Subject: (urth) Wolfe story in Weird Tales

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 06:05:45 +0000

This months Weird Tales has a new Wolfe story, "My Name is Nancy Wood" I read 
it quickly in the bookstore, so here are some spoilers

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It is a first person account which purports to be a note found interred with a 
woman who has been dead for a century.  According to a prefatory note from a 
doctor, she is exhumed because their is a suspicion that she was poisoned by a 
lover and died.  The note says that Nancy Wood, the narrator, was transfered 
from a Sanatarium to a cardiac ward where she worked as a nurse.  She had a 
patient who was a Reverend.  He asks her to pray for him, and she eventually 
breaks down and does so sincerely.  He says he doubts he will ever get back to 
St. Martha of the Wood, and she notes that he thinks she must be related 
somehow due to her name.  He dies, then gets up and gets dressed.  She takes 
him home and they make love.  She takes him back to the hospital, where he is 
later found dead.  He is rushed off to the morgue, but when he arrives there 
he is alive again, so he gets sent back.  Nurse Wood begs her grandneice to 
bury her with pencil and paper in case the same thing should happen to her 
after she dies.  The Reverend was married, so their affair was adulterous.
It ends with a disclaimer from the present day doctor, who doubts that the 
note was really written in the grave.

Ok, here's my best shot at this one: the Reverend may have had some kind of 
medication that induced the old false death of Romeo and Juliet fame.  He took 
it as a scam to win people over to his church and beliefs, and he used it to 
get Nurse Wood in bed.  It may have stopped his heart for a while or 
something.  Maybe his wife was poisoning him with it for infidelities.  
Perhaps Nancy Wood was introduced to the same drug, through the jealous wife 
or by threatening to continue their affair or make it public after he returned 
to life.  However, I figure she would probably have been embalmed, so their 
might be a much more mystical explanation than that, instead of my rather 
ordinary drug idea.  I suppose I should look up the significance of Martha of 
the Wood right now.  Just some initial impressions; I don't know if anyone 
else has read it.

Marc Aramini

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