Not satisfied, Dale went back into the house. He traded the bat for the crowbar, locked the door, and went from room to room, switching on lights as he went. He checked behind furniture and drapes and under the bed. He opened closets. He went down the basement stairs and checked behind the furnace and under Duane’s old brass bed. He checked the empty coal bin.

Upstairs again, he rechecked all of the ground-floor rooms. Then he went up the stairs to the second floor.

The heavy plastic remained stapled firmly in place. The second-floor hallway was dim behind the yellowed sheets of construction plastic.

Dale checked everything again. Nothing. No one. The house was so empty and silent that the sound of the furnace kicking on made him jump and hold the crowbar at port arms.

He retrieved the baseball bat and went back to the study, hoping that the words would be gone from his screen. They were still there.

Dale sighed, sat in the old swivel chair, and printed out the page.

As he saw it, there were only two possibilities—either someone had been in the house while he was walking, or he had typed these lines without being conscious of it. Either possibility made him slightly ill.

He looked at the first line—gabbleretchetsyethwishthounds.The word “hounds” leaped out of the line. Whoever had typed this mess had not taken time to hit the space bar.

Dale went through the manuscript with his blue pen, setting diagonal slashes where he thought the breaks should be. The message became—

gabble retchets yeth wisht hounds

he haefde hundes haefod & his loccas waeron

ofer gemet side & his eagan scinon swa leohte

swa morgensteorra & his teth waeron swa scearpe

swa eofores texas

Unfortunately, most of it made sense to the English professor.

Dale Stewart’s expertise was in twentieth-century literature, but he had taught his share of Chaucer and enjoyed his seminars on Beowulf. This Old English was closer to Beowulf’s. “Gabble retchets” rang vague bells, but did not immediately translate. He didn’t believe that was Old English—Welsh, perhaps. “Yeth” meant “heath,” so the end of the first line meant something like “heath or wisht hounds.” He would have to check references for the “wisht.”

The rest of the message was straight old English. “He haefde hundes haefod”—“he had the head of a hound.”

Dale lowered the paper and rubbed his cheek, hearing the stubble there scrape. His hand was shaking ever so slightly.

“& his loccas waeron ofer gemet side”—“and his locks were extremely long.”

Dale smiled. When he had first seen the typing, he’d been afraid that Derek and the other skinheads, or even Sheriff C.J. Congden, had sneaked into the place to spook him. He felt he could safely rule them out. He doubted if any of the locals he’d met so far were literate in Old English. Careful, Dale old boy, he warned himself, intellectual pride goeth before a fall.

“& his eagan scinon swa leohte swa morgensteorra”—“and his eyes shone as bright as the morning star.” Someone with the head of a hound, long locks, and blazing eyes. Lovely.

“& his teth waeron swa scearpe swa eofores texas.” Texas. Dale wished it was a note about Texas. This line translated as “. . . and his teeth were as sharp as a boar’s tusks.” Texas.

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.”