Animal Appetite

by Susan Conant

  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.

  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.

  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?

  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.

  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?

  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.

  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?

  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.

  After I left Buttonwoods, I took a back route across the Merrimack to a rural section of Bradford, where I stopped in at Janet Switzer’s. When I arrived, Janet was in the kennel area just in back of her tiny blue Cape Cod house. Parked in the driveway were her tan RV, tan house trailer, and tan Chevy wagon. The rear ends of all three vehicles were plastered with bumper stickers, including a new one: Monotheism: The Belief in One Dog, the Alaskan Malamute.

  A few years earlier, when Janet had had breast cancer, she’d taken a break from breeding. Her face had looked a little haggard, and she’d lost some weight. Today, I noticed, her weathered face had regained its former fullness. Through her sho
rt mass of gray-streaked brown waves you could see her scalp.

  To avoid causing a commotion, I left Kimi and Rowdy in the car. At a minimum, Janet would’ve said hello to them and shaken their paws. Without greeting me, she announced, “I might want to use Rowdy at stud.”

  “I thought you weren’t breeding anymore,” I said. The statement was as close as I’d ever come to asking about her health.

  “I’ve got a bitch here that ought to be bred. Victoria. She’s finished”—AKC champion—“and she’s OFA excellent.” OFA: Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, an organization that examines and rates hip X-rays to determine whether dogs are clear of hip dysplasia. Buying a puppy of any medium, large, or giant breed? Oh no you’re not. Not until you see proof in writing that both parents are OFA good or excellent, or that they’ve both cleared something called PennHip.

  Walking over to Victoria’s kennel, I said, “She’s nice. She has a beautiful head.”

  Victoria, who knew we were discussing her, licked my fingers through the chain link. She had lovely dark eyes, good pigment, decent bone, and small ears. Color and markings aren’t all that important in malamutes, but Victoria was Rowdy’s color, dark wolf gray, with shadows under her eyes and a trace of a bar down her muzzle. I opened the kennel door and entered. You can’t do that as just any kennel, but Janet’s dogs have excellent temperaments. I ran my hands over Victoria and checked her mouth. Her bite was good, and she wasn’t missing any teeth. “She’s out of . . . ?”

  “Denny and Lucy. His eyes have been checked?” Janet demanded.

  I nodded. “Clear.”

  “Run a brucellosis test,” Janet ordered me. Before you can get a marriage license, you need a syphilis test. Before you breed dogs, you check for brucellosis. Except that no one had yet accepted the proposal. As you’ll have gathered, Janet’s idea of tactful negotiation was to state outright what she was going to do.

  I cleared my throat and asked Janet for a cup of coffee. Seated in her kitchen amid forty-pound bags of premium dog food, water buckets, chew toys, and stacks of dog magazines, I raised no questions about whether the breeding should take place. With anyone else, I’d have put up an argument. I’d have wanted my opinion solicited. I wouldn’t have followed orders. With Janet, all I did was ask when she expected Victoria to come in season. It seemed to me that I was playing Mary Neff to Janet’s Hannah Duston, except, of course, that we’d be bringing life into the world, not taking it away. Spurred by the thought, I told Janet all about what I’d been doing in Haverhill. Janet knew who Hannah was; I didn’t have to explain. “The book I wanted is missing from the library and from Buttonwoods, too,” I said. “It’s a privately printed book about Hannah: And One Fought Back. The author taught at Haverhill High School. Lewis Clark. He died in World War Two.” With no pun intended, I said, “For the moment, I seem to have hit a dead end.”

  Janet promised to ask around to see whether she could locate a copy.

  On the way back to Cambridge, I belatedly realized that Janet and I hadn’t discussed a stud fee. Rather, I hadn’t raised the matter, but had assumed that, as usual, I’d go along with whatever Janet decreed. I knew the pedigrees of Janet’s dogs all the way back to Rowdy of Nome, the first AKC-registered Alaskan malamute. For the first time, I wondered about Janet’s own ancestry. I knew as little about her family tree as I’d ever known or cared about my own. Switzer was Janet’s married name. I didn’t know her maiden name. She grew up in Haverhill. So did her parents. Her grandparents? Great-grandparents? And on back? Hannah and Thomas Duston had had thirteen children. If I recalled correctly, nine had survived to adulthood and married. In the gift shop at Buttonwoods, I’d seen numerous pamphlets about the genealogy of the Duston family. I’d paid no attention. Only now did it cross my mind that Janet might well be one of Hannah’s descendants. In certain respects, she was, I thought, exactly the type.

  CHAPTER 17

  I’m seldom invited to tea by anyone at all, never mind by a Harvard professor emeritus. Although I felt certain that the unpretentious Professor Foley wouldn’t object to my usual garb—T-shirt, sweatshirt, jeans, running shoes—I felt compelled to costume myself for the occasion. At the back of my closet, I located a blue corduroy Laura Ashley pinafore and a simple white blouse with ruffles at the neck and sleeves. I wore dark stockings and flats. For the first time since last winter, I removed my good navy wool coat from its dry cleaner’s bag. Just before leaving the house, I went over myself with one of those red velvet clothes brushes that actually do a half-decent job of removing dog hair. With a steno pad and pens stashed in my purse, I set off on foot down Appleton, turned right onto Huron, and then made my way against the cold December wind up Fayerweather Street toward Governor Weld’s house. The route was familiar. The ladylike attire was not. Slapping the sidewalk, my leather-soled flats sounded like someone else’s shoes. I may have paused here and there at Rowdy’s and Kimi’s favorite trees and utility poles to wait for invisible dogs.

  Professor Foley’s house proved to be an immense Victorian I’d admired on previous walks. It was painted a soft, inviting shade of yellow, with shutters and trim in rich cream. A row of solar-powered lamps illuminated the path from the sidewalk to the house. The grass had been cut short for the winter, and the wide flower beds that ran up to the sidewalk and circled the property in gentle curves had been put to bed under cozy-looking blankets of salt-marsh hay. Along the front of the house, little wooden structures protected the foundation evergreens from snow and ice that would cascade from the steep roof. The massive front door was deep green. The electric light mounted above it was on. On the brick stoop by the door, a big pot of pale pink chrysanthemums had toppled over in the wind. Still encased in plastic, the New York Times and the Boston Globe lay on a long, wide jute mat. A sheaf of magazines, letters, and junk mail protruded from the brass mail slot. The windows at the front of the house were dark.

  I pushed the doorbell and heard distant chimes. No lights came on. No footsteps approached. No voice called out. I rang the bell again. This was Friday, I reminded myself. I checked my watch: ten after four. To avoid seeming gauche, I’d tried to arrive a few minutes late. Mounted on the door was an old-fashioned door knocker, a brass lion’s head that I’d assumed to be mainly decorative. I pounded hard. Then I again rang the bell.

  Elderly people who live alone, I reflected, sometimes establish a sort of home-within-a-home at the back of the house. Perhaps Professor Foley didn’t use the front rooms of this gigantic place, but denned up in the kitchen or a breakfast room, and took it for granted that visitors would seek him out in the part of the house where he really lived. The explanation felt far-fetched. I pursued in nonetheless. I couldn’t believe that Professor Foley had forgotten his gracious invitation.

  To avoid trampling the lovingly winterized flower beds or shoving my way through the shrubbery to get to the back door, I returned to the sidewalk and made my way down a narrow gravel driveway that led to a two-car garage and the rear of the house. Lights were on in what I guessed was the kitchen, but when I rang the bell at the back door, no one answered. Reluctant to conclude that Professor Foley had stood me up, I fished for ways to excuse him. I was a stranger in the world of those who routinely took tea: To habitual sippers, four o’clock might be universally understood to mean four-thirty or even five. Perhaps Professor Foley intended to serve a real English tea and was now hurrying home from one of the fancy shops on Huron Avenue where he’d bought fresh scones, little cakes, and out-of-season giant strawberries to be served with Devon cream. If so, I didn’t want to be caught lurking around his back door.

  Returning to the front of the house, I felt obliged to explain my presence there to onlookers who were, in fact, nonexistent. I again rang the bell, listened to the chimes, and pounded the lion’s head door knocker. Eager, I suppose, to set something right, I put the overturned pot of mums back on its base by the door. At four thirty-five, I came to my senses. The mail might not have arrived until the afternoon, bu
t the newspapers had been delivered in the early morning. Professor Foley was elderly, but he’d shown no sign whatsoever of forgetfulness and every sign of gentlemanly manners. And, no, my own memory wasn’t slipping, either. I’d been invited for four o’clock on Friday. If Professor Foley wasn’t here to welcome me, something was wrong.