of what worked and what didn’t. I also got a feeling for how the dogs hunt. They’re not all the same, and they don’t look equally hard for everybody who’s on the run. A young guy who’s a student and isn’t dangerous, sometimes they figure he’ll just turn up sooner or later. He’ll pay taxes or apply for a marriage license or a loan or something. Sometimes I think they got a special kick out of arresting draft-dodgers twenty years later, so it would get into the papers to remind people that they never stop looking.'
'So you made him disappear?'
'Yes. Then a few people found out about it—friends of his, friends of mine.'
'And they told other people?'
'Not right away. But people grow up and the years go by, and just about everybody meets someone at some point who needs that kind of help.'
He nodded. 'So they made you do it again.'
'No,' she said. 'It wasn’t them, it was me. When I realized I could do it, there was a temptation to do it again. I was the one who decided.'
When the sun started to fill the room they turned the lights off and made breakfast. As they washed and dried the dishes at Jimmy’s sink, Felker said, 'What’s next?'
Jane pulled the plug in the sink and let the water go out. 'We need to sleep.' She had kept it up for almost twenty-four hours now. She wasn’t sure she had burned the dream out of her mind, but she knew she hadn’t been doing him any good for the past hour or two. 'If you wake up before I do, spend the time thinking about the future. Try to pick out things you’re not sure about. Forget the past. There’s nothing deader than that.'
14
Jane woke up in the dark room. She felt agitated, troubled. There was a throbbing of drums far off, and then the voices of the people singing the Ga-dashote. The chorus of voices in the first column of dancers was singing, 'Ga no oh he yo,' and the other column of dancers would answer, 'Wa ha ah he yo.'
'Are you awake?' Felker was in the room.
'Yes,' she said. She pulled the covers up to her neck and sat up. 'What is it?'
'I was going to ask you the same thing.'
She laughed. 'I’m sorry. You startled me. Are you dressed?'
'Sure. As soon as I heard the war drums, I figured I’d better.'
'Give me a minute.'
She watched his shadow slip out and the door close. Then she got out of bed, turned on the light, and searched her bag for clean clothes while she tried to bring her mind back up from the panicky feeling she had gotten in the deep, restless sleep. She caught sight of herself in the mirror on Jimmy’s dresser when she stepped into her jeans. She looked frightened.
She walked out into the living room, brushing her hair. 'Mattie will be here in a few minutes to find out why we’re not at the dance.'
'Shouldn’t we wait for her?'
'No. If we don’t go now, we’re being rude.' They walked out into the field and headed for a long, low building a distance off. There were lights, cars, and the sound of the drums and voices. 'It’s not a war dance, by the way. It’s called the Trotting Dance. It’s the first dance you do in a big celebration.'
'What are we celebrating?'
'Thanks to the Maple.'
'You mean the tree?'
'It’s the first big party of the year, because the first good thing in the spring is that the maple sap starts running. Then there’s the Green Corn Festival, Strawberry Festival, Harvest, New Year’s. You know, the usual.'
'New Year’s I know about. What do they do on New Year’s?'
'They used to strangle a white dog and hang it on a pole.'
'The usual.'
'And then they’d have the guessing of dreams.'
'That sounds like fun. Did you just have a dream?'
'Yes.'
'Can I guess it?'
'No.'
As they walked through the cool night air toward the low building, the music seemed to grow louder. The doors, one on each end of the building, kept opening to let more people inside, and each time a light would shine out into the darkness and the sound of the singing would rise. The beat of the drums and the squash-shell rattles were amplified by the thumping of hundreds of feet.
When they reached the edge of the light shining from the doorway, Felker stood still and listened. 'Getting shy?' Jane asked.
'A little.' The music changed. It slowed down, and this time a lone male voice that reminded Felker of a zydeco singer, with breaks and falls in his clear baritone, sang, 'Ya ha we ya ha!' and the two or three hundred voices, men and women and children, chanted, 'Ha ha.' 'I’ve got to wonder what they’re going to think of me.'
She reached out and touched him. She put her arm through his and gently tugged him toward the building. 'Think of it as a Polish wedding. Everybody is welcome and everybody is here.'
He started to walk along with her again. 'That I can understand. Just like in St. Louis.'
'Not like St. Louis,' she said. 'This is Poland.'
The door swung open and they were inside. The room was a big public meeting hall, with benches along one wall but bare otherwise. The people were in four giant moving circles, one inside the other. As the outer circle passed by them, here and there a brown face would grin at Jane or a head would toss its long black hair to reveal glittering almond eyes that focused on her and only passed shyly across Felker. But there were other faces he would not have expected to see here— people with white skin and light hair who didn’t look any more like Indians than he did. He started to feel less conspicuous.
Jane tugged his arm again to pull his head closer and said into his ear, 'Remember, Polish wedding. Join the fun and you’re a guest. Stand around and you’re a stranger.'
Felker took a deep breath and stepped forward to enter the outer circle, but once again Jane held his arm. 'Boys in front, girls in back.' She pushed him into the line in the middle of a string of men. Three little girls who had seen him try to step in among them giggled, careful not to look at him. He saw Jane slip into an inner line between Mattie Wilson and a woman in her late twenties, who looked over her shoulder to clasp Jane’s hand and then release it. They danced until people were hot and winded, and then the leader stopped singing.
Suddenly, Felker heard an unearthly noise, like a dozen men growling and bellowing. The drums started again, and people grinned and backed off the floor. A strong hand gripped his arm. He turned to see an old man with skin like the brown leather on Jane’s bag. He was grinning so his black eyes narrowed. 'Come on,' the old man said. 'You’ll get trampled.'
Felker walked with the old man to the bench by the wall. 'I’m Basil Henrick,' said the old man.
'John Felker.' He shook the old man’s hand.
The door on the east end of the building flew open and ten men danced into the room wearing dark blue carved wooden masks with pointed leather ears and tufts of fur on top, huge eyes, and big teeth. They grumbled and grunted, bent over and glared at the people gathered around the walls. As he watched, he saw one of them pass Jane, who was on the other side of the building with about five young women. Some of the women wore Indian skirts with elaborate embroidered pictures on them and a loose red tunic above, dangling earrings, and big silver brooches like plates. Others were dressed like Midwestern farm girls after church, in modest dresses, skirts, and sweaters. They all seemed amused by the men in the masks, who were now roaring and grunting as they danced.
'This is the Buffalo Dance,' said Basil Henrick.
