were only forty or fifty kids, but their noses exuded the nasal discharge of a multitude, and when they opened their mouths to cough, the historic house resembled a gigantic nest of greedy baby birds. Insinuating myself into the group, I piped up to ask about the tribe or clan who’d captured Hannah Duston. Before the guide could answer, a teacher accosted me to explain that the Hannah Duston part came later. And which school was I from, anyway?
Yankee
article had made the museum guides sound bored and unhelpful. It seemed to me that they tried their best to assist me despite overwhelmingly adverse circumstances, specifically, two thousand drippy-nosed school-children. Actually, there were only forty or fifty kids, but their noses exuded the nasal discharge of a multitude, and when they opened their mouths to cough, the historic house resembled a gigantic nest of greedy baby birds. Insinuating myself into the group, I piped up to ask about the tribe or clan who’d captured Hannah Duston. Before the guide could answer, a teacher accosted me to explain that the Hannah Duston part came later. And which school was I from, anyway?
Eventually, when the competition among the hackers and drippers had reached a virulent fever pitch, the guide led us into an exhibition hall in the old part of the museum and showed us, among zillions of other objects displayed on the walls and in glass cases, the Hannah Duston artifacts. The
Yankee
article had suggested that the Duston items were few, dull, and of doubtful provenance: a teapot, some buttons, and what were believed to be the hatchet and the scalping knife that Hannah Duston had used on her abductors.
Yankee
article had suggested that the Duston items were few, dull, and of doubtful provenance: a teapot, some buttons, and what were believed to be the hatchet and the scalping knife that Hannah Duston had used on her abductors.
The artifact I’d come to see, Hannah’s “Confession of Faith,” was framed in glass. Until 1929, the document had rested, unrecognized for what it was, in the Haverhill Center Congregational Church. One account claimed that it lay in a vault; another, that it was discovered behind a gallery pew. Since it was of no interest to the children, I had the chance to study it. “I am Thankful for my Captivity,” Hannah had professed; “’twas the Comfortablest time that ever I had: In my Affliction God made his Word Comfortable to me.” In one of the books I’d consulted, I’d seen an old document that Hannah Duston had signed only with a scrawled
X
. I wondered whether she’d dictated this statement or learned to write at an advanced age. She’d made the “Confession of Faith” at the age of sixty-seven, when she finally applied for full church membership: “I desire the Church to receive me tho’ it be at the Eleventh hour.” I later read somewhere that she’d dictated the confession to her minister. At the time of her captivity, she’d been almost forty. After her return, she and Thomas had yet another baby, a girl, Lydia. Hannah and Thomas Duston were buried in an old cemetery in Haverhill. The graves hadn’t been marked, the guide said, because of the fear that Indians would steal the bodies. The age of sixty-seven was not, after all, Hannah Duston’s eleventh hour. She was born in 1657 and lived for nearly eighty years. Only the good die young?
X
. I wondered whether she’d dictated this statement or learned to write at an advanced age. She’d made the “Confession of Faith” at the age of sixty-seven, when she finally applied for full church membership: “I desire the Church to receive me tho’ it be at the Eleventh hour.” I later read somewhere that she’d dictated the confession to her minister. At the time of her captivity, she’d been almost forty. After her return, she and Thomas had yet another baby, a girl, Lydia. Hannah and Thomas Duston were buried in an old cemetery in Haverhill. The graves hadn’t been marked, the guide said, because of the fear that Indians would steal the bodies. The age of sixty-seven was not, after all, Hannah Duston’s eleventh hour. She was born in 1657 and lived for nearly eighty years. Only the good die young?
When the tour ended, I asked the guide whether the historical society owned a copy of
And One Fought Back
. Like the man at the library, she got her hackles up. The guide, however, knew an honest face when she saw one. The volume, she informed me, had been stolen. Its author, Lewis Clark, I learned, had taught at Haverhill High School, written the biography in the thirties, and perished in the Battle of the Bulge. No, the guide said, his widow had died years ago. They’d had no children.
And One Fought Back
. Like the man at the library, she got her hackles up. The guide, however, knew an honest face when she saw one. The volume, she informed me, had been stolen. Its author, Lewis Clark, I learned, had taught at Haverhill High School, written the biography in the thirties, and perished in the Battle of the Bulge. No, the guide said, his widow had died years ago. They’d had no children.
The museum, too, was finally childless, so I poked around examining a lot of objects that the
Yankee
article hadn’t mentioned and acquiring bits of information I’d missed elsewhere. The boy captive, Samuel, had been stolen in 1695 at the age of twelve; at the time of the massacre, he’d been fourteen, old enough to swing a hatchet. And speaking of hatchets, the blade of the one on display looked as dull as the purported scalping knife. The knife was worn and chipped; it had no sharp edge at all. Could Hannah possibly have brought it home and gone on using it to slaughter pigs and peel vegetables? Or had she dulled and nicked it in a single night?
Yankee
article hadn’t mentioned and acquiring bits of information I’d missed elsewhere. The boy captive, Samuel, had been stolen in 1695 at the age of twelve; at the time of the massacre, he’d been fourteen, old enough to swing a hatchet. And speaking of hatchets, the blade of the one on display looked as dull as the purported scalping knife. The knife was worn and chipped; it had no sharp edge at all. Could Hannah possibly have brought it home and gone on using it to slaughter pigs and peel vegetables? Or had she dulled and nicked it in a single night?
In mint condition were a collection of pewter plates presented to Hannah by Governor Sir Francis Nicholson of Maryland and a large pewter tankard offered as a tribute by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts on the grounds, I guess, that after all Hannah had been through, what she needed was a good drink. The tankard was engraved with delicate decorations. Its shiny pewter could almost have passed for silver. The tankard looked like the kind of trophy I’d be proud to take home from a dog show.
The truly freakish object on display was, however—and I swear to God I am not making this up; go to Buttonwoods and see for yourself—the third in a series of historical bottles sponsored by the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission and produced by Jim Beam Distillers. The bottle stood more than a foot high and took the form of the Hannah shown in the Boscawen statue, but with her nose and hatchet intact. Also, the bottle was in gaudy color. Hannah’s skin was pale. The scalps were red. The bottle looked as if it had never been opened. Hannah’s cold-bloodedness had been pretty obvious all along. It had never occurred to me that what coursed through her veins was actually Jim Beam.
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