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Meadow drove an old Subaru station wagon. The back was filled with lights, microphones, gels, lens cases, and other shooting gear.
    â€œSure,” Meadow said. “But the Iroquois have their own ideas about who was martyred. The Jesuits cut a swath through here, and there are competing histories standing right next to each other. When you buy a prayer card, you are picking a side, you know.”
    â€œReally? Is it offensive?” Carrie held up the card.
    â€œIt’s complicated,” Meadow said. “Did she have a great faith or in converting did she turn her back on her tradition of Long House spiritual practices? Is she the brave orphan who survived smallpox and had a genuine epiphany or is her elevation just the ongoing saga of the spiritual colonization of native peoples?” Meadow gripped the bottom of the steering wheel with one finger while she took a swallow from a can of Diet Dr Pepper. She smiled. “Probably both things are true: she had a conversion and she is a propaganda tool.” Meadow turned up a road heading north, and moved up into the hills above the Mohawk. The air smelled of manure, and the fields were dotted with cows.
    â€œBut I must admit what most intrigues me is that her devotion manifested itself with—naturally—lifelong chastity and mortificationrituals. They draw her as so pretty on that card, call her ‘Lily.’ But she must have been something in person, disfigured and then continually rending her flesh. This zealous scarred woman hurting herself with hot coals and cat-o’-nine-tails to feel closer to God. Now there’s a woman you could build an interesting film around, right? Like Falconetti’s screen-filling, deep-suffering eyes in Dreyer’s Joan of Arc. ”
    â€œYou like it up here,” Carrie said.
    â€œNot Ingrid Bergman’s glam little nun.”
    â€œNever! That hussy.”
    â€œYes, I do like it,” Meadow said. “Do you remember Drums Along the Mohawk ?”
    â€œNo,” Carrie said. “I haven’t seen it.”
    â€œIt’s John Ford, 1939. Starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert. So Fonda plays a settler constantly under attack from the Mohawks and the Tories.” Farther up Meadow turned again, and they approached the town of Johnstown. Here farmland gave way to towns with no warning except a wooden sign. The sign said welcome, and then the farms stopped and houses appeared right by the road: a few sadly columned old behemoths, a prefab double-wide, a set-back stone mansion, and a stingy version of a gingerbread Victorian painted all white. The paint was peeling, especially on the sides.
    â€œIt’s a very patriotic movie—from the settlers’ point of view, of course—and the interesting part is that Henry Fonda’s family is from that town, Fonda, his relatives were the European settlers who pushed the Five Nations out of there.” Meadow looked over at Carrie. Carrie laughed.
    â€œReally? The same Fondas?” Carrie said. The road bypassed the old downtown, and now the pasture was replaced by a commercial strip that could have been on Route 3 in New Jersey or in the Valley in Los Angeles. A Super 8 motel. McDonalds, Friendly’s, MonroMuffler/Brake, Big Lots discount store, multiple car dealers. Carrie felt the dulling effect of the familiar commercial architecture.
    â€œAre there enough people up here to even bother building these things?” Carrie said.
    â€œI don’t get it either. This is the ugly arterial strip between Johns­town and Gloversville. But the downtowns are old and quite pretty, if deserted.”
    Sure enough, Main Street in Gloversville was a series of intact turn-of-the-century storefronts largely empty, ornate cornices attached to limestone back buildings. There were big brick warehouses with large multipane windows, many panes missing and some of the windows covered in wood boards. “It is great that they