Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Janina resumes her teaching duties in October but is put out when she learns that her students are being commandeered to help with preparations for the new chapel, which will be dedicated to Saint Hubert on November 3. She is invited to attend the mass even though she is an atheist.

Saint Hubert’s story is an unusual one. He led a dissolute life and enjoyed hunting deer until one day he saw Jesus as the face of a deer that he was about to kill. Hubert immediately mended his ways and never killed again. Janina speculates, “How does someone like that become the patron saint of hunters? I was struck by the fundamental lack of logic in it all. If Hubert’s followers really wanted to emulate him, they would have to stop killing” (237).

The mass to dedicate the chapel is being conducted by Father Rustle. As Janina listens to the service, she thinks back to a visit from the priest a year earlier. At the time, she was still grieving the loss of her two dogs, her “little girls.” At the time, Father Rustle rebuked her for caring so much about mere animals.

Janina’s attention switches back to the present. She becomes aware of the dozens of men dressed in hunter green who have shown up for the service. Father Rustle speaks glowingly of the stewardship of the hunters who preserve the balance of nature by feeding wildlife. Janina can’t stand the hypocrisy of his sermon and compares this baiting practice to inviting someone to dinner to murder them. She begins shouting at the priest and his passive congregation. “Have you fallen asleep? How can you listen to such nonsense without batting an eyelid? Have you lost your minds? Or your hearts? Have you still got hearts?” (243). Some of the hunters escort Janina outside and slam the door behind her.

The next day, Janina learns that she is being fired from her teaching job because of her outburst. The school headmistress feels that she is a bad influence on the children. Her values would teach them to flout time-honored traditions like hunting and respect for the church.

Back at home that evening, Janina prepares supper for Oddball, Dizzy, and Good News. Her guests are distracted by the sound of sirens in the distance. Dizzy receives a phone call from the police station. Someone has set the church presbytery on fire, and Father Rustle is dead. Dizzy accuses Janina of the crime. Her guests have already guessed that she is the murderer. When they ask why, Janina wordlessly shows them a photograph. 

Janina explains the reason for her rampage. On the night of Big Foot’s death, she searched for his identity papers when she came across a photo of a group of hunters proudly displaying their kill. Among the many animal corpses, Janina recognizes her pets. “In the corner of the picture lay three dead Dogs, neatly laid out, like trophies. One of them was unfamiliar to me. The other two were my Little Girls” (253-54). She also recognized the hunters posing for the camera. They are the commandant, the president, and Innerd. Big Foot is also lurking in the background of the photo.

Although Big Foot accidentally choked on his dinner, his death inspired Janina to assume the role of wildlife avenger. She follows the commandant for days and eventually lures him to the abandoned well. There, she bludgeoned him over the head. Her murder weapon is the plastic bag that previously held the deer remains from Big Foot’s last meal. When she hung the empty bag outside on the tree to dry, it filled with ice and froze solid, making it a particularly appropriate murder weapon. Janina uses the same deer’s trotters to leave hoofprints around the crime scene.

A few nights later, Janina contacted Innerd and said the commandant asked her to deliver something. He willingly followed her into the woods behind his fox farm, thinking that she meant to return the bribe money he gave the commandant. Janina has already set a wire trap in the brush. After Innerd stepped into it, she beat him to death with her frozen bag of ice. She then set about freeing all the caged foxes. She tells her friends that afterward, she couldn’t remember the events of the evening at all.

The president’s death was a little more complicated. Janina found him sitting against the firehouse wall, very drunk. He begged her to take him home. She felt sorry for him but proceeded to poison him with the beetle pheromones that she stole months earlier from Boros’s supplies. Janina says that the president seemed almost relieved when he knew she meant to kill him. For good measure, she bashed in his head with her frozen bag of ice and poured more pheromone liquid all over his clothing, which is why the beetles swarmed across the president’s body after he died. Janina’s friends are speechless at her confession, and they soon depart.

The next morning Dizzy tries calling Janina. He knocks on the door, but Janina is groggy from her sleeping medication. When she gets to the door, all she finds is a volume of Blake’s letters with a passage about crime marked out. Janina takes the hint and realizes the police will soon be coming for her. When she hears them arrive, she hides in a cubby hole in the basement.

As the police conduct their search, Oddball appears to tell them that Janina has gone to visit friends in a faraway city. When the officers can’t find her, they leave. Janina waits a while longer before packing a few essentials and walking toward the Czech border. “I felt hot in my fleeces, my hat and scarf, but I knew that as soon as I crossed the border I wouldn’t need them anymore. […] And just then, over on the Czech side, Venus, my Damsel, shone out above the horizon” (271).

Janina makes her way to the bookshop that she has visited many times with her friends. The owner shelters her until Boros arrives a few days later to spirit Janina away in disguise. They take up residence at a remote entomological research station in the Białowieża Forest, where no one will find her. Janina communicates with her friends via letter, using Boros as a go-between. She also continues her astrology investigations and says, “My own Horoscope is the thousandth, and I often sit over it, doing my best to understand it. Who am I? One thing’s for sure—I know the date of my death” (273). As she assures Dizzy in her next letter to him, she knows she still has many years to live.