Animal Appetite

captivity anyway. Consequently, my wish to call these people something other than “Indians” did not stem from some romantic vision of Hannah’s captors as noble savages. Rather, although I knew almost nothing about particular tribes, I did understand that all tribes weren’t alike. To call all of them “Indians” made as much sense as using “European” to lump together the seventeenth-century English and French. Also, like Hannah, I had a pecuniary motive. If I wanted to sell whatever I wrote about Hannah to a magazine as well as to Rita, I’d do well to avoid a word that would bother people. The terminology of political correctness, however, did nothing to solve my problem. I could hardly write that Hannah had been “captivated by Native Americans.”
    So that’s why I got in touch with Professor George Foley, who, in his own way, had captivated me. As he’d told me, he lived on Fayerweather Street, which, as it happens, crosses Huron Avenue conveniently near Emma’s and the Bryn Mawr Book Sale. His name was in the phone book. I dialed the number. He was at home.
    After polite preliminaries, I posed my question.
    “Coleman doesn’t say?” he asked.
    “No, she doesn’t. And I can’t find it in anything else I’ve read.”
    “Hmm. Well, to hazard a guess, I’d say they were Abenaki. Yes, I’d say there’s a ninety-five percent chance they were Abenaki.”
    The Abenaki were once widespread throughout what is now Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, he told me. Few survived the epidemics of smallpox, bubonic plague, and other diseases brought by the Europeans. I’d had no idea who they were. George Foley, I realized, must have been a wonderful professor, a gifted teacher. Instead of making me feel ashamed of my ignorance, he seized on my curiosity. He also invited me to tea. He promised that on Friday at four o’clock we’d have a long talk about Hannah Duston and the Abenaki. As I hung up, I made a silent vow that Professor Foley and I would also have a chat about Jack Andrews.
     

Twelve

     
    After my conversation with Professor Foley, I put on my heavy leather boots, a wool shirt, and pigskin work gloves, and went out to split and stack wood. The sky was the blue of bleached denim, the sun was a pale buttery yellow, and the air was wintery. When I’d been out there for an hour or so, the phone rang, and I dashed inside to grab it. Dr. Randall Carey’s voice was even more supercilious than deep. 1 explained that I’d read his chapter about the murder of Jack Andrews and wondered whether he’d be willing to discuss the subject with me. According to the phone book, I said, we were practically neighbors. He lived on Walden Street, didn’t he? I was at the corner of Appleton and Concord. Yes, the red house next to the spite building. Smitten as I was with Professor Foley, I imitated him: I invited Dr. Randall Carey to tea.
    Dr. Randall Carey refused, and not very graciously. He was very busy. He worked at home, but he did work. He did not say what he did. I worked at home, too, I announced. I was a writer. I did not inform Dr. Randall Carey that I wrote about dogs. Not that I’m ashamed of being a dog writer; on the contrary, I’m proud. It’s just that around here, when I say what I do, people get this funny look on their faces. I wished I’d had credentials of some sort to present to him. Dropping Professor Foley’s name would probably have worked, but it would also have felt like a betrayal of my harmless infatuation. So I fell back on the reliable skills honed by a lifetime of training dogs. I’d made the beginner’s mistake of asking a question: Come, Rover? Rover, come? Come to Mommy? I corrected my error: “I’m taking my dogs for a walk late this afternoon,” I informed Dr. Randall Carey. “I’ll be passing right by your house. We’ll stop in.”
    Life with malamutes has sharpened my sensitivity to power plays. When I encountered Dr. Randall Carey, I intended to emerge one up. Consequently, I dressed for success in a uniquely Cantabrigian manner: I wore my same old jeans, wool shirt, and heavy boots. At the highest levels of academe—Harvard, where else?—the So-and-So Professors of Such-and-Such are always getting mistaken for maintenance workers. Dr. Randall Carey would take one look and decide I was brilliant and eminent—unless he wrote me off as an unemployed lumberjack with the bad manners to go around inviting herself places she most