Grendel's Guide to Love and War

by A. E. Kaplan

  I dug my nails into my palms, and behind me I heard Ed mutter something under his breath.

  Zip’s voice pitched down an octave into something menacing. “It will never happen, little boy.” She turned and left and Ed and I fell in behind her.

  “Do not turn around,” she whispered. “Absolutely, positively, do not look at him.”

  So we didn’t. When we got back inside my kitchen, Zip stuck her head in the freezer and stayed like that while Ed started opening and closing the cabinets. “There’s nothing here, Grendel.”

  “I just went shopping.”

  “You didn’t buy anything! And—gah! There are ants everywhere!”

  “I still can’t believe you went out with him,” I said to Zip. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “People do stupid things, Tom.”

  “This goes a little beyond stupid. What were you thinking?”

  She took her head out of the freezer and gave me a look. “You need to discontinue this line of questioning. Right now.”

  Ed said, “Everybody’s allowed to date one loser, Tom. It’s in the rules.”

  “The rules,” I repeated, as if Zip had only ever dated one loser. Pasha wasn’t exactly top-of-the-barrel material, either. I didn’t know much about the guy before that, except that I’d come across a photo of him once, and he had a tattoo across his arm that said NIHILISM SAVES! There did seem to be a bit of a pattern.

  I muttered, “Daddy issues.”

  Behind Ed’s back, Zip grabbed me by the front of my shirt and whispered, “Do not. Go there. Ever.”

  I blinked a few times as she smoothed her face back into something approaching normal. Over Zip’s shoulder, Ed continued as if he hadn’t heard this last exchange, and frankly, I was glad of it. He shot Zip a fond smile. “Just don’t marry him or anything, right?” he said.

  She closed the freezer door. “Oh yes,” she deadpanned. “That’s been my evil plan all along.”

  “So,” I said, sitting down and propping my feet on the next chair. Zip quickly shoved them out of the way so she could sit there instead. “Are we on to plan B?”

  She smirked. “Oh, Tommy-Tom. Talking to Wolf was plan B. It was a brief respite from my work on plan A.”

  “And plan A was?”

  “Is. It’s still in effect.” She patted me on the head. “How familiar are you with Shultz’s Artisanal Pork Farm?”

  The Shultzes ran an artisanal pork farm just outside of town, where they sold free-range organic bacon to rich foodies in Chambliss and, through their local farm-share program, up in DC. It was fairly well-known that the twenty-seven-dollar-a-pound bacon was the best on the East Coast, though I’d never tried it. The pork chops were sold to the Inn at Elm Springs and other restaurants with flamboyant restaurateurs and hundred-dollar entrées, and the pigs, rumor had it, were treated better than most people’s pets. Until they were turned into food, anyway.

  “You do know,” said Zip, “that Mrs. Henry is running a medicinal-marijuana operation out of her basement.”

  Mrs. Henry lived two blocks over. She had a small but steady stream of customers, most of whom were our neighbors. “Of course,” I said. “Everyone knows that.”

  “And you also know what she does with her leftovers? You know, the stems and stuff?”

  I blinked. “I didn’t know there were leftovers in pot production.”

  “Sure. Well, she trades them to Bob Shultz in exchange for free pork chops.”

  Ed sat down in the chair next to Zip and started eating some seriously freezer-burned ice cream out of the carton. Zip peeked into the container and shook her head. “That’s desperation food there, Ed.” He laughed and kept eating it.

  I tapped my hand on the table. “So what does he do with the marijuana stems?”

  “He feeds them to the pigs. It’s apparently something he picked up in Bhutan when he was backpacking there in the eighties. All the free-roaming pigs eat tons of wild pot. It’s supposed to make them fatter. Or taste better. Or both, maybe—I wasn’t really paying that much attention to the story.”

  “Shultz Farm: Where Pigs Fly.”

  “I’ll suggest it for their T-shirt. Anyway, that’s the plan.”

  “Your plan involves stoner pigs.”

  “My plan involves stoner pigs,” she said, holding up a finger, “and a trailer.”

  “I think you may be leaving out some key details here?”

  “Pfft,” she said. “Those are minor.”

  None of this sounded minor to me.

  “Tom. Come on. Don’t you want to get back at Wolf?”

  “We’ve gone down this road before, Zip. It works for one night and then the parties start back up the next day.”

  “Look,” she said. “You just haven’t been thinking big enough. This is going to work. Have you been to a pig farm lately? The smell will be enough to keep everyone away for at least three days. And by then, everyone will have moved on to the next venue. Never overestimate the attention span of drunk high school kids.”

  When I frowned, she punched me on the arm. “You are torpedoing your chance at glory here, old man. This is everything you want—vengeance and the promise of eternal peace and quiet—all wrapped up in a bacon-scented bow. Trust your older sister. You won’t be sorry.”

  “Zip—”

  “No. Wolf Gates is a pig. We’re just giving him the family reunion he deserves.” When I still looked doubtful, she added, “Remember, we’re doing this for Dad.”

  And because I didn’t have a better idea, I said, “Right. For Dad.”

  The sun was just hitting the tops of the trees overlooking the lake when I finally got Willow on the phone and asked her to go see a movie that night.

  “I told you,” she said, “that Wolf and Rex can’t know we’re doing…whatever we’re doing.”

  “And they won’t. Because you’ll be at the movies, and I’ll be elsewhere.”

  “You’re asking me out. To a place you won’t be.”

  “Exactly. And in case Wolf does think you were with me, you’ll be able to prove you weren’t. You’ll have a ticket stub.”

  “If I want Wolf to think I’m not with you,” she said slowly, “why wouldn’t I just stay home?”

  “You won’t want to be home. Because of…stuff.”

  “Stuff,” she said. “What are you going to be doing?”

  “Probably better if you don’t know,” I said. I chewed the inside of my cheek. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how she was going to feel about a bunch of toked-up pigs stinking up her house. I mean, it wasn’t like I was doing this to her intentionally, but she still had to live there.

  “Am I still going to be able to live in my house after this?” she asked, which actually did make me feel kind of bad.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “All right. So I’m going to the movies. By myself. What movie do you want to not see with me?”

  I smiled into the phone. “Lady’s choice.”

  “Fine. I’ll pick something with hot, sweaty men doing hot, sweaty man things.”

  “I’m sorry to miss it.”

  “Call me tomorrow. Unless you get yourself killed, in which case, don’t call me tomorrow.”

  “I will.” I clicked the phone off and looked over my shoulder, where Ed and Zip were sitting on the couch, Ed on one side, Zip sideways on the other with her legs across Ed’s lap.

  Ed said, “Have you secured the safety of fair Willow Rothgar?”

  “I have.” I gestured toward Zip. “This is your operation, lady.”

  She swung her legs back down and got up. “We’ll start once the sun’s down,” she said. “But first let’s hit the market. We’ll need some potato chips. Lots and lots of potato chips.”

  Unfortunately, Zip’s plan wasn’t just to steal Bob Shultz’s prized artisanal pigs. It also involved stealing his pig trailer.

  Zip was feeding potato chips to the pigs while Ed, who had just pulled out the fuse that conducted
electricity to the fence, was jogging back from the main house.

  “They’re so sweet!” Zip said, patting one on the head. “Aren’t you a good piggy? Aren’t you?”

  “They reek,” I said.

  “Kind of the point, Tom.” She cut a glance to Ed. “I do feel bad about the fence,” she said as he pulled an enormous pair of wire cutters from a grocery bag stuffed with Utz kettle chips.

  “Do you have a better idea?” Ed asked, applying the wire cutters to the fence and snipping. “Anyway, we’re kind of doing the guy a favor. We’re only borrowing the pigs. Someone else might come along and actually steal them.” He cut a few more wires. “He needs to up his security.”

  “When do you think he’ll be back?” I asked.

  Ed slipped and cut himself on the fence, and Zip grabbed some wadded-up tissues out of her pocket and handed them to him. “Are these even clean?” he asked, wrapping them around his bleeding finger.

  Zip shrugged at Ed and glanced back at me. “Probably not until late,” she said. “The restaurant we sent him to was way down in the southern part of Chambliss.”

  “And you convinced him it was a genuine gift card how?”

  “It was a genuine gift card,” Zip said. “I put in the note that it was a thank-you from a customer. And I listed tomorrow as the expiration date.” She smiled angelically.

  “Lucky he bothered to check the date,” Ed said.

  “Please,” Zip said. “He’s in the food-service industry. Of course he’d check the date.”

  Ed stepped back from the fence. “I’m done.”

  “Bully,” Zip said. She glanced back at the potato-chip trail we’d made to Shultz’s trailer, which was hooked up to the back of Ed’s RAV4. “That may not be enough chips.” She tossed a bag to me. “When we pull the fence out of the way, you need to lure them into the trailer.”

  “Um,” I said. “How do I get them inside without me in there, too?”

  “Throw the bag,” Ed said. “Honestly, Tom, I don’t know how you’ve gotten this far in life.”

  “Forgive me. My pig-thieving skills are rusty.”

  “Don’t worry so much,” Zip said. “It’s not like they’re wolves. They aren’t going to eat you.”

  “They weigh five hundred pounds!” I said. “They don’t have to eat me. They just have to step on me.”

  “Well,” said Zip. “Don’t fall down.”

  “They’re going to get bored,” Ed said. “Let’s do this, people.”

  “On three,” said Zip. “One, two…”

  She and Ed pulled away the broken section of the fence. I waved the open bag of chips in the air while the pigs stormed through, eating their way closer to the trailer.

  “Do we really need all of them?” I called.

  “By my calculations, we need at least twelve,” she shouted back.

  The first of the pigs was heading into the trailer, so I tossed the rest of the bag inside and jumped out of the way. “I like how you say calculations, as if you sat down and worked this out with a pencil.”

  Zip slammed the door behind the rest of the pigs while Ed repaired the cut piece of fence with some copper wire and replaced the fuse.

  “How many did we get?” he asked, jogging back to the car.

  “I think eleven,” I said, glancing at Zipora. “Is that enough? It’s not the requisite twelve.”

  “Should be fine,” she said. “We need to move in case Shultz decided not to stay for dessert.”

  “Please tell me you paid cash for that gift card,” I said as I climbed into the RAV4. I got in back because (a) it was not my car and (b) it was not my operation.

  “I paid cash, and I paid some college kid ten bucks to buy it for me,” she said. “I’m not some rank amateur.”

  “You are nothing if not professional,” Ed agreed.

  “Ha,” I said. “The word professional implies an employment history.”

  She blew a raspberry at me from over her headrest. I noticed that Ed’s hand was resting on her knee. I swallowed and pretended I didn’t notice.

  Ed put his foot on the accelerator and attempted to pull out. The engine groaned, and our heads whipped backward.

  “Damn,” Ed said. “This thing is supposed to haul thirty-five hundred pounds. The trailer doesn’t weigh anything like that.”

  “Didn’t you account for the weight of the pigs?” I asked.

  “Of course I did,” he spat. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Dude, we’re sitting in a driveway with a trailer full of stolen pigs and WE ARE NOT MOVING.”

  “They must be heavier than we thought,” he said to Zip.

  “We could let one of them out,” she said. “Or two.”

  “How do we get just two of them out of there?” I asked.

  “With finesse,” Zip said. “You do it.”

  “Me? I’m not the one who didn’t account for the fact that pigs are fat!”

  “I’m doing this for you, jackass,” Ed said. “Let’s not forget that.”

  I jerked my eyes up to his in the rearview mirror. I was so focused on doing this for my dad that it hadn’t occurred to me that Ed was doing it for me.

  Although he might have been doing it for Zip, too. I tried not to think about that.

  “Fine, I’ll do it,” I said, grabbing another bag of chips. I slammed the door on my way out and paused by the back of the trailer. I counted to three, muttered, “Guile!” with a halfheartedly raised fist, and very slowly opened the door a few inches, wedging it partway closed with my body so the pigs wouldn’t all come streaming out at once.

  The door slammed into my side as a determined pig pushed his way out. I flew sideways and landed in the dirt.

  “Close it!” Zip shouted through her open window. “We’re going to lose all of them!”

  We’d already lost two, and the rest were trying to figure out how to turn around in the cramped trailer. I threw my bag of chips into the back and slammed the door shut.

  I more or less flung my broken body into the backseat, panting and swearing.

  “How many did we lose?” Ed asked.

  “Two,” I said. “And I only have two cracked ribs, thanks for asking.” I glanced out the back window. “Should we just leave them there?”

  “They’re stoned pigs,” Zip said. “It’s not like they’re going anywhere.”

  Ed pushed the accelerator to the floor. The engine groaned, and we lurched forward about three feet before we stopped again. “Shoot,” Ed said. “That’s not really better.”

  “Try a lower gear,” Zip suggested.

  Ed downshifted and tried again. We moved forward. Slowly. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to do more than twenty hauling this thing,” he said.

  We slowly lurched down the two-lane highway back toward my house.

  “This is stupid,” I said. “There’s no way we’re not getting caught moving like this.”

  “Nobody’s out here,” Zip said. “It’s ten o’clock on a Wednesday.”

  “We’re going to prison,” I said. “We’re totally going to prison. How much are those hogs worth? This is grand larceny. It has to be.”

  “We aren’t stealing them!” Zip said. “Think of it as a field trip. One last hurrah before they become a very expensive protein source.”

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

  “Bah. That’s because all your ideas suck.”

  “So,” Ed said to Zip. “How long are you staying in town?”

  She smiled sweetly. “I haven’t entirely decided yet.”

  “God,” I said. “You are such a case of arrested development.”

  “Oh ho,” she said. “Pot, meet kettle.”

  “I’m extremely mature for my age.”

  “Sure you are, babycakes.” She pointed ahead. “Turn here, Ed.”

  “I do know where you live.”

  “Well,” she said, batting her eyes. “Thank goodness for that.”

  “COULD YOU STO
P DOING THIS, ZIPORA. YOU ARE VERY, VERY OLD AND IT’S GROSS.”

  “I don’t find you gross,” Ed said.

  “Me either,” Zip said. “You should cut the lights now. We’re about to go by the Rothgars’.”

  Ed switched off the lights. I pointed to the house just past ours and said, “I think you should park in front of Mrs. Lee’s. Our place is too close, and they’ll see us unloading the pigs.”

  “They could probably see us from there, too,” Ed said.

  “Only if they were actually focusing on Regina Lee’s house,” Zip said. “Which they won’t be doing.”

  Ed came to a halt along the gravelly roadside. A second later, the trailer stopped, too, after it had bumped us forward another foot.

  “Tell me again,” Ed asked, “what we’re doing with the trailer?”

  “We have to take it back so Shultz can come get his pigs.”

  “He’ll be having a great morning.”

  “Don’t feel too bad for him,” Zip said. “He’s overcharging people for drug-tainted meat. I’m sure he’s made at least one person fail a drug test.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he’s getting a free dinner out of it.”

  “Was it someplace nice?” Ed asked.

  “Yeah, the Greek place on Cary Street?”

  “That’s not bad,” Ed said. “They have a really good wine list, especially on the red side.”

  “I think,” Zip said, “we may be stalling.” She turned sideways in her seat so that she could look at me and Ed at the same time. “Okay. Plan: We lead the pigs behind Mrs. Lee’s, through the woods, around our backyard, and up through the Rothgars’. Half of them will go into the backyard toward the DJ table. The other half are going into the house.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You never said anything about taking them inside. How do we do that without getting caught?”

  “I’ll make two trails with the chips. One to the table, and one to the back door. And I’ll be in disguise. You guys just need to stay out of sight.”

  “And what keeps Wolf and his friends from just chasing them back out?”

  “That’s part two,” she said. “We have to dump the keg. Drunk, stony piggies are sleepy piggies.”

  “Do pigs like beer?” Ed asked.

  “Pigs love beer.”