Still Life with Woodpecker

After Bernard’s disastrous meeting with her parents, Leigh-Cheri doesn’t expect support from her parents. Instead, she cries on Gulietta’s shoulder and then makes an appointment with Bernard’s lawyer.

Bernard’s lawyer, Nina Jablonski, has red hair and is seven months pregnant. Nina tells Leigh-Cheri that she can visit Bernard, but the authorities are convinced that Bernard is involved in a plot to return Max to the throne, and their conversation will almost certainly be bugged. Because of this, Bernard requests that Leigh-Cheri tell him a story, and she realizes that she only knows one.

At the jail, Leigh-Cheri tells Bernard the story that Gulietta told her every night at bedtime. A princess plays with her golden ball in the forest, and it falls into the water. She begins to cry, because the water is far too deep for her to retrieve it, and a frog appears. He offers to retrieve the ball in exchange for being her constant companion, eating, sleeping, and playing with her.

The princess agrees, and the frog dives down and brings up the golden ball. When he gives it to her, however, she runs home and forgets about him. The next night at dinnertime, the frog appears at the door, but the princess shuts him out. When the king hears the story, he tells her she must always keep her promises. The frog eats beside her, and that night, demands to sleep in her bed. She refuses and throws him against the wall. The frog turns into a handsome prince who asks the princess to marry him. They live happily ever after.

After Leigh-Cheri finishes the story, Bernard is quiet. Just before he is taken away, he asks what happened to the golden ball.

Over the years, Leigh-Cheri has often wondered why the frog would want to marry such a bratty princess and why the Brothers Grimm represented princesses in such an unflattering light. However, she had never wondered what happened to the golden ball, as it was only an object in the story. Some readers theorize that the ball symbolizes the moon but still don’t question what happened to it. She wonders why it is so important to Bernard.

The CIA believes that the story is a coded message from Max to Bernard. Leigh-Cheri isn’t allowed to visit again. The press finds out about her connection to the Woodpecker and begins pestering her, creating upheaval throughout the household.

On Leigh Cheri’s 20th birthday, she meets Nina Jablonski at a bar. After several drinks, she asks Nina to help her get Bernard out of jail. Nina tells her that Bernard won’t have a trial; instead, he is beginning a 10-year sentence immediately and will be eligible for parole in 20 months.

Bernard fires Nina when he finds out he won’t have the fun of a trial and begins his prison sentence. Leigh-Cheri cuts his picture out of the newspaper and puts it under her pillow.

A few days later, Leigh-Cheri visits Nina one last time. The lawyer accuses her of immaturity and of being a romantic. Leigh-Cheri only wants to know the exact dimensions and layout of Bernard’s cell. Nina describes it for her and tells her that the only object in the cell is a pack of Camel cigarettes. On the way home, Leigh-Cheri buys a pack of Camels.

Bernard has several favorite bomb recipes. In one, he cuts the hearts and diamonds from a deck of playing cards and soaks them in alcohol before packing them in a pipe. He used this kind of bomb to escape prison the first time. For another, he uses lye and aluminum foil. He escaped another prison with a bomb made from gasoline. His most characteristic bomb, however, involves Fruit Loops cereal and guano—“batshit”—and acts more as a smoke bomb.

Leigh-Cheri moves into the attic, where she recreates an exact replica of Bernard’s cell, even blacking out all but one window. Gulietta empties Leigh-Cheri’s chamber pot and brings food every day.

For the first few days, Leigh-Cheri doesn’t know what to do with herself. On the fourth day, she decides to think, in a productive way, about love. She paces her cell, masturbates, and tries to name all the US state capitals. She loses track of whether she is awake or asleep.

After a week, the princess wakes one morning feeling clear-headed and energetic. She eats dinner and then notices that the moon, beaming through her one windowpane, is lighting the only object in her room: the pack of Camels.

Leigh-Cheri examines the cigarette package and its warning message, wondering why anyone smokes.

She reads the entire package, then examines the drawing on the front. She reads the word CHOICE and notices that it reads the same in its reflection. She looks for other camels in the drawing. Every day, she reads the cigarette pack.

Leigh-Cheri’s time in the room is marked only by Gulietta’s visits to bring food and empty the chamber pot. Every day, she examines the cigarette pack, noting its dimensions. She plays with it, tossing and catching it, but mostly she just stares at the picture, imagining herself in its desert.

Spring passes, and the room becomes hot and stuffy in June. More and more, Leigh-Cheri escapes into the Camel pack, but she does not open it.

In July, Leigh-Cheri realizes that her menstrual cycle is in sync with the moon. She likes this connection with Bernard through his idea of lunaception. Even though the moon is an object, it exerts force on her, and the pack of Camels does the same.

While Leigh-Cheri is in the attic, a revolution is happening in the Furstenberg-Barcalonas’ homeland. More crucially for the family, Gulietta goes on strike, demanding a salary. She has never been paid beyond room and board, but now that the plastic frog is almost empty of cocaine, she wants the money to buy more.

During Gulietta’s strike, the downstairs household suffers, but Gulietta continues to bring Leigh-Cheri food and empty her chamber pot. Gulietta also brings magazines, which Leigh-Cheri refuses. The princess does, however, accept Prince Charming in his terrarium. Still, her thoughts always return to the Camel pack and the pyramids on it.

Leigh-Cheri stares into the pack, imagining being amidst the pyramids. From far away they seem perfect, but up close, the damage of the years is clear. She has questions about the pyramids’ origins and their builders. It seems clear to her that, regardless of who built the pyramids, they must have a purpose. She wonders if the Red Beards from Argon built them.

Leigh-Cheri can’t stop thinking about the pyramids and eventually sends Gulietta to the library for a book about package design. Chuck, the CIA agent, follows Gulietta. While he is gone, two men pull up in a van, looking for Max.

When there is a knock at her door, Leigh-Cheri assumes it is Gulietta, but it is Max. He is embarrassed because Leigh-Cheri is naked, having taken off her clothes because of the stifling attic heat. He gives her the book Gulietta checked out and asks after her mental health. He tells her that people are beginning to emulate her by imprisoning themselves, but she doesn’t care. He leaves without telling her that the two men who visited him are involved in their country’s revolution and want her to be queen when they succeed.

Max asks Leigh-Cheri what she will do when Bernard is released, and she realizes that she doesn’t know, beyond being with him. Further, she has no idea what he will do.

The library book has a wealth of information about the Camel package. She discovers that the lithographer who added the pyramids to the package remains anonymous but had red hair. Despite the fact that the package was meant to reference the Turkish tobacco blend in the cigarettes, there were no pyramids in Turkey. However, when the company attempted to change the package, its customers were so angry that they abandoned the plan. After she finishes reading the entry, Leigh-Cheri formulates a theory that will change her life.

Leigh-Cheri’s theory maintains that although the pyramids around the world are ancient, they are still relevant. They also appear regularly on other objects, like the Camel pack and the US dollar bill. The pyramid’s addition to the dollar bill is credited to Thomas Jefferson, who had red hair. Red-haired people are also mentioned in the myths and legends of the Latin American pyramids. Leigh-Cheri theorizes that the Red Beards allied themselves with those civilizations, and their enemies, the Yellow Beards, targeted those civilizations, speeding their demise.

She theorizes that the Red Beards chose the Camel cigarette pack as a means of communication and placed important symbols on it: the camel, the palm trees, and two pyramids. They also hid a woman’s figure in the camel, representing the Moon Goddess. Finally, they placed the word CHOICE on the package in such a way that even when reflected in the mirror, the message remains the same.

In October, the revolution in the family’s homeland is accelerating. Max is depressed because the revolutionaries don’t want him to rule. Although previously they wanted Leigh-Cheri to rule, now that she is involved with a “common convict” and the subject of gossip, they aren’t sure. Max decides he won’t return to his homeland.

Leigh-Cheri realizes that her theory is just a reworking of Bernard’s philosophy but hopes that it is more. She wonders if Bernard, in his cell with his Camels, has come to any of the same conclusions. After six months in the attic, she decides to visit Bernard, disguised as Nina Jablonski. In preparation to leave the attic, Leigh-Cheri opens her window. Chuck, who is on a ladder trying to see into her room, falls into the blackberry brambles below. She calls for help and sees a man coming up the driveway in a cheap suit, bringing news from Bernard’s prison.

Leigh-Cheri’s self-imprisonment gets a lot of coverage in the news, and people around the world have been similarly imprisoning themselves to declare their “subjugation” to love. She doesn’t know anything about this, but Bernard hears the news. He writes a letter to the princess in which he berates her for this new social movement.

Leigh-Cheri cries for three days before destroying her cell, crushing the Camel pack in her hand. After she stops crying, she tells Gulietta to bring A’ben Fizel.

The Remington SL3 remains stubbornly modern despite the author’s changes. However, it is too late to switch to another machine, so the only choice is to try to get to the end of the story with it.