preparation that Mary instantly perceived that this was another of the things that she must simply smile at and not question.
Jane and Martha walked out among the dry, frost-flecked flower stalks in the garden and spoke to one another in Seneca. 'What happened to her?'
Jane had come here because it was the only place she could think of in this part of the country where she could trust people absolutely, but when the question came she could not relinquish her old habits. She quickly manufactured a story, but when she looked into the old lady's eyes to begin, they seemed already to have penetrated the lie. Telling it would be a waste of time. 'She was kidnapped. She had money that wasn't hers. Some men wanted it. They tortured her. She hasn't said so yet, but they raped her.'
'Did the police catch them?'
Jane shook her head. 'We couldn't even call the police. She's done too much. She'd end up in jail and the men would find her there and make sure she never got out.'
'What's a Nundawaono girl got to do with that kind of business?'
Jane looked into her eyes. 'It's what I do. Fugitives come to me and I guide them out of the world.'
'Why?'
Jane laughed a sad little chuckle. 'Because if I didn't, they would give me bad dreams.'
'I'll bet a lot of them do anyway,' said Martha. She looked at Jane with her bright old eyes and shook her head. 'People like me - the old longhouse people who believe in the visions of Handsome Lake - we're always saying the young have forgotten everything. So the one day I stay home from work my own great-grandmother comes to my door. I should learn to shut up. Now I have to help you take care of her, don't I?'
Jane said, 'You're a clan mother. You must have learned enough in all those years to make a decision by yourself.'
'Has she been to a doctor?'
'Not yet. I'm going to call a doctor friend of mine and have him use his connections to get us one who won't call the police when she walks in.'
'I know one who will see her today. Leave her to me,' said Martha.
A few days later, Mary opened the trailer door and walked outside to find Martha standing alone in the weeds. The old woman was already looking at her, as though she had been watching the door and waiting for it to open. 'Come on,' she said, and began to walk.
Mary Perkins caught up with her. 'Where are we going?'
'No place. I've been walking like this for seventy-five years, and if I stop doing it, I'll stiffen up and die.'
They walked along in silence for a time. Every few minutes Mary found that her steps had started to move toward the highway without her thinking about it, and she had to correct her course. Martha showed no interest in the road. She kept walking straight through the weeds. After a time Mary noticed that Martha's dress was hemmed precisely a half inch above the weeds so that it didn't get caught in brambles or pick up seeds. 'How about you?' the old woman asked. 'Have you decided yet?'
'Decided what?'
'To die.'
Mary walked a long time. 'I don't know. Sometimes I think it's already happened and I missed it. I don't know exactly when. I was beyond noticing things by the time Jane came. After that I concentrated on staying upright long enough to do something I had promised myself to do. That's over now, but nothing has come to take its place.'
Martha walked along in the weeds. The cold made the dry stalks snap as her feet pushed them aside to touch the snow. 'Each time I walk through here it's different. In four months this will all be wildflowers. Tiny white ones, lots of blue and gold and pink, all mixed together. There are about four hundred acres here that nobody has farmed since I was a kid, and the flowers grow like crazy.'
'I'd like to see that,' said Mary.
'Then you're not dead yet.'
Mary walked stiffly, not paying much attention to the rattling stalks of the weeds. 'Maybe that wasn't me. It's been so long since I used my real name that it doesn't sound like me anymore. Maybe Jane didn't tell you, but that's why this happened.'
'Whatever you did, what was done to you wasn't the punishment. It was only something else that happened. Now something else will happen.'
'That's my problem. It's not that I don't know what will happen, or that I'm afraid. I can't even think of anything that I would like to happen.'
'Maybe you need some help. You could spend the rest of your life going to see psychiatrists.'
'I take it you don't approve.'
'It's okay with me. Some people like drugs, and I think a lot of them just like getting dressed up and having a place to go where they're expected at a certain time.'
'Right now I can't see any difference between that and anything else that people do.'
'Maybe Mary Perkins got so torn up that she isn't worth much anymore. Maybe you didn't like her much to begin with. Forgive her, because you know that she's suffered. Love her, because you traveled together and shared secrets. Then end her life and bury her.'
'Kill myself?'
'Unless you still want to see the wildflowers.'
Mary studied her carefully. 'You made that up about the wildflowers, didn't you?'
Martha nodded. 'Of course I did. This is all thistle and buffalo grass. I'd like to see some wildflowers, though.
Most winters I find that's all that's necessary.'
Jane waited until Martha McCutcheon had gone to work at the store, then sat beside Mary on the steps of the trailer.
'I didn't ask you to talk much about what happened because I didn't want to upset you,' Jane began. 'Now I need to.'
Mary's voice was tense, but she said, 'Okay.'
'They probably asked you a lot of questions - things that didn't seem to make any sense, right?'
'Yes. It was the older one, most of the time. It was like he was trying to see if I was telling the truth. Where did we meet the guy to get a ride in Ann Arbor? What did we eat - '
'Names,' Jane interrupted. 'Did he ask you about the names we used when we were running?'
'Well, yes.' She seemed to sense she had made a terrible mistake. 'I told them. I was so scared, so tired - '
'It's okay,' Jane said. 'It's okay. Just think back. Are there any names you know that you left out?'
'No.'
Jane nodded and stood up. 'You didn't do anything wrong. I just needed to know.'
The 'older one' must be Farrell. He had waited until she had reached the lowest point and then asked her all of the questions. The answers would have given Barraclough what he needed now. Barraclough could take something as trivial as the room number of a hotel on a particular date, approach the right clerk in the right way, and get the name Jane had used and her credit card number. If the hotel happened to be one that bought its security from Intercontinental, then they would give it to him without any fuss. Whenever Barraclough wanted to, he could be Intercontinental Security Services.
Jane spent the next few days watching the horizon. The flat, empty fields on all sides should have made her feel safer, but the endless sameness induced a panicky agoraphobia in her. She would sit at Martha McCutcheon's kitchen table for fifteen minutes at a time, staring into the west down the highway, then move to another window to gaze to the south across the winter-bare fields.
On the fourth night she heard a noise and sat up in bed, not waking up, just awake. From the other wall of the trailer Martha McCutcheon whispered, 'It's the wind.' After a moment she said in Seneca, 'Have you thought about what you were going to do if it weren't?'
'Always,' Jane whispered. She stood up, put on her coat, and walked outside the trailer into the field and away from the lights of the trailer park. She sat in the weeds in the dark and listened to the wind. It was cold and wild, coming across the plain in sputtering gusts and eddies. She had a scared feeling that it carried something that
