The Face-Changers (55 page)

The Genesee River was the place where the Stone-Throwers, one of the tribes of Jo-ge-oh, lived. They were said to be no taller than the length of a person’s foot, so they were called Little People, but they were very strong. On the few occasions when they had allowed themselves to be seen, they had done it to intervene and save a person in extreme danger.

They would take him out of the world for a time, to hide him from his enemies until the danger was over.

The Seneca woman took the purse off her shoulder, set it on the rock ledge at her feet, and pulled out a pouch of pipe tobacco she had bought at the Rochester airport. She took a pinch and tossed it into the air, then watched the wind carry it down onto the rocks below her.

“It’s me, little guys,” she said. “Jane Whitefield.” She waited for a few seconds, listening to the water whispering over the stones, then poured more tobacco to the rocks below her.

“I brought you the usual presents.” The Little People liked tobacco, and their only source of supply was the Senecas, who had not lived along this part of the Genesee since the Buffalo Creek treaty of 1826. She emptied the rest of the brown shreds of tobacco from the pouch and reached into her purse again.

This time she had a plastic bag containing the clippings of her fingernails. The Little People particularly valued the fingernail clippings of human beings, which they used to fool foxes and raccoons into believing that big people were nearby.

She sprinkled the little moon-shaped clippings onto the rocks to make a wide zone of safety for the Little People.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for keeping my husband safe.” She stood looking at the river for a few minutes, then said aloud, “I’m going home to be with him now.”

Jane drove the length of the park road, then turned onto the Genesee Expressway at Mount Morris and headed north to change to the New York State Thruway west of Rochester. As she drove, she could see signs that the summer had reached its fullest perfection and was about to end. The leaves on the maple trees had all matured, opened flat, and grown as big as a man’s hand.

In the Old Time, the people’s lives had followed a cycle announced by signs in the world. Each spring, when the white oak leaves were the size of a red squirrel’s foot, the women would go out to the fields to plant the corn, beans, and squash.

When the leaves on the deciduous trees had opened a little farther, and the foliage was thick enough to hide a human shape in the forest, warriors would slip away, sometimes in parties of three or four and sometimes alone. They would travel in silence just off the trails, until they had reached the countries of enemies. They would stay for most of the summer watching, listening, and studying until they had found the enemy’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

When the nights were just beginning to turn cool and the days shorter, and the corn in the enemies’ fields was beginning to ripen, the scouts would begin the journey back to the land between the Niagara River and Sodus Bay. They would travel quickly through the forests, often from as far west as the Mississippi River and, more rarely, from beyond it to the eastern slopes of the high mountain range they called the Rim of the World, where the Left-Handed Twin was reputed to wait for the souls of the dead.

They returned to take part in the Green Corn ceremony that was held when the ears on the stalks standing in the women’s fields had ripened enough to be edible. Green Corn marked the end of the female half of the year, when the country of the Senecas was warm and fruitful, and the corn, beans, and squash they called the Three Sisters grew to feed the people.

The festival began on the day when the people knew that for this year, at least, they would not starve. Their lives had been preserved.

A few weeks later the crops would be harvested and the male half of the year would begin. In the dark, cold half of the year, the celebrations were given by the men. There were hints that the men’s ceremonies came from a time when the land between the Niagara and the Hudson had been much colder and barer, and the people had lived by following the migrations of herds of large animals. Every year, as soon as the harvest was completed, the men went off to hunt deer and bear or to attack the enemies that the scouts had observed during the summer. But Green Corn was a time when all of the people came together.

When Jane reached the edge of Amherst, she stopped along the road, tilted the rearview mirror so she could see her face, brushed her hair, and put on her makeup. Then she readjusted the mirror and drove on.

She turned into the driveway of the big old stone house, glanced in the rearview mirror, and watched the woman in shorts and a T-shirt strolling along the other side of the street stop, open her purse, and fiddle with something inside it, her lips moving. She was apparently muttering to herself about something she was looking for, but Jane smiled in the mirror at her and said, “It’s me, all right. Tell them I said ‘Hi.’” Jane got out of the car and walked toward the front of the house. The door swung open, and Carey stepped onto the porch.

Jane said, “How was the rest of the movie?” He shrugged. “A cynical attempt to pander to the romantic, sensitive female audience. You would have been putty in my hands.”

“Didn’t understand it, huh?”

“I put some estrogen in the popcorn after you left, but it didn’t help.” He rubbed his chin. “Didn’t have to shave for twenty-eight days, though.”

She put her arms around him and held her cheek against his in a long, hard embrace. “It seems to have worn off.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I got tired of the popcorn.” He suddenly bent to scoop her off her feet, carried her inside the house, and pushed the door shut with his foot.

Jane said, “Nice of you to give me a lift, but I can only stay a minute.”

He withdrew his right hand so her feet swung to the floor.

“These nightmares are beginning to get a perverse, teasing quality to them.”

“I came to get your opinion of a place I rented. Would you be willing to take a look at it?”

“I was going to do a crossword puzzle, but I could work on it in the car…”

“Well, then, come along. It’s kind of nice.” She took his hand and tugged him toward the door. “I promise you’ll like it.

It’s got four hundred rooms, and a bed in every one.” He brightened. “A hospital! You finally got me a hospital.” She wrapped her arms around him again and kissed him.

She broke it off and looked at him happily. “No,” she said. “I didn’t.” Then she swung the door open and pushed him out toward the car.

Dr. and Mrs. McKinnon did not return to the house in Amherst that night. At eight the next morning they were seen driving from a hotel in Buffalo eastward to the Tonawanda Indian Reservation. At nine-thirty the mobile surveillance team was ordered to break off contact, and the team at the house in Amherst was told to dismantle their observation post and stand down.

John Marshall arrived in Tonawanda in the afternoon. He parked in a small blacktop square near a long, single-story building with a door and a chimney at each end and a row of windows along the side. There were two smaller buildings nearby, where he could smell food cooking and now and then hear women’s voices and the clatter of utensils.

He entered the long, low building he had been told to call the longhouse in time to hear several speeches in a language so alien to him that he was occasionally incapable of discerning even the mood. He guessed correctly that the first one was a prayer.

The prayer was spoken by a man who’d held an office in unbroken succession since Deganawida and Hiawatha convinced five warring nations to form the Iroquois confederacy at least five hundred years ago. The prayer was much older than that, and it contained a skeleton of the Seneca cosmology. In it the people thanked the Right-Handed Twin, Hawenneyu the Creator, for making all parts of the universe and, at the same time, thanked each of the parts themselves.

The prayer began with the lowest earthbound beings, the warriors and women, then moved upward to the water, the herbs and grasses, the bushes and saplings, then the trees, the corn, beans, and squash, the game animals, the birds. Then the people thanked the Thunderers, the winds, the sun, moon, and stars, and finally Hawenneyu. There was nothing in the prayer but thanks, because the Senecas did not believe in asking for anything. They only expressed gratitude for what had been created and preserved.

After that there was a recitation of an abridged version of the Gaiiwio, the “good word” that the prophet Handsome Lake had received in his visions two hundred years ago, during the worst moments of Seneca history, when the world had seemed to them to have changed terribly but really had not changed at all. One of Handsome Lake’s visions had told him to preserve the ancient cycle of feasts.

Marshall listened as an elderly man with a stentorian voice addressed the people on what appeared to be another matter of profound seriousness, upon which the audience burst into laughter, stood up, and went about preparing to serve food.

Marshall drifted through the crowds and began his search.

Once Marshall thought he saw the one he was looking for, but as he stepped toward her, a hand touched his arm. He turned and found Violet Peterson with her face close to his.

She said quietly, “If you’re here to arrest somebody, you picked a rotten time.”

“I didn’t – ”

“Would you go to a church on Easter and haul somebody out in front of his family?”

He said, “I’m not here to do anything like that. I was just hoping that they would be here. If you see them, will you let me know?”

She said suspiciously, “If I see them, I’ll let them know.” Marshall saw huge cauldrons brought in from the kitchen building, and matrons ladling food into bowls for eating in the dining hall next door and into covered containers for taking to people who were not here.

Twice he thought he saw her, but each time it was another young woman with long black hair. He didn’t find the one he had come to look for until early evening, after the dancing had begun. He saw her only because she was standing along the wall close to her husband. The drums throbbed, the singers wailed, and the turtle shells made a noise like ghosts whispering in Marshall’s ear as he approached.

She seemed to feel his presence rather than hear it. She turned to face him and stared into his eyes for a moment, then lowered her head and took a step. Her husband started to follow, but she shook her head.

She led Marshall out of the western door of the long, low building, down the wooden steps, and into the night. She turned again to look up at him.

He said, “I heard you were going to be here.”

“I didn’t say it. I left a note in my house for my husband.” He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “My name is John Marshall.”

She nodded. “My husband told me. He remembers you from the hospital.”

Marshall said, “I was the one in Santa Barbara.” She said,

“I’ve never been to Santa Barbara.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said. He looked in the direction of the longhouse, where the sounds of singing and dancing had grown louder. “What are you folks celebrating?” Jane seemed to ponder for a moment, as though she were compressing a great many complex matters, then answered,

“Being alive.”

Marshall smiled. “Me too.” He started again, looking at her intently. “I know you must have heard Richard Dahlman turned out to be innocent. All the evidence – a witness, tape recordings, videotapes even – all turned up miraculously. The charges were dropped.”

“I think I read something about it in the newspapers.” He looked down at his feet. “There was a woman I met not long ago who reminded me of you. She gave me a present.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a small black box that looked like a transistor radio. “This is something I thought you might like.”

“What is it?”

“It’s kind of a safety device. It detects even the very faintest resistance on any electrical line. If, for instance, there were some very small appliance that was draining voltage on your house – say, a transmitter of some kind – you could pick it up and find it.” He shrugged. “Silly gadget, but it could prevent the wires from heating up some time.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He began to back away from her. “Don’t mention it.” She stared into his eyes. “I never will.” Then she added, “Unless I happen to meet that woman.”

“What woman?” He fumed and walked toward the longhouse parking lot, then got into a car. She watched the car moving up the road until the two taillights diminished into a single, glowing spot of orange-red light no bigger than a firefly. She listened to the pounding of the drums and the shuffling of many feet on the wood floor inside.

This was the first night of Green Corn. This morning babies born since Midwinter had been given names, and adults who were taking on new names had announced them.

Tomorrow there would be the chanting of personal thanks for good fortune and accomplishments, the appearance of the Society of Faces to cure the sick, and more food and dancing.

And on the final day, there would be the casting of the peach pits, one side white and the other burnt black. The pits would be thrown down and read, over and over, until the black side or the white side triumphed, in imitation of the eternal battle between the Creator and his identical twin brother, the Destroyer.