Beowulf for Cretins

by Ann McMan

  “I know, right?” CK picked up her fork. “Dig in while it’s hot.”

  “That’s pretty much your advice for everything, isn’t it?”

  “See?” CK shoved a chip loaded with chili and gooey cheese into her mouth. “I knew you were trainable.”

  “CK? I’m not kidding. I’m in one hell of a mess.”

  “I know you are. You’re faced with a big damn choice.”

  Grace watched her friend lift another chip that sagged beneath the weight of its toppings. “Just for the sake of discussion,” she asked, “what, in your view, are my so-called choices?”

  “I can’t really answer that without understanding some of the variables.” CK wiped her fingers on a napkin.

  “Such as?” Grace asked.

  “Well, for starters, what does ‘Abbie’ want?” CK raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and postulate that the two of you have met to discuss this unhappy dilemma?”

  Grace nodded.

  “And?”

  Grace shrugged. “She came by my house the night after the announcement.”

  “Aaaaand . . .” CK made an entreating gesture.

  “And . . . nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yeah. ‘Nothing’ pretty much covers it.” Grace shrugged again. “We didn’t reach any resolution.”

  “A wasted opportunity.” CK shook her head. “Did you at least bump uglies?”

  “Hey,” Grace hissed before shooting panicked looks around the restaurant. “Would you mind lowering your damn voice? There are students all over this place.”

  “Oh, give me a break. None of them would ever suspect you of having a sex life.”

  Grace rolled her eyes and loaded a few of the nachos onto her plate. “I still need to keep this on the DL. I don’t want to lose my damn job.”

  “Why the fuck would you lose your job?”

  Grace was incredulous. “Does your spinal cord touch your brain? I’m up for tenure this year . . . remember?”

  CK waved a hand dismissively. “Those assholes wouldn’t dare use something like this to disqualify you.”

  “With all due respect, not all of us enjoy the perks that come with an academic pedigree like yours. Finding someone else to teach four sections of freshman English is pretty much a cakewalk.”

  CK ignored her argument. “Ah, but you’ve also made a name for yourself by editing one of the country’s most prestigious literary journals.”

  That much was true. Grace had been at the helm of Borealis, the college’s highly esteemed quarterly, for two years now. During her tenure, the journal had continued its lauded tradition of publishing short fiction and poetry by luminaries in contemporary literature.

  “Yeah, well.” Grace replied. “Don’t think Bryce Oliver-James wouldn’t happily step into the void.”

  “Oh, good god. A pencil-dick with three first names and no chin? I don’t think so.”

  Grace glared at her. “Seriously? Would you stow the commentary? He could be in here.”

  “I highly doubt it. Blowjob wouldn’t darken the door of any establishment that boasted beer cheese as its leading refinement.”

  “Blowjob?”

  “Hey.” CK waved a hand dismissively. “If the acronym fits, claim the title.”

  Grace shook her head. “Nevertheless. He’s up for tenure in the department, too—and there’s only one slot available.”

  “They’d never choose that waste of skin over you.”

  “They might—if they found out I was sleeping with the boss.”

  For once, CK didn’t have a ready response. They ate in silence for a bit.

  CK changed the subject. “So, you’re heading out to the island for the weekend?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Gonna work on that book?”

  “Maybe. Grady made me promise not to do any work on the cabin.”

  “I so do not understand you.” CK sat back and folded her arms. When her sleeve rode up, Grace noticed that she’d added yet another tattoo.

  “Why the hell do you keep getting those things?” Grace pointed at the angry-looking patch of skin. “You’re starting to look like a headliner for Strates Shows.”

  CK rolled her eyes. “If I knew what that meant, I’d deliver a crushing reply.”

  “It’s a carnival,” Grace explained. “I keep forgetting that you’re, like, eighty years younger than me.”

  “Yeah. Well. Get over it.” CK drained her glass. “Do you want another beer?”

  “Nope. I gotta get going. I want to get out there before the rain decides to circle back around.”

  CK looked over her shoulder toward the big front windows that faced the street. “You think it’s going to?”

  “Probably. It’s Vermont. It might even snow before dark.”

  “True.” CK waved at Tif, who was passing their table, carrying a stack of fat menus. “Could we get our check?” Tif flashed her an okay sign. “As I was saying,” CK resumed. “You need to get your thumb out of your ass and submit that book to some publishers.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says every set of submission guidelines I’ve ever read,” Grace explained.

  “Okay. So, screw publishers. What about literary agents?”

  Grace shrugged.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s . . .” Grace didn’t finish her explanation.

  “Yes? It’s . . . what?” CK leaned toward her. “I’m waiting.”

  “It’s not ready for that.”

  “Not ready? When the fuck will it be ready? When it’s nine times the length of Ulysses?”

  “Give me a break, CK.”

  “Nope. Don’t think I will.”

  Grace decided it was her turn to change the subject. “What are you doing this weekend?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Macabre images of CK, tangled up with Dean, flashed through Grace’s mind like a profane slide show. “Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re probably right.”

  CK smiled. “You head on out and get a jump on that weather. Lunch is on me.”

  “Really? That’s awfully generous.”

  “Yeah, well. Consider it my contribution to great literature.”

  Grace shook her head. “You’re nuts.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Grace extended her hand and CK gave it a warm squeeze.

  “See you on the flip side, pal.”

  “That you will, my friend.” Grace smiled at her. She didn’t bother adding that CK would likely be seeing a lot more of her—as a potential roommate, once she got rejected for tenure and lost her job.

  # # #

  Grace had spent enough time on the island to have a good routine down for getting ready. She didn’t need to take much besides whatever food she wanted to eat, drinking water, and a change of clothing. Everything else was already there. She always found it odd that Karen didn’t often accompany Grady on his weekend work trips. It seemed her friend’s wife found the cabin’s spartan conditions and relative isolation more off-putting than charming. More than once, Grace asked him why they kept the place when it was so abundantly clear that his wife did not enjoy spending time with him there.

  “Karen’s too much of a mall rat,” Grady had explained during their last trip. “If there are no available stores to hit, she’s definitely not spending twenty-four hours without access to Amazon Prime.”

  “I don’t get you two sometimes.”

  “Join the club.” He laughed. “I don’t get us any of the time.”

  Grace had often fantasized about buying the place, but it would have taken a minor financial miracle. And even then, she knew there was no chance Karen could let it go while her mother was still alive.

  “Gladys would have a shit fit,” Grady once told Grace when she asked if Karen would ever consider selling the place.

  “Why?”


  “Because the place is a monument to Karen’s big ole, queer uncle, Martin.” Grady shook his head. “Gladys still believes her brother used the cabin for fishing expeditions. She’s determined to cling to her delusions.” He laughed. “Ole Martin was ‘fishing,’ all right—but not for anything that swam in the lake.”

  Grace thought about it. “That certainly would explain some of the eclectic reading material we found piled up inside the outhouse.”

  “You think? Although I have to say—that’s not a place I’d ever be inclined to tarry long enough to read anything.”

  “Grady?” Grace asked. “I don’t think anybody stockpiles those publications so they can linger over the prose.”

  He blinked.

  Grace laid a hand on his shoulder. “I have so much to teach you, young Skywalker.”

  Grady sighed. “I really don’t understand your people.”

  “My people?” Grace withdrew her hand. “I beg your pardon. My people read prolix monographs, not porn.”

  Grady waved a hand dismissively. “You know what I meant.”

  “Not so fast, bucko. You don’t get a pass for making a stupid and ill-informed observation just because you’re black.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “Nothing. That’s my point.”

  He squinted at her. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  “It means the ability to make bigoted and ignorant generalizations about an entire population has about as much relevance to race as my sexual orientation has to some pathetic wanker, holed up on an island ogling guy-on-guy porn.”

  He sighed. “You’re spending too much time with CK.”

  “I see we understand each other.” Grace smiled at him.

  She didn’t mean to be so hard on Grady. But, sometimes, despite her best efforts to retain nothing from her forced attendance at all those CYO summer camps growing up, a random aphorism would rouse its sleepy head and invade her consciousness. “Sweep your corners, girls,” Sister Merry Larry would lecture her captive crew of fledgling campers, as they sat huddled together around a campfire that smoldered beneath the weight of wet kindling. “That’s the best way to make positive change in the world—one small bit at a time.”

  Grace wondered what advice Sister Merry Larry would have for her today . . .

  Slap the unholy passion that smoldered inside her until it was safely extinguished?

  Turn her back on her own happiness—and probably, Abbie’s—to save her career and shave a few hundred millennia off her sojourn in purgatory?

  Tuck her tail and run like hell in the opposite direction?

  No. That last bit was more like her mother’s one-size-fits-all brand of advice.

  Shit. There was no wisdom that could save her or provide a ready exit from this mess.

  The only way out is through. Merry Larry’s voice again. Grace often wondered if the upstart nun had spent her free time penning proverbs for fortune cookies.

  # # #

  Grady and Karen kept their pontoon in a slip at St. Albans harbor. Grace topped off the fuel tanks and stowed her bags in the dry storage wells beneath the front bench seats. The lake was only mildly choppy after several days of steady rain. The winds were blowing in from the south—an ominous sign that the weather system might decide to loop back around and wage a dorsal assault . . . usually the worst kind.

  She was not an experienced boater, but she could manage the straight shot from the harbor to Butler Island—just. And if she took care to head in slowly and toss out all the bumpers on the docking side, she could usually moor the damn thing without too much hassle—or collateral damage. Grady and Karen shared a dock with two other Butler Island property owners.

  One of the neighboring camps belonged to a pair of elusive octogenarians who, if they ever left their house at all, did so under cover of darkness. Grace had never caught a glimpse of, much less met, the antisocial pair. Grady said the man, Ed Simpson, was a retired investment banker from Manhattan, and that he and his wife arrived on June the first every year, and departed on Halloween—without exception. Grace would sometimes see smoke belching from their stone chimney—or hear the bang and clatter of their gasoline-powered generator on cold nights. But she never saw either of them—not even during the island’s monthly, communal binge-drinking and trash-burning rituals.

  Grace called the reclusive couple, “Edward and Mrs. Simpson.”

  The other resident who shared Grady’s dock was an avid “free-cycler” named Roscoe. Nobody really knew what Roscoe’s last name was—or whether he even had a last name . . . or a first name, for that matter. He was just “Roscoe.” Every week, Butler Island’s self-styled Mr. Haney would show up with his gargantuan Mandalay pontoon heaped to the gills with . . . junk. Roscoe spent his free time cruising neighborhoods on the mainland, looking for any promising castoffs. Old furniture. Discarded hunks of wood. Doors. Bits of old scrap metal. Broken tools. Buckets. Mismatched tires. Any kind of waste that might be headed for a landfill or a burn pile was fair game for Roscoe. He snapped up all of it. And he was always quick to make sure the other island inhabitants found ways to put his eclectic gleanings to use.

  Roscoe’s high-dollar salvage barge was tied up at the dock when Grace arrived. He waved enthusiastically when he recognized her.

  “Hey, Doc?” he called out. “You gotta come take a gander at what I brung today. Got some real finds in here. Things you’n Grady will want to use for that new deck railing.”

  Grace secured her boat and tossed her bags onto the dock.

  “Whattaya got, Roscoe?”

  Roscoe threw back an old, stained canvas tarp and shifted some of his haul to the side. He pointed at a bundle of twisted iron rods. There had to be at least three or four dozen of them, strapped together with frayed bungee cords.

  Grace knelt to examine them more closely. “Oh, wow. What are these? They look like parts of an old fence.”

  “Exactly.” Roscoe beamed. “They’re from the Greenwood cemetery in St. Albans—back in the oldest section where all them Revolutionary War soldiers is buried. These were all part of a fence they had way back before they started building all them houses up in that area. I figure these iron spikes was all hand-wrought. Look close and you can see the hammer marks and how the patterns is irregular from one to the next.”

  Grace ran her fingers over the rough texture of the narrow iron pickets. It was incredible to think that these hunks of metal had been heated, pounded and twisted into such intricate ribbon-like shapes by hand.

  “They just let you have these?” she asked Roscoe.

  “Waaall.” He rubbed a calloused hand across his jaw. “Didn’t nobody try to stop me from takin’ them. They was all piled up behind an old mausoleum—and mostly buried beneath a couple years’ worth of grass clippin’s, so I figured nobody’d kick up a fuss if I dug ’em out and hauled ’em off.”

  Grace shook her head. “How’d you even find out they were there?”

  He winked at her. “I got my sources.”

  “I just bet you do, Roscoe.”

  He smiled at her. “Grady not comin’ this weekend?”

  “Nope. I’m doing a solo.”

  “Waaall.” Roscoe plucked at his chin. “You give a holler if you need help with anything.”

  Grace fetched her bags from the dock. “Thanks, Roscoe. But I think I’m gonna have a quiet couple of days—just grading papers and working on my book.”

  He scoffed. “I wouldn’t be countin’ on that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He waved a hand at the landscape behind them. “Some asswipe ditched a stray dog out here . . . again. Damn thing barked up a storm last night—and again this mornin’.”

  “Oh, man. What kind of person can do something like that?”

  “Beats the hell outta me. But I’ll tell you one thing—if ole Bud Wyatt gets sight of it, he’ll pump its hind-end full of lead.”

  Grace was horrified.
“Well that’s not any better than ditching the poor thing in the first place.”

  Roscoe shrugged. “Maybe not. Might be better’n starvin’ to death out here in the middle of the lake.”

  “Unless it can swim?” Grace suggested.

  “You never know.”

  Grace shook her head. “Why would somebody go to the trouble to bring a dog out here by boat and abandon it?”

  “Hell if I know. But I seen a lot a stranger things in my time. Couple years back, some doofus tied off in the cove and dumped out a crate of ferrets. Did you know them little rats can swim? And they breed like rabbits. They was all over this dang island.” He clucked his tongue. “But that first winter out here did for them. Maybe the same thing’ll happen with this dog.”

  Grace didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about anything freezing to death, all alone in a Vermont winter. She gave him a salute and headed for the path that led up a steep incline to Grady and Karen’s cabin. “See you later, Roscoe.”

  “You tell Grady about these here spikes.”

  “I will,” Grace called over her shoulder. “Thanks.”

  She reached the clearing at the top of the rise. The view of the lake from here always took her breath away. It made everything else seem smaller. More fleeting. Less important. Even her angst about the situation with Abbie got up from its anxious perch in the front row and retreated to the cheap seats at the back of the hall.

  She never got tired of it. Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. This view of Lake Champlain woke something up inside her. The cranky, old sleeping dog that inhabited the better part of her psyche would stir and lift its head, nosing at the air like it caught a whiff of something tantalizing on a stray breeze. Hope? A second shot at happiness? Brisket?

  She turned her head away from the view and inhaled.

  Yep. Brisket. The scent was unmistakable. Somebody was grilling. Probably the Simpsons.

  Her stomach growled. The sooner she got her stuff stowed inside, the sooner she could get everything hooked up and humming. The propane-powered fridge took a couple of hours to cool down.

  She hefted the backpack higher onto her shoulder and walked the remaining distance to the cabin. The place looked great. She’d talked Karen into letting them paint the clapboard exterior a rich mustard color. Now the brightly colored little cabin seemed to vibrate at the center of its cleared patch of ground. It was a simple saltbox—four side walls and a stand-up loft. It had a kitchen, a small bedroom, and a big living area topped by the loft that was only accessible, for now, by a wooden ladder. The cabin had an outhouse, too, located a short but respectful distance away.