Dale deleted the lines of Old English and tried to get back to his novel, but somehow he could not transport himself back to the rich summer vacation of 1960. After a while he gave up, pulled a cold beer from the fridge, grabbed his dogeared copy of Norton’s Anthology, found the Beowulf section, and went down to the basement where it was brighter and warmer.
He turned on the console radio and listened to the scratchy jazz coming from St. Louis. As he skimmed over Beowulf, the last of the day’s light faded and died through the windows high on the cement wall. The furnace came on with its wheeze and roar, but Dale was too lost in the Beowulf tale to notice.
The monster Grendel and his mother—not to mention the wolves circling close around the beleaguered mead hall—were described several times by the word wearg or its variant, wearh. A marginal note in Dale’s own hand read, “German form warg —wolf, but also denotes outlaw —someone who has committed a crime that is unforgivable or unredeemable.” Then, next to his note, in Clare’s slanting script, “Those cast out from their communities and doomed to wander and die alone. Warg = corpse-worrier (from Indo-European wergh, to strangle = ‘one who deserves strangulation’). The outcast human warg could be killed on sight with impunity.”
Dale’s hands were shaking again as he lowered the heavy anthology. He’d forgotten that he’d loaned Clare his text when she’d audited his Beowulf graduate class four years ago.
Dimly, slowly, Dale became aware of the blues song being played on the old radio. It was as if someone had turned up the volume. He dropped the book and reversed positions on the bed, leaning closer to the glowing dial.
It was a powerful and classic piece of blues. Legend said that the composer/player, Robert Johnson, had sold his soul to the devil to be able to write and play such music. Johnson had never denied the rumors.
Dale closed his eyes and listened to the ancient recording of Johnson wailing to the tune of “Hellhound on My Trail.”
ELEVEN
TWO weeks after Clare Hart joined Dale’s 20th- Century American Authors class and a week before they became lovers, Dale—Dr. Stewart—had her stay a few minutes after the seminar ended. It was a beautiful early autumn day that felt like summer, and the windows to the old classroom were open, looking out onto green leaves and blue sky.
“You’re Clare Two Hearts,” said Dale. “Mona Two Hearts’s daughter.”
Clare frowned at him. “How did you find out?”
“Some supplementary transcripts arrived from the university in Florence and your real name was on them. . . unlike the earlier transcripts. Your mother’s name was also on one of the documents.”
Clare stood silent, looking at him. He was soon to learn just how still and silent this young woman could be. After a moment, Dale cleared his throat and went on, “I apologize. . . I mean, I really wasn’t snooping. But I was just curious why. . .”
“Why I hid my identity?”
Dale nodded.
Clare had smiled without warmth. “Dr. Stewart. . . it isn’t easy being a famous diva’s daughter. Not even in Italy. And that part of my identity had no role in my graduate work here.”
Dale nodded. “I knew that your mother had grown up on the Blackfeet reservation up north. . .”
“Actually, she didn’t,” said Clare in that no-nonsense tone that he’d already grown to enjoy in class. “All of Mama’s press kits say that she grew up poor on the reservation—not far from St. Mary—but in reality she was born there but grew up in Cut Bank, Great Falls, Billings, and half a dozen other little towns before she went to Juilliard and then on to Europe.” Clare looked him straight in the eye. “Mama’s mother had married a white man who was ashamed of the rez. I’m part half-breed.”
Dale shook his head at that. “Miss Hart. . . I really didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I just noticed the difference in names, recognized your mother’s name. I thought that I should tell you about the supplementary transcripts.”
“Does anyone else know?” asked Clare.
“I don’t think so. I just happened to see the file on the day that the transcripts came in because we were trying to allocate credits for the nondegree graduate students.” He pulled the file out of his drawer, removed the telltale transcripts, and handed them to her. “I’ll refile the rest,” he said. “The supplements weren’t necessary.”
Clare slid the papers into her backpack without looking at them and turned to go. She stopped at the door and looked back at him. He expected to hear a “thank you,” but what she said was “I’ve been in Missoula for almost a month, but I haven’t had the nerve to drive up to the reservation.”
Dale had amazed himself by saying, “I go up to Glacier and the reservation every fall. I could show you around there if you want.”
Clare had looked at him with that neutral, intense stare of hers, and then turned and left without another word. Later, after he came to know her as well as he could—perhaps as well as anyone could—he realized that she had probably decided to have an affair with him at that moment.
Dale awakens to a loud banging.
He looks around. He is in the study—he’d fallen asleep in the chair—and with the exception of the single desk lamp, the farmhouse is dark. He does not remember dozing off or what he was working on here when he fell asleep. The ThinkPad is turned off.
The banging is coming from upstairs.
To hell with this. Dale is suddenly very angry. He looks around for the baseball bat, but he’s left it in another room or it has rolled under the bed.
The banging intensifies.
Dale leaves the lighted study and walks down the darkened hallway, up the narrow steps. A pale light glows through the yellowed plastic.
He pulls out his pocket knife, selects the sharpest blade, and makes rough incisions through the plastic, diagonally, X marks the spot. He tears at the layers of brittle plastic with his hands until he rips a hole, widens it, tears plastic from the frame.
The air wafts out from behind the plastic and it carries the scent of lilacs and decay. Tutankhamen’s tomb. Dale steps through the torn plastic, feeling the strands of the brittle stuff trying to hold him back, and then he is standing on the faded runner in the upstairs hallway, the stale air still rushing past him and downstairs as though he had opened an airlock.
There is one open door on his right, two on the left. The light is coming from the rear room on the left.
The banging has stopped.
Still holding his small utility knife, Dale strides down the hall, pausing to glance in the first room on his left and the open door to his right. A small bedroom to his left, an even smaller bathroom to his right. Both rooms are dark. The light from the rear bedroom flickers like candlelight.
Pausing in the doorway, Dale peers around the door frame.
A tall bed, a massive chest of drawers, a low dressing table with an opaque mirror, a flickering kerosene lamp on the dressing table, and a hand-built closet—painted a faded yellow—that seems strangely familiar to Dale. The windows are so heavily curtained and draped that no hint of moonlight or sunlight could find its way in. Holding the pathetic little knife ahead of him, Dale crosses to the bed.
There is a dark outline there on the age-tarnished quilt. At first Dale thinks it is a figure, then he sees it is merely an indentation in the quilt, but as he steps up to the high bed he sees that it is more than an indentation.