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"You'll be the first recipient of this new fellowship. My father has established the Hannah Fellowship, in my stepmother's name, and after careful consideration, you've been chosen as the first recipient." |
Trudy opened the door, her hand holding a tumbler of water, half full. She wore her usual paint-speckled jeans, a sweater of chocolate wool a shade darker than her skin, and she'd had her hair cut even shorter since I'd seen her last. My God, those cheekbones. I stole a quick puff off my inhaler. |
"I'm the one who should be knocking on your door late at night, telling you how I feel," she said. From behind her came a tide of warm air, smelling faintly of turpentine. |
"Okay," I said. "How do you feel?" |
Trudy shifted in the doorway. She took a drink of water. I could see she'd been repainting the walls of her dorm room with ancient cave drawings and symbols. |
"Well, I'm pissed off," she said, sounding reluctantly justified. "I've got good ideas. My Clovis theory isn't even out there in the literature. Nobody's articulated it. And all I hear about is Eggers. What's his idea? He doesn't even have one. He has a gimmick." |
"Trudy, I recruited you, remember? I've always believed in you. I don't know how you'll ever prove it, but your dissertation hypothesis is brilliant. For a culture based on making animals extinct, to fuse weaponry and art only makes sense. The part about women carving all the spear points while the men hunted-well, you'll maybe have to gather more data on that." |
"I've smelled Doritos on him," she said and paused to let that sink in. "Dorito breath is unmistakable. Did you know he doesn't read the textbooks he assigns? He doesn't even use chalk, because it's 'technology.' He gives his tests orally, and gets one of those girls of his to bubble in the grades on his grade sheets. Do you know how many bubbles I bubble in? And he's Mr. Primitive? Look at how I live. I steal toilet paper from the faculty bathroom. I'm eating noodles and oil in here. If my car breaks down, I'm the one who has to fix it." |
"Doritos, huh?" |
"Spicy Taco flavor." |
"Look, Trudy, I'm going to need a favor from you." |
"I'm not done yet," she said. |
I put my hands up, as if to say, No offense, I come in peace. |
"That was my fellowship," she said, pointing at me. "Mine." |
Trudy looked as if she was gearing up for a speech, but then, as if she'd heard her own words from afar and decided she didn't like their tenor, she stopped. "Okay, I'm done now," she said. |
I waited a moment, to be sure she was through, then said, "This favor I need, it involves meeting Eggers, but the favor's for me." |
Now she waited a moment, looking at me with her head cocked. |
"Is that for real?" she asked. "That this fellowship's named after your mother?" |
The fellowship was in honor of Janis, but I didn't correct her. I didn't answer at all. Trudy seemed to see in my eyes that this was a subject about which I would not lie. She shook her head, as if disgusted with herself, then disappeared into her dorm room and returned with a heavy scarf. |
"Okay," she said. "Let's go." |
We crossed the courtyard together, passing a solitary picnic table frosted with white. Trudy steered me around the blanket of snow that hid the sunken volleyball pit. Black slush lined the edge of the Honor Roll Parking Lot, and as we trudged through it, heading for the quad and Eggers' lodge, I couldn't help noting the natural grace and authority with which Trudy moved. |
It would be less than ethical of me if at this point I did not confess that I believed Trudy was the ultimate female specimen. Intelligence and beauty aside, and from a strictly professional anthropological perspective, her body was perfectly evolved-tall frame, thick bones, and long muscles-a decathlete's physique. Her back flared into broad, square shoulders that framed a strong chest marked with small and unobtrusive breasts, and she carried just enough fat to optimize insulation and energy reserves without compromising mobility. I'd seen her body articulated once as she swam butterfly inside the jade cube of the Carney Aquatic Center, the points of her rotator cuffs launching each stroke, causing a wave that ran through pectorals, abdominals, and quadriceps before she cracked into a dolphin kick with the cablelike snap of her Achilles tendons. This was not the body of a gatherer. This was a person who could walk into any society, historic or prehistoric, and demonstrate abilities that were absolutely commanding. Of course I kept such thoughts to myself, lest I appear lecherous, or just plain old-fashioned. |
We followed a thin column of woodsmoke toward Eggers' lodge, which lay in the darkness ahead. Janis was a shadow in the trees uphill from us, and the whole campus was quiet except for one soul. Out in the quad, a lone student was running the fitness track in the late cold. He jogged in his parka until he reached the pull-up station, where his breath plumed upward each time his chin crested the bar. After a certain number, he ran on. |
Eventually, we reached the muddy, snowless circle that surrounded the lodge, and were met with the charring smell of an odd, sour meat. With a lift of the flap, Eggers emerged in a bizarre set of pantaloons and a huge serape of black fur. He saw we were looking at the strange hat of rabbit hides on his head. "It's not finished," he said. "Come on. I spend half my life gathering wood, and the other half melting snow." |
"Here we are, Eggers," I said. "What's this favor?" |
"It involves our new Clovis point," he said. |
Trudy narrowed her eyes at him. |
"There are no new Clovis points," she said. "Unless you think you're the one person in the world who can make them." |
"I have a real one," Eggers said, "and we're going to use it." He ducked into his lodge and returned with a heavy spear, about two and a half meters long, the pink Clovis point bound to the end with some kind of thin fiber. |
"Are you crazy, Eggers?" I asked. "This is an artifact. It's invaluable." |
"No, sir," he said. "This is a tool, made to be used, and the only thing I still need to do for my dissertation is bring down a large herbivore. This is your idea, Dr. Hannah. This is straight out of The Depletionists. I don't care what your critics think. I read that book ten times. Your book is why I'm doing this." He gestured at his lodge, his clothes. "Don't you want to see if it's true, if this point can really do it?" |
"There's no need," I told him. "These points have been found lodged in mammoth and mastodon bones. There is no doubt they kill." |
"You can shoot an African elephant ten times with a rifle and it will only get angry," Eggers said, gesturing a little wildly with the spear. Trudy and I backed up a step. "Fifty years later, when that elephant dies of old age, it leaves bones with bullets in them. Maybe your mastodons were the ones that got away. You ever think of that? But how can you know, without research and testing?" |
Trudy laughed. "And where are you going to find a mastodon?" |
Eggers turned to me. "All I need is an animal that weighs at least a thousand pounds. Isn't that right, Dr. Hannah?" |
"Well," I said, "I suppose." |
My head was starting to spin a little. I kept seeing pink spears flying into the future-where would they land? Most of my colleagues believed climate change at the end of the Ice Age had killed off all the big animals in North America, which caused the Clovis to starve and disband; but I'd staked my whole career on the belief that a Clovis point could take down any animal. Yet Eggers was right-I'd never seen a kill. |
"Where are you going to find a thousand-pound animal that no one's using?" Trudy asked. "Those guards at Hormel mean business. They'd grind you up and turn you into an Eggers burger." |
"Don't you worry about Eggers burgers," Eggers said. "Eggers has this all planned out." |
I put a hand on Eggers' shoulder. "Is this the bad news?" I asked. "You know, the bad part of the good-news/bad-news thing?" |
"The bad news comes tomorrow," he said. "This is the celebration part." With that, Eggers began backing into the darkness of the quad. |
Trudy and I stood there a moment, looking at each other. |
"Did you see that Clovis point?" she asked. "A woman made that. I know it. It took her hours, sitting around a mineral deposit with her friends. She talked and told stories while her hands worked the quartz. She chose the material for its beauty, because this was her art, and the design was taught to her by her mother-the keeper of a thousand years of hunting technology." |
While Trudy spoke, I pictured her hands working the quartz, holding the point up to the light to search for imperfections, then testing its edge with her thumb. |
We both reached the same silent conclusion, then set out after Eggers, following his tracks in the snow, though the vaporous trail of his body odor left no doubt as to his course. By the time we reached the dean's garden, we were abreast of him. |
Trudy stuck her hand out. |
"Let's see this so-called spear," she said. |
She inspected the spear by pointing it toward the moon and turning the shaft to see if it was straight. Then she examined the blade. "It smells like mint," she said. |
"It does not," Eggers said. |
"Is this dental floss?" she asked. "You tied this point onto the shaft with dental floss, didn't you?" |
I was only half listening. In my head, I was animating Clovis points. They flew and flew, waves of them. What had seemed like abstractions were coming clear. I saw a spear fly from dark hands into a gleam of bright light before passing into the haze of its victim. |
Trudy said, "Dental floss, unless I'm mistaken, is made from wax-infused monofilament, which is derived from modern polymers. Did the Clovis use petrochemicals, Dr. Hannah?" |
"Listen," Eggers said. "Do you know how long it takes to dry and string catgut? I've done it. I know." |
By now, we were in the Old Main's colonnade. Across the street was Parkton Square, and the locked gates of the Glacier Days carnival. Eggers neared the tall fence and appraised it. With one hand, he shook the chain link, and a shower of ice beads rained down on him. He tried to climb it, but in fur booties could get no hold. |
Trudy crossed to the gates and went to work on the lock that held the chain. "This is just a combo lock, like the kind for your school locker," she said. "It would be easier if I had my tools with me. I could just pop it open with a prybar." |
Trudy knelt on the cold sidewalk and put her ear to the green-faced lock, while I looked through the fence to the dark carnival inside. From somewhere kept coming the keening of ravens, and though I couldn't be sure, I felt I saw a flash of black wings. The raven was a medium-sized bird, with a great curving beak that drove straight into a heavy brow, giving it a look of constant judgment. I can't think of many birds that were physically dangerous to humans, but to those with a guilty conscience, the raven could be a troubling omen. |
"Voilà," Trudy said as the lock opened, and it wasn't until we were through the gate that the stillness of the place gave me the shivers. In the dark, all the funhouse faces were more personal, like people from your distant past. Each game seemed to stand waiting for its perfect customer, which wasn't me. The Hammer Blow sat ready for a stronger man, and the Gypsy dared me to purchase its dark fortune. In the moon, all the overdrawn devils and clowns seemed cut from maroon-and-blue plastic, and I wished someone would shut those ravens up. |
Eggers led us down a stretch of midway bordered on both sides by shooting galleries. At counter after counter were rifles and pistols mounted on rods, all pointing into dark tents toward rows of bears who stood when shot, ducks who fell back into nothing, and wolves who would grab their asses and howl at the moon when plinked. |
We passed darkened trailers that dealt in Indian fry bread and twin funnel-cake carts that folded up like campers, and then we came to a huge pile of the night's leftover popcorn, which had been thrown out in the snow. This is where the ravens were, pacing in the moon, gulleting down cold popcorn. |
"God, I love popcorn," Eggers said. "That's one of the things I really miss." |
"Maybe Doritos will come out with a popcorn-flavored chip," Trudy told him. |
He said nothing, only steered us under the old roller coaster, the kind that packed up onto a couple of flatbed trailers. Its name was no longer visible, but Dragon or Sidewinder would be safe bets. Underneath, a lattice of shadows passed over our faces, and we could see the stains of oil that had dripped down the supports. When the light filtered down just right, you could make out the occasional flash of the nuts and washers that had worked themselves loose and now littered the ground. |
Finally, Eggers came to a stop before a temporary corrugated shed the size of an aircraft hangar, hastily assembled on a bare parking lot. "Here we are," he said, and we all looked at the sign above the great sliding door. It read "4-H." |
Inside, a single propane heater kept the room just above freezing, though the asphalt floor was certainly colder. The room was lined on both sides with pens of varying sizes, some with straw on the ground, and others with little shelters inside. Maybe half held animals. We walked down the row in the dim fluorescent lighting, stepping over the hoses that were wound everywhere to spray down the waste. A little llama came out of its shed and nuzzled up to the rail. Its pen had a large blue-and-yellow handicapped-parking icon on its floor, and the furry little guy seemed intent on sucking everyone's fingers. At the end of the room, where the heat barely reached, stood a pen larger than the others with what looked like a child's fort constructed in the back. There was a piece of masking tape affixed to the rail in front of us, and on it someone had spelled "Sir Oinks A Lot" in straggling letters. |
"Oh, you're kidding me," I said. "This isn't right." |
Eggers clapped twice and whistled. |
Something rustled in the fort, and its tiny walls shook. |
"This isn't happening," I told them. "This is a child's pet, that's a name a child would think up." |
A giant brown-and-gray hog emerged from the fort, its head big as a beer keg. It was a pork-belly hog and must have weighed eleven hundred pounds. It snorted twice, and each time it exhaled, its white breath cleared circles of dust and straw from the floor. Its head floated, cranelike, from Trudy to Eggers to me. |
Harder to describe than any bird is the pig. There was no animal quite like it. What defined it most were not its enormous dimensions, but the clack of its cloven feet on hard surfaces, the guttural horn of its squeal, the smack of its jowls bouncing as it walked, and the way the tugging weight of its face revealed the yellow undersides of its eyeballs. But what truly comes to mind when I think of the pig are sunsets over the river after the sky was blackened with the kerosened smoke of towering pyres of burning hogs. It's true that I haven't seen a pig in thirty years, but lately I have turned to petroglyph art in an attempt to document those events, and what I have discovered is that, despite its simple oblong shape, the pig is the most difficult figure to convey to a rockface. |
Eggers bent over and touched his toes. Then he held the spear over his head with two hands, leaning forward and back, stretching side to side. Finally, he jumped up and down to get the blood going. "All in the name of science," he said. |
"Wait a minute," I told him. "We should talk about this, we should realize what we're doing here. At least let's find some consensus." |
I turned to Trudy for a dose of sanity, but there was a wild look in her eyes. |
"No one's hunted with a Clovis point in twelve thousand years," she said. |
Eggers added, "This is the hunt. This is what connects us to the ancient ones, to the lost peoples of the world." |
Trudy touched my coat. "Look," she said, "I know your critics think the last chapter in The Depletionists is New Age-y, but when you say that the reason we are drawn to the artifact is to know, without judgment, the heart of another, I believe it. That's the whole reason I look at Paleolithic art. That's why I came here to study with you." |
I took my glasses off and folded them. I rubbed my temples a moment. |
"Okay," I said. "Okay." |
"Wow," Eggers said. "We're joining the elect few." |
"Yeah," Trudy added, "we're making history." |
"Here you go, then," Eggers said, handing me the spear. |
"Me? Wait a minute." |
Eggers said, "It's your Clovis point, Dr. Hannah." |
"I don't know how to throw a spear," I told him. "You're the one living in the Stone Age." |
"That's right," Eggers said. "A pig gets killed with a twelve-thousand-year-old spear. Who do you think they're going to suspect? Yes, perhaps the authorities might consider the Paleolith living in the park." |
"He's got a point," Trudy said. |
"What was with the calisthenics, then?" |
Eggers looked shocked. "We're all going to be running in a couple minutes." |
I hefted the spear and watched as Sir Oinks A Lot took a lazy turn around the pen, probably looking for a newer, more comfortable place to sleep. |
"This thing's heavy," I said. |
"Choke up on your grip," Trudy told me. |
Eggers pointed at the pig. "Aim just behind the shoulder blade. That's home to lung, liver, and heart. You'll get at least two out of three." |
I took an extra puff off my inhaler, for luck, then backed up a couple of steps, then a couple more. I don't know why, but I scratched the soles of my shoes, one at a time, on the asphalt. I wiped a hand on my pants. The pig started to circle, the way a dog would before lying down, and I started to time my throw. |
"Don't miss, Dr. Hannah," Trudy said. "That point's irreplaceable." |
I ran at the pen and thrust my arm high, but my arm wouldn't let go. |
I stood there with the spear still in my hand. |
The truth came to me cold and swift: I was no hunter. |
"Oh, give it here," Trudy said, loosening up her shoulders. |
"Give the woman the spear," Eggers said. "She holds an all-military-school record in track and field." |
"Trudy," I said, "we can't ask you to throw this spear. I'm a white male professor, and you, you know, you're an African American female student." |
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