Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

By dawn, Janina and Oddball have finished preparing the corpse, and they walk back to Oddball’s house. He has taken charge of Big Foot’s little dog, which pleases Janina. She is also impressed by how neatly Oddball keeps his cottage. The two share a glass of tea, but Oddball isn’t much of a conversationalist. Janina thinks, “With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts” (24). As they drink their tea in silence, Janina recalls an episode when she went to the local police station to complain about Big Foot’s poaching and his cruelty toward his pet. The police commandant dismissed her as a crazy old lady, and nothing was done.

After daybreak, Janina returns to her cottage. She hangs the empty plastic bag from the deer remains outside to dry on a plum tree. Then, she goes indoors to get some sleep. Once again, her rest is disturbed when two men arrive. They say that they were friends of Big Foot’s, and they’ve come to pay their respects. Janina once more gets up and walks to her former neighbor’s house. There, she finds a collection of men standing around smoking outside.

Because she is the only woman in the group, they consider her the chief mourner. She lets them inside and lights candles around the body. The men ask her to lead them in a hymn, and Janina recalls a church song called “Perpetual Light.” The group sings for an hour while Janina’s thoughts stray to the concept of eternal light. She thinks,

We even carry a particle of it within us, each of us, even Big Foot. So in fact death should please us. That’s what I was thinking as I sang, though in actual fact I have never believed in any personalized distribution of eternal Light (39).

After the impromptu ceremony ends, the police arrive to investigate the circumstances of Big Foot’s death. One of the officials is Oddball’s son, who chastises his father for moving the body and dressing the remains in fresh clothes. Janina thinks Oddball’s son is disrespectful and dismissive toward his father. Janina and Oddball are told that they will have to come to the police station and make official statements about the event later in the week.

The following day, Janina makes her rounds to inspect all the houses in the little village. She is the caretaker for the homes belonging to its summer residents. Only she, Oddball, and Big Foot remain in town during the frigid, dark winters. After ensuring that all the houses are in good order, she retreats to her own home to work on Big Foot’s astrology chart. Janina says,

I was curious to know if the date of a Person’s death can be seen in their Horoscope...In all these years I have gathered 1,042 dates of birth and 999 dates of death, and my minor research is still in progress. […] A kitchen table project (56).

She is content to work for days on her calculations, accompanied by the sound of the TV in the background. Janina only watches the weather channel and declares that she receives all the information she requires from that one station. As she continues with the chart, she admits that she isn’t a very good astrologer at interpreting aspects. She says, “I look at them through my fear, and despite the semblance of cheerfulness that people naively and ingenuously ascribe to me, I see everything as if in a dark mirror” (59).